Yesterday, a group of West Point alumni came out of the closet in order to form Knights Out, an LGBT alumni organization pushing for the repeal of the ban on gays serving openly in the U.S. military and hoping to serve as an “open forum” for LGBT alumni and their fellow graduates. From the group’s press release:
By publicly outing themselves, the 38 members of Knights Out ended once and for all the anonymity that has obscured from full view their service to the nation as West Point graduates. Knights Out seeks to reduce the stigma associated with sexual diversity by providing an open forum for discussion between out LGBT West Point graduates and their fellow alumni. Knights Out is well-positioned to help West Point maintain its status as the world’s premier leadership institution by swiftly and effectively adapting to the end of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which Knights Out believes is both imminent and inevitable.
The Advocate notes that Knights Out “joins similar groups formed by graduates of the U.S. Naval and Air Force academies, including the U.S. Naval Academy’s USNA Out and the U.S. Air Force Academy’s Blue Alliance.”
Reports over the weekend that bailed-out insurance giant AIG will be paying $165 million in bonuses to executives “in the same business unit that brought the company to the brink of collapse last year” have sparked bipartisan outrage. Even ultra-conservative Bill Kristol expressed his anger in a column yesterday, asking rhetorically, “[I]f capitalism is to survive, shouldn’t the Republican party, the party that defends democratic capitalism, be particularly vehement in denouncing its excesses? Isn’t this a pretty spectacular one?”
However, it seems that Dana Perino, former President Bush’s press secretary, didn’t receive the memo. On C-Span’s Washington Journal on Sunday, Perino defended the bonuses:
PERINO: And the people who are working there that are middle-class people, are expecting to get this bonus. If they do not get it, maybe they won’t be motivated enough to try to help the company turn around and getting the company to turn around and be more profitable is important for all of us.
Perino then chastised the “rhetoric in Washington” that “can try to make things so black and white, and make things sound so easy — demonize people when I don’t think that that’s fair.” Watch it:
It appears that Perino either doesn’t know who is set to receive the bonuses or is unaware what it means to be “middle class” (i.e. those American households that generally make between $40,000 and $70,000 per year). In fact, while as of Sunday, it was unclear what the salary range is for the executives who are set to get the bonuses, as The New York Times reported at the time, some of them will receive more than $3 million in bonuses alone.
A new Wonk Room analysis notes that under Bush’s tax system, these AIG executives will collectively take home $7.5 million more dollars more than they would have in the 1990s. But President Obama’s budget would effectively eliminate the Bush tax bonuses, allow middle class families to save as much as $800 per year, and invest in health care, renewable energy and education.
Earlier today, Reps. Erik Paulsen (R-MN) and Leonard Lance (R-NJ) introduced legislation that would direct Treasury Secretary Geithner to “recover AIG executive bonuses, increase transparency in bailout funds, and detail for taxpayers the communications between the Administration and AIG.” While Republican Leader John Boehner touted the legislation as the “two-pronged House GOP response to AIG revelations,” it seems to be a rehash of what President Obama is already doing to address the issue. As Obama explained yesterday:
In the last six months, AIG has received substantial sums from the U.S. Treasury. And I’ve asked Secretary Geithner to use that leverage and pursue every single legal avenue to block these bonuses and make the American taxpayers whole. I want everybody to be clear that Secretary Geithner has been on the case.
Greg Sargent writes that the legislation appears to be “an effort to position the Republicans as the ones who are leading a populist rebellion against AIG and are trying to wrest those bonuses back.” In reality, it appears that the House Republicans are just playing catch up.
This afternoon on CNN, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) pretended as though he had favored capping the salaries of bankers whose firms accepted TARP funds, claiming that his position has been that bailed-out companies “are going to have to operate in a different sort of way.” When host Wolf Blitzer asked whether Congress should have passed salary caps on bailout recipients, McConnell acts as though he had been in favor of such a proposal:
BLITZER: Should the Congress — and you are the leader of the Republicans in the Senate — have passed salary caps on these bailed out companies?
McCONNELL: We certainly had a chance with the amendment by Senator Snowe to prevent this kind of bonuses from being paid. But look, the day-to-day responsibility of oversight of TARP funds is at the Treasury Department.
