Month: January 2013

The presidency is a powerless office except when it isn’t

by digby

From “The Presidency is a symbolic office” files:

Jose Antonio Vargas, an undocumented immigrant, asked Muñoz during a Google+ Hangout how President Obama feels about deporting 1.5 million illegal immigrants since taking office.

“The government’s job is to do what Congress tells it to do,” Muñoz replied. “Congress, under the immigration laws that we’ve got now, Congress requires us to remove people who are removable and gives DHS, frankly, a whole lot of resources to do that job. DHS’s job is to make sure they make the best possible decisions on how they use those resources.”

She said the Department of Homeland Security has tried to prioritize whom it goes after, for example those convicted of crimes, but at the end of the day, Congress needs to pass immigration reform.

“We all understand we are enforcing and implementing a system which is broken, and our primary job here is to fix it and that requires the Congress of the United States,” Muñoz said. “That’s something we’ve been trying to get Congress to do for four years, and our moment has come… We have to drive it home and make sure we get to an outcome.”

The number of deportations has increased every year since Obama took office and reached an overall total of 1.5 million at the end of last year.

Ok. I guess the president has no power except to do the congress’s bidding. Well, sort of:

President Obama’s announcement Friday that he is using his executive authority to defer deportation proceedings for young immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally but meet certain requirements was just the latest example of the president’s use of his power to act without Congress on policy issues.

And like the other actions the president has increasingly taken as part of his “We Can’t Wait” initiative, the decision announced Friday was characterized by Obama’s political opponents as an abuse of power and violation of congressional prerogatives.

All of which goes to prove that Obama has reached the stage in his presidency, like so many of his predecessors, where his frustration with congressional inaction has led him to act unilaterally.

William Howell, a political scientist at the University of Chicago who wrote Power Without Persuasion: The Politics Of Direct Presidential Action, said in an interview:

“The boundaries of presidential power are constantly being negotiated and renegotiated. This is very typical. In some ways the option itself may be atypical. We haven’t seen presidents issue this particular kind of policy initiative on their own before. But all the time, presidents are pushing out on the boundaries of their power and claiming new authority. And their ability to actually secure that authority crucially depends on how the two other branches of government respond.

“So the idea that presidential power is fixed and static is a deep misnomer. It mischaracterizes both the long trajectory of presidential power over time and it also mischaracterizes what the founders themselves had in mind. They fully expected various branches of government to be pushing and pulling.”

During the Bush administration we were all very upset at what we saw as the abuse of executive power. Like giving the Vice President presidential powers. But I don’t think anyone has ever said that because a lot of money has been appropriated it means that an executive branch agency is required to be extra energetic about administering laws which fundamentally conflict with its values.

This might have been one the Obama administration “pushed back” on. For reasons that are obscure, they went overboard instead. I guess it had no political repercussions so they have little reason to regret it. But it wasn’t the right thing to do.

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Police state dispatch

by digby

Better stock up on body armor citizens:

Following a rise in violent crime in Paragould, an Arkansas town of around 26,000 residents, the mayor and police chief announced that starting this month police in SWAT gear carrying AR-15s would patrol the streets.

“If you’re out walking, we’re going to stop you, ask why you’re out walking, and check for your ID,” police chief Todd Stovall told a December town hall meeting. As if to render the implementation of a visible police state more palatable, Stovall assured residents that police stops would not be based on any profiling: “We’re going to do it to everybody,” he said.

Stovall also told residents he had not consulted an attorney before instituting the plan. HuffPo’s Radley Balko noted that Paragould is not the first town to bring in such measures:

Using SWAT teams for routine patrols isn’t uncommon. Fresno did this for several years in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The city sent its Violent Crimes Suppression Unit into poorer neighborhoods and stopped, confronted, questioned, and searched nearly everyone they encountered. “It’s a war,” one SWAT officer told Christian Parenti in a a report for The Nation (not available online). Another said, “If you’re 21, male, living in one of these neighborhoods, and you’re not in our computer, then there’s something definitely wrong.”

They ended up cancelling two town hall meeting because after the public outcry the police felt there were “public safety concerns.” Which is hilarious.

There’s an awful lot of taxpayer funded quasi military gear just sitting in police stations waiting for some terrorists to move to town. It’s only reasonable that they’d want to use it. I suspect that’s what’s driving most of this sort of thing: boys wanting to use their toys.

