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Just hide and watch. He'll slither out of this with the help of congress. Republicans are so drunk on power right now that they believe they can't do any wrong

A Pulitzer worthy history lesson from top recording engineer Wally Hayman.

Where Are the Heroes?

Ferdinand Sirica was an Italian immigrant who failed at nearly every business he started. In the 1920s, he tried to survive by becoming a smalltime bootlegger and selling the contraband out of his unprosperous bowling alley/pool hall in Washington. By 1930, he jettisoned the overhead of his front businesses and operated his illegal side business out of the back of a local barber shop. I suspect Ferdinand managed to squirrel away enough money while the Volstead Act was still in effect to keep his son, John, enrolled in decent DC prep schools. Still, John had to do his part by working part-time as a trash collector's assistant to augment the family's modest income.

John eventually cut out his own path as a decent if not champion professional boxer, just good enough to make some money on the pro circuit between Washington and Miami. Jack Dempsey would become his best friend and serve as best man at Sirica's wedding. John was also a passable if not great student, smart enough to box by night and make his way through Georgetown's law school by day. After a few failed attempts, he passed the bar and earned his license, only to be turned down for employment by every major law firm in Washington. But he managed to latch on with a small local practice specializing in criminal law where he proceeded to lose the first 13 cases he was assigned before punching a police officer witness for the prosecution in frustration.

While he never rose to the status of legal scholar, John was known for being an honest man - a Republican unafraid of breaking with party power-brokers to make a from-the-gut legal call rather than the safe political call. His squeaky clean reputation earned him a position as a US Attorney and eventually a federal judgeship bestowed on him by Dwight Eisenhower.

John was a relative non-entity on the US District Court even as its senior member. He remained a source of ridicule and scorn from superior legal minds who spoke of him using the profession's pejorative, "bench-warmer" - and one with a decidedly short and volcanic temper. So it was with some irony that the minimally talented and cantankerous ex-boxer and son of a bootlegger would preside over one of the most consequential trials and follow-up legal decisions in this country's history.

The hero part of Sirica's story began when an odd group of five burglars arrested while casing the Democratic Party headquarters in Washington's Watergate Apartments stood in front of his bench. They refused to reveal the name of the person or persons who employed them for the job, hence "Maximum John" did what Sirica did best - clobber the five with the threat of stiff provisional jail sentences to help loosen their lips.

It worked. What began as a routine burglary would forever change American history. But Sirica's heroism didn't end there. He was also responsible for successfully forcing Nixon to turn over highly incriminating audio recordings made in the Oval Office; recordings that would contain the smoking gun necessary to topple a president who had won reelection by a landslide just two years earlier.

John Sirica was an American hero, but this story could have been told about Alexander Butterfield. A Republican, like Sirica, Butterfield was a war hero who had earned the Distinguished Flying Cross in Vietnam. When the scandal broke, he was serving as special assistant to Alexander Haig in Nixon's White House. It was past and future hero, Butterfield, who informed a congressional committee, Judge Sirica and a shocked World that Nixon clandestinely taped every conversation he held in the Oval Office - a leftover secret habit that started during the Johnson Administration.

The heroes kept coming thanks largely to the enthusiasm and curiosity of two young metro beat reporters at the Washington Post by the names of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. It was Woodward and Bernstein who took extra notice of an otherwise routine burglary at the DNC's office in Washington's posh Watergate complex and oddly involving not one or two, but five burglars - a couple of them with vaguely familiar names connected to Nixon's White House.

And here, honorable hero mention should include the name Frank Willis, a 24-year-old high school dropout from Michigan who earned $80 per week as a security guard at the Watergate complex. It was Frank who alertly noticed a piece of duct tape sticking out between the safety bolt and catch on the door of the Democratic Committee headquarters. He rushed to the lobby to summon the Metro police - and action that created the genesis of one of the biggest scandals in American history. For doing his job (and altering the course of American history in the process), Frank received a $2.50 per week raise.

Another hero soon emerged in the form of a secret whistle-blower who supplied inside knowledge to the young WaPo reporters. Woodward and Bernstein dubbed him "Deep Throat" and his identity remained the subject of cocktail party conjecture until FBI special agent, Mark Felt, revealed himself some 32 years later. And it took a tough newspaper editor, Ben Bradley and equally tough newspaper publisher, Katherine Graham, to pursue the story, wherever it went. For months, the Washington Post remained practically alone in their reporting. Not even the New York Times dared to publish the daily Post reports until the scandal was well beyond containment.

