Chart of the day.

Maybe the Birchers were right after all. Maybe Ike was a commie.

Nah.

Nixon, neither.

Hat tip to John Cole.

Fun facts.

Gallup...

Only Richard Nixon was explicitly less popular at the time of his exit than Bush is today.

From the "American Government 101" file.

Democracy Now, via Adam B...

AMY GOODMAN: We just were listening to Vice President Cheney. One of the remarkable things he said was, well, as you pointed out, echoing back to Nixon—if people have seen Frost/Nixon, we just had Ron Howard on—that issue of, if a president does it, it’s not illegal.

REP. JERROLD NADLER: Well, that’s the definition of a monarch. We rebelled against that notion in 1776. And, in fact, it is just completely either ignorant or malevolent. It’s the antithesis of a democratic country. It’s the antithesis of the rule of law. The whole point of the way they drafted the Constitution was that they didn’t want the president to be an elected monarch. A president, anyone in this country, must be subject to the rule of law and not above it. The people are sovereign, not the president. And someone who says that if the president does it, it’s legal, betrays the Constitution and betrays the entire goal of American government, which is to have rule by the people, not by a king.

0f course, Cheney could be both completely ignorant and malevolent.

At least malevolent, though.

Probably felonious, too.

And Nadler? Add him to the list of folks who'd make a fine junior Senator from New York.

Worth repeating.

Charles Pierce...

The fiction that Watergate was a "national trauma" to be healed, and not a series of crimes for which specific people should be punished, lead directly to the inability of Congress to do its duty in the Iran-Contra scandal and, therefore, to the abdication of constitutional oversight that, since 2001, has ruined so much of what the country once stood for.

It didn't start with Bush.

It isn't over yet.

We have a lot to celebrate. We have even more to do before we the people truly have our country back.

40 years of failure.

...from Nixon to Bush. Sidney Blumenthal on the Republican legacy...

In economics, supply-side panaceas and deregulation created the worst crisis since the Great Depression, requiring a conservative Republican administration to part-nationalize banks, something unimaginable under any Democratic administration. In foreign policy, neoconservatism led to the morass in Iraq and Afghanistan while undermining the western alliance. In social policy, the evangelical right battered science, the separation of church and state, and the right to privacy. Finally, the conservative principle of limited government has become a watchword for incompetence, cronyism, corruption, hypocrisy, and contempt for the rule of law.

It's not just time for a change, the change is just in time.

Hat tip to Gordon.

In related news…

Via Kos...

For the first time in the history of the Gallup Poll, 50% say they "strongly disapprove" of the president. Richard Nixon had reached the previous high, 48%, just before an impeachment inquiry was launched in 1974.