 The martial law aspect of this is the only thing that’s really out of the ordinary. The general militarization of the police is nationwide.

Update:

Righto:

If you live in downtown Miami, you’ve probably noticed something unusual in the sky the past few nights.

Residents have been posting videos on YouTube of unmarked military helicopters flying through Brickell at late night hours, creating lots of noise and a little concern.

The videos, titled “Miami Under Attack” and “POLICE STATE 2011: Homeland Security/ARMY Black Helicopters in Drill Over Downtown Miami,” show the black choppers navigating through the high rises, hovering in place and flying pretty low.

But Military officials released a statement Wednesday saying the helicopters are part of a military training exercise focusing on operating in urban environments, but didn’t give any specific details.

the training exercises, conducted with the support of the Miami Police Department, were being done at night to minimize the impact on Magic City citizens, the statement said.

“We recognize this training has an impact on Miami residents and we appreciate your support during this critical training event,” the statement reads.

Uhm, what exactly is the “support” being given by the police department? I suppose if it’s just logistics then you could just call it a really stupid, paranoia inducing maneuver on the part of the military. All over the internet conspiracy theorists are breathlessly reporting that there are black helicopters doing maneuvers over their city. (I have no idea if it’s true, and it probably isn’t.)

If this Miami event was some sort of “homeland security” operation, we have reason to be concerned. We don’t allow the military to do domestic policing in America. Or at least we didn’t used to. And maybe it’s outdated anyway. With all the combat gear local police are wearing and carrying around, I’m not sure it makes any difference. An awful lot of police departments seem to think they’re at war with the citizens.

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Atlas Shrugged for dummies

by digby

John Nichols compiles a list of quotes from some of the “Randiest” members of congress (and I’m talking about people who have the hots for a dead Russian romance novelist.) But then he features one who makes even the Rand lovin’ Paul Ryan look like a casual reader:

But it is now safe to say that no congressional Republican is more in the thrall of Rand than Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson. The Tea Party favorite who came into the limelight last week, first with his convoluted questioning of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about the tragic killings of Americans at Benghazi in Libya, and then with his acknowledgement after a dressing down from secretary of state nominee John Kerry that he had not actually been a member of the committee when some of the basic briefings on Benghazi were presented.

While Johnson may not be prepared for Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings, he’s entirely up to speed on Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged…

Before his election to the Senate, Johnson helped purchase and erect a statue honoring the book. And in a newly produced video he tells an interviewer that he thinks we’re living in an Ayn Rand moment and that he’s a lot like one of the characters from Atlas Shrugged.

“Ayn Rand wrote Atlas Shrugged in 1957, partly as a warning against the growth of government. Do you see parallels between the plot of Atlas Shrugged and current events?” asks Laurie Rice of the Rand-focused Atlas Society in the interview.

“Absolutely,” replies Johnson, while discoursing on how he thinks “we’re all suffering collectively from the Stockholm Syndrome. That’s where people who have been kidnapped are grateful to their captors when they just show them a little bit of mercy. And collectively, we just don’t understand the freedoms we’re really losing.”

The highlight of the interview comes when Rice asks the senator: “What do you see as the differences between your ideas and the ideas of Ayn Rand?”

“I’m not sure there are too many differences,” he says with regard to the writings of the author who decried “the appalling disgrace” of Ronald Reagan’s administration because of its deference to ideas emanating from what she referred to as “the God, family, tradition swamp.”

Then Johnson goes all in, finding something of himself in a favorite Ayn Rand novel.

“I guess when you take a look at the book Atlas Shrugged, I think most people always like to identify with the main character—that would be John Galt,” chirped Johnson. “I guess I identify with Hank Rearden, the fella that just refused until the very end to give up. And I guess I’d like to think of myself more as a Hank Rearden—I’m not going to give up.”

That’s the sort of confidence you’d expect from a senator who boldly interrogated the Secretary of State without bothering to prepare.

