mere weeks before Watergate, Nixon won in a landslide

[librechik]

America, are you blind?

[AnotherMcIntosh]

1. Plus the failure to prosecute Nixon for his criminality encouraged the right-wing nuts to

continue with their actions. Just think of Cheney for one example.

[RZM]

5. Ford granted Nixon a full pardon a month after taking office

So I don't see how it would have been possible to prosecute him.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

7. Well somebody with a legal mind, and there is more than just one of them, might have considered

the fact that Nixon had not been indicted at the time and that there was no convicted criminal for Nixon to pardon.

What Ford did had no precedence in the law. In the absence of an authority granted or delegated to him under the Constitution, and in the absence of any precedence for such activity, his purported granting of a so-called pardon was a mere fiction.

[RZM]

8. Here's the text of the pardon

GRANTING PARDON TO RICHARD NIXON

------

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
A PROCLAMATION

Richard Nixon became the thirty-seventh President of the United States on January 20, 1969 and was reelected in 1972 for a second term by the electors of forty-nine of the fifty states. His term in office continued until his resignation on August 9, 1974.

Pursuant to resolutions of the House of Representatives, its Committee on the Judiciary conducted an inquiry and investigation on the impeachment of the President extending over more than eight months. The hearings of the Committee and its deliberations, which received wide national publicity over television, radio, and in printed media, resulted in votes adverse to Richard Nixon on recommended Articles of Impeachment.

As a result of certain acts or omissions occurring before his resignation from the Office of President, Richard Nixon has become liable to possible indictment and trial for offenses against the United States. Whether or not he shall be so prosecuted depends on findings of the appropriate grand jury and on the discretion of the authorized prosecutor. Should an indictment ensue, the accused shall then be entitled to a fair trial by an impartial jury, as guaranteed to every individual by the Constitution.

It is believed that a trial of Richard Nixon, if it became necessary, could not fairly begin until a year or more has elapsed. In the meantime, the tranquility to which this nation has been restored by the events of recent weeks could be irreparably lost by the prospects of bringing to trial a former President of the United States. The prospects of such trial will cause prolonged and divisive debate over the propriety of exposing to further punishment and degradation a man who has already paid the unprecedented penalty of relinquishing the highest elective office of the United States.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GERALD R. FORD, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, pursuant to the pardon power conferred upon me by Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, have granted and by these presents do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9, 1974.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this eighth day of September, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and seventy-four, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and ninety-ninth.

Gerald Ford

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Proclamation_4311

I'm sure constitutional scholars went over it with a fine-toothed comb both before and after it was proclaimed.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

11. Constitutional scholars would call it a self-serving statement. It doesn't change a thing.

As noted in Presidential Studies Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 1,

President Gerald R. Ford's full and unconditional pardon for Richard M. Nixon generated intense political and constitutional controversy in its time. The decision generated enormous emotions and recriminations. In the wake of that decision, numerous legal and political writings challenged the validity of Ford's action.

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/27551198?uid=3739656&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=56239121373

When you say that you are "sure constitutional scholars went over it with a fine-toothed comb both before and after it was proclaimed," you are suggesting that there was or your believe that there was unanimity on the issue. That was never the case. That isn't at the present.

The U.S. Constitution provides the means by which it can be amended. The Constitution cannot be amended by the issuance of a presidential self-serving statement.

[Turbineguy]

2. That was perhaps the ultimate irony of Watergate

they didn't need to do it.

Walker is different. He's being paid to harm people.

[elleng]

3. Not exactly, but I get your drift. It was even WORSE.

'The affair began with the arrest of five men for breaking and entering into the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate complex on June 17, 1972. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) connected cash found on the burglars to a slush fund used by the Committee for the Re-Election of the President, a fundraising group for the Nixon campaign.[1][2] In July 1973, as evidence mounted against the president's staff, including testimony provided by former staff members in an investigation conducted by the Senate Watergate Committee, it was revealed that President Nixon had a tape-recording system in his offices and he had recorded many conversations.[3][4] Recordings from these tapes implicated the president, revealing he had attempted to cover up the break-in.[2][5] After a protracted series of bitter court battles, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the president had to hand over the tapes to government investigators; he ultimately complied.'

In January 1972, G. Gordon Liddy, general counsel to the Committee for the Re-Election of the President (CRP), presented a campaign intelligence plan to CRP's Acting Chairman Jeb Stuart Magruder, Attorney General John Mitchell, and Presidential Counsel John Dean, that involved extensive illegal activities against the Democratic Party. Mitchell viewed the plan as unrealistic, but two months later he approved a reduced version which involved burgling the Democratic National Committee's (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate Complex in Washington, D.C and placing wiretaps. Liddy was put in charge of the operation. He was assisted by former CIA Agent E. Howard Hunt and CRP Security Coordinator James McCord. John Mitchell resigned as Attorney General to become chairman of CRP.[8]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal

The United States presidential election of 1972 was the 47th quadrennial United States presidential election. It was held on November 7, 1972. The Democratic Party's nomination was eventually won by Senator George McGovern of South Dakota, who ran an anti-war campaign against incumbent Republican President Richard Nixon, but was handicapped by his outsider status and limited support from his own party, as well as the medical scandal and firing of vice presidential nominee Thomas Eagleton.

Emphasizing a good economy and his successes in foreign affairs, such as ending American involvement in Vietnam and establishing relations with China, Nixon won the election in a landslide. Overall, Nixon won 60.7% of the popular vote, only slightly lower than Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, but with a larger margin of victory in the popular vote (23.2%) – the fourth largest in presidential election history. He received almost 18 million more popular votes than McGovern—the widest margin of any U.S. presidential election.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1972

--------
AND, imo, Watergate was the beginning of what has become a frenzy among 'journalists,' which has degraded into what we exist with today.

[murielm99]

4. In the end, we got rid of him.

He is known as a crook and a failed President.

Keep that in mind, Scumbag Walker.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

6. thank you for that reminder - nt

[left is right]

9. I was just a kid but my memory is slightly different

I remember that my dad went to the polls early that election day and about lunch time the news began to talk about the scandal involving RMN. ( I have alway assumed it was the beginning of watergate) My dad begged my mom to go vote for the Democrat to cancel her vote. She normally only voted in local elections but she did what dad asked about 4:00.

By the way, that was the last time he voted for a puke in national elections

[coalition_unwilling]

10. Hunh? The Watergate break in (where the burglars were caught) occurred during the 1972

campaign, many months before Nixon won re-election in a landslide.

Nixon resigned in disgrace in August, 1974, many weeks after he had won re-election.

Am I missing something here? Somehow your sense of chronology seems a bit off, but maybe I'm mis-reading you.

[librechik]

12. yeah, well no one should drunk post. You get my point. Walker is going to

embarrass them all when he is indicted, and repubs are PROUD to vote for crooks.

[coalition_unwilling]

13. Ha-ha. I take your point. Thought maybe I had smoked

one too many doobies during that long, hot summer of 1974