It was near the end of June in the summer of 1973, about 3 weeks after my 15th birthday.  Summers were hot in Oklahoma.  In the air-conditioned comfort of our family room that summer, my political consciousness was born.  

A little while ago on Countdown (11 PM West Coast airing), Keith Olbermann interviewed John Dean about his new book on Barry Goldwater, co-authored with Barry Jr.  I think it was the first time I've actually seen Dean since that June that began it all for me.  I was struck with an overwhelming urge to write this diary.

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE

FALL OF THE HOUSE OF CLINTON

Hillary Clinton's ravenous ambition and sense of entitlement has clearly blinded her to reality. If she wasn't so blinded by the arrogance of believing that America owes her the presidency, she'd realize that her antics in this election is not only undermining any chance she has of becoming president, but it's also wreaking havoc on the Clinton legacy. The one thing the Clintons had going for them was America's belief that, with all their flaws, they were primarily motivated by what was in America's best interest. But that's no longer the case. Now we see the Clintons for what they are–a couple who's willing to lie, cheat and steal to promote their own greed and self-interest. That, in turn, has caused many Americans to take a second look at both, their character, and Bill's presidency through the lens of this new information, and a large number of them don't like what they see.

While we have had overexposure to Jeremiah Wright, I think this piece about Hillary is much more disturbing in light of years of questions about her credibility,transparency and balance in the face of a challenge to win.

Please pass this on.

Do I want her answering the phone at 3 AM or any other time?
I don't think so.
What's a ranting preacher compared to this?

Remainder deleted because it violated copyright. --mcjoan

This is potentially a bombshell.

It turns out that Sen. Clinton was fired from the Watergate congressional committee for lying and unethical behavior.

The media and the Obama campaign would be wise to raise this issue, in the interests of full "vetting" which Sen. Clinton says she welcomes.

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com...

"Watergate and a lot of things around Watergate and Vietnam... served, I think, to erode the authority ... the president needs to be effective, especially in the national security area" – Vice President and Former Nixon Staffer Dick Cheney

Imagine White House operatives were caught illegally wiretapping Democratic National Committee headquarters during the coming Presidential election. That according to the head of the DNC, those listening in had overheard the conversations of what the Chairman speculated to be "perhaps every prominent Democrat in America." Imagine senior White House staff with the help of current and former U.S. intelligence agency personnel conducted illegal break-ins, wiretapping, and espionage against ordinary citizens, journalists, Democratic Party candidates, and even members of its own administration for the purposes of political dominance and electoral victory. Now imagine the President justified it all and sought to conceal its existence with a claim of national security and executive privilege.

Consider if Richard Nixon had blamed Hubert Humphrey for breaking into the DNC headquarters at the Watergate Hotel.  Or if George H.W. Bush had blasted Bill Clinton for shredding documents about an illegal arms-for-hostages swap with Iran.  Consider the gall, the hunger for political power in such a move.

Well, consider this:

The telecoms dont want the amnesty
DC is interested in immunity for itself
Go ahead, give telecoms immunity
but only after they testify
It's the discovery phase DC fears
And the cradle will rock
It's the discovery phase DC fears
And the cradle will rock

Who could ever forget the prediction of the Broder Bounce?

It may seem perverse to suggest that, at the very moment the House of Representatives is repudiating his policy in Iraq, President Bush is poised for a political comeback. But don't be astonished if that is the case.

Well, a year has passed, and wouldn't you know it? No bounce!

So, thanks (I would have to guess) to people like Atrios, who came up with the new-media savvy and totally blog-o-licious innovation of actually keeping track of and checking on predictions from the punditry who set the agenda for our national discourse, we find ordinary citizens, well, actually keeping track of and checking on predictions:

Long Island, N.Y.: Mr. Broder, thanks for taking time today for this chat. About a year ago you wrote a column where you stated: "It may seem perverse to suggest that, at the very moment the House of Representatives is repudiating his policy in Iraq, President Bush is poised for a political comeback. But don't be astonished if that is the case." I think it's safe to say that this comeback has yet to materialize. In your opinion, what has transpired over the last 12-plus months where Bush has failed to capitalize on any opportunity to garner any significant increase in support outside his high-20 percent core backers?

