Woodward & Bernstein on Watergate: Nixon was far wose than we imagined

And this surprises people?

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Woodward and Bernstein: 40 years after Watergate, Nixon was far worse than we thought

By Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, Friday, June 8, 12:35 PM

As Sen. Sam Ervin completed his 20-year Senate career in 1974 and issued his final report as chairman of the Senate Watergate committee, he posed the question: “What was Watergate?”

Countless answers have been offered in the 40 years since June 17, 1972, when a team of burglars wearing business suits and rubber gloves was arrested at 2:30 a.m. at the headquarters of the Democratic Party in the Watergate office building. Four days afterward, the Nixon White House offered its answer: “Certain elements may try to stretch this beyond what it was,” press secretary Ronald Ziegler scoffed, dismissing the incident as a “third-rate burglary.”

History proved that it was anything but. Two years later, Richard Nixon would become the first and only U.S. president to resign, his role in the criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice — the Watergate coverup — definitively established. Another answer has since persisted, often unchallenged: the notion that the coverup was worse than the crime. This idea minimizes the scale and reach of Nixon’s criminal actions.

Ervin’s answer to his own question hints at the magnitude of Watergate: “To destroy, insofar as the presidential election of 1972 was concerned, the integrity of the process by which the President of the United States is nominated and elected.” Yet Watergate was far more than that. At its most virulent, Watergate was a brazen and daring assault, led by Nixon himself, against the heart of American democracy: the Constitution, our system of free elections, the rule of law.

Today, much more than when we first covered this story as young Washington Post reporters, an abundant record provides unambiguous answers and evidence about Watergate and its meaning. This record has

A Not-so Surprising Prescription for Economic Recovery: Get Married, Stay Married

It’s difficult to argue with the facts.

But perhaps we should be asking ourselves this question: “Why are we doing this?”

Is this not a type of suicide?

Would it not be insane for us to NOT promote “best practice” activities?

Would it not be ludicrous for us to NOT tell someone that danger lies ahead if they embarked upon a particular path, course of action or behavior?

No one in their right mind would ever say that we loved or cared for that person precisely because we simply failed to warn them. For indeed, though we may say that we do love them, we do not behave as if we do, because love is not in words only.

In fact, love cannot exist in words only.

Love exists in evidence, and in abundance of action.

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The single-mom catastrophe

The demise of two-parent families in the U.S. has been an economic catastrophe for society.

Op-Ed
By Kay S. Hymowitz
June 3, 2012

The single-mother revolution shouldn’t need much introduction. It started in the 1960s when the nation began to sever the historical connection between marriage and childbearing and to turn single motherhood and the fatherless family into a viable, even welcome, arrangement for children and for society. The reasons for the shift were many, including the sexual revolution, a powerful strain of

Taxed Enough Already? Not hardly, says new report.

So-called “tea” partiers may be disappointed

The Tax Policy Center (TPC), a non-partisan policy analysis and collaborative effort of the Brookings Institution and Urban Institute, both Washington, D.C. think-tanks, recently reported that 47% of all Americans will not pay income tax for the 2009 tax year.

President Obama’s “Making Work Pay” tax credits, and his American Recovery and Reinvestment Tax Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5) have further reduced income tax burdens on Americans.

Because of his initiatives, more than half of all elderly households, families with children, and other Americans will pay no income tax this year. More than 75% of married couples and single heads of households with income between $30,000 – 40,000 will pay no income tax. And more than 90% of all households with children will have no tax liability this year.

The Tax Policy Center estimated President Obama’s policies significantly lowered the tax burden on average Americans,