Free Republic

One of the most notorious political scandals in American history, the Watergate Scandal is set to be exposed yet again in White House Plumbers (2023), an all-new miniseries coming this Spring. The notorious scandal that would ultimately remove President Richard Nixon from power remains to this day an unprecedented act of political espionage, showing what even people in the highest and most respected institutions in the country are willing to do in the name of the greater good. It's a well-documented historical event that has been depicted and referenced in various movies and shows, but with White House Plumbers, it's...

Many walking near the White House Friday noticed an incongruous sign at 17th and Penn: “President Nixon campaign headquarters.” Turns out HBO’s White House Plumbers docuseries—which follows the story of the Nixon cronies behind Watergate—is filming in town and turned a portion of DC around the Eisenhower Executive Office Building into a recreation of 1972. Here’s what some people have seen over the past few days.

Former Nixon campaign official G. Gordon Liddy, who was a key figure in the Watergate scandal as the chief operative in the White House Plumbers unit, has died, according to multiple news outlets. He was 90.

How many plumbers does it take to fix an airplane toilet? It’s a joke with no punch line, as 85 plumbers on a Norwegian flight headed for Germany discovered Saturday when their plane had to return to Oslo because of a broken toilet, reported The Independent. The flight, which departed Oslo bound for Munich, turned back at the Swedish border. “We would have liked to fix the restrooms, but unfortunately it had to be done from the outside and we did not take the opportunity to send a plumber (out) at 10,000 meters,” Frank Olsen, a plumbing company CEO aboard...

Hundreds of thousands of people whose personal fates could hinge on whether Britain leaves the European Union won't even have a vote in next month's referendum: Polish migrants. Among other EU citizens, up to a million Poles live and work in Britain. They're allowed to do so, because of free movement of workers in the EU. At a typical construction site in a leafy suburb of London, a brick row house is under renovation. There's a radio on for the builders, and it's all in Polish — Polish Radio London, a digital radio station that launched in 2006, two years...

Dorothy, 77, showed him in. In the middle of the living room, Dave saw her son Steve, 50, propped up in a hospital bed. His right leg had been amputated below the knee because of diabetes. In the nearby bedroom was her husband, John, 78, who has Parkinson's disease. Recalling the moment, Dave told me that he "immediately felt and saw the life stripped out of Dorothy" because of the pressures she faced. He proceeded with his inspection of the Cothrans' bathroom. He saw an old tub unsuitable for a person with Steve's disability. He saw fixtures that made the...

Obama to aides: 'Plug the damn hole' By Eric Zimmermann - 05/25/10 11:48 AM ET As critics question whether the White House is being tough enough with BP, Obama is reportedly showing his frustration behind closed doors: Since the oil rig exploded, the White House has tried to project a posture that is unflappable and in command. But to those tasked with keeping the president apprised of the disaster, Obama's clenched jaw is becoming an increasingly familiar sight. During one of those sessions in the Oval Office the first week after the spill, a president who rarely vents his frustration...

Obama, speaking to CBS in Beijing, says he's "furious' about the stream of leaks characterizing the Afghanistan deliberations... CHIP REID: “Firing offense??” THE PRESIDENT: “Absolutely" M What's odd about this is that many of the leaks (though certainly not all) have seemed deliberate, in tandem with Flickr photo releases from the meetings and in line with a message that Obama is considering deeply. And indeed, leaking has been a signature of the transition from the Plouffe/campaign era to a governing era run by Rahm Emanuel, who talks frequently to the press and whose hiring was one of the first major...

I INTERVIEWED two plumbing-company owners in Pittsburgh recently about Barack Obama's economic proposals for small businesses. One has 15 workers and 12 trucks, the other 52 and 34 trucks. It's Joe the Plumber, writ large. Both had the same reaction to Obama's proposed new taxes and mandates. To not have their bottom lines reduced by government fiat, both said they'd be forced to lay off employees. Specifically, here's what the owner of the larger firm said regarding six of Obama's key proposals for the small-business sector. The average wage at his company, figuring the 52 paychecks of his office staff,...

Last night, during Austin Hill's radio show on 630 WMAL in Washington, DC, a caller named Max from Arlington (VA) called in suggesting that Americans grab their plungers (a sanitized one, please!) and march at the Washington Mall with plungers in hand and in support of John McCain and Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber -- and to reject the Democratic Congress and also Barack Obama and his absurd tax policies. I thought it was an excellent call and a great idea! E-mail Austin at the link provided if you're interested in this.