David S. Broder: That was certainly one of my less astute observations. He has been less flexible in the past year than I expected after the 2006 election, and I think he continues to pay a price for his rigidity. On the S-CHIP program, for one example.

To his credit, Broder doesn't run away from this one. I say it's to his credit because these days, you actually have to take special note of people who don't run away from or try to hide their blunders. It used to be assumed that you just couldn't deny reality like that, so it has never before been particularly creditworthy not to. But times have changed, and so Broder teaches us a sort of lesson-within-a-lesson. The Conventional Wisdom -- or "CW," as that paragon of the CW community, Newsweek, likes to call it -- has changed with the times. But not everyone has been able to keep up with it.

What do I mean?

Well, on the one hand, this embarrassingly inaccurate prediction is Broderism at its worst. The White House had already declared -- in that other paragon of the CW community, Time, no less -- its strategy for the next two years:

[W]hen it comes to deploying its Executive power, which is dear to Bush's understanding of the presidency, the President's team has been planning for what one strategist describes as "a cataclysmic fight to the death" over the balance between Congress and the White House if confronted with congressional subpoenas it deems inappropriate. The strategist says the Bush team is "going to assert that power, and they're going to fight it all the way to the Supreme Court on every issue, every time, no compromise, no discussion, no negotiation."

So how much clarity of vision does it really require to see that Bush isn't going to be any more flexible?

Was he flexible when he only became president by squeaking it out in the Supreme Court in 2000? No.

Was he flexible with his razor thin re-election in 2004? Absolutely not. In fact, he called it a mandate. Quite in contradiction to the CW.

So he's got a clear history here. Why think he'd vary it now? Or rather, then?

There was no reason to believe it. And yet it was believed, by more than just Broder. It was believed by the entire Washington establishment. By Official Washington. And, truth be told, more than a few new media types as well. Such is the power of the CW.

And that's the lesson of what we now, with the benefit of hindsight, can call Broder's ossified thinking. By all rights, Bush should have been more flexible. That's what the CW was. That's what the CW always is when you get your ass handed to you in an election. You mellow. You back off. You compromise.

You have to. Because the traditional levers of political power are no longer in your hands.

But what if you just... defy tradition? You'd likely leave Broder and the rest of the CW community without their polestar. And then what?

In that sense, Broder and others can be forgiven for thinking that Bush would do what all presidents do in the same situation. After all, even here at Daily Kos, there was some resistance to the suggestion that a president who hadn't vetoed a bill in six years would suddenly start vetoing everything in sight. It wasn't possible. It would destroy the Republican Party forever. We would get our agenda passed, because the CW said we could. (And we could not, therefore, risk discussing impeachment, because it would "suck up all the oxygen" and surely would be responsible for sinking that agenda.)

On the other hand, it's exactly that kind of ossified thinking that the Bush "brain trust" depends on to get away with its power grabs. That is, they depend on the likelihood that no one would ever believe they were going to do what they were going to do, even if you told them point blank before you did it, because it was just too damned crazy to be believed. And so Bush and his cohorts found their opposition and even "neutral" observers looking on in stunned silence as they rode roughshod over the CW (and that little trifle we call the Constitution, too) and did pretty much whatever the hell they wanted to. In fact, the crazier the better, meaning the better to achieve the Cheney post-Watergate dream of establishing the precedent that the president gets to do whatever the hell he wants, on his say-so alone.

There were people who saw it coming and believed it, to be sure. And many of us were among them. But it's also no less clear than Bush's insanity was to us, that Official Washington believed that the CW would eventually prevail, as it always had throughout their lifetimes.

Only it didn't this time.

So maybe now it's time to ask whether it really ever did. Was the CW on scandalized presidents, or presidents who are rebuffed at the polls, ever really correct?