Watch it:
McConnell is certainly right: Congress did have a chance to pass salary caps. However, he opposed such a move at the time, telling ABC News, “I really don’t want the government to take over these businesses and start telling them everything about what they can do. … We have to resist the temptation to basically dictate to these businesses how to run every aspect of their operation.” On CNN today, McConnell accused AIG of “trying to have it both ways.” Pot, meet kettle.
On Sunday, journalist Mark Danner revealed a previously secret International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) report, which concluded that “the Bush administration’s treatment of al-Qaeda captives ‘constituted torture,’ a finding that strongly implied that CIA interrogation methods violated international law.”
As The Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan noted yesterday, when the Washington Post wrote up the report, they “put the word torture in quotation marks.” Appearing on CSPAN’s Washington Journal this morning, Danner took the press to task for engaging in a “semantic debate” over whether the U.S. committed torture under the Bush administration.
“One can continue to talk about torture is in the eye of the beholder, etc etc, but frankly, nobody of any legal reputation believes that,” said Danner. Later in the interview, he added that he was “frustrated by the practices of the press” that are “interfering with a clear debate”:
DANNER: I think the definitional question is extremely important, and as I mentioned a moment ago, I think it’s extremely important to get by it already. We’re debilitated in that by some degree by the practices of the American press, frankly, which is that as long as the president or people in power continue to cling to a definition that they assert is the truth — as President Bush did when it came to torture, he said repeatedly the United States does not torture — the press feels obliged to report that and consider the matter as a question of debate.
Watch it:
Indeed, as Glenn Greenwald wrote in November, despite the ample mountain of evidence that the Bush administration authorized torture, the media “mimicked the Orwellian methods adopted by the administration to speak about and obfuscate these matters.” In a New York Times op-ed on Sunday, Danner wrote that the ICRC report now means “we can say with certainty” that “the United States tortured prisoners”:
What we can say with certainty, in the wake of the Red Cross report, is that the United States tortured prisoners and that the Bush administration, including the president himself, explicitly and aggressively denied that fact.
But despite the evidence of this certainty, traditional media outlets still dance around using the word torture. Andrew Sullivan calls this the “the cowardice of the MSM.” Danner calls it “ridiculous” and “a fallacy.”
Transcript: More »
Earlier today, CNBC discussed a congressional proposal to create a systemic risk regulator for the financial industry. To analyze the feasibility and necessity of such a regulator, CNBC introduced one of its newest “contributors,” Tony Fratto, who most recently served as former President Bush’s Deputy Press Secretary. But rather than comment on the merits of the systemic risk regulatory plan, Fratto simply claimed that Congress is “dangerously” motivated to over regulate by a thirst for “vengeance” stemming from the current financial crisis. Watch it:
As Pat Garofalo explains at the Wonk Room, Fratto is far from a reliable voice on the economy. Last year, Fratto first claimed that no one was predicting a recession and then argued that admitting the U.S. is in a recession was “relatively irrelevant.” Garofalo asks CNBC, “Was Phil Gramm unavailable?”
Former President Bush is in Calgary today giving his first speech since leaving office last January. While it appears Canadian human rights lawyers and activists were unsuccessful in banning Bush from Canada (he arrived safely last night), protesters have gathered to rally against Bush’s invasion of Iraq and his terror and detention policies. As part of the protests, local activists have collected shoes from Canadians around the country and constructed a shoe cannon that will launch shoes at an effigy of Bush:
Footwear has been collected and a cannon has been constructed to toss shoes at an effigy of the much-maligned leader in homage to the Iraqi reporter who chucked his loafers at Mr. Bush last December and was sentenced last week to three years in prison.
Over the weekend, activists held a mock trial and found Mr. Bush guilty of committing war crimes and urged authorities to arrest him when he steps foot on Canadian soil.
“We had shoes sent in (to us) from across the country,” said Colette Lemieux of the Canadian Peace Alliance. “It doesn’t matter that he is no longer president,” she added. “A bank robber who stops holding up banks can and must still be prosecuted for his crimes.” The same applies for Bush, she said.