There is a secret group in the Obama-Biden campaign tasked with shutting off any leaks from the record that links Barack Obama to his longtime adviser and mentor Bill Ayers, professor of education at the University of Illinois and unrepentant Weatherman terrorist and fugitive from the 1970s. This surprising fact has been developed by Chicago-born and Ralph Nader-supporting Professor Steve Diamond of Santa Clara University Law School, who maintains the Global Labor and Politics blog and has pieced together over many months the unusual surreptitious activity around the public records of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) grant now housed at...

As it turned out, all of those involved in the infamous leakage of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's recorded -- albeit private -- remarks about the proclivities of Republican legislators sullied themselves. For those who have been out of touch for the past week -- or tuned out -- the Los Angeles Times published excerpts from a private conversation Schwarzenegger had last spring with some aides in which, among other things, he speculated about GOP Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia's ethnicity and added: "I mean, they are all very hot. They have the, you know, part of the black blood in them and part...

See for example this thread first. The news, I fear it is bad. A plumber announced that he had Adopted Islam! What says his Imam? “Durka, Durka, Ti-D-Bowl Jihad” ??

Black Democratic leaders in Maryland say that racially tinged attacks against Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele in his bid for the U.S. Senate are fair because he is a conservative Republican. Such attacks against the first black man to win a statewide election in Maryland include pelting him with Oreo cookies during a campaign appearance, calling him an "Uncle Tom" and depicting him as a black-faced minstrel on a liberal Web log.Operatives for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) also obtained a copy of his credit report -- the only Republican so targeted.(see Schumers Plumbers below)

The Nixon administration put the FBI's Mark Felt – who recently admitted to being "Deep Throat," the Watergate source of the Washington Post – in charge of finding out the informant's identity, reported The Nation. The publication says it has obtained once confidential FBI documents that reveal Felt was asked to find out who in the administration was leaking damaging information to the Post's Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the reporters who published a series of stories credited with bringing Nixon down. An article by The Nation Washington editor David Corn and independent TV producer Jeff Goldberg states Felt, who...

Wed Jan 26, 4:40 PM ET Reuters This combination photo shows a model presenting a creation as part of Cavalera's 2005 Fall/Winter collection show during Sao Paulo Fashion Week, January 25, 2005. Picture taken on January 25. REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker

<p>Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger won office in large part on a promise to reduce the anti-business climate fostered by recalled Gov. Gray Davis. A prime example of that climate is the Davis administration's bureaucratic ban on the use of plastic pipe in housing construction, an issue we have written about for years.</p>

If you have just the slightest notion how L.A.'s homicidal gang wars may affect peace-loving noncombatants, consider this: - My plumber now carries a gun. He's no sharpshooter. No Wyatt Earp. He lives and works far from inner-city battlefields. He's never fought over a parking space and isn't, known to explode when the world doesn't turn his way. Nonetheless, he is packing. He's heeled. Strapped. This middle-age, bespectacled soul keeps some sort of automatic pistol - I didn't ask make and model - in his toolbox or glove compartment. Always. Now, the plumber is not a stupid man. He knows...

<p>An obscure battle over what sort of pipes can be used in California homes has become a cash cow for Gov. Gray Davis.</p> <p>Plumbers unions, whose members stand to lose pay if copper water pipes are replaced by a less-expensive plastic known as PEX, have donated at least $384,000 to the Democratic governor's re-election campaign in a post-Labor Day wave.</p>

On February 16, 2000 two Plumbers Unions gave $15,000 each for a total of $30,000 to Davis (Transactions 645217-A33984 & 645217-A33985). Coincidently, a new member Sidney Cavanaugh (an employee of the United Association of Apprentices and Journeyman in the Plumbing and Pipefitting Industry (the plumber's union) was appointed by Davis to the Building Standards Commission on February 24, 2000 (note that all the members of the Committee were appointed during the Davis term). http://www.bsc.ca.gov/abt_bsc/abt_cbscmem.html The "coincidence" happened in October of 2000. The Building Standards Commission was going to do the usual code adoption process which happens every three years, but...