On one other matter - (and this is cc:'d to Dan) is it me, or do you also notice how much information Dan seems to have so handy?
What a pleasure to be smeared by the honorable Mr. K. No biggie, though, pretty gentle innuendo compared to Mr. Vaughn's well-reasoned "facts". Mr. K, you ever heard of cut and paste? It ain't so hard. Then, there's the internet, always good for catching up on things. You can believe it or not, but I hadn't followed the Starr affair closely since the Monica Bimbogate broke. The news was too grim. I got in this ridiculous argument with my mother, who started listening to Rush somewhere along the line. I was temporarily cured of the political part of my information jones.
That Walsh piece- I stumbled on it while looking for the Nixon articles of impeachment I remembered as being voted down. Got sidetracked there, but I thought the story made quite a telling contrast to current matters. Never found anything on the missing articles net , so I went to the library (well, actually, I was going there anyway to pick up some holds for my wife), and checked out "The Final Days", Woodward and Bernstein. From P. 309, describing events on July 29, 1974:
The Committee was completing its task. It passed the third article of impeachment, for the President's defiance of its subpoenas. The vote was 21-17. Two additional articles, accusing Nixon of illegally concealing the bombing of Cambodia and of committing tax fraud, were rejected by votes of 26-12.
Yuck, I had to fix about 8 typoes there, cut and past works much better. I'd remembered 8 articles, though not any specifics besides the secret bombing; I don't know if some weren't voted on or I just remembered wrong.
Funny thing about The Final Days- The portrait of Nixon is not unsympathetic, though there's a bit of bathos. The book was controversial at the time because sources weren't identified, although W&B put all their source material away for posterity. As I said, things were a bit less partisan at the time, believe it or not. There was a certain degree of civility. Journalistic standards were a bit higher too, a leak to Matt Drudge wouldn't have been immediately propagated across front pages everywhere.
Cheers, Dan. |