As outrage mounts over the $165 million in executive bonuses paid to AIG staffers, many Republicans are trying to tap into the widespread public anger by striking uncharacteristically populist tones. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Senate Banking Commitee ranking member Richard Shelby (R-AL) have said the following in recent days:
MCCONNELL: “Well, it is an outrageous situation. I wrote Secretary Paulson back in October complaining about the way AIG had been doing its business. […] This is an outrage.” [ABC News, 3/15/09]
SHELBY: “We ought to explore everything that we can through the government to make sure that this money is not wasted. […] A lot of these people should be fired, not awarded bonuses. This is horrible. It’s outrageous.” [AP, 3/16/09]
However, when Congress debated limiting executive pay last month, these same key Republican lawmakers stood firm in opposing such caps. McConnell argued against the “temptation” to “dictate” business practices when it comes to salaries and bonuses:
MCCONNELL: “I really don’t want the government to take over these businesses and start telling them everything about what they can do. […] We have to resist the temptation to basically dictate to these businesses how to run every aspect of their operation.” [ABC News, 2/4/09]
Similarly, Shelby demanded a laissez-faire approach to executive compensation as Congress pressed Secretary Paulson for details of the bailout plan:
SHELBY: “It should be up to the board of directors of a private corporation to set the compensation of an executive; it shouldn’t be Congress’s role.” [Washington Post, 9/23/08]
Not all conservatives have backtracked from their previous positions on executive compensation. Rush Limbaugh, on his program yesterday, said, “I am all for the AIG bailouts, and I am all for the AIG bonuses. Well, I’m not for the bailouts, well, in a way I’m for the bailout because I’m for the bonuses.”
Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), on the other hand, says he simply feels “outraged” but is not yet walking back what he said in September on opposing salary caps: “I’m not necessarily advocating going forward, that the federal government be able to set salaries across the board for any company.”
Yesterday, ThinkProgress noted that Fox News spliced a six-month old clip of Vice President Biden to misleadingly imply that he recently said the “fundamentals of the economy are strong.” Today, Fox News’s Martha MacCallum apologized to viewers and said it was an “inadvertent” error:
MacCALLUM: Yesterday during a segment on the recent change in tone from President Obama’s economic team, we inadvertently used a piece of video of Vice President Biden saying “the fundamentals of the economy are strong.” This video was from the campaign trail when the vice president was a candidate and was actually quoting Sen. John McCain. When we get something wrong we admit it. We did so yesterday, and for that we apologize.
Watch it:
“These are the types of mistakes we can expect to arise when a television network is so hungry to make a partisan point,” ThinkProgress’s Faiz Shakir said Tuesday. “It ended up fabricating the facts to bolster a false right-wing argument. It’s not fair and it’s not balanced.”
Last week, ThinkProgress reported that hate radio host Laura Ingraham responded to Meghan McCain’s criticism of right-wingers like Ann Coulter by calling her “plus-sized.” Meghan shot back, telling Ingraham, “stop talking about my body.” Yesterday, Meghan ripped Ingraham on The View, saying, “Kiss my fat ass!”
Today, in his “Twitterview” with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) shied away from condemning Ingraham’s gratuitous attacks on his daughter. Stephanopoulos asked McCain, “What do you think of Meghan’s feud with Coulter and Ingraham?” McCain first said, “I’m proud of my daughter and she has a right to her opinions.” When asked if he agrees with his daughter, McCain did not say, simply stating, “like any family we agree on some things and disagree on others”:
Stephanopoulos, seeing that McCain didn’t want to go any further on the matter, tweeted to McCain, “I know I’m not getting anymore on Coulter and Ingraham.”
It’s unclear why McCain wouldn’t directly admonish Ingraham, who has mocked his daughter’s voice, weight, and just yesterday, called Meghan a “useful idiot.” But in the past, McCain has courted the extreme right of the GOP, granting an interview to Ingraham as late as October 2008. Throughout the presidential election, McCain, long considered too liberal by the extreme right, frequently appeared on hate radio shows, and he has a history of defending the bigoted remarks of right wingers.
Is McCain placing right-wing politicking before his own family?
Last week, ThinkProgress reported that Gov. Mark Sanford’s (R-SC) proposal to reject $700 million in stimulus funds could imperil the jobs of up to 7,500 South Carolina teachers, because most of the money was meant to fill the education budget gap and keep schools operating. Today, State Rep. Dan Cooper (R) said Sanford’s proposal would result in 4,000 teachers losing their jobs, along with 700 prison guards:
He said the state budget — already cut from $7.1 billion to $5.6 billion in less than a year — would have to be slashed another 8 percent to 9 percent if the stimulus money is used as Sanford proposes.
