I wasn't doing that, really (if I had been I would have said something like "hopefully he wasn't married to Plame"). I was keeping in mind the gentle manner in which Hoover and Nixon typically treated their political enemies, and extrapolating from there how they might treat someone who came forward with evidence of crimes by the administration.

Who is projecting? Are you saying Nixon was nice to his enemies? I forgot. Did he make cupcakes for Daniel Elsberg?

Uh, I adopted the half-serious argument that Sidd was, in order to use sarcasm to draw a larger parallel between current and past administrations.

No. Sigh. Clearly, I go away for a few days and the humor skillz calcify. Maybe I should stick to something safe, like insulting ironweed.

Please don't use Spanky as your humor barometer. Literalism is a tough gig.

That, clearly, went way over my head. Wouldn't be the first time.

I heard that a Nixon tape with Hadleman showed that Nixon and Hadleman knew it was this guy- (at least knew he was talking not necessarially ddepthroat but that name maybe wasn't public) they decided not to fuck him because he "knew everything" (maybe the part about having Kennedy killed?)

Funniest part is Hadleman said the guy was pissed cuz he didn't get hoover's job- Nixon: is he Catholic
Hadlerman: no a Jew
Nixon: Jesus make one of them head of FBI?

wow. when Ty does an edit it takes the poster off my ignore list. Go figure!

STP Hank.

I did. there's nothing similar, or did someone I ignore post something similar?

I wonder whether the Nixon and the boys had similar conversations about other people they suspected were Deep Throat.

Again, Deep Throat wasn't a public name until the book came out. In the early 70's white house Deep Throat was simply Martha Mitchell's secret service name.

Ty's probably the expert on this, but I recall hearing tapes at some point with speculation about others as well. I think they used the same "colorful" language -- "he's a jew so it could be him" "he's got italian roots, so it wouldn't surprise me" and so on.

So if you work with that person, and they are senior to you, do you call them on that?

mmmm bacon

mmmmmm sausage egg and cheese biscuit.

I invented that.

Checks and balances.
 

Mark Felt reminds us of the abiding wisdom of the framers of the Constitution, and specifically of their vision of dividing the federal government's powers among the three branches, so that by acting according to its own institutional self-interest, each might tend to curb the worst excesses of the others. Felt worked for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, not Congress or the judiciary, but the principle is the same -- Nixon's abuses of power were not checked by a do-gooder acting out of altruism, but by a government official protecting his own position.

Huh
 

http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/20...n-ossetia.html

Article about the trial of the one surviving Beslam school attacker's trial.

Here's what is weird.....

• The 30-year-old former contract laborer from the Chechen village of Engenoi, has been charged under nine articles of the Criminal Code of Russia, including murder, banditry, terrorism, and the taking of hostages. He admits to seven of these, but categorically denies the other two.............
  
  During the investigation, the Chechen admitted to terrorism, banditry, and everything else, but... he did not like it when the investigators also charged him under Article 166 of the Criminal code (Misappropriation of an automobile without intent to steal).
  
  Kulayev, who faces life imprisonment, has acknowledged being one of the guerillas who stormed a school in Beslan on September 1, 2004, seizing more than 1300 hostages.

Life in prison? I thought Russians were the guys who were just cold blooded and killing terrorists. The guy MIGHT get life?

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=8242

• Deep Throat and Genocide
  By Ben Stein
  Published 6/1/2005 12:22:42 AM
  
  Re: The "news" that former FBI agent Mark Felt broke the law, broke his code of ethics, broke his oath and was the main source for Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward's articles that helped depose Richard Nixon, a few thoughts.
  
  Can anyone even remember now what Nixon did that was so terrible? He ended the war in Vietnam, brought home the POW's, ended the war in the Mideast, opened relations with China, started the first nuclear weapons reduction treaty, saved Eretz Israel's life, started the Environmental Protection Administration. Does anyone remember what he did that was bad?
  
  Oh, now I remember. He lied. He was a politician who lied. How remarkable. He lied to protect his subordinates who were covering up a ridiculous burglary that no one to this date has any clue about its purpose. He lied so he could stay in office and keep his agenda of peace going. That was his crime. He was a peacemaker and he wanted to make a world where there was a generation of peace. And he succeeded.
  
  That is his legacy. He was a peacemaker. He was a lying, conniving, covering up peacemaker. He was not a lying, conniving drug addict like JFK, a lying, conniving war starter like LBJ, a lying, conniving seducer like Clinton -- a lying, conniving peacemaker. That is Nixon's kharma.
  
  When his enemies brought him down, and they had been laying for him since he proved that Alger Hiss was a traitor, since Alger Hiss was their fair-haired boy, this is what they bought for themselves in the Kharma Supermarket that is life:
  
  1.) The defeat of the South Vietnamese government with decades of death and hardship for the people of Vietnam.
  
  2.) The assumption of power in Cambodia by the bloodiest government of all time, the Khmer Rouge, who killed a third of their own people, often by making children beat their own parents to death. No one doubts RN would never have let this happen.
  
