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Day 2, Impeachment 3, Stone x 7
All honest governments look alike; every crooked government is crooked in its own way.
I’m sure Tolstoy would forgive my re-purposing his great line — if he were among the living — but it makes me feel even older than I am to admit that I am watching my third presidential impeachment.
First, I watched the Watergate scandal unravel slowly.
It started with a burglary that made no sense, a break-in at an office that apparently contained nothing worth stealing. Inside Nixonworld, there was a scramble to raise money for the burglars.
Richard Nixon, believing himself still in a bulletproof presidential cocoon, did not find it necessary to turn off the White House taping system.
Judge John J. “Maximum John” Sirica, a Republican appointee, insisted on getting to the bottom of the burglary before sentencing the burglars. The short explanation is that Judge Sirica kept pulling on threads until the whole sordid story unraveled.
Along the way, President Nixon made a lot of law as he attempted to avoid producing evidence and tried to keep anyone from testifying about conversations with the president. A pattern developed where Judge Sirica would order evidence produced and the appeal would start wending its way to the Supreme Court. As the Supreme Court affirmed the discovery…