This reminds me of nothing so much as girlfriends who half drunkenly confess to each other which character in Sex in the City is most like them. (“I’m deffffinately Miranda, but, you know, I’m short of like Charlotte too.“)

I think the true brilliance of Rand may be that she wrote it as a novel rather than an outright polemic. By putting her philosophy into the mouths of strapping heroes and the sexy women who love them, she gave young teen-agers a way to access the ideas through identification with the lead characters. And those who never emotionally or intellectually mature beyond that age continue to see their self-centered philosophy from that “heroic” perspective. Just as 14 year old narcissists see themselves as uniquely gifted and special, so too does Ron Johnson.

Nichols concludes with this, which never gets old:

Paul Krugman reminds us (of Kung Fu Monkey’s great quote): “There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.”

Erecting a statue dedicated to Atlas Shrugged is the equivalent of erecting a statue dedicated to The Hardy Boys There’s nothing wrong with honoring a book you liked as a kid, of course, but you wouldn’t want to run a country based on The Hardy Boys. Not that the Bush administration didn’t try …

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Lamar Alexander, slave to NRA talking points

by David Atkins

Lamar Alexander, slave to the NRA line, makes a fool of himself in the Capitol Building:

I think guns do affect plenty of people. Especially the ones unfortunate enough to be on the business end of hot lead tearing through their bodies. Video games? Not so much.

You’d think a good Objectivist like Lamar could stand on his own two feet, be a man and think for himself rather than serve as an NRA parasite. A man chooses; a slave obeys. If he ever bothered to play a game sometime, Lamar might learn that.

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Religious Incorrectness

by digby

This Barna Group study is fascinating, but unsurprising:

The findings of a poll published Wednesday (Jan. 23), reveal a “double standard” among a significant portion of evangelicals on the question of religious liberty, said David Kinnaman, president of Barna Group, a California think tank that studies American religion and culture.

While these Christians are particularly concerned that religious freedoms are being eroded in this country, “they also want Judeo-Christians to dominate the culture,” said Kinnamon.

“They cannot have it both ways,” he said. “This does not mean putting Judeo-Christian values aside, but it will require a renegotiation of those values in the public square as America increasingly becomes a multi-faith nation.”

Yes, they can have it both ways. They believe the constitution is a Christian tract that requires the American government to follow the Bible. To them “religious freedom” means that Christianity must guide the entire nation. And they have con artists out there “proving” it every day:

David Barton is not a historian. He has a bachelor’s degree in Christian education from Oral Roberts University and runs a company called WallBuilders in Aledo, Texas. But his vision of a religion-infused America is wildly popular with churches, schools and the GOP, and that makes him a power. He was named one of Time magazine’s most influential evangelicals. He was a long-time vice chairman for the Texas Republican Party. He says that he consults for the federal government and state school boards, that he testifies in court as an expert witness, that he gives a breathtaking 400 speeches a year.

Seeking his endorsement are politicians including Tea Party favorite Ted Cruz of Texas and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who’s mentioned as a possible running mate for Mitt Romney. Newt Gingrich is a fan. So is Mike Huckabee.

“I almost wish that there would be like a simultaneous telecast,” Huckabee said at a conference last year, “and all Americans will be forced, forced — at gunpoint, no less — to listen to every David Barton message. And I think our country will be better for it.”
[…]
David Barton says Americans have been misled about their history. And he aims to change that.

Barton has collected 100,000 documents from before 1812 — original or certified copies of letters, sermons, newspaper articles and official documents of the Founding Fathers. He says they prove that the Founding Fathers were deeply religious men who built America on Christian ideas — something you never learn in school.

For example, you’ve been taught the Constitution is a secular document. Not so, says Barton: The Constitution is laced with biblical quotations.

“You look at Article 3, Section 1, the treason clause,” he told James Robison on Trinity Broadcast Network. “Direct quote out of the Bible. You look at Article 2, the quote on the president has to be a native born? That is Deuteronomy 17:15, verbatim. I mean, it drives the secularists nuts because the Bible’s all over it! Now we as Christians don’t tend to recognize that. We think it’s a secular document; we’ve bought into their lies. It’s not.”

We looked up every citation Barton said was from the Bible, but not one of them checked out. Moreover, the Constitution as written in 1787 has no mention of God or religion except to prohibit a religious test for office. The First Amendment does address religion.

What about the idea that the founders did not want government entangled in religion? Wrong again, says Barton. On his tours of the U.S. Capitol, for example, he claims that Congress not only published the first American Bible in 1782, but it also intended the Bible to be used in public schools.