After Watergate? Did the CW really prevail? When the stories that comprised the Watergate scandals first began to break, Official Washington was in stunned disbelief. Moving the Congress to the brink of impeachment took months upon months of a slow drip, drip, drip of revelations. By the the "end" of the "long national nightmare" -- after the resignation, after the pardon, after the adoption of new laws regulating campaign finance, outlawing warrantless wiretapping, and limiting presidential war-making authority --  it was surely the CW that nothing like this would or could ever really happen again. It would be political suicide. Right?

Then came Iran-Contra. And again, stunned disbelief. Calls for investigation. Then actual investigation. Actual revelations. Actual convictions!

But then... nothing. Pardons. Reversals on technicalities. And finally, the election of a "healer" president, with a new agenda and a willingness to put it all behind us. Because surely, this was just too crazy ever to happen again. Americans just wouldn't stand for it!

And yet, here we are. Not just in the same situation, but at the mercy of the very same people who did it the first two times!

The Congress -- certainly at the heart of Official Washington -- is only just now waking up to the realities of where the Bush-Cheney revival of what Arthur Schlesinger famously termed "The Imperial Presidency." They've seen their agenda thwarted by reckless vetoes that fly in the face of the CW, signing statements they can't get a legal handle on, and the refusal to honor Congressional subpoenas (an offense for which the House Judiciary Committee voted to impeach Nixon, by the way). And they've responded, after a fashion, with the first contempt of Congress votes in 25 years (since -- surprise! -- the Regan/Iran-Contra administration), and have had to resort to the use of pro forma sessions to prevent recess appointments, pocket vetoes, and even calls for extraordinary special Congressional sessions.

Now it's dawning on them that the president's intransigence will likely prevent anything of substance at all from being done for the rest of the 110th Congress.

So what can we expect from the 110th?

Well, if they can't impeach because it'll derail the agenda that's just been declared derailed, and they're not entirely willing to take on a full-court press on the subpoena power we were told was the most important reason for electing a Democratic majority, then the least we might ask of them is to not pass something: specifically, the retroactive amnesty and bulk surveillance authority the Bush-Cheney "administration" seeks in order to help cover its tracks.

The CW, of course, is that Congress will buckle. Because it always has.

But hasn't Broder (and Broderism) been clear enough in demonstrating that it's time for a new CW?

If we're going to be reality-based, it's time to take off the blindfold and find reality.

I'm old enough to still lump up at black-and-white pictures of "Robert, Martin, and John," and I think, for good reason.  I've been involved in enough campaigns to think I'm beyond starry-eyed idealism, and tilting at windmills (without, I hope, hopelessly compromising the ideals of my peacenik and bleeding-heart youth, with utterly pragmatic realism).  That is not to say that life does not still surprise and delight me in all kinds of ways, including politics.

Tonight was just such a night, and for reasons that have nothing (okay, unexpectedly little) to do with whether Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama carried California on this Super Tuesday.  Although I had perhaps one or two too many glasses of wine at our Wasco County (Oregon) Democrats' Super Tuesday Party, I want to share my experience of the evening, and hope you will join me across the fold.

This is the second in a series of diaries on impeachment

There was a time when House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers was a fierce warrior for impeachment. As a fourth-term congressman in 1972, Conyers was one of the first to introduce a House resolution calling for the impeachment of President Richard Nixon, even before the Watergate burglary had occurred. In 1974, just after President Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon, Conyers wrote an essay entitled, Why Nixon Should Have Been Impeached, in which he laid out his case for an article of impeachment condemning Nixon's illegal bombing and invasion of Cambodia, as well as the constitutional threat posed to America by the choice not to pursue impeachment.

(John Conyers is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, which has before it House Resolution 333, calling for articles of impeachment to be drawn up against Vice President Dick Cheney.  In 1974, while a member of the Judiciary Committee, Conyers helped draft articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon, articles that were about to be voted on by the full House when Nixon suddenly resigned. Conyers had been one of the most vocal and persistent proponents advocating for Nixon’s impeachment. In May 1972 he and others had taken out a two-page ad in the New York Times calling for impeachment in response to Nixon's handling of the war in Vietnam; the Watergate burglary had not yet taken place.  The essay below appeared in the October 1974 issue of the journal, The Black Scholar. Nixon resigned in August 1974 and was pardoned the next month by President Gerald Ford.  To the best of my knowledge, this essay has never before appeared online. – o.h.)

