Free Republic

This month, I spoke at an event commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Watergate scandal with some of its survivors at the National Press Club. While much of the discussion looked back at the historic clash with President Nixon, I was struck by a different question: Who actually won? From unilateral military actions to warrantless surveillance that were key parts of the basis for Nixon’s impending impeachment, the painful fact is that Barack Obama is the president that Nixon always wanted to be. Four decades ago, Nixon was halted in his determined effort to create an “imperial presidency” with unilateral...

A U.S. Justice Department document that says America can le­gally order the killing of its citizens if they are believed to be al-Qaida leaders uses the devastating and illegal bombing of Cam­bo­dia in the 1960s and ’70s to help make its case. American broadcaster NBC News first reported on the “white pa­per”—a summary of classified mem­os by the U.S. Justice Depart­ment’s Of­fice of Legal Council—on Monday. The 16-page paper makes a legal case for the U.S. government’s highly controversial use of un­manned drones to kill suspected terrorists, including some U.S. citizens. In making its argument, the docu­ment brings up the...

Last year, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney attacked the Democratic convention platform for its “shameful” decision to omit a reference to Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. But in a sign of how U.S. politics have changed in 40 years, President Richard Nixon complained in 1972 of the Democrats’ “dishonest” platform language declaring the city Israel’s capital. Nixon’s national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, agreed with his condemnation during a previously unreported taped conversation from June 29, 1972. “To make Jerusalem the capital of Israel is not the platform of a major American national party,” Henry Kissinger told Nixon. “That is...

Few presidents in modern times have been as interested in gun control as Richard Nixon, of all people. He proposed ridding the market of Saturday night specials, contemplated banning handguns altogether and refused to pander to gun owners by feigning interest in their weapons. Several previously unreported Oval Office recordings and White House memos from the Nixon years show a conservative president who at times appeared willing to take on the National Rifle Association, a powerful gun lobby then as now, even as his aides worried about the political ramifications. “I don’t know why any individual should have a right...

It is not without a bit of irony that, in the 40 years since the explosion of the Watergate story, Bob Woodward would again be under attack from the White House for trying to tell the truth. But this time the attack is coming from a Democrat. While Barack Obama may not share the Nixon pedigree, he and his White House are the closest thing to the Nixon regime of any that we have seen since then -- both in the extent of their paranoia and their willingness to suppress the truth and push the boundaries of law. In my...

I’m not sure what you’re supposed to do with this: Tricky Dick, Slick Willie and the Wordle Wizard           H/T Instapundit Since it’s on Facebook I guess you could just “like” it. Butt it might be more fun to assign WaPo Pinocchios to see who wins.   Butt if we’re just going to award prizes to Presidents for fibbing, I know who I’m putting my money on:     You can’t really blame BO for his seemingly contradictory statements and actions. It’s a lot harder to remember what you’ve said when you’re just reading it.     If you have to...

(CBS News) Just weeks after the 100th anniversary of President Richard Nixon's birth, a new exhibit at his presidential library is raising eyebrows. It contains newly declassified documents that reveal Nixon's correspondence with President Bill Clinton, and a surprisingly warm relationship between the two. The correspondence includes a personal, handwritten letter from Nixon congratulating Clinton on surviving a tough primary and general election to win the White House. That letter was the beginning of an unlikely union between the former Republican president and the newly elected Democratic chief executive.

memory hole reminder The first documentary evidence that Vietnamese communists were directly steering John Kerry’s group Vietnam Veterans Against the War has been discovered in a U.S. archive, according to a researcher who spoke with WorldNetDaily. Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2004/10/27207/#615wufvA5oZXKuWK.99

At a ceremony commemorating the late U.S. President Richard M. Nixon’s 100th birthday, politicians, a military official and Nixon’s eldest daughter on Sunday remembered him as an underappreciated president and a foreign policy genius. Nixon, the Cold War-era Republican stalwart who opened U.S. relations with communist China, was the only American president to resign from office, leaving the White House in disgrace over the Watergate scandal. “He looked at (the world) as a world with 200 countries and 200 leaders, and he studied every one of those leaders, and he knew most of them,” said Bruce Herschensohn, a friend and...

For five years, he was known as the leader of the Free World. But for the first several years of his life, Richard Milhous Nixon had a more modest title: farm boy. Wednesday will mark the date, 100 years ago, of a winter day so cold that Hannah Nixon was advised it would be better to bear her fifth son at home than risk traveling in the chill to a hospital. That was the day a small, kit-constructed home surrounded by citrus trees saw the birth of the man who would become the 37th president of the United States.