“And we’re going to be told they don’t want any kind of religion in education, they don’t want voluntary prayer?” Barton asks his audience rhetorically? “No, it doesn’t make sense.”

But historians say Barton is flat-out wrong in his facts and conclusion. Congress never published or paid a dime for the 1782 Bible. It was printed and paid for by Philadelphia printer Robert Aitken. At Aitken’s request, Congress agreed to have its chaplains check the Bible for accuracy. It was not, historians say, a government promotion of religion.

No kidding. A thousand years of bloody religious wars in Europe didn’t escape their notice. But then they didn’t have “historians” like David Barton around to guide them.

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ICYMI: Women ruining warzone bromance

by digby

The great Samantha Bee:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Yeah. And chicks aren’t funny either.

And by the way, this throwback was actually being politically correct when he said, “girls become women by getting older, boys become men by accomplishing something, by doing something.” The original saying which I heard when I was younger, is “girls become women by bearing children, boys become men by accomplishing something.” Yes, they used to say that.

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No Austerity for The “Right” People

by David Atkins

While the country debates how many government jobs to cut, how many grandparents to put on a cat food diet, how many working poor to deny healthcare to, and whether the people who do almost all our dirty jobs should be afforded a path to citizenship, this is still happening:

Top executives at firms that received taxpayer bailouts during the financial crisis continue to receive generous government-approved compensation packages, a Treasury watchdog said in a report released on Monday.

The report comes from the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the bank bailout law passed at the end of the George W. Bush administration. The watchdog, commonly called Sigtarp, found that 68 out of 69 executives at Ally Financial, the American International Group and General Motors received annual compensation of $1 million or more, with the Treasury’s signoff.

All but one of the top executives at the failed insurer A.I.G. — which required more than $180 billion in emergency taxpayer financing — received pay packages worth more than $2 million. And 16 top executives at the three firms earned combined pay of more than $100 million.

“In 2012, these three TARP companies convinced Treasury to roll back its guidelines by approving multimillion-dollar pay packages, high cash salaries, huge pay raises and removing compensation tied to meeting performance metrics,” Christy Romero, the special inspector general, said in a statement. “Treasury cannot look out for taxpayers’ interests if it continues to rely to a great extent on the pay proposed by companies that have historically pushed back on pay limits.”

But it’s all going to “deserving” people, so everything’s OK.

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Kirsten Powers needs to get out more

by digby

Kirsten Powers is hopping mad:

There is no war on terror for the Obama White House, but there is one on Fox News.

In a recent interview with The New Republic, President Obama was back to his grousing about the one television news outlet in America that won’t fall in line and treat him as emperor. Discussing breaking Washington’s partisan gridlock, the president told TNR,”If a Republican member of Congress is not punished on Fox News…for working with a Democrat on a bill of common interest, then you’ll see more of them doing it.”

Alas, the president loves to whine about the media meanies at Fox News. To him, these are not people trying to do their jobs. No, they are out to get him. What other motive could a journalist have in holding a president accountable? Why oh why do Ed Henry and Chris Wallace insist on asking hard questions? Make them stop![…]

This latest volley from the president is just one in a long line of comments from his White House as part of their campaign to silence any dissent they detect in the press corps.
Recently, the White House has kept Fox News off of conference calls dealing with the Benghazi attack, despite Fox News being the only outlet that was regularly reporting on it and despite Fox having top notch foreign policy reporters.

They have left Chris Wallace’s “Fox News Sunday” out of a round of interviews that included CNN, NBC, ABC and CBS for not being part of a “legitimate” news network. In October 2009, as part of an Obama administration onslaught against Fox News,White House senior adviser David Axelrod said on ABC’s “This Week” that the Fox News Channel is “not really a news station” and that much of the programming is “not really news.”

Whether you are liberal or conservative, libertarian, moderate or politically agnostic, everyone should be concerned when leaders of our government believe they can intentionally try to delegitimize a news organization they don’t like.

Oh please:

Let the fence-mending begin. According to a Broadcasting & Cable source in Washington, D.C., CBS News president Andrew Heyward, along with Washington bureau chief Janet Leissner, recently met with White House communications director Dan Bartlett, in part to repair chilly relations with the Bush administration.