But the heroism didn't stop with the Post.

After Nixon's AG and close friend, John Mitchell, became implicated in the coverup and was forced to resign, Nixon appointed Defense Secretary Elliot Richardson as Mitchell's replacement at Justice. Richardson, like Butterfield, was a war hero - a medic in the first wave on D-Day who risked his life crossing an unswept minefield to administer aid to wounded GIs. Rather than renege on his promise to Congress to support Cox's investigation, the honor-bound Richardson and his first assistant, William Ruckelshaus, resigned their positions rather than carry out Nixon's order to fire Cox. Likewise, the 3rd man at Justice was prepared to resign rather than carry out Nixon's order. He stayed on at the urging of Richardson who feared a total loss of senior leadership at Justice would not prevent Nixon from bringing in an outside hatchet man to fire Cox... while also wreaking havoc inside the DOJ. That third man in charge was the Solicitor General, Robert Bork - later a federal judge and infamous failed Reagan nominee for the Supreme Court. While the right wing Bork never qualified as a hero, even he found the subterfuge by the Nixon gang hard to stomach.

In the wake of Cox's firing, a second federal judge earned the mantle of hero. This one was Gerhard Gesell. it was Gesell who ruled Nixon's firing of Cox illegal, and who famously declared after handing out stiff sentences to two of the Watergate Burglars, Barker and Martinez, "It is impossible to preserve freedom when the zealots take over and rule of law is ignored."

And don't we know it, now.
While Cox did not return as special prosecutor, another hero, Leon Jaworski, took his place. Jaworski was a conservative Texas Democrat who voted for Nixon, twice, yet he wasted no time following Cox's lead and refused to limit the investigation - a request for which Nixon's lawyers had vociferously argued.

And then there were the heroes on the Hill - men like Senator Howard Baker, a conservative Tennessee Republican who famously demanded, "What did the President know and when did he know it." And Republican Senator Lowell Weicker from Connecticut who deeply owed his 1970 election to the senate to Nixon's unwavering support. Yet Weicker's electoral debt to Nixon didn't prevent him from delivering a blistering indictment of Nixon's role in the Watergate scandal.

Heroes and patriots, all.
Which begs the question,
Where are those heroes, today?

WBH

Maybe a better question would be, Who will be the heroes in this drama as it plays out?

Well I think that's what Wally meant when he said "where are those heroes today".
You're both on the same page.

Hmm, ok.

Trump has gone folk on nuts with latest tweet Sturm. President Trump Accuses Obama Of 'Wire Tapping,' Provides No Evidence - npr. Between that and his tweets about Schumer, Pelosi and the White House having meetings with Russian officials, his "defense" has become farce. Next you can expect a claim that he found Obama's Kenyan birth certificate in his desk drawer...

I realized something though. Given the totally unqualified stature of his cabinet appointees, there is no way they could invoke the 25th Amendment - assuming any of them have read it. I doubt a majority of them could reason that far.

The last first ... loyalty is the word you are looking for. the question is, would any of the Generals take the chance?

I did a quick review of the "evidence". Mark Levin (if anyone has ever listened to him as I have, they would know he is a weasel) promoted the story which was published several weeks ago and parts of which were known last summer. Breitbart picked up on it and of course Mr Trump believes everything in BB is the truth.

Basically the FBI surveiled a server in Trump Tower because of its connections to Russian banks. First, thinking there may have been some criminal activity between banks and later to surveil Trump campaign connections to Russians through the server. Apparently the FBI did not find anything interesting about the banking connections which was leaked last summer. It is unknown what was found out about campaign connections as the FBI is not talking.

There was no known wiretaps on phone lines or captured wireless signals from phones.

Is it actionable as libel?

Better ask the legal eagles, but even if so it would seem the penalty would be limited to the damage. Libel law
Consider the damage already done through birtherism, without penalty. No penalty only the prize of POOTUS. It wont be a long term problem once the so-called 1st amendment is reinterpreted by the, new and improved, GREAT SCROTUS.

If indeed it is true that TT was tapped, doesnt that show that a judge thought there was probable cause that there was a crime. Maybe he could get some expurt legal advice from the AG.
Would you want Sessions defending you in court?

Tat