1. I retreated into the television room and today it was the progressive rock and reading room. I had enjoyed the radio program, Soundscapes, on KRVM from Eugene on Sunday evening so much that I created a progressive rock station on Pandora. The station is Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin heavy and, to my delight, also includes punk bands like the Ramones and Cramp. The station gave me some enjoyable tracks by Yes and Rick Wakeman and Joe Satriani and introduced me to bands I hadn't heard of and don't remember.
2. I returned to reading Elizabeth Drew's Washington Journal: Reporting Watergate and Richard Nixon's Downfall. I didn't quite finish this detailed study of the end of Nixon's presidency today, but I'm almost there. I spent much of the day reading all that went into the impeachment of Richard Nixon. Elizabeth Drew details the excruciating work it required to impeach Richard Nixon and presents detailed interviews with both Democrats and Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee regarding how they reasoned themselves to support impeachment or not. The Constitutional arguments different Representatives made were most impressive and Drew makes it a point to examine the physical and emotional toll this process took on the committee. Drew also reports in detail on the deliberations of the Supreme Court when it ruled unanimously in favor of the Special Prosecutor's subpoena for the tapes Richard Nixon made of the conversations that occurred in his office.
I want to read more, now, about the impeachment of Bill Clinton. I don't remember if that process brought out in House members the kind of passionate arguments in defense of certain Constitutional principles that the deliberations Drew reports on did. I also don't know if the proceedings leading to Clinton's impeachment were as agonizing for the participants as the Nixon proceedings were.
It seems to me that the Constitution leaves a lot of room for interpretation regarding what constitutes impeachable offenses. Moreover, the Constitution does not lay out a process for how to impeach a sitting president. It was fascinating to read how the members of the Judiciary Committee, under Peter Rodino's leadership, slowly, exhaustingly, and painstakingly worked out the process of impeachment, the articles themselves, and their support or opposition to impeaching Nixon. It was a political as well as a judicial process. I would say the source of much of the agony was political, especially for conservative members who wrestled with the intersection of individual conscience, Constitutional principles, and the wishes of their constituents back home, knowing that their support of impeachment was against the wishes of many voters in their districts, donors from around the country, and many of their conservative colleagues. Enough Republicans put principle and country before party that the Judiciary Committee reached a bipartisan decision to impeach Richard Nixon.
3. The Deke made an especially delicious dinner tonight. She opened a package of ground Italian sausage, part of the half a hog we recently purchased, combined it with tomatoes and made a mashed cauliflower topping and topped it all with grated cheese. It was a potato-less Shepherd's Pie and I far preferred the cauliflower layer to all the potato layers I've eaten over the years.
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