CBS News’ popularity at the White House—never high to begin with—plunged further in the wake of Dan Rather’s discredited 60 Minutes story on George Bush’s National Guard service.

An incentive for making nice is the impending report from the two-member panel investigating CBS’s use of now-infamous documents for the 60 Minutes piece.

Heyward was “working overtime to convince Bartlett that neither CBS News nor Rather had a vendetta against the White House,” our source says, “and from here on out would do everything it could to be fair and balanced.” CBS declined to comment.

And they went way out of their way to make that happen:

In the July 21 edition of The Philadelphia Inquirer, columnist Gail Shister quoted CBS chairman Les Moonves: “That’s not the end-all, be-all, but obviously the White House doesn’t hate CBS anymore with [Bob] Schieffer in the anchor chair.” But far from hating CBS, the White House has reason to embrace the network and its selection of Schieffer to serve as interim anchor following Dan Rather’s departure as anchor of the CBS Evening News. Schieffer has previously described his “golfing friendship” with President Bush “during the 1990s” and has said, “It’s always difficult to cover someone you know personally.” Following the announcement that Schieffer would moderate the third and final presidential debate last year, Media Matters for America noted several statements Schieffer had made that raised questions about his objectivity.

Moreover, Shister wrote: “Moonves says Schieffer is looked upon kindly at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue because his brother, John Thomas Schieffer, was ambassador to Australia (he was posted to Japan in February), and was partners with the future President Bush in the Texas Rangers.”

Perhaps Kirsten Powers is too young to know this but conservatives have been trying to “delegitimize” the so-called liberal media for decades. Let’s start with good old Brent Bozell:

The Media Research Center (MRC) is a conservative content analysis organization based in Alexandria, Virginia, founded in 1987 by conservative activist L. Brent Bozell III. Its stated mission is to “prove — through sound scientific research — that liberal bias in the media does exist and undermines traditional American values” and to “neutralize [that bias’s] impact on the American political scene”.

And these guys:

S. Robert Lichter, Stanley Rothman and Linda Lichter wrote The Media Elite in 1986, in which journalists’ political views and voting record were compared to the general public.

Bob Kohn wrote Journalistic Fraud, a criticism of The New York Times.

John Stossel wrote Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media in 2004 about what he alleged was a liberal bias in the established media.

Bernard Goldberg wrote Bias in 2001, in which he claimed CBS, his former employer, had a liberal bias. In 2009, he published A Slobbering Love Affair: The True (And Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media.

Ann Coulter wrote Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right in 2002, in which she claimed the American television and print news had a widespread liberal bias.

Brian C. Anderson wrote South Park Conservatives: The Revolt Against Liberal Media Bias. 

Tim Groseclose wrote Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind.

Hey, Paul Ryan said this as recently as back in October:

“It goes without saying that there is definitely media bias. I think most people in the mainstream media are left of center and, therefore, they want a very left-of-center president versus a conservative president like Mitt Romney.”

I’m fairly sure that Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch started Fox News in response to this critique. That’s why they use the laughably inaccurate “fair and balanced” slogan.

Kirsten probably doesn’t know all this because she lives in the Fox bubble where right wing conservatism represents everyone in the country. She needs to get out more. This “war” started long before Fox even existed. And it was the right that started it.

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Fine lines on immigration reform

by digby

Josh Holland has a nice succinct rundown on the possible roadblocks to the immigration reform effort. It’s a little bit more complicated than it seems at first:

[C]onventional wisdom may be underestimating the degree of fractiousness that defines the conservative movement today. Sean Hannity may see the partisan benefit in getting onboard, but Michelle Malkin is a better harbinger of the passions of the base – “Suicidal GOP senators join open-borders Dems for Shamnesty Redux,” screamed her headline.

Meanwhile, many members of the House GOP caucus are insulated from both popular and elite opinion. An analysis by the National Journal highlights the problem for a party struggling to connect with non-white voters:

Fully 131 of the 233 House Republicans represent districts that are more than 80 percent white. Not only have many of those members opposed measures beyond improving border security in the past, but there are also no natural pressure groups for immigration reform in their districts. The Democratic Caucus, which is largely unified in support of some sort of immigration-reform proposal, has just 31 members from such very white districts.