He said that would trigger the layoffs of 4,000 teachers and the emergency closures of three to five prisons, with 3,400 inmates freed early and 700 guards losing their jobs.
Yesterday, the White House rejected Sanford’s waiver application to use the funds to pay down the state debt rather than fill in educational and public safety budget gaps. In response, Sanford submitted a new request asking to use the funds to to repay $577 million in school bonds. Pete Pillow, a spokesman for the state Education Department, said that Sanford’s new proposal would do nothing to save teachers’ jobs, and repeated the assertion that 4,000 teachers stood to lose their jobs.
This is still an attempt to pay down debt. It doesn’t to anything to help conditions [in schools] now. … All the districts now who are planning to lay off people and are saying we’re going to be short next year in terms of operational expenses, that wouldn’t be helped by any paying down of bonds. … So it’s the same song, different tune.
Rather than addressing the real educational crisis in his state, Sanford is instead complaining about an ad put out by the Democratic National Committee accusing him of “playing politics” with the stimulus. “I don’t think this approach of targeting ads against anyone who sees an issue a little differently represents the kind of so-called ‘change’ many people were voting for in November,” Sanford said in a statement.
Earlier this month, all 41 Senate Republicans sent a letter to the White House, threatening to filibuster if President Obama didn’t consult with them on judicial nominees. As ThinkProgress noted, the filibuster threat was a stunning reversal from the GOP’s claims during the Bush administration that filibustering judicial nominees was unfair and unconstitutional. The Washington Times reports today that the Senate GOP believes it’s “more important that Democrats, not Republicans, be consistent” on the issue:
It also required that some senators go back on their previous positions, but Republicans said it’s more important that Democrats, not Republicans, be consistent.
“We’re not asking Leahy to follow the Hatch position; we’re asking Leahy to follow the Leahy rule,” said a senior Republican Senate official involved with judicial nominations. “Senator Hatch isn’t chairman now, and he wasn’t chairman for the last couple Congresses.”
Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), tells the Times that unlike Senate Republicans, Reid plans to be consistent in his position. “I can’t imagine Senator Reid would ever resort to the illegitimate tactic called the ‘nuclear option’ that the GOP turned to four years ago,” said Manley.
On the front page of the New York Times’ business section today, economic writer Andrew Sorkin argued in favor of paying out the AIG bonuses. He cited “the sanctity of contracts” to warn that “the business community” would panic if the government started “abrogating contracts left and right.” He also claimed that the bonuses were necessary to retain AIG employees, who are needed to turn the economy around: “A.I.G. built this bomb, and it may be the only outfit that really knows how to defuse it.”
This morning, ThinkProgress sat down with Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), who chairs the House Financial Services Committee and has called for the firing of AIG executives. When asked to respond to Sorkin’s claim that only AIG employees can navigate the economy out of the mess they created, Frank dismissed it as “nonsensical”:
That’s nonsensical. It’s clear they made a lot of mistakes and we need to undo what they did. If they really understood what they did in the first place, seriously, they probably wouldn’t have done much of it. Secondly, when you are trying to undo something, it is often not the case that the people who did it are the ones to put in place. People are sometimes committed to not admitting mistakes. … So that argument I think is in fact almost counter, because the argument that you take the people who made the mistake and put them in charge of undoing the mistake goes against the human impulse not to admit a mistake.
Watch it:
Sorkin also effectively endorsed AIG executives holding the American taxpayer hostage, saying that if they are fired, they “might simply turn around and trade against A.I.G.’s book”:
So as unpalatable as it seems, taxpayers need to keep some of these brainiacs in their seats, if only to prevent them from turning against the company. In the end, we may actually be better off if they can figure out how to unwind these tricky investments.
Though Sorkin seems to have no problem with such a hostage situation, it is clearly part of the “perverse incentives” he discussed with Rachel Maddow last night: “If a deal makes money for the company, they make extra money. But if it loses money they don’t lose anything.” Apparently the New York Times’ chief financial journalist has no problem with this perversity.
