Free Republic

William D. Ruckelshaus, who resigned as deputy attorney general rather than carry out President Richard M. Nixon’s illegal order to fire the independent special Watergate prosecutor in the constitutional crisis of 1973 known as the “Saturday Night Massacre,” died on Wednesday at his home in Seattle. He was 87.

Nixon-era DOJ official made famous by 'Saturday Night Massacre' dies at 87 BY ZACK BUDRYK - 11/27/19 03:52 PM EST Nixon-era DOJ official made famous by 'Saturday Night Massacre' dies at Former Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus, one of two top Department of Justice (DOJ) officials who resigned rather than fire the special prosecutor investigating the Watergate scandal, died Wednesday at 87, his family said. Ruckelshaus joined the Nixon administration in 1969 as assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s civil rights division before becoming the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) first administrator in 1970. In 1973, after a brief stint as...

EACH of us took turns over the past 43 years running the Environmental Protection Agency. We served Republican presidents, but we have a message that transcends political affiliation: the United States must move now on substantive steps to curb climate change, at home and internationally. There is no longer any credible scientific debate about the basic facts: our world continues to warm, with the last decade the hottest in modern records, and the deep ocean warming faster than the earth’s atmosphere. Sea level is rising. Arctic Sea ice is melting years faster than projected. The costs of inaction are undeniable....

<p>Thirty years ago today, the Environmental Protection Agency drastically restricted the production and use of DDT, an inexpensive pesticide once widely used to repel mosquitoes and other disease-carrying insects.</p> <p>Count us out of any celebration. Instead, we should mourn for the 30 million to 60 million people the World Health Organization reckons have died from malaria, lives that might have been saved by DDT. The American Council on Science and Health points out that in the two decades before it was restricted this "miracle pesticide" saved as many as 100 million lives in Africa, Asia and South America.</p>