And while the national party has embarked on a period of introspection forced by a crushing national loss, many House Republicans saw their individual victories as mandates to carry on. A number of members represent districts so safe — both politically and demographically — that they don’t need to step out on immigration reform. Some surely fear potential primaries more than standing in the way of a deal: State legislatures across the country are dotted with ambitious Republicans who voted for Arizona-style immigration-enforcement laws over the past few years.

If House Republicans demand that the so-called Hastert Rule prevail – meaning that Speaker John Boehner can’t bring a bill to the floor without the support of a majority of Republicans – they could successfully block the effort, regardless of any heat they might take from leadership or the Washington Post’s editorial page.

Perhaps more importantly there are the contentious issues of “border security” and “path to citizenship” both of which seem to make right wingers crazy. Nobody even knows what “border security” is supposed to be much less how to tell if we have achieved it. And “path to citizenship” still means amnesty to most Republicans.

Meanwhile, Josh points out that Marco Rubio is walking a very fine line. He could find himself in trouble with the base with this kind of talk. It will be very interesting to see how it works out for him. Rush really doesn’t want to give up his preferred stereotype of the primitive Mexican peasant coming over the border to “drop a baby” so she can get some of that generous welfare they hand out like Halloween candy to all the non-English speakers who casually stroll into government offices crawling with police and federal authorities and demand them:

RUSH: Well, is that the reason that a majority of immigrants come to this country today? I know it used to be. They wanted to be Americans. They wanted to escape oppression. They wanted to become citizens of the greatest country on earth. I’ve seen a number of research, scholarly research data, which says that a vast majority of arriving immigrants today come here because they believe that government is the source of prosperity, and that’s what they support. It’s not about conservative principles and so forth, not the way it used to be. Are the Republicans stuck in the past in misjudging why the country is attractive to immigrants today?

Who knew that all the lazy Mexicans weren’t lazy back in the day after all? And I wonder why they suddenly got that way? This “scholarly research” sounds fascinating. I’ll have to look it up over at the VDARE site.

It’s hard to know where this is going to go. The President seems to be doing the usual thing of starting out on the center right before negotiations begin, but maybe it will work out this time. Rubio has dopted the Democratic attitude that the Republicans will get big points for making the attempt and the nation — specifically Latinos, I’d imagine — will blame the other side for the failure. I think maybe Marco’s confused. It’s either going to be the Republicans walking away from a deal because it doesn’t offer up enough punitive measures, “enforcement”, “border security” and offers a much too easy path to citizenship or Democrats walking away because it’s too punitive and makes a path to citizenship too difficult. I could be wrong, but I’m going to guess that Latinos will see themselves on the Democratic side of that argument. So, on a political level, this should be good for Democrats.

On a policy level, I’m not sure who it’s good for. But it’s unlikely to make things worse, so it’s probably worth a try.

Also, too: Why are domestic workers ignored in immigration reform? (Well, they are mostly wimmins…)

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Paranoia Runs Deep 

by tristero

If I were a conspiracy theorist –  I’m not, I’m someone who came out of JFK convinced that Oliver Stone had proved beyond a doubt that Oswald acted alone  – I would be getting the tinglies over this amazing little factoid:

[Both the young Richard Nixon and his wife-to-be Pat Ryan] had a role in the Whittier Community Players’ 1938 production of “The Dark Tower,” by George S. Kaufman and Alexander Woollcott. Pat Ryan, a pretty twenty-five-year-old teacher at Whittier High, came to “The Dark Tower” with a smidgen of theatrical experience. Born in a Nevada mining-town shack and toughened by a hardworking childhood on a farm in Artesia, she had helped put herself through the University of Southern California with occasional jobs as a movie extra. But it wasn’t any real enthusiasm for the stage that brought her to the Community Players. As her daughter Julie explains in a biography of her mother, she went only because the assistant superintendent at Whittier High asked her to, and she “found it difficult to say no to a school administrator.” Nixon took to the whole business and several months later was back for more. At the urging of the Players’ director, he went on to appear in “Night of January 16th,” a melodrama by Ayn Rand in which the text itself chewed the scenery.

Tricky Dick Nixon and Ayn Rand sitting in a tree – and way back in the thirties, no less!

Coincidence? I do think so. But still…