Selective Memory

The press is in a reflective mood this slow-news July Sunday. 
NPR’s Weekend Edition noted the anniversary of Chappaquiddick,
lest a whole generation grow up thinking it’s a Harry Potter field sport,
I suppose.  The big 35th anniversary, what is that, crystal?

On CBS’s Face the Nation the featured 50th Anniversary Flashback
was a moment from a 1986 interview with Marion Barry, which was used to
set up file footage of his drug
arrest sometime in the murky midnight hours of July 18/19, 1990. 
OK, I’m not going to play up the conspiracy angles here (that’s what the
book side of self-publishing is for), but I will say this is a hell of
a long way to go for a perp walk.

ABC is covering the British Open (is that golf or tennis?)  So
to fill out their dance card, I will note that my childhood best bud Judy
McKenna was born on 7/19 a good many years ago.  Who knew she would
become a top-flight legal scholar of national renown? ­ We all did. 
Hey, Jude!  Many Happy!

Another quick aside:  while researching this post on the Washington
Post's helpful if hillarioulsy-named Destination: 
Scandal, I was reminded of Bush Senior's misadventure
with cocaine.  She don't lie, but he has maybe been known to mis-represent.

NBC’s Meet the Press opened with a guest who doesn’t need film
clips to look back over the past century of American politics. Robert C.
Byrd (D, WV) is basically mad as hell, in a gracious Senatorial way, of
course, and he has written a book. 
Drawing on the senior senator’s historical perspective, host Tim Russert
asked Byrd to compare the current Bush administration to another noted
for its secrecy, Nixon’s.

“Worse.  Far worse,” Byrd said, even allowing for the fact that
several Nixon staffers hold key positions in the Bush administration (Cheney,
Rumsfeld).

And for those of you keeping score at home, from the Watergate
Timeline:  July 18, 1973 Richard Nixon reportedly orders the White
House taping system disconnected.  Happy 31st Anniversary!  (horsehide?)

“I’ve never been as afraid for our country, for the direction we’re
heading, as I am now.” Byrd held up a well-worn pocket copy of the U.S.
Constitution and decried Congress for turning over to Bush its power to
declare war.  “The framers must have been spinning in their graves,”
he said.