Democracy was nice while we had it
PERSIST, THE POET SAYS: “Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” (Shari Golob photo)
This year’s elections could be the end of democracy in America. …
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COMMENTARY
WILL THERE BE PUNISHMENT FOR A LYING EX-PRESIDENT?
NEAR THE END. Trump at Gastonia, NC, Oct. 21, 2020. (Gaston Gazette photo)
Herblock, the late Washington Post political cartoonist and nemesis of Richard Nixon, wrote in a 1974 book, …
Read More →THE PRESS SINCE WATERGATE: GETTING BETTER AND WORSE AT THE SAME TIME
One long-lasting Watergate myth is that the coverage of the Watergate scandal was a great success for the news media in America, in that, as many have said facetiously, the press dethroned a president. There …
Read More →GEORGE W. BUSH: A WISE GUY AS PRESIDENT
George W. Bush was not elected president in the year 2000; he was appointed in a Supreme Court coup and things went downhill from there. Aside from Donald Trump, no president in modern times seemed …
Read More →GINGRICH, THEN THE SUPREME COURT CONTINUED THE GOP DRIFT FROM DEMOCRACY
Not long after Iran-Contra, Newt Gingrich, a clever, eely hypocrite became a leader in the Republican move away from democracy. He ran a smashing Republican takeover of the House (and Senate) in 1994, one of …
Read More →Race, the elephant in the smoke-filled room
The 1988 Willie Horton ad is to this day regarded as one of the most vicious ads in American presidential politics, a trend-setter for ugly campaigns ever since. When people ask, “Who let the dogs …
Read More →Iran-Contra, the presidential cover-up that succeeded
The first report of Iran-Contra appeared in a Lebanese magazine on November 3rd, 1986, a story saying the U.S. had sold arms to Iran. The sale was unlawful and news of it was a serious …
Read More →‘If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law’
Republican presidents and other leaders after Nixon quit on democracy, sometimes criminally, straight on through to the Donald Trump era. This segment of Watergate at 50 is the first of several describing how we got …
Read More →Nixon’s legacy: After him, Republicans en masse quit on democracy
Fifty years after the break-in some Watergate ideas emerge.
Among the main ones, in my view, are that the failure to prosecute Nixon and the Ford pardon of him did great damage to democracy …
Read More →Mueller Has Some Answering to Do
There’s a few simple, direct questions I hope House members will put to Special Counsel Robert Mueller Wednesday. Mueller says his report speaks for itself. Maybe not.
In Volume 1, Page 10, Mueller lists a …
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