You couldn’t make it up: see NYT on Dick the Trick, Tapes Reveal Nixon’s View of Abortion,

     On Jan. 23, 1973, when the Supreme Court struck down state criminal abortion laws in Roe v. Wade, President Richard M. Nixon made no public statement. But privately, newly released tapes reveal, he expressed ambivalence.
     Nixon worried that greater access to abortions would foster “permissiveness,” and said that “it breaks the family.” But he also saw a need for abortion in some cases, such as interracial pregnancies.
     “There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white,” he told an aide, before adding: “Or a rape.” …
     The tapes also reveal that in February 1973, after Israel shot down a Libyan civilian passenger jet, killing 113 people, Nixon talked about his views of anti-Semitism in America in a phone conversation with the evangelist Billy Graham.
     Mr. Graham complained that Jewish-American leaders had denounced efforts to promote evangelical Christianity, like Campus Crusade, and Nixon and Graham agreed that the Jewish leaders risked bringing anti-Jewish sentiment to the surface.
     “What I really think is deep down in this country, there is a lot of anti-Semitism, and all this is going to do is stir it up,” Nixon said. At another point he said, “It may be they have a death wish. You know that’s been the problem with our Jewish friends for centuries.” …

     Lucky that Nixon wasn’t around to abort Obama!!

     On the “Frost/Nixon” tip, see AP via Salon, ‘Deep Throat’ regarded at memorial as truth-teller,

     Mark Felt, the former FBI second-in-command who helped unlock the secrets of Watergate as the shadowy “Deep Throat,” was remembered Friday by family and friends as a man who stood up for truth in deceptive times.
     About 300 people, including journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, attended the service in Santa Rosa to remember Felt, who died in December at the age of 95. …
     Woodward, who spoke at the ceremony, called Felt a “truth-teller.”
     “He knew his oath of office in the end was to the people of the country and to the Constitution,” Woodward said. “He served both creatively and ably and courageously. It was the highest loyalty.”
     Bernstein, who read from a letter he had written to Felt’s daughter, Joan Felt, said the former FBI man had “acted with remarkable personal courage and concern for principles.” …
     Woodward recalled being goaded into working harder by Felt, who “had all the characteristics of a prickly, nagging, insistent newspaper assignment editor.”
     Woodward said secrecy in government remains a problem.
     “There’s secret wars. There’s secret prisons. On Wall Street, secret deals within secret deals,” he said. “We have Mark Felts in the government and other institutions. We need more.”

     RIP MF. You would have been useful re the Bush Administration…

     One finds it fascinating that with the film Frost/Nixon currently out, that there is not more public outrage that the current Nixon, George W. Bush, is still in office and unimpeached and uncensured…nay, not even threatened with impeachment or censure, even though he may have damaged the country even more than Sickie Trickie Dickie did. (Cf. the Nix quote “If the President Does It, It’s Not Illegal”.)
     Nixon was not held fully accountable before he left office–and then he was pardoned. Do we want this repeated?

     –And see some of Adam B’s fine commentary on Frost/Nixon here, and some from Meteor Blades here.

     Anyway, all the reader has to do is click on the following link,

     Gary_Myrick@Reid.senate.gov, Mary_Irvine@Feingold.senate.gov

, and send the little package on its way to your hired servants on the Hill, Russ Feingold & Harry Reid, through their chiefs of staff,

[e-mail subject line: "Censure Bush/Cheney, finish the job Russ and Harry"]

Dear Senators Feingold and Reid:

     Please officially censure George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for their Nixonian, disgraceful, and ruinous failures of duty in office, before they leave office. Torture, Katrina, Iraq, and wiretapping are only some of the many reasons to condemn the administration in the strongest terms possible. The integrity of the Senate and of the Republic itself depends on official condemnation of our failed and immoral leaders.
     Thank you,

                         Sincerely, [your name]

     Or phone them too, Russ’s chief of staff Mary Irvine, at (202) 224-5323, or Harry’s chief of staff Gary Myrick, at (202) 224-3542.

     Frost away! And thanks for reading/acting!!

     See our friends at FOXNews.com, Records Reveal Nixon’s Conflict Over Vietnam War,

     …The day after Christmas, White House special counsel Charles Colson told the president that the American people needed to hear “some explanation of why it is we’re continuing to bomb [North Vietnam], and that it isn’t simply an exercise in trying to decimate a country.”
     “It’s too damn bad we aren’t decimating the country,” Nixon snapped.
     “I wish to hell we were,” Colson replied.
     “We’re doing one hell of a lot,” the president continued, marveling at North Vietnam’s “war-making capabilities.” But Nixon added that the North had been “clobbered this time, because…I told [Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Thomas] Moorer…’Now look here. May 8th, we mined, we bombed. We did a hell of a lot. And it set ‘em back a year. Now, we’re going to set ‘em back two years.”
     Nixon then told Colson: “The targets they’ve had have been really something. Everything, except, of course, we’re avoiding civilians. I mean, even — with all the screaming about civilians, believe me: If we were trying, the goddamn place would be leveled. Leveled!”
     “God, yes,” replied Colson, who after pleading guilty during the Watergate scandals became a born-again Christian and dedicated his life to his Prison Fellowship ministry. …

     “too damn bad we aren’t decimating the country”. Aren’t we frustrated.
     Lucky that Nixon didn’t have a moustache; otherwise, people might have mistaken him for some German dictator or something…
     (And check out godly Colson’s “God” comment! –”"OMG!”")