You are at Kroger's at Lewis Center waiting
on Carol to pick up a can spray wash for dirty clothes as Brennan or the cat
had a problem in the B-man's bed last night. After the boys were taken care of
you stopped over at Schneider's for some freshly baked doughnuts. Paul has a
heart surgery this morning but it is not a long operation. He hopes to be home
to take the boys to Jujitsu after school today. You are having take-home
Chinese for supper. The plan is to go out for lunch. - Amorella
You had lunch at Panera and
you have to pick up Owen at school at three-twenty. From school, you pick up
Brennan then go to Jujitsu. Paul will meet you there then you return to the
house. When he brings the boys home at about six-thirty he will stop for
Chinese along the way. - Amorella
1449 hours. MSNBC would like for things to go downhill for Trump and
Company, but it is hard to imagine with seemingly all of his loyal supporters
sticking with him. After being personally involved it letter-writing to those
in Washington as well as Ohio senators during the Saturday Night Massacre I
don't feel the parallels with then and today.
** **
The Saturday Night Massacre refers to U.S. President Richard Nixon's orders
to fire independent special prosecutor Archibald Cox, which led to the
resignations of Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General
William Ruckelshaus on October
20, 1973, during the Watergate scandal.
History
U.S.
Attorney General Elliot Richardson had appointed Cox in May, after promising
the House Committee on the Judiciary that
he would appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the events surrounding the
break-in of the Democratic National Committee's offices at the Watergate Hotel
in Washington, D.C., on June 17, 1972. The appointment was created as a career
reserved position in the Justice department, meaning it came under the authority
of the attorney general who could only remove the special prosecutor "for
cause," e.g., gross improprieties or malfeasance in office. Richardson
had, in his confirmation hearings before the U.S. Senate, promised not to use
his authority to dismiss the Watergate special prosecutor, unless for cause.
When Cox
issued a subpoena to Nixon, asking for copies of taped conversations recorded
in the Oval Office, the president refused to comply. On Friday, October 19,
1973, Nixon offered what was later known as the Stennis Compromise—asking the
infamously hard-of-hearing Senator
John C. Stennis of Mississippi to
review and summarize the tapes for the special prosecutor's office. Cox refused
the compromise that same evening and it was believed that there would be a
short rest in the legal maneuvering while government offices were closed for
the weekend.
However,
the following day (Saturday) Nixon ordered Attorney General Richardson to fire
Cox. Richardson refused and resigned in protest. Nixon then ordered Deputy Attorney
General William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox. Ruckelshaus also refused and resigned
– and the Saturday Night Massacre was complete.
Nixon then ordered the Solicitor General
of the United States, Robert Bork, as acting head of the Justice Department, to
fire Cox. Both Richardson and Ruckelshaus had given personal assurances to
Congressional oversight committees that they would not interfere, but Bork had
not. Although Bork later claimed he believed Nixon's order to be valid and
appropriate, he still considered resigning to avoid being "perceived as a
man who did the President's bidding to save my job."[4] Nevertheless, having been brought to the White House by
limousine and sworn in as acting attorney general, Bork wrote the letter firing
Cox. Initially, the White House
claimed to have fired Ruckelshaus, but as an article published the next day by The Washington Post pointed out, "The letter from the
President to Bork also said Ruckelshaus resigned."
The night
before he was fired, Cox gave an impassioned news conference during which he
said, “Whether ours shall continue to be a government of laws and not of men is
now for Congress and ultimately the American people.”
On November
14, 1973, federal district judge Gerhard Gesell ruled firing Cox was illegal absent a
finding of extraordinary impropriety as specified in the regulation
establishing the special prosecutor's office. Congress
was infuriated by what it saw as a gross abuse of presidential power as did
many Americans, who sent an unusually large number of telegrams to the White
House and Congress in protest.
Less than a
week after the Saturday Night Massacre, an Oliver Quayle poll for NBC News
showed that, for the first time, a plurality of
U.S. citizens supported impeaching Nixon,
with 44% in favor, 43% opposed, and 13% undecided, with a sampling error of 2
to 3 per cent. In the days that
followed, numerous resolutions of impeachment against the president were introduced
in Congress.
But the
House Judiciary Committee did not approve its first article of impeachment
until July 27th the following year – more than nine months after the Saturday
Night Massacre – when it charged Nixon with obstruction of justice. Two more articles
of impeachment quickly followed.
Nixon
resigned less than two weeks later, on Aug. 8, 1974.
Impact and legacy
Nixon was
compelled to allow Bork to appoint a new special prosecutor. Bork chose Leon
Jaworski. There was a question whether Jaworski would limit his investigation
to the Watergate break-in or follow Cox's lead and look at other corrupt
activities, such as those by the "White House Plumbers". Following
Cox's lead, Jaworski looked at broader corrupt activities.
While Nixon
continued to refuse to turn over the tapes, he agreed to release transcripts of
a large number of them. Nixon said he did so partly because any audio pertinent
to national security would have to be redacted from the tapes. There was further
controversy on November 7 when an eighteen and a half minute portion of one tape was found to have been
erased. Nixon's personal secretary, Rose Mary Woods, said she had accidentally
erased the tape by pushing the wrong foot pedal on her tape player while
answering the phone. Later forensic analysis determined that the tape had been
erased in several segments—at least five, and perhaps as many as nine.
Nixon's
presidency succumbed to mounting pressure resulting from the Watergate scandal
and its cover-up. Faced with almost certain impeachment and conviction, Nixon resigned.
In his
posthumously published memoirs, Bork claimed Nixon promised him the next seat
on the Supreme Court following Bork's role in firing Cox. Nixon was unable to
carry out that promise. But President Ronald Reagan nominated Bork for the Supreme Court in 1987, though
he was rejected by the Senate.
The Ethics
in Government Act of 1978 was a
direct result of the Saturday Night Massacre.
Selected
and edited from Wikipedia
** **
Paul's surgery took longer than anticipated.
He did get to the boys' Jujitsu (Brazilian style). You spent much of the
evening watching MSNBC -- the latest is working on Trump's business dealing with
Russia and money laundering via New York Times, Wall Street Journal and
Washington Post (tomorrow's morning papers). Post. - Amorella
2211 hours. I'm ready for bed. Enough on politics tonight. Why can't I
let it rest?
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