The scandals in this administration are like Watergate in slow motion

[EstimatedProphet]

God, the suspense is killing me!

[Kber]

1. According to my elders

Watergate happened in slow motion too. It's just in hindsight that it seems to have moved with any real speed - at least at the beginning anyway.

But I was 2 in 1973, so what do I know.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

4. Hey,

shut the hell up.

<wink>

[BuyingThyme]

5. It's still moving.

[EstimatedProphet]

7. Probably.

I was 11, and only remember part of it myself. Just seems to have been faster...

[OldLeftieLawyer]

16. That's because

you were shorter.

[Frustratedlady]

2. Why Didn't Slaughter Mention The New

finding of Frist and DeLay having stock buying/trading operations from their offices? I thought that was going to be included in her CSPAN appearance?

[OldLeftieLawyer]

3. Keep in mind

that Watergate took a long, long time to unravel.

The break-in took place in 1972, and Nixon resigned in 1974. A little more than 2 years.

Slow is good. Enjoy the show.

[cybildisobedience]

6. also keep in mind

that we have a real press back then -- the type that was interested in uncovering governmental misdeeds, not aiding and abetting the criminals.
We also had a Supreme Court that embraced democratic principles, not crushing them.
And we had Democratic leaders, apparently, who had the stomach for a fight.

Forgive us for being a little concerned that the gang of thugs will get away with all of it.
I'd love to have your optimism and patience!

[EstimatedProphet]

8. Hey, I'm not ranting

I know we've got a harder row to hoe this time. It would be nice if the press were interested...

[Seabiscuit]

10. We also had traditional Republicans in Congress, not neo-cons.

Those Republicans were still willing to stand up for principle and the rule of law and vote for impeachment against a Republican president who broke the law.

Unless the Dems recapture Congress in 2006 AND we find some Congressional Republicans to join us, there will be no impeachment of G.W.B.

Fat chance.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

15. Remember them?

Real Republicans. Real conservatives. Compromise. Friends across the aisle.

I loved those guys, regardless of party.

I remember watching the Rodino committee as they voted, and the awful sadness and regret on the faces of the Republicans who were casting votes against the President of their party. That kind of thing lasts a lifetime.

Good thing, too, because we ain't gonna see it happen in this lifetime.....

[Seabiscuit]

20. Yes, I remember it well, and sadly, those kind of Republicans are

no longer anywhere to be found in Washington.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

23. Maybe,

just maybe, if there's a sweeping change in the 2006 elections, and this culture of division and corruption is brought to an end, with the election of people like Paul Hackett - man, that guy's impressive - we might find Congress going back to those days of compromise and respect.

I'm so sickened by DeLay's handiwork. I want it all reversed.

Meanwhile, you notice how this Osama bin Laden tape suddenly appears just as the Abramoff scandal is getting worse and worse for the Republicans?

And, I do believe we're up to Orange on the Alert Scale. That's why I'm wearing all duct tape today...................

[bush_is_wacko]

22. Unfortunately, many of the idiot Republicans I deal with now still

believe the Republican party represents "Real Republicans. Real conservatives. Compromise. Friends across the aisle." That is why they are STILL backing them. I was only 7 years old in 73' I "remember" nothing really. But I have EDUCATED myself by reading and investigating as much as I can about that time. I continue to investigate and pay attention to what is going on with my government on a daily basis. I know people don't have a lot of time these days but dammit they can't become complacent just because it USED to be okay. I just got the most idiotic email from a Nixon era Republican friend of the family this morning "comparing" the former moral Republicans to the current Democrats. I can't even remember it very well, but my thoughts were that he was comparing the present to the past and he had no intention of finding out for himself what the reality of the current state of his party is. This is what those of us who truly care are up against. It is very sad.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

25. Wait........

As I see it, the good people who are sadly misled and who insist on believing that their party has not gone to Hell will be forced to change their stances as this Abramoff thing plays out over the next several months.

Take heart and have patience. Let them live in their worlds of illusion. They cling to those myths because they're afraid to face the truth: that they've been as badly betrayed as any leftie Democrat has. It's hard for these folks to believe how they've been lied to, how lives have been wasted, how we've been sent, essentially, into bankruptcy, how truly horrid are these people who stole two elections.

Take heart, and have patience. Watch the Abramoff investigation closely. That's the key to everything, I firmly believe it. And, as I keep hearing from my colleagues in Washington, it's going to make Watergate look like foreplay - it's going to ruin at least a hundred careers in Congress, that number - I'm told - being a conservative <sic> estimate.

Take heart. We're gonna be all right.

[bush_is_wacko]

26. I hope you're right cause I have lost a lot of hope in human kind

lately over this. I just can't figure out how they can STILL hold on to that distorted view with all the evidence out there that the party is RAMPANT with corruption!

[OldLeftieLawyer]

14. Who said anything

about optimism or patience?

Things unfold in their own time. Beyond Woodstein, the press was irrelevant in the matter of Watergate.

It was a fluke that the tapes were made known, thanks to Alexander Butterfield.

The Democratic leaders were not up for a fight, if you recall, but there were bipartisan committees who knew how to work together, and, even then, I firmly believe, save for the slip of the tongue of Butterfield, Nixon would have gotten away with it.

So, while you're expecting things to go by the book, you'd do well to remember that it's the slips of the tongue and the missteps that eventually cause scoundrels to be exposed.