Today activists are staging a sit-in at Rep. Jerrold Nadler's office in Brooklyn to demand impeachment hearings, and Nadler's office is being inundated with calls. (Please add to the deluge by calling 202-225-5635.) Nadler's staffers are telling callers that Nadler opposes impeachment, but they won't say why.

I asked Nadler directly about impeachment in November and blogged it here. Mostly he gave the usual excuses, but his bottom line was quite shocking to me:

"Impeachment can never work, it wasn't designed for a two-party system, that's why we've never removed a President" he said. "So then we should tear up the Constitution?" I asked. "No we need a new Special Prosecutor law that would focus on truly impeachable offenses like abuse of power." "But we just got rid of the Special Prosecutor law because of Ken Starr," I said. "We can write a better law," he said. Yeah sure in 5 or 10 years, I thought to myself as someone else grabbed him.

An open letter to Hon. David Boren,
former governor of Oklama,
former U.S. Senator from Oklaoma,
President, University of Oklahoma

Dear President Boren:

I'm sure you remember speaking at the OU College of Law in 1974, running for governor as a relatively inexperienced state legislator by in essence running against the scandals of the Nixon administration. You caught on, defeating incumbent Democrat David Hall and U.S. Rep. Clem McSpadden, in no small part because those of us who heard you were outraged by all of the things that coalesced into Watergate. Your "Boren Broom Brigade" resonated and created a base for you of educated young voters who believed that Nixon put us on the brink of tyranny through such programs as the Department of Justice's use of preventive detention to disrupt the spring 1971 anti-Vietnam War protests in Washington.

You've moved a long way over the yeras from being a party insurgent, but at moments when I've thought the worst of you - when you caved on the Gates nomination as chair of the senate intelligence committee for instance, or when you renamed Oklahoma Memorial Stadium after the Gaylord family - I've reminded myself that it was clear back in 1974 that you were a politician who got it.

Years afterwards, Richard Nixon was asked what he had learned from the Watergate scandal that he could pass on to future presidents. He said, "My big mistake was, I should have burned the tapes."

Cheney always listened to Nixon. He took the whole affair personally, and internalized Nixon's advice, and implements it now on what seems like a daily basis.

But it wasn't the stuff that Nixon let out that really finished Nixon off. It was what he held back.

From The Hill’s Pundits Blog:

Torture Tapes are the Watergate of Our Times

Brent Budowsky

As I write these words on the morning of Wednesday, Dec. 19, high- and low-level officials of the Bush administration involved in torture, and the destruction of the torture tapes, are consulting their criminal lawyers as The New York Times reports that highest-level lawyers in the administration had discussed the destruction of the tapes.

I predict there will soon be new stories about more torture tapes that were destroyed and new stories about more high-level officials that were either tainted or corrupted by this scandal, and others who opposed this travesty who will ultimately testify about who they approached to attempt to prevent it.

Washington and America will momentarily ask once again: What did the president and vice president know, and when did they know it?

MORE MORE MORE

ABC News dug into the archives to look back at Fred Thompson during the Watergate era. Let's just say Richard Nixon was not impressed with him.

Tom Purcell bills himself as a humorist. Yet there is nothing funny about his brand of anti-tax extremism as he wraps himself around the American flag for the Thanksgiving holiday. What we have learned from the tragic years of the Bush administration is that anti-tax extremism destroys lives. Therefore, all of the Democratic candidates would rightly move away from that and enact a more progressive tax code that is fair for all.

Is there anyone left who will save the world from the horrors that Bush and Cheney are lusting to unleash with a pre-emptive war on Iran? (Having watched the Democrats go 0-40 in their efforts to end, or even to modify, the war in Iraq, you are not allowed to pick the Congress.)