At moments, “The Lessons of Watergate” conference, held a couple of weeks ago in Washington, DC, by the citizen’s lobby Common Cause, was a little like that two-man roadshow retired baseball players Bill Buckner and Mookie Wilson have been touring, the one where they retell the story of the catastrophic moment during the bottom of the last inning of Game Six of the 1986 World Series, when the Mets’ Wilson hit an easy ground ball toward Buckner of the Red Sox, who haplessly let it roll between his legs. That notorious error ultimately cost Boston the championship.As The New Yorker magazine’s Reeves Wiedeman wrote of the players’ joint public appearance, ”It is as if Custer and Sitting Bull agreed to deconstruct Little Bighorn.” Or those World War II reunions where aging Army Air Corps men meet the Luftwaffe pilots who tried to shoot them down over Bremen.So, too, in Washington, four decades after the Watergate break-in scandal that led to the downfall of President Richard Nixon. Up on stage was Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame, one of the first victims of Nixon’s infamous “plumbers,” the burglars who went skulking into the night to attempt illegal break-ins – including one at the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist.Continue Reading… … Read More
Rand Paul Wins CPAC Poll; Reaffirms His Opposition to Abortion
As Reason 24/7 dutifully informed you, Sen. Rand Paul
(R-Ky.) won
his first (though likely not last) presidential poll at the
Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Saturday, edging
his nearest rival Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) 25-23 percent. (And the
National Jewish Democratic Council
thinks that’s a terrible thing, and reminded the world that the
Democratic Party is better because it is
more reliably for war on Iran.)
A CPAC poll victory is by no means a rocket-sled to real-world
victory. His father Ron Paul won the poll twice, in 2010 and 2011.
As Nick Gillespie wrote
here after that second Ron Paul victory, it made the media
quickly discount any possible significance to the poll, even though
it presaged Paul coming in second in actual delegate votes on the
floor at the Republican National Convention in Tampa last
summer.
A Paulite blogging under the name “Barry Goldwater”
gives special extra significance to Rand’s victory since he
says there was no organized liberty movement push to rack up CPAC
votes for Rand as there has been for Ron in his victories, and that
since Rand doesn’t even have the sure support of his father’s old
fans, this proves Rand Paul’s outreach strategy to the larger party
must be working so far.
CNN
on the also-rans:
The ballot included 23 Republicans with a national political
profile as well as spots for write-ins and “undecided.”
Former Secretary of State Condolezza Rice and 43 others -
including former president Richard Nixon, who died in 1994 -
received at least one write-in vote.
Another potential presidential candidate, former Florida Gov.
Jeb Bush, asked not to be on the ballot. New Jersey Gov. Chris
Christie, who received 7%, and Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, were on
the ballot but were not invited to speak on the main stage….
Rounding out the top 10 vote-getters were Wisconsin Gov. Scott
Walker at 5%, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas at 4%, Louisiana Gov. Bobby
Jindal at 4%, and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin – the 2008 GOP vice
presidential candidate – with 3%.
Given that Palin also gave a prominent talk at the convention, I
don’t think you can credit the mere excitement of proximity for
Paul doing so well. His
filibuster ;over domestic drones–as well as being the only
guy admitting the GOP needs an overhaul in the direction of more
liberty, more civil liberty, and a
foreign policy that at least recognizes the possibility that
war isn’t a necessary solution to all our disagreements with our
enemies–are winning him genuine love in the young-skewing activist
base of CPAC.
While at CPAC, Charles Murray, author of the welfare policy
classic
Losing Ground ;and
What it Means to Be A Libertarian, gave a
CPAC speech in which he recommended that the Party cool it on
such social policy issues as gay marriage and abortion prohibition,
to win a newer generation of voters. ;
George Will on ABC News Sunday
celebrated the “rise of the libertarian strand” in the GOP at
CPAC, including a more sane foreign policy and live and let live
about drugs and gay marriage.
Rand Paul for his part used CPAC weekend to release his own
newest legislative action on abortion:
S.583, a bill that would implement equal protection under the
14th Amendment for the right to life of each born and unborn human.
This legislation does not amend or interpret the Constitution, but
simply relies on the 14th Amendment, which specifically authorizes
Congress to enforce its provisions.
From Section 1 of the 14th Amendment:
“No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the
privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor
shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property,
without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its
jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
“The Life at Conception Act legislatively declares what most
Americans believe and what science has long known- that human life
begins at the moment of conception, and therefore is entitled to
legal protection from that point forward,”
Sen. ;Paul ;said. ;
Paul has said various times,
to me and other reporters, that he recognizes that the Party
has to reach beyond its base to be a successful national party. At
the same time, he doesn’t seem to think that hewing so tightly to
this anti-abortion position will lose him the independents and
disaffected Democrats who might like him on civil liberties and
foreign policy; I’m not as sure as he is. (He also insists that his
position is perfectly libertarian–if you believe a developing
fetus is a human life, laws protecting it are no more unlibertarian
than laws against murder.)
