On Nixon’s pardon — Greenwald’s latest

by digby

I was going to write a big thing about Greenwald’s new book, With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful, but after seeing this interview with Maddow, I think it’s better just to have you watch this:

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I must admit that I was part of the “elite class” that backed the Nixon pardon, although I was an 18 year old college student at the time. Surprisingly perhaps, the people who influenced me the most in that direction were disillusioned left wing radicals who believed that Nixon inherited the baby killing Johnson’s war and got scapegoated. (They didn’t vote for him, but never thought of him as the villain Johnson and the Democratic hawks were. The reasons for that are complex and fascinating.) And I was led by my youthful, soft heart … which hardened for good somewhere around Iran Contra.

Obviously, I agree with Glenn that in retrospect, it was the beginning of a new phase in lawless government activity, even as the late 70s produced a whole new set of toothless oversight guidelines. It isn’t even debated at this point.

Glenn’s book discusses many of the issues with which his readers — and mine — are already familiar. But seeing it all in one place is truly astonishing — and frightening. When you think about the police state we’ve beggared ourselves building in the wake of 9/11 — and placed in the hands of people who simply have no accountability to the people or the law — it scares the pants off of you. And it should.