  So, this is the great boast of the enemies of Richard Nixon, including Mark Felt: they made the conditions necessary for the Cambodian genocide. If there is such a thing as kharma, if there is such a thing as justice in this life of the next, Mark Felt has bought himself the worst future of any man on this earth. And Bob Woodward is right behind him, with Ben Bradlee bringing up the rear. Out of their smug arrogance and contempt, they hatched the worst nightmare imaginable: genocide. I hope they are happy now -- because their future looks pretty bleak to me.

Of course Ben was part of the Nixon White House.

Ben Stein is so completely and utterly full of horse, chicken, and bull shit that I am sitting here agog after reading this. What did Nixon do that was so bad? Without doing any research and without much thinking . . .

(1) Overthrowing Salvador Allende's government in Chile. Death of a few US citizens in coup by CIA resources in Chilean army.

(2) Dumping an antitrust suit against ITT in return for a campaign contribution.

(3) Cheating the government out of tax money by back-dating a document (can't remember if this involved the foundation that was to build his library or "Six Crises").

(4) Using the IRS to attack political opponents by ordering audits.

(5) Having the FBI investigate critical newsman Daniel Schorr ("we were doing a background check because we were thinking about appointing him to a high government position").

(6) Ordering a break-in of the office of the shrink of Pentagon Papers leak Daniel Ellsberg in order to find something incriminating on him.

(7) Using the FCC to attack the Washington Post Co. by challenging renewal of TV broadcast licenses.

(8) Payment of money from cash held by his personal lawyer to Watergate burglars in an attempt to keep them quiet.

As for Vietnam, Watergate had nothing to do with the fall of Saigon or Cambodia. Nixon won election in 1968 on a promise to end the war, and he was doing whatever he could to get the US out well before the Cubans broke into the DNC offices. The fall of Nixon did not create the Communist victory -- in fact, some argue that Nixon's invasion of Cambodia in 1970 was the first step of the Khmer Rouge takeover.

;)

Checks and balances.
 

Assuming his assessment is right, then wouldn't he properly have "leaked" the information instead to Congress, or someone within it, rather than the press?

In case anyone needed a reminder that pretty much everyone who lived in the 70s was stoned pretty much all of the time.

Ben is a funny guy, but 2, I never thought of Nixon as a peacemaker. On the other hand the opening the door to China thing was a big step. and re. non-military issues, My most nazi-like partner read a bio on Nixon and came away hating him since he seemed more liberal than even the Dems now.

It's hard to argue that Nixon's invasion of Cambodia was NOT the first step in the Khmer Rouge takeover. He destabilized and ultimately helped overthrow a legitimate and popular leader, Sihanouk, and replaced him with Lon Nol, a puppet and military dictator whom the people hated, who did not have the support necessary to fight the Maoist uprising that was already underway.

To suggest that "RN would never have let this happen" is utter horseshit. That Ben Stein could accuse Felt and Woodward of being complicit in Cambodian genocide is truly staggering.

Ben should have spent his life doing cheesy gameshows.

Agree on China, but I wouldn't characterize that as "peacemaking." We weren't at war with China (despite the original Nixonian fantasy that China and Vietnam were yellow-red soulmates), and the motivating purpose of opening to China was to have another ally against the Soviet Union. The latter was certainly a good thing, but, again, not what I would call "peacemaking."

Nixon's trip to China, however, is further verification of my comment. You think a guy who wasn't stoned would have kept saying "It sure is a Great wall!" over and over again?

On the other hand, I'm sure if Felt had just publicly reported what he knew, say to a local District Attorney, then Nixon would have stood back and let the judicial process function.

He also created the EPA and instituted wage and price controls. His red-baiting of the 50s was obviously just to cover the fact that Nixon was a communist.

Don't get me wrong -- on the merits, a lot of what Nixon did made sense. He did the right thing with China, handled the Mideast as well as could be expected, negotiated the SALT and ABM treaties, etc. His domestic agenda was fairly liberal (other than on "law and order" issues and busing). He was a smart guy with a lot of good instincts.

He was also a deeply flawed person. He had a streak of petty cruelty (read some of the transcripts of the White House tapes), as well as an amoral side that allowed him to justify to himself that his noble ends justified whatever means were necessary.

I have no problem with Nixon apologists who stick to accentuating his positives, but for someone like Ben Stein to say that the only bad thing the man did was to lie about a break-in is simply absurd. And I suspect that there are a few Ben Stein quotes in the Woodward and Bernstein follow-up to All The President's Men (After the Fall? I forget the title) from 1974 that are a bit different than his tune now. Even Pat Buchanan was outraged by his boss back then after the smoking gun tape was released.

Ben desperately wants his life to have been about more than hawking Visine.

and he would have if only Jimmy Kimmel hadn't moved up and out.

