John Dean testified recently before the House Judiciary Committee.
Dean was Richard Nixon’s White House Counsel. He was part of Watergate. As Nixon et al. were furiously engaged in covering up the Watergate burglary, he told Nixon, “There's a cancer growing on the presidency.” His testimony helped pave the way for Nixon’s ignominious resignation, when he flashed the V for victory sign as he got into his official helicopter and then back to California.
Donald Trump doesn’t have the faintest idea how to keep his own counsel because he is so totally unsuited for the Oval Office. One of his numerous personal attorneys is Attorney General William Barr, who does pretty much what Trump tells him to do.
House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Doug Collins (R-Georgia) kept up a steady drumbeat of nonsensical objections to Dean’s presence, but Dean explained very clearly how many parallels there are between Nixon’s obstruction of justice and Trump’s.
Associate solitary reporter Melissa Smith, who covers Congress for us, congratulated Dean on his testimony.
Dean was a Republican (now an Independent), but the Republicans hate him because he understands Republican dirty tricks.
So ASR Smith asked Dean to run against Trump in 2020.
“Thanks, Melissa, I appreciate it, but I’ve had enough of politics, and I’m eighty years old.”
Smith then called former Senator Mike Gravel, a Democrat who represented Alaska in the Senate for twelve years, and he’s now running against Trump.
Gravel is 89 years old. He told Smith that Joe Biden, at 76, is way too old.
Elsewhere, leading gun control advocate Tom Sullivan, who represents Colorado’s 37th District in the Centennial State’s House of Representatives, survived a venomous and very ill-conceived recall effort put forth by Dudley Brown and the Rocky Mountain Gun Owners (RMGO). RMGO is even more extreme in promoting gun “rights” than the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre.
Representative Sullivan’s son Alex was murdered in the 2012 Aurora theatre shooting massacre. That’s what propelled him into politics. Representative Sullivan proposed Colorado’s “red flag law” (Emergency Risk Protection Orders) bill, which was signed by Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat.
Associate solitary reporter Lewis Thompson was instrumental in persuading the good voters in Sullivan’s district not to sign Dudley Brown’s recall petition.