TPM Reader JO remembers Archibald Cox’s recollection of Robert Bork’s role in the Saturday Night Massacre, one of fabled moments of the Watergate drama …
The Bork story reminds me of a story Archibald Cox told an undergraduate class on Constitutional Law that I was lucky enough to take about 30 years ago. In the unit on executive privilege, Cox told us about the Saturday Night Massacre from his unique perspective — not only as the Special Prosecutor Bork fired, but as the law school professor whose former students refused to fire him. Here’s how I recall the way he told the story (not verbatim, but it captures the essence of it):
It hasn’t gotten a lot of play. But when President Obama appears this afternoon at the Newport News shipbuilding yard he’ll be there with Republican Rep. Scott Rigell (R-VA). Under ordinary circumstances, it’s not uncommon to appear with a President of the opposite party when he appears in your district. But it strikes me as a pretty big deal in the midst of such a charged partisan standoff.
British Cardinal who resigned over ‘inappropriate acts’ with priests was harsh foe of gay rights, marriage equality.
As you know, there’s nothing more important than your right to carry a firearm.
But what if you were charged with a crime and pled guilty by reason of insanity? Now you can’t legally own a gun a firearm. But what if after your period of criminal insanity, you stop being insane and you need to go around armed again? Is there no recourse for people in this situation? Read More
I’ll believe it when I see it. Lindsey Graham was on CNN a bit earlier talking to Wolf Blitzer and says that he’s willing to raise $600 billion in new taxes as part of a so-called ‘grand bargain’.
Here’s a rush transcript …
Graham: We’re the party of fiscal conservatism. Have we put together a plan to cut $20 billion between March and October? No, the house passed a plan, the senate republicans have yet to offer a plan. But the house would have to pass it again. But the House used savings outside of the 2013 window. If you think this is that easy, I challenge any member of Congress to come up with a proposal to cut $85 billion out of the federal budget between March 1st and October 1st.
In a postumous memoir Robert Bork says President Nixon promised him an appointment to the Supreme Court after complying with Nixon’s demand to fire Archibald Cox.
Ted Cruz’s supporters are busily trying to defend or massage or explain away his claim that when he was at Harvard Law School in the mid-90s there were a dozen members of the faculty “who would say they were Marxists who believed in the Communists overthrowing the United States government.”
The latest contender is Dan McLaughlin, an HLS graduate who writes at RedState. His argument? Read More
As I said this morning, the side begging and whining the most about sequester is unquestionably the side that thinks its losing.
Earlier I mentioned that New York pol Dov Hikind had gotten in trouble for showing up at a Purim party in black face. For those unfamiliar with Jewish holidays, Purim is a bit like Halloween. You dress up in costumes, though the meaning of the Holiday is very different. Just hopefully not wildly offensive ones, especially if you’re an elected official. But now Hikind is digging even deeper. If blackface is a problem, he asks, why isn’t it a problem that people were there dressed up as Arabs?