Watergate Judge John J. Sirica aided the prosecution in pursuing the White House connection to the Democratic headquarters break-in by providing the special prosecutor information from a probation report in which one of the burglars said he was acting under orders from top Nixon administration officials, according to once-secret documents released Friday by the National Archives. One newly public transcript of an in-chambers meeting between Sirica, the U.S. District Court judge in charge of the case, and then-Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox in July 1973 shows the judge revealed secret probation reports indicating that E. Howard Hunt had cited orders from...

The cover up is worse than the original crime. When the president conspires with others in government to lie to the American people and claim "national security" as a defense, the congress has a duty and precedent to get to the truth. Lying to the America people and ordering subordinates to lie in a cover up attempt is historically recognized as high crimes and treason and IS definitely an impeachable offense. When the president of the United States commits high crimes and treason and then lies to the American people and conspires to hide it from congressional investigators and claims...

Officially, JFK won by 112,000 votes. However, in Alabama, people voted for individual Electors, not for candidates. Six of Harry Byrd's Electors won, but all of them voted for JFK. Thus, all popular votes cast for Byrd's Electors were awarded to JFK.

What kind of president would Mitt Romney be? And what should we expect from Barack Obama's second term? To answer these questions, I'll draw on the work of Yale political scientist Stephen Skowronek, who has argued that presidents' fortunes depend on how they establish their political legitimacy in the particular circumstances under which which they assume power. In this essay, I'll discuss the prospects for a Romney presidency; in the next, I'll discuss the second term of an Obama presidency.

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — George S. McGovern, a proud liberal who argued fervently against the Vietnam War as a senator from South Dakota and suffered one of the most crushing defeats in presidential election history against Richard Nixon in 1972, died before dawn Sunday. He was 90. A spokesman for McGovern's family, Steve Hildebrand, told The Associated Press by telephone that McGovern died at 5:15 a.m. Sunday at a hospice in Sioux Falls, surrounded by family and lifelong friends.

Well,isn’t this just the last thing we need: a bunch of Republicans trying to make a big election about a bunch of small, non-optimal stuff?  Take Benghazi, for example;suddenly–and “conveniently” just ahead of the Foreign Affairs Debate–the drumbeat of “cover-up” surrounding the colossal screw-up tragedy at our embassy has begun. You can practically hear the rumble all up and down the Potomac: “What didn’t he know, and when didn’t he know it?” The implication, of course, is that - just like Nixon’s Watergate - BO is presiding over a massive cover-up of the truth about Benghazi. Except that no Americans...

Right now the RCP Averages are showing an odd situation. Mitt Romney leads nationally by one point, but trails in the Electoral College by a 294-244 count. Moreover, electoral vote number 270 (right now, Wisconsin) favors President Obama by a two-point margin. While I believe that an electoral vote/popular vote disconnect of this magnitude is unlikely, it certainly is possible that we’ll see another split between the two, especially if the popular vote is decided by less than a point. If that happens, Americans will once again receive a civics lesson in how presidents are really chosen. In particular, we’ll...

PIERRE, S.D. (AP) -- Longtime former U.S. Sen. George McGovern, the Democratic presidential candidate who lost to President Richard Nixon in a historic landslide, has moved into hospice care near his home in South Dakota, his family said Monday. "He's coming to the end of his life," his daughter, Ann McGovern, told The Associated Press.

The election of 1972 was a contest between the liberal media and the silent majority. President Nixon won a landslide victory for re-election that year carrying every state in the union except Massachusetts by running against the elite liberal media which, in turn, did everything short of illegal activities to defeat him.The media exacted its revenge in 1973 with the Watergate witch-hunt which essentially overturned the election. The election of 1980 saw much the same dynamic with Ronald Reagan defeating the incumbent liberal President Jimmy Carter and his media lackeys. Vice President George Bush did it again in 1988 when...

The election of 1972 was a contest between the liberal media and the silent majority. President Nixon won a landslide victory for re-election that year carrying every state in the union except Massachusetts by running against the elite liberal media which, in turn, did everything short of illegal activities to defeat him.The media exacted its revenge in 1973 with the Watergate witch-hunt which essentially overturned the election. The election of 1980 saw much the same dynamic with Ronald Reagan defeating the incumbent liberal President Jimmy Carter and his media lackeys. Vice President George Bush did it again in 1988 when...