Well, This Is A True Thing
Orin Kerr in the Washington Post this morning.
If I understand the history correctly, in the late 1990s, the President was impeached for lying about a sexual affair by a House of Representatives led by a man who was also then hiding a sexual affair, who was supposed to be replaced by another Congressman who stepped down when forced to reveal that he too was having a sexual affair, which led to the election of a new Speaker of the House who now has been indicted for lying about payments covering up his sexual contact with a boy.
Yikes.
Republicans beat us 3 to 1 on that deal.
Thanks to Brian for the heads up.
….and then wingnuts wouldn’t file impeachment charges against a mass murdering war criminal Potus of their own party who was responsible for starting two illegal,unnecessary wars and was also a party to outing a covert CIA agent for purely political purposes. Nice wingnuts.
1Hypocrisy, hubris, hyperbole, Halliburton, halitosis and a plain string of word I will leave out in respect to Mama.
e platypus onion, before my time, but how did ‘Saint’ Rayguns escape prosecution for his arms deals? Not to mention any fool with more than a semester of economics should have hung him in effigy for “Trickle Down.” Yet, and here’s the head buster, fools still vote Republican expecting a 35 year old failed policy will work, if we exempt taxes on corporations and the 1%. Given a second chance, those fools would dig up Eisenhower and execute him.
2PKM, what thou sayest.
3PKM, even though many members of the Reagan administration were indicted for Iran-Contra, St. Ronnie kept repeating that he didn’t remember anything. Since he was already showing signs of Alzheimer’s, that could very well have been true. And many of the ones indicted were also convicted, but some of those convictions were overturned on appeal. And if I remember correctly, the others convicted were pardoned by George H.W. Bush during his presidency.
4Mary in San Antonio, let’s fast forward to my day. 😉 Without my Dad and Grandpops filling in between the lines of my history textbooks, I too could be as st00pid as our “liberal media.”
Holy Mother of Mary, Ollie North on the History Channel and $Scarah Payme once a VP candidate and still yapping.
Think I need to invite the family over for a barbecue to clue me in when the media went so haywire.
5Something happened in the 80s. I was there, and even semi-cognizant (well, I was a student, so I was learning how to be cognizant-among other things!) and it had something to do with the junk bond king (timing mainly, and envy of his stuff!?). Also, that was when private corporations had more to offer as employers than the government did for the first time in decades. Or maybe that’s reversed (undoubtedly!)? But that was when we threw our integrity away publicly, and started chasing the almighty dollar in good earnest and didn’t care who knew it. The rise of sports-worship coincided; is it connected, or was it a perfect storm? Dunno; maybe (likely!!) one of you who is smarter than I am can clue me in!
6Cartoon from back in the day (I paraphrase from memory):
Nixon: I covered up a crime, arranged the payment of hush money, and used the FBI to obstruct justice to keep myself in office.
Reagan: I defied the law passed by Congress, traded arms for hostages, and ran a private foreign policy.
Clinton: I let an intern play with my weewee.
… and now we could add Baby Bush’s starting a war based on evidence that was obviously bad or faked, and all the rest of it.
I shoulda got that bumper sticker: “Will somebody please b*** Bush so we can impeach him?”
7Aggieland Liz, it really started to go to hell when Reagan was elected and the religious rightwing took office with him. That’s when, as far as I could tell, the Almighty Dollar became the other focus of society, besides what was going on in other people’s underpants. How the rich convinced the religious conservatives that they were all pals together I don’t know, but the lie hasn’t worn off yet and it’s been 35 years.
Anybody else remember when we were a little nervous about Jimmy Carter because he talked about religion? We didn’t know when we were well off.
8Rhea, the worst is that it isn’t just about the Almighty Dollar. It’s about the Almighty Short-Term Profit Dollar. Hedge funders will destroy their own companies in order to squeeze every penny of quick profit out of them. At least in the past some business leaders were proud of creating companies meant to last.
9The head spook at the CIA who aided and abetted North in Iran Contra conveniently died before he was ever questioned under oath. William Casey was as crooked as a dog’s hind leg,imho. North was indicted and convicted and the sentence was overturned on appeal because one branch of Congress had given him immunity if I remember right. The most accurate summation of Raygun’s presidency was by the band “Genesis” and their video Land of Confusion. 100% accurate and funny.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pkVLqSaahk
10he investigation was impeded when large volumes of documents relating to the scandal were destroyed or withheld from investigators by Reagan administration officials.
Raygun’s administration refused to declassify vital information against his administration. Cover-ups abound when wingnuts rule the town.
11Juanita, you note that the “Republicans beat us 3 to 1 on that deal.” I believe in this situation a golf score would be preferable. The lower the score the better.
12@Aggieland & Rhea: check back to the history of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. This is not the first coming of this type of idiocy; the era of the robber barons was even worse than today. We seem to be heading back in the same direction now, powered by the greed of the richest and the blithering stupidity of the worst of the conservasheep.
13The Gerg, you are definitely on the right track. It was old John D. Rockefeller who testified before a Congressional hearing, “I don’t remember. I remember nothing about (fill in the blank). Yes, I was President of Standard Oil but it was an honorary position like President of the United States.”
Where oh where is a bolt of divine lightening when you need one?
14We can’t let the Republicans gain control of the White House again. Every time they do, they bring us closer to the end of democracy and further back in the human condition.
15Teh Gerg, yes, I know, it’s the second Gilded Age. One should have been more than enough. Further evidence that we could get another (and another) Dark Age too, since progress is not guaranteed.
16There’s no meat left on that bone for those who know. The real question, not rhetorical, is how long was St Ronnie medically incompetent while still holding office? Who was the real POTUS while St Ronnie drooled in his oatmeal every morning? (I mean no disrespect. It may come to pass that I will drool in my oatmeal as well. Hell I drool in it some mornings while I stare incredulously at the electric teevee. But … it will never come to pass that I will serve as POTUS. Huge difference.)
17PKM, allow me to add a deuce to your run of “haitches:” Henry Hyde. The Congressman from my home district in Illinois was the floor manager for the impeachment trial in the Senate.
Henry Hyde had had a long-term relationship with a woman, who was NOT his wife, that also came out at the time of all this nonsense.
GOP 4, Dems 1.
18Gingrich gets extra special mention for serving divorce papers on his wife getting cancer treatments and then cheating on his then mistress/wife to be with another woman altogether,whom he is now supposed to be married to.
But,but Ted Kennedy killed someone and got away with it. So did Laura Bush before she married dumbass dubya.
19More movie material.
20My favorite part of the whole ‘affair’ was when Larry Flynt offered $100,000 for information about GOP affairs. At least Bob Barr and Livingston were forced to resign as well as one other.
21Thank you and bless you, JJ, for putting it all together. ’98 && ’99 stick in my craw to this day.
22It’s basic human nature. As a species we tend to rail against that which we are guilty of. To be less eloquent, the best defense is a good offense. The unfortunate thing is that the Republicans have become exceedingly good at subterfuge. If they were half as good at governing we wouldn’t be in the messes we were in.
23da Chipster and PKM: the second Speaker, Livingston was replaced by none other than David Vitter, he of the prostitutes and diapers. GOP 5, Dems 1.
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