Mother of God. This week is inspiring all sorts of nonsense. Joe Scarborough, unable to exhume Nixon's bones in time for an interview, instead decided yesterday to interview G. Gordon Liddy and ask him what he thought about Felt.

Unsurprisingly, Liddy -- who was caught and did jail time for the burglary -- had a dim view of Felt's ethics, and said so. At this shocking revelation, the nation watched and burped contentedly.

This has all the signs of Bad News
 

Pentagon delays release of May Recruiting Data

Recruiting data for May, normally released on the first business day of the succeeding month, will be delayed until June 10.

June 10 is - natch - a Friday.

This has all the signs of Bad News
 

so is the 3rd

This has all the signs of Bad News
 

And the first business day of the month, the normal time for release, is the First (a Wednesday).

Your point is what, again?

This has all the signs of Bad News
 

Too bad they're still discharging decorated vets who are gay.

This ended up being a great thing for Chile and us. Allende had destroyed Chile's economy and may have turned it into another Cuba.

These were all bad and threatened the constitution. Mr. Stein should have mentioned these.

This is liberal B.S. In 72 Kissenger signed a treaty with North Vietnam to end North Vietnams involvement in the war(for which he got the Nobel Peace Prize). At this point South Vietnam held every provincial capital in South Vietnam. Without support from the North Vietnamese regulars the Vietcong started to lose ground. Because of this North Vietnam started to break the treaty, so Nixon did the Christmas bombing of Hanoi. This got the North Vietnamese to back off. Once again the Viet Cong started to lose ground. But once Watergate got really bad the Democrats in Congress cut off all military aid to South Vietnam and prevented Nixon from doing anything in Vietnam. The North Vietnam invaded South Vietnam and there was nothing the US could do about it. Once Nixon left office Congress prevented Ford from doing anything to enforce the Peace Treaty making the fall of Saigon inevitable. South Vietnam did not fall do the Vietcong. It fell to North Vietnam, which would not have happend had Nixon not fallen.

Only a twisted mind could come up with the crazy idea that the communist takeover of Cambodia was caused by Nixon. The Khmer Rouge were support by the North Vietnames. Of course they later lost control of them, but intially they were pawns of the North Vietnam. Nixon bombed Cambodia and got invovled in Cambodia because the North Vietnamese were there. It was when US influence was completely pulled from the region that the Khmer Rouge took over.

This has all the signs of Bad News
 

Perhaps it's not common knowledge the degree to which the administration releases discomforting news on a Friday. For example, last Friday it was the resignation of Windy Hill, the head of the Federal Head Start program. Ms. Hill coincidently is currently being investigated for misappropriation of funds that occurred while she ran her own daycare centers in Texas.

Oh, those were funds from - wait for it, wait for it - yes, the federal Head Start program. You can't make this stuff up.

Great times in Chile:

• In the weeks after the military seized power in a coup Sept. 11, 1973, thousands of Chileans sympathetic to the socialist government were detained. Many were tortured, and several hundred were tried and executed by military war tribunals.
  
  A woman described the corpse of her son, the manager of a state cement plant, who turned himself in after the coup and died in custody five weeks later: "He was missing one eye, his nose was torn off, one ear was separated and hanging, there were marks of deep burns on his neck and face, his mouth was very swollen."
  
  In the next stage, the army's secret police squads waged a "systematic campaign to exterminate" leftist dissidents from 1974 to 1977, the report states. Inside clandestine prisons, people were tortured with electric shocks, choking, confinement and even animal rape. There were 957 victims who never reappeared and are presumed dead.

link

• Among its dramatic findings, the National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture appointed by Chilean President Ricardo Lagos found that 94 percent of the people detained in the aftermath of the coup reported having been tortured. One of the most common methods of torture, reported in more than a third of the cases, was the application of electrical shocks.
  
  Of the 3,400 women who testified, nearly all said that they had suffered sexual torture. More than 300 said that they were raped, including 11 who were pregnant when detained. Many of these women said they had never reported their experiences before.
  
  The worst period of torture was immediately after the military coup in September 1973. More than 18,000 people — two-thirds of the total number — were tortured during the four months after the coup, the commission said. Detentions were indiscriminate, and most of the victims were innocent civilians. The commission identified more than 1,000 sites used to torture prisoners, including schools and hospitals as well as police stations and military installations.
  
  Another 5,266 people were tortured from January 1974 until August 1977, a period during which secret military intelligence agencies, such as the Directorate of National Intelligence (Dirección Nacional de Inteligencia, or DINA) and the Combined Command (Comando Conjunto) took over the repression of left-wing dissidents from other military units.

link

That's just the tip of the greatness.

That still does not change the fact that Chile now has the strongest economy in Latin America, and has the highest standard of living (maybe number 2) in South America. When the coup occured, Chile was close to the bottom, its standard of living was declining rapidly, there was massive inflation, and incredible capital flight from the country. Pinochet may have been a nasty dude, but the country has kept his economic policies in place making Chile the economic miracle of Latin America.