Angered over the AIG’s decision to dole out bonuses to its top employees, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) yesterday caused a stir when he suggested the company’s executives should follow “the Japanese example” and resign or kill themselves. Grassley appeared this morning on Bloomberg TV, where he was given a chance to clarify his views. “Of course I don’t want anyone to go commit suicide,” he said. “But I do want some contrition. I want showing of remorse. I have not heard a single apology from a single Wall Street CEO.” He continued:
In the case of the Japanese, you know, they do one of two things. They either go commit suicide or they take a deep bow and say apologies and then sometimes resign. But they take full responsibility. And we’re not hearing that.
And obviously, I don’t want anyone to kill themselves because I don’t believe in that sort of thing. But I do believe that when you have done bad for your company, for your stockholders, and eventually for the taxpayer…you ought to say I’m sorry.
Watch it:
Responding to Grassley’s comments from yesterday, AIG spokesman Nick Ashoosh told MSNBC, “The remark is very disappointing. But AIG’s employees continue to work with poise and professionalism to take care of policyholders and repay taxes.”
Politicians and pundits from both sides of the aisle have expressed outrage at the recent news that bailed-out insurance giant AIG will be paying $165 million in bonuses to the same executives who “brought the company to the brink of collapse.” President Obama and members of Congress are trying to figure out a way to revoke the bonuses while others have called for top executives to be fired.
While conservatives have joined in the mass discontent with AIG, some are taking their anger a bit too far. Yesterday on a local Iowa radio show, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) suggested that AIG executives consider committing suicide. And last night on Fox News, far right pundit Charles Krauthammer and his milder counterpart Mort Kondracke argued that some should be put to death:
KRAUTHAMMER: I’m all in favor of keeping this heaping opprobrium. I would deny them the bonuses if possible. I would be for an exemplary hanging or two. Have it in Times Square, invite Madame DuFarge. You borrow a guillotine from the French and we could have a party. If that’s what it takes to maintain popular support, let’s do it. But it’s not going to change anything economically. […]
KONDRACKE: I was going to recommend boiling in oil in Times Square, but look, because these are the people who invented these crazy credit default swaps that are leading to the whole disaster.
Watch it:
Whether it’s terrorism, international crises, domestic crime or, in this case, excessive corporate greed, some conservatives seem unable to see problems as anything other than a nail for which the only solution is a hammer.
A new USA Today/Gallup poll finds that American support for the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan is at a new low. Forty-two percent said the U.S. made “a mistake” in sending military forces to Afghanistan — the highest since the start of the war — and up from 30% in February and 6% in January 2002. Thirty-eight percent said the war is going well — “the lowest percentage since that question was asked in Sept. 2006.”
Wall Street firms are looking for loopholes to avoid the bonus caps that come attached to TARP funds. Citigroup Inc., Morgan Stanley, and other banks are considering increasing base salaries rather than relying on bonuses. Citigroup has received $45 billion in taxpayer relief so far, while Morgan Stanley has received $10 billion.
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said yesterday that he “issued subpoenas for the names of American International Group employees given millions of dollars in bonuses despite their possible roles in the insurance giant’s near-collapse.” Cuomo explained that “his office will investigate whether the…payments are fraudulent under state law because they were promised when the company knew it wouldn’t have the money to cover them.”
Pope Benedict XVI said today that the international community “can’t resolve [the problem of AIDS in Africa] with the distribution of condoms. On the contrary, it increases the problem.” The Pope described the “current crisis as the consequence of ‘a deficit of ethics in economic structures‘” and said that it can give “spiritual and moral” suggestions.
“The Obama administration is considering making veterans use private insurance to pay for treatment of combat and service-related injuries,” a move that has earned widespread criticism from veterans groups. IAVA Director Paul Rieckhoff said the proposal “is bad for the country and bad for veterans,” while Joe Violante, legislative director of Disabled American Veterans, called it “a betrayal.” Watch Rieckhoff discuss the idea with Rachel Maddow here.
