On the rather surreal occasion of the opening of something solemnly called the George W. Bush “Library,” I was inexorably drawn not to my personal Bush Library of 92 infuriating volumes, but the somewhat smaller 60 or so in the Nixon section.  As I listened to snippets of Village homilies and President Obama predictably joshing chummily about the “clubhouse,”  I was reminded of Jonathan Schell’s masterful recounting of the Watergate era, The Time of Illusion. 

Someone at the Department of Homeland Security website dedicated to studying terrorism thought they should do their job and really describe terrorist groups, including one funded by the FBI. The Secret Army Organization was involved in domestic bombings, break-ins, and assassination, while one of its top leaders

George McGovern, a political hero of my early adult years has passed away at age 90. It was obvious from news reports early last week of McGovern being admitted to hospice and being unresponsive that this was only a matter of time. Yet there is a pain to this.

It’s been one of those weeks again where I just don’t know which story to discuss, so I wind up trying to discuss them all.

Dissenters’ Digest takes a look back at news stories covering whistleblowers, watchdogs, and government accountability.

When Ann Romney haughtily declared this morning that “You People” had better well quit nosing around in her family’s affairs already, I was reminded of my mother’s perennial and typically generous comment regarding couples who were either startlingly unattractive or otherwise even less appealing together than the sum of their parts: “Well, at least they found each other.”

Indeed.

One of my favorite authors, David Wise, published a book in 1973 called The Politics of Lying: Government Deception, Secrecy, and Power. At the time, of course, Watergate was rapidly unfolding, and the first President since Andrew Johnson was about to be impeached for, well, lying. I know it seems quaint today, when actually telling the truth about anything is seen as more politically damaging, but back then, people were still offended about being lied to, for which reason liars at least had some fear of getting caught.

It’s painfully ironic that Dagwood Bumstead finally got around to celebrating Earth Day today, by napping instead of mowing the lawn, at the same time Earth Day became more of a wake than anything to celebrate. Thanks to our brain-dead media and bought-off politicians in both parties, fewer Americans than at any time since the 1970′s give a tinker’s damn whether or not our planet turns into an uninhabitable, sweltering, toxic cesspool.

A chorus of unconvincing shock arose when Mitt Romney’s flack so blithely admitted that whatever bonkers positions he’s taken to appeal to the craziest of Republican primary voters could simply be shaken away like the scribbles on an Etch-A-Sketch, and general election voters would be none the wiser. Although Romney’s desperate and flailing rivals evidently cleaned out Toys-R-Us to capitalize on this supposed gaffe, in fact his statement is anything but controversial; from Karl Rove’s K Street money-laundering shops on down to the lowliest Mississippi trailer park, Republicans applaud lying, as long as it wins elections. And for them, anyway, the lying tends to pay off.

Promising one thing and delivering its diametric opposite has a long and hallowed tradition in Republican politics.

When then-President Richard Nixon sat down at the piano on the stage of the Grand Old Opry in 1974, he was reinforcing a conservative, polemical wall of sound to help contain several decades of transformational popular music, from blues and jazz to rock & roll. Music was the last thing on his mind.

As part of his notorious race-based “southern strategy,” Nixon led the efforts of conservative elites to co-opt American country-western music. He got the idea from George Wallace’s 1968 campaign, which Wallace had filled with country stars like Hank Snow and Hank Williams Jr.