Nixon's Enemies - Master List "This memorandum addresses the matter of how we can maximize the fact of our incumbency in dealing with persons known to be active in their opposition to our Administration, Stated a bit more bluntly --how we can use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies. "
[more inside]
posted by marienbad
on Oct 30, 2012 -
60 comments
We've had
excerpts before, but this is the full performance.
Nixon in China, with music by John Adams, libretto by Alice Goodman and choreography by Mark Morris. Directed by Peter Sellars, conducted by John DeMain, and presented by Walter Chronkite. Houston Grand Opera, 1987. Parts
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
posted by Navelgazer
on Jun 7, 2010 -
17 comments
He was... "...the meanest, toughest, most ambitious S.O.B. I ever knew but he'll be a hell of a secretary of state." -- Richard Nixon
Alexander Meigs
Haig, Jr.,, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, who served US Presidents Nixon (as a military adviser, deputy assistant for national-security affairs, and chief of staff), Ford (chief of staff), and Reagan (secretary of state),
has died at the age of 85. Haig
commanded a batallion during the Vietnam War (where he was seriously wounded), managed the White House during the Watergate scandal that brought down President Nixon, and was himself a former Presidential candidate.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Feb 20, 2010 -
40 comments
Weird political junk on eBay. Traffic lights from Dealey Plaza, President Garfield's funeral shroud, Yitzhak Rabin's Scandalous Greek Vase. And
here is the boat which Brezhnev gave Nixon (after Nixon gave him a Cadillac). No bids yet at $1m.
posted by tombola
on Dec 20, 2006 -
8 comments
Former GOP senior strategist Kevin Phillips wrote the political Bible of the New Right,
The Emerging Republican Majority. He coined the term "Sun Belt." He voted for Reagan twice and still considers himself a staunch Republican. But now Phillips, the author of a new book called
American Theocracy, is warning that the party of George Bush and Karl Rove ("W brand Republicans," in the phrase of GOP pollster Jan van Lohuizen) has become "
God's own party" -- the champion of a convergence of "petroleum-defined national security; a crusading, simplistic Christianity; and a reckless credit-feeding financial complex." Phillips also cautions that the W-brand party's "
sense of how to win elections comes out of a CIA manual, not out of the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution." [Phillips was also discussed
here.]
posted by digaman
on Apr 2, 2006 -
27 comments
"Rose . . . is as close to us as family". Rose Mary Woods, who died Saturday at 87, was
Richard Nixon's private
secretary. In 1973 Woods was transcribing
secretly recorded
audiotapes of
Oval Office conversations , working on a
June 20, 1972, tape of a conversation between
President Nixon and his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, that might have shed light on whether Nixon knew about the
Watergate break-in three days earlier. While she was
performing her duties (.rtf file), she said, the phone rang. As she reached for it, she said she inadvertently struck
the erase key on the tape recorder and kept her foot on the machine's pedal, forwarding the tape. More inside.
posted by matteo
on Jan 24, 2005 -
16 comments
War on Drugs - Do you remember it? A call for support of this amorphous war has been trumpeted by every American President from
Nixon through
Clinton. The current guy, has associated himself (at least a little bit) with the
Drug War in the previous campaign but current policy,
not so much. What I’m curious about is the actual phrase, the concept of War on Drugs. It looks like we still dedicate
large sums of money to the effort. It seems to me that we just don’t use the phrase much anymore. Did we
win? Did we
lose? Do we just want to
forget about it? Or, did we repackage the endeavor under a
new name? I tend to think we are not capable of waging more than one war against
the nameless other at a given time. It would just be too scary. So, I think maybe we're bundling the
War on Terror and the
War on Drugs under a
new brand name.
posted by Crackerbelly
on Dec 8, 2004 -
31 comments
Campaign Contributions and U.S. Ambassadors In 1972 President Nixon appointed thirteen noncareer ambassadors to Western European countries; eight of them had contributed at least $50,000 to his reelection campaign...(-Source, scroll to item 2.) In 1980 a federal law was created to combat this, stating that ambassadors must
"possess clearly demonstrated competence, including, to the maximum extent practicable, a useful knowledge of the principal language or dialect of the country in which the individual is to serve, and knowledge and understanding of the history, the culture, the economic and political institutions and the interest of that country and its people. … Contributions to political campaigns should not be a factor in the appointment."Currently 1/4 to 1/3 of U.S. Ambassadors are noncareer appointees, not experienced diplomats, causing criticism
since the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. Critics point out that neither the Pentagon, the CIA nor any other U.S. government agency must shoulder the burden of a significant cadre of "nonprofessionals" encumbering senior field positions. (-Source.)HERE is the current tally of Embassy Row and their campaign contributions, including
Clark Randt, Jr, former Geo W Yale fraternity brother who defended Bush against drug allegations during Bush's last campaign. "Rangers" and "Pioneers" abound.
Mauritius is sunny, tropical, and
expensive.
(Inspired by this AskMe question.)
posted by Shane
on Oct 14, 2004 -
14 comments
"The President wants me to argue that he is as powerful a monarch as Louis XIV, only four years at a time, and is not subject to the processes of any court in the land except the court of impeachment." - James D. St. Clair, arguing before the Supreme Court in 1974.
The court
didn't agree, returning an 8-0 decision and as a result, thirty years ago today Richard Nixon announced his
resignation. The next day at
11:35AM it became official and
Gerald Ford, the first unelected Vice-President in history was sworn in under the provisions of the
25th Amendment to the Constitution as the 38th President of the United States.
But what if Nixon had chosen to respond differently? What if he had
vowed not to resign?
Article II of the Constitution makes the President the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy. Could the Supreme Court really have forced Nixon to comply with their order? What if the President had viewed the Court's order as an attempted
coup d'etat?
posted by snarfodox
on Aug 8, 2004 -
17 comments
The President Calling: American Radioworks (MPR) explores the secret phone tapes of Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. AFAIK, the content is all previously available, but online, they've
packaged and annotated it for ease of use. It's not exhaustive, but the moments picked out are often illuminating, showing "how each man used one-on-one politics to shape history."
You might want to start here.
posted by soyjoy
on Nov 20, 2003 -
5 comments
Nixon Ordered the Watergate Break-in. Jeb Stuart Magruder, the deputy director of Nixon's 1972 campaign, revealed in a PBS documentary to air on Wednesday that Nixon personally ordered the bungled break-in at the luxury Watergate Hotel complex. It took 30 years, but the truth finally comes out.
posted by zaelic
on Jul 27, 2003 -
18 comments
Nixon's Last Secret The race is on to try to recover the missing 18 1/2 minutes of the infamous Tape 342. While it will be interesting to see what's on the tape (if it can be recovered) the big question is this: Why erase part of one tape and leave all the others intact?
posted by Irontom
on Jun 19, 2002 -
14 comments
