By Dave Lindorff

We’ve come a long way towards imperial government in the US—towards
a view of the relationship between the federal government, and
especially the administration, and the citizenry that has more of a
ruler-subjects than a democratic feel to it.

Now I know it is easy to gloss over the way things were, and since I
spent a few days in federal prison for protesting the Indochina War at
the Pentagon in 1967, after being beaten by federal marshals for doing
nothing more than exercising my constitional right to protest on public
ground, I am well aware that 40 years ago we were also often treated
like serfs. But that said, there was something different back then—a
sense that you could deal with powerful officials as an equal.

By Dave Lindorff

The dramatic hearing on presidential crimes and abuses of power
held on Friday by the House Judiciary Committee was both a staged
farce, and at the same time, a powerful demonstration of the power of a
grassroots movement in defense of the Constitution. It was at once both
testimony to the cowardice and self-inflicted impotence of Congress and
of the Democratic Party that technically controls that body, and to the
enormity of the damage that has been wrought to the nation’s democracy
by two aspiring tyrants in the White House.

By Dave Lindorff

    I remember back in 1970, when I was a student and anti-war activist in Connecticut, watching an ad on TV for Lowell Weicker, who was running for US Senate. The ad was very powerful: It showed Weicker playing in the yard with his son, who looked like he was maybe 10 or 12.  Weicker was saying that when his son was a tot, the US was fighting in Vietnam, and he didn’t want us to be fighting there when his son reached draft age.  

I voted for Weicker, a Republican who went on to win a Senate seat where he played a key role in helping to bring an end to the Nixon presidency.

As it happens, the Vietnam War ended five years later, when Weicker’s son was probably 17. He didn’t get drafted, but I remain struck by the fact that we could, back then, even contemplate the idea of being at war for so long.

By Dave Lindorff

Is America at the mercy of an invasion of the pumpheads?

The bizarre behavior of Bill Clinton during this campaign season, which has seen this once smooth-talking and politically uber-sophisticated campaigner repeatedly stick a foot in his mouth and undermine his wife’s struggling campaign, raises the issue of whether he is suffering from postperfusion syndrome—a now recognized cognitive impairment common in patients who have undergone heart bypass surgery.

The Doctor delivers the smackdown., layin' the curse of Nixon on John McCain...

Carl Bernstein: Bush Administraton Has Done "Far Greater Damage" Than Nixon
Editor & Publisher Wednesday 24 January 2007
In an online chat... Carl Bernstein, the famed Watergate reporter... now writing articles for Vanity Fair, took several hard shots at the current Bush administration - almost every time he was asked about the Nixon era... After a long explanation of how the American system "worked," eventually, with Watergate, Bernstein said:

"In the case of George W. Bush, the American system has obviously failed - tragically - about which we can talk more in a minute. But imagine the difference in our worldview today, had the institutions - particularly of government - done their job to insure that a mendacious and dangerous president (as has since been proven many times over-beyond mere assertion) be restrained in a war that has killed thousands of American soldiers, brought turmoil to the lives of millions, and constrained the goodwill towards the United States in much of the world."...(more)

CONGRESS CAN ONLY STOP THE IRAQ OCCUPATION BY CUTTING OFF THE FUNDS

ACTION PAGE: http://www.peaceteam.net

In the 1968 presidential campaign Richard Nixon promised to end the war in Vietnam, but would not tell anyone exactly he would do it. In as many words this came to be known as his "secret plan." Yet, after his election the war still dragged on for another five years with 20,000 more American deaths and 100,000 wounded.

Now along comes the Iraq Study Group supposedly with a plan for extricating ourselves from the strategic disaster in Iraq, if not the moral one. And let us be not deceived, their proposals will make no meaningful difference whatsoever in really bringing the troops home. John Murtha, who so far has only spoken out for redeployment (something short of immediate withdrawal), has said he believes they represent no actual change of policy. They are just kicking the can of casualties down the road and trying to fool us into thinking they might in fact leave.

In tapping Henry "Hank" M. Paulson, Jr. for his new Secretary of the Treasury, George Bush has literally taken a play from Richard Nixon's playbook. Paulson worked in the Nixon administration as assistant to John Ehrlichman, mastermind of the Watergate "Plumbers," from 1972-1973. Nixon asked for Ehrlichman's resignation in April, 1973. He was convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and perjury in 1975. He served 18 months in prison and was not pardoned.

The goal of Watergate was to undermine the Democratic Party and the opposition to the Vietnam war. Today, the unpopularity of the Iraqi invasion is a glaring parallel, as is Nixon's penchant for covert operations.

In Sept. 1999, while duly elected President Bill Clinton was on a working trip to New Zealand to meet with the Chinese president, Cat3 Hurricane Floyd started menacing the Carolina coast. What did he do? Did he strum a guitar? Did he eat cake? Did he lie to the troops about Serbia being just like WII? Did he lie to the nation and a hall full of sycophants about Medicare deformation? NO, of course not! He declared the Carolinas a Federal Disaster Area before Floyd struck, mobilized the National Guard and military, cut short his working diplomatic foray, and flew home early to manage the natural disaster...

Robert Parry writes:

As the Washington Post again basks in the faded glory of its Watergate coverage, many of the scandal’s crucial lessons remain obscure even to people close to the iconic events of 33 years ago. Ironically, that’s especially true for those on the winning side.

Indeed, it could be said that today’s U.S. political imbalance – tilting so much in favor of Republicans over Democrats – derived from the simple fact that conservatives learned the real lessons of Watergate while the liberals didn’t.