While I’m not sure how CPAC activists en masse feel about
abortion, Paul’s re-emphasizing the issue right before the poll
vote didn’t hurt him. (Most
recent national polls see a 54-44 split in favor of legal
abortion.) In electoral terms, being an anti-abortion libertarian
will undoubtedly make some Republicans more comfortable with him as
it makes many Democrats and independents less comfortable with him.
I don’t think Paul is making the decision with cynical electoral
calculation either way. For whatever reason, most national media
focusing on Paul don’t seem to consider his abortion stance
something worth paying much attention to. That would likely change
if and when he’s the Republican presidential nominee. … Read More
An Intelligence History of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War
The Central Intelligence Agency has published a series of essays on intelligence and the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, to coincide with a symposium on the subject held last week at the Nixon Presidential Library.
The publication itself (“President Nixon and the Role of Intelligence in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War”) is a welcome addition to the literature. But it also “includes some embarrassing errors,” wrote Amir Oren in the Israeli paper Ha’aretz on February 3 (“CIA report on Yom Kippur War: Israel had nuclear arsenal”).
“For example,” Oren wrote, “in the photograph labeled ‘An Egyptian soldier holding up a portrait of President Sadat,’ the soldier in question and the two soldiers flanking him are clearly Israelis, as evidenced by the ‘IDF’ stamped visibly on their shirts.”
“The editors of the new study also err in attributing two things to lessons from the Six-Day War: the faulty prevailing conception among Israeli Military Intelligence ‘that Israel would have at least 48 hours’ warning before an invasion’ and that Sadat wouldn’t start a war before acquiring fighter planes. Furthermore, it seems they also confused war analyst Maj. Gen. (ret.) Chaim Herzog with one of his sons, Brig. Gen. (ret.) Mike Herzog,” he added.
If these discrepancies are cause for embarrassment, then it is the kind of embarrassment that should be willingly endured. To put it another way, exposing such work to external review and criticism is an unsurpassed way of identifying and correcting errors. … Read More
Diana Nyad: Lance Armstrong: The Cold Untruth
Is this the biggest sports scandal since the 1919 Chicago Black Sox threw the World Series? Oh, it’s bigger than any sports story. These lies rank up there with Richard Nixon and the Watergate Scandal.Read More…
More on Lance Armstrong
The secret story of Richard Nixon’s first scandal
Richard Nixon’s Checkers speech — delivered just five days after the New York Post reported wealthy backers had set up a fund for his day-to-day expenses — was seen by some 58 million people, or about a third of the population of the United States. It lasted thirty minutes and was to be forever identified by its reference to a cocker spaniel named Checkers. It was like nothing ever seen in American politics, set apart by its intimacy, its pathos, the apparent revelation of a private life from a public man, and its use of television. Its structure was a trial lawyer’s closing (or, perhaps, opening) argument, which ranged from the explanatory to the exculpatory to the defiant; buried within it was not only Nixon’s defense of himself, but occasional jabs at his opponents and probably at General Dwight Eisenhower, his running mate. It is still a remarkable document. The set was simple: Nixon sat behind a desk, his hands loosely clasped over his notes, and Pat Nixon was several feet away in a chair that seemed too large for her. Looking earnestly into the camera, Nixon said: My fellow Americans, I come before you tonight as a candidate for the Vice Presidency and as a man whose honesty and integrity have been questioned. Now, the usual political thing to do when charges are made against you is either to ignore them or deny them without giving details. I believe we’ve had enough of that in the United States, particularly with the present Administration … I have a theory, too, that the best and only answer to a smear or to an honest misunderstanding of the facts is to tell the truth. And that’s why I’m here tonight. I want to tell you my side of the case. Nixon went on to do just that, often conducting a dialogue with himself in a style and rhythm that he would continue to employ and to improve upon throughout his public life: I’m sure that you have read the charge and you’ve heard it said that I, Senator Nixon, took $18,000 from a group of my supporters. Now, was that wrong? And let me say that … it isn’t a question of whether it was legal or illegal; that isn’t enough. The question is: Was it morally wrong? I say it was morally wrong if any of that $18,000 went to Senator Nixon, for my personal use. I say that it was morally wrong if it was secretly given and secretly handled. And I say it was morally wrong if any of the contributors got special favors for the contributions they made. But that never happened, Nixon insisted. And then he posed another question to himself: “Well, then, some of you will say, and rightly, ‘Well, what did you use the fund for, Senator?’ ‘Why did you have to have it?’” That permitted him to explain the economics of a Senate office — his salary, his travel expenses, and the rest. But there were, he added, other expenses that needed to be covered for which there was no federal reimbursement. How, Nixon asked, does one pay for that — and do it legally? “The first way,” he said, “is to be a rich man. I don’t happen to be a rich man; so I couldn’t use that one.” Then, using the language of quiet insinuation that infuriated his detractors, he took the night’s first slap at the Democrats — starting with Senator Sparkman — while bringing Pat Nixon into an increasingly personal narrative: Another way that is used is to put your wife on the payroll. Let me say, incidentally, that my opponent, my opposite number for the Vice Presidency on the Democratic ticket, does have his wife on the payroll, and has had her on his payroll for ten years — for the past ten years. Continue Reading… … Read More
Barack the Unmerciful
Will Barack Obama go down in history as our least merciful
president? With less than two weeks to go in his first term, this
reputedly progressive and enlightened man has a strong shot at
winning that dubious distinction. December, a traditional season for presidential clemency, has
come and gone, and still Obama has granted just one
commutation (which shortens a prisoner’s sentence) and 22 pardons
(which clear people’s records, typically after they’ve completed
their sentences). Barring a last-minute flurry of clemency actions,
his first-term record looks weaker than those of all but a few
previous presidents. Which of Obama’s predecessors managed to make less use of the
clemency power during their first terms? According to numbers
compiled by P.S. Ruckman Jr., a professor of political science at
Rock Valley College in Rockville, Illinois, just three: George
Washington, who probably did not have many clemency petitions to
address during the first few years of the nation’s existence;
William Henry Harrison, who died of pneumonia a month after taking
office; and James Garfield, who was shot four months into his
presidency and died that September. With the exception of Washington’s first term, then, Obama so
far has been stingier with pardons and commutations than any other
president, especially when you take into account the growth of the
federal penal system during the last century, the elimination of
parole, the proliferation of mandatory minimums, and the
concomitant increase in petitions. This is a remarkable development
for a man who
proclaims that “life is all about second chances” and who has
repeatedly described our criminal justice system as excessively
harsh. As an Illinois state legislator in 2001, Obama declared, “We
can’t continue to incarcerate ourselves out of the drug crisis.” As
a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2007,
he lamented that
“we now have 2 million people who are locked up…by far the
largest prison population per capita of any place on earth.” He
worried that “there does seem to be a racial component to some of
the arrest, conviction, prosecution rates when it comes to these
[drug] offenses,” saying skewed criminal penalties are “not a black
or white issue” but “an American issue,” since “our basic precept
is equality under the law.” The following year, Obama told
Rolling Stone that making felons out of “nonviolent,
first-time drug offenders” is “counterproductive” and “doesn’t make
sense.” Obama’s campaign said he
believes ”we are sending far too many first-time, nonviolent
drug users to prison for very long periods of time.”
It promised he
“will review drug sentences to see where we can be smarter on crime
and reduce the blind and counterproductive sentencing of nonviolent
offenders.” The one significant way in which Obama followed through on this
rhetoric after being elected was by supporting 2010 legislation
that shrank the irrational sentencing gap between crack cocaine and
cocaine powder (although there was not much political risk in doing
so, since the bill passed Congress almost unanimously). But the
Fair Sentencing Act did not apply retroactively, and Obama has used
commutation to help
just one of the thousands of crack offenders serving mandatory
minimums that nearly everyone now admits are unjust. More generally, Obama has granted clemency petitions at a
lower rate than all of his recent predecessors. The odds of winning
a pardon from Obama so far are 1 in 59, compared to 1 in 2 under
Richard Nixon, 1 in 3 under Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, 1 in 5
under Ronald Reagan, 1 in 10 under George H.W. Bush, 1 in 5 under
Bill Clinton, and 1 in 13 under George W. Bush, per Ruckman’s
calculations. The odds for commutation are even longer: 1 in
6,631 under Obama, compared to probabilities under the seven
preceding presidents ranging from 1 in 15 (Nixon) to 1 in 779 (Bush
II). As Obama embarks upon a second term, he deserves credit for this
amazing accomplishment: He has made Richard Nixon look like a
softie. … Read More
‘All My Children’ & ‘One Life To Live’: Creator Agnes Nixon Supports Revivals
Is it time for the “All My Children” and “One Life to Live” revivals?Creator Agnes Nixon seems to think so.“We of the ‘One Life to Live’ and ‘All My Children’ families are thrilled to bring our beloved viewers new, ongoing stories from Llanview and Pine Valley,” Nixon wrote in a statement on her blog. “I’m overjoyed that so many actors you love have voiced their desire to bring their characters back to life.”Read More…
