BTRTN January 2018 Month in Review: As Showdowns Loom, Can We Measure Up to the 1970s?
BTRTN looks back at the 1970s and compares our institutions, now and then. It's not pretty.
http://www.borntorunthenumbers.com/2018/02/btrtn-january-2018-month-in-review-as.html
"...and when Nixon fired Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox over the tapes, the people did their job, too. The outrage was so swift and palpable – over 450,000 telegrams sent to the White House over the weekend of the Saturday Night Massacre – that Nixon was forced to promptly name a new Special Prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, who received an even stronger mandate (and thus greater independence) than Cox had enjoyed, and who finished the job Cox started.
What a time! Nixon’s disgrace, and how our country disgorged him, was a riveting live civics lesson, to say the least, to an impressionable young politico.
And where are we now? In January, 2018, these same institutions stand in stark contrast to their 1970’s predecessors.
Various Congressional committees allegedly investigating the Russia fiasco flounder along, largely ignored, toothless by choice, failing to use their subpoena power, holding private interviews with the key players, utterly failing their test against the standards of Ervin, Baker, Weicker, Inouye, Montoya, Talmadge and Gurney. As the month ended, the GOP House Intelligence Committee Chair voted to release a notorious (and selectively slanted) staff memo purporting to reveal that the Department of Justice and FBI had wrongfully obtained a FISA warrant on suspected spy Carter Page, a thinly-veiled attempt to discredit the DOJ/FBI/Mueller brigade. The memo is now in the hands of the Trump White House, awaiting release. Devin Nunes, Trump-stooge, you are no Sam Ervin..."