Optimism. Ha. I was in my first year of law school when it all broke, and optimism is hardly what we learned from Watergate.

[Seabiscuit]

19. A little fine tuning...

I always agree with you, OldLeftieLawyer, as we're from the same generation.

Just some fine points:

Item 1:

The press wasn't 100% irrelevant beyond Woodstein at the time. Thanks to the rivalry between the Washington Post and the New York Times, the following happened:

James McCord delivered a letter to Judge Sirica on the day of sentencing, which pointed out that, without naming names, perjury was committed in the trial of the 7 people who were caught at the Watergate Hotel (the 4 Cubans + McCord, Liddy and Hunt) and that others not indicted were involved. Sirica told McCord that if he wanted his sentence reduced he would have to name names before Sam Ervin's Senate Committee. Before he could do so, however, a reporter at the NYT who knew McCord personally, got the scoop from McCord and published headlines implicating John Dean and Jeb Magruder. That ultimately led to Nixon sending Dean away to Camp David, not just to get away from the reporters hounding Dean, but to write a history of the Watergate coverup
(to shield Nixon and incriminate Dean) which caused Dean to find an attorney and approach the prosecutor with an offer to spill the beans in exchange for immunity. When the prosecutors ultimately refused the immunity request, Dean and his lawyer went to Ervin's committe where he was granted immunity. As we all know, Dean turned out to be the star witness against Nixon. Which leads to...

Item 2:

Although Alexander Butterfield revealed to Ervin's committee the existence of Nixon's tapes, it wasn't a "slip of the tongue", and I wouldn't characterize it as a "fluke".

You probably recall that in Dean's testimony, Dean at one point commented that he got the impression that Nixon was taping one of their conversations by the way Nixon was cagily phrasing things. On investigation, the Ervin committee discovered Butterfield was in a position to have custody of the tapes if they existed. Butterfield in a later interview admitted that he would only admit to the existence of the tapes if asked a direct question about them, but if asked something imprecise or vague or too general, he would fudge his answer without revealing the truth. Over the weekend, he was questioned about a transcript that was provided by Nixon's lawyer to counter some Dean testimony. He remarked only that it was "very detailed" (he suspected it was an exact transcript of a tape). Only at the end of the meeting did one of the senators go back to this subject and ask him a pointed question about the existence of recording devices in the Oval Office and he admitted to it.

The next Monday morning, Butterfield was in a barber shop when he got a call from a member of the Ervin committee, telling him Ervin wanted him to come right away to the committee room to testify. Butterfield angrily refused. As he was sitting in his barber chair watching the committee proceedings on TV, he could see the guy he was talking to whisper Butterfield's response in Ervin's ear. Ervin's bushy white eyebrows bounced up and down and Ervin angrily told him to get his ass right down to the committee room or he would send federal marshalls after him to drag his ass in. Of course, Butterfield appeared, and when asked the same direct question he'd been asked over the weekend he reluctantly said that "Yes" he was "aware" of "recording devices" in the Oval Office, as John Dean had suspected.

BTW, I don't have a photographic memory like John Dean. I just recently re-watched an old videotape about Watergate (an excellent documentary narrated by Daniel Schorr).

[OldLeftieLawyer]

21. I was at the courthouse

when Sirica decided to put the squeeze on the defendants. McCord, no stranger to intrigue, had tipped off the Times reporter in advance, and the reporter was there, too, waiting to see what happened. McCord was ready to sing, and E. Howard Hunt, even though he'd already copped a plea, was furious at the reneging of the WH on his pay, plus his wife had been killed in a plane crash in Chicago that Hunt, the mystery novelist, maintained was the work of the WH. So, the whole thing was set up in advance, beautifully choreographed. McCord's letter wasn't even his handiwork, the story around the courthouse went.

Who is our Maximum John today, I wonder. I loved Sirica - I used to go just to watch him conduct a trial, which he did with the same kind of punch he must have had when he was a young boxer. He was incredible.

Yes, it was a different day for journalism, that's for sure, and the Post/Times rivalry was wonderful, but, save for the accident of the plumbers fucking with Ellsberg's shrink, who knows what might have transpired?

Remember Katharine Graham's decision to go ahead and publish?

Who is our Katharine Graham today?

As for Dean's speculation, well, that's all it was, and, as you know, it's pretty hard to get a subpoena on someone's guess.

I've heard that Butterfield story a lot, but, it's incorrect. He mentioned the taping system in the White House in a trailing end to an answer to another question. The barber shop stuff, well, these stories get around.

Speaking of Daniel Schorr, I remember watching him watching himself on one of the first little TVs manufactured while the hearings were going on. He was so proud to have been on the Enemies List.

Who is our Daniel Schorr today?

[MrBenchley]

9. Watergate was Watergate in slow motion

and Nixon had Republicans in Congress defending him right to the bitter end.

[EstimatedProphet]

11. And still does too

There are still people around that say Nixon didn't do anything wrong.

[MrBenchley]

12. Exactly so....

Twas ever thus, as Mr. Natural used to say.

[MrBenchley]

13. Exactly so....

Twas ever thus, as Mr. Natural used to say.

[liberalitch]

24. My parents had a resignation party.....

It was a WILD one.

[Vidar]

17. Watergate -- jaywalking in comparison--brought down a popular president.

[MadHound]

18. Get used to it, hell, Watergate was in slo-mo

It took a little over two years to go from the break-in to Nixon's resignation.

This is the US government, very, very little gets done quickly.