I am only half joking on this:

Can we ask for our money back based on the complete incompetence of some of these assholes?

File a civil suit for return of wages/salaries based on failure to meet basic minimum standards for competence within their field?

I agree with this column 100%, Glenn.

I think you raise a great point with this line:

...Congressional Republicans spent the last six years purposely allowing the Executive branch to accumulate unlimited amounts of unchecked power, while they blocked every attempt (most of which were lame and half-hearted) by Congressional Democrats to exert oversight over how these powers were used.

The Republican noises of today, while I do not believe they are sincere or will have any longevity or durance, are still, somehow, so much more ... I don't know what the word I am looking for is ... maybe emphatic? ... than the vapid, vague, moist bleating that the Democrats have been able to work up over the past few years.

William -

"Nixon's Golem"

Holy shit is that a great phrase, thanks for rescuing it for me, I missed it whenever it was originally proferred.

I have been saying this (maybe only in my head) for a few years now - when people are talking about Vietnam like the only real problem was that we hadn't had the "will to win," and that the real problem with Nixon and Watergate was the press and Daniel Ellsberg's violation of "State Secrets," and that the 60's had been some abberation that should be abolished as soon as possible from memory, and that George McGovern was some pot smoking peacenik who tried to sabotage America, and thank God for Reagan... I mean, what a crock of shit this whole fuzzy house of neo-con cards is founded on.

I am willing to give Ford the benefit of the doubt that he pardoned Nixon for the reasons offerred in the statement of the pardon. But I think he did incalculable damage that we are now paying the price for. If we had had a trial at that time we could have conceivably driven a stake through that vampire's heart.

As it is, I don't see a comparable solution appearing on the horizon, unless someone gets access to Cheney's double secret probation lockbox somewhere and starts digging real fucking hard.

I mean, I heard some well-intentioned buffoon call into Rush Limbaugh today and talk about how it is a morale booster for the troops to hear President Bush stand up and fight for the right for his advisors to not testify before Congress. That they are somehow being given succor by this demonstration of his fighting spirit.

Nixon's Golem. Couldn't we have gotten Ike, even?

Robert -

I think the thing that makes the Nixon's Golem iconography so apt, your protest notwithstanding, is that Nixon "knew" the truth, he just didn't consider it important to speak it or adhere to it in public discourse.

Of course he learned some of that from JFK who exploited a completely fictitious missle gap at Nixon's expense, but Nixon took it to new levels.

The now infamous line "If the President does it, it's not illegal," is a truth like none other as a basis for an authoritarian movement. The fact that his truth was concocted with the help of, and protected through the prodigious and completely amoral use of, an enormous pile of lies, doesn't prevent that truth from animating the rotting corpse and clay that the golem imagery evokes. The more I think about it the more I think it is entirely apt.

I think Cheney even came out publicly in support of that Nixon quote at one point, but I will freely admit that that may just be wishful thinking.

Nixon didn't have illusions about being a paragon of morality, he just thought he was smarter than everybody else, and therefore "right", and therefore privy to some higher truth that didn't require things like integrity, dignity, or honor. This is truth of a sort, just a disgusting one.

Paul -

It is my understanding that Kennedy did, in fact, know that he was completely full of shit when he was exploiting the comletely fabricated missle gap in the 1960 election, and that, motivation notwithstanding (I personally think he was just terrified of Ike), Nixon did the "honorable" thing by not refuting him, and thereby preserving the secrecy of the spy plane missions.

Your quote from Wikipedia is about Ike and the administration's knowledge that the missile gap was fabricated.

Kenndy was given a briefing in July of 1960, at Eisenhower's suggestion, by Allen Foster Dulles about US foreign policy and security issues.

http://www.thespacereview.com/archive/523.pdf

So from at least July on, he was well aware that any talk of a missle gap was complete horseshit.

I am writing this from work, and therefore unable to research this thoroughly. Kennedy might have refrained from advancing the missile gap theory after this briefing, but that didn't prevent him from stoking the fires of cold war rhetoric:

...We can convince Mr. Khrushchev to bargain seriously at the conference table if he respects our strength. [Applause.] He will never resort to war, and in that way we shall secure peace, if he realizes that the balance if power is shifting against him. I can imagine no more hazardous course than for the United States to gamble on its defenses, to take a chance that the Russians and the Chinese Communists will follow a peaceful role if we disarm here in the United States, or if we fail to maintain our strength. If we are strong, then peace will be our reward, and that is the doctrine that we preach in the year 1960. [Applause.]

That requires only one kind of defense policy, a policy summed up in a single word "first." I do not mean "first, if," I do not mean "first, but," I do not mean "first, when," but I mean "First, period." [Applause.]