In an e-mail message today titled “useful idiot watch,” right-wing talker Laura Ingraham sends a “Memo to Meghan McCain,” claiming that her “plus-sized” attack was just “one satirical line” that the left is now using “to malign outspoken conservatives.” Ingraham claims that “indignation” over her “off-the-cuff remark” is “manufactured and totally phony“:
The left’s indignation in this instance is manufactured and totally phony. If any off-the-cuff remark about a woman’s size was condemnable, then where was the outrage when President Obama made a passing reference to Jessica Simpson’s “weight battle” during his Super Bowl interview with Matt Lauer? And of course they look the other way when obvious personal attacks are levied against conservatives. Remember when Al Franken was the toast of all media for his book “Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot”? Last month The View’s Joy Behar called him a “fat guy”; and when I was a guest on The View a few years back she ridiculed Ann Coulter and me as “peroxide” blondes on Fox. I laughed it off. If you can’t stand the heat…get out of the punditry business.
In a nod to ThinkProgress, Ingraham closes her e-mail by encouraging her readers to “click here to listen to the entire segment from March 13th, instead of the version that was edited and sent around by left wing smearmongers.”
As ThinkProgress noted, in February, bailed-out Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit told a House committee that he received only $1 million in salary and “no bonus” in 2008:
PANDIT: My compensation was for the year 2008 was my salary, which was a million dollars. I received no bonus. And as I stated earlier, I plan to take a dollar per year salary and no bonus until we return to profitability.
Watch it:
But Reuters reports today that Citigroup awarded Pandit “$10.82 million of compensation in 2008,” despite the bank accepting $45 billion in TARP funds. The package included a “$958,333 salary, $9.84 million of stock and option awards and $16,193 of other compensation,” according to an SEC filing. As of February, Citigroup still owned or was leasing a private jet.
Last fall, as AIG teetered on the edge of collapse, then-Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) came out against using government resources to rescue the firm. Less than 24 hours later, McCain decided that a bailout was necessary because, as he put it, “there are literally millions of people whose retirement, whose investment, whose insurance were at risk here.” But today — after learning of the AIG’s plans to award $165 million in bonuses to its employees — McCain apparently decided that saving “literally millions of people” from financial ruin wasn’t worth it:
While McCain seems to believe that the only way to deal with AIG’s misuse of its bailout funds is to not to offer such bailouts in the first place, other options exist. As Pat Garofalo explains, nationalizing AIG and giving the Treasury Department “outright control over the hiring and firing of executives and the payment of bonuses and dividends” could be a better strategy.
Earlier today, Huffington Post’s Sam Stein noted that as the guest host of Bill Bennett’s radio show on March 6, RNC Chairman Michael Steele compared President Obama to Richard Nixon. “What you are seeing here, folks, unfold is nothing short of the Nixon administration played out in a different era and a different style,” declared Steele:
“I’m going to tell you something,” Steele replied. “You make such an important point, because I had a conversation earlier this week about the very point you just made about the Nixon administration. What you are seeing here, folks, unfold is nothing short of the Nixon administration played out in a different era and a different style. But the results and the effects are the same. You have H.R. Haldeman and Rahm Emanuel, these guys, the master manipulators, the master controllers in the background, moving and shaking the pieces, creating an enemies list, putting together the targets on our side. The whole strategy of demonizing Rush Limbaugh, which has been exposed now…”
Steele’s comparison of Obama to Nixon is ironic given the fact that just a month earlier Steele enthusiastically compared himself to one of Nixon’s most prominent henchmen, G. Gordon Liddy. During a February 5, 2009 appearance on Liddy’s radio show, Steele told the former political dirty trickster, “I follow the footsteps of guys like you”:
STEELE: So, I, you know, I follow the footsteps of guys like you who, you know, who, you know, set the bar and pushed and pushed and pushed and made sure that we could obtain the results that would benefit people in communities, fighting for the rights of individuals and making sure that, you know, we don’t back down. Our opponents don’t back down. Why do we?
Listen here:
As the Chicago Tribune’s Steve Chapman noted last year, Liddy is truly radical:
Which principles would those be? The ones that told Liddy it was fine to break into the office of the Democratic National Committee to plant bugs and photograph documents? The ones that made him propose to kidnap anti-war activists so they couldn’t disrupt the 1972 Republican National Convention? The ones that inspired him to plan the murder (never carried out) of an unfriendly newspaper columnist?
Carl Bernstein, who along with Bob Woodward uncovered much of the Watergate scandal, pointed out last year that as one of Nixon’s “plumbers,” Liddy once planned “to firebomb a Washington think tank.”
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