Hightower Lowdown

Reagan when he was a Democrat

Stepford Republicans: All Caught on Tape!
by Jeff Cohen

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/01/6776/

Reagan's Legacy

Here's the abstract of an article by Mark Green from the end of the Reagan era:

In Comtempt Of the Public

Reagan's team is eclipsing its predecessors when it comes to unethical conduct, corruption. A Baedeker of Scandal -

Newsday - Long Island, N.Y.
Author: By Mark Green and Peter H. Stone.
Date: Jun 28, 1987
Edition: Combined editions
Section: IDEAS
Text Word Count: 2599

Abstract (Document Summary)

THE REAGAN administration is proving - both in volume and variety - to be the most unlawful and unethical in memory. It has given us, among others, the Iran-contra and Wedtech scandals. Six "independent counsels" are investigating current and former administration officials for possible criminal conduct. Some 200 Reagan administration officials have been charged with unethical or corrupt conduct, according to a compilation recently released by Rep. Pat Schroeder (D-Colo.).

In the meantime, sensing that the only defense against the burgeoning investigation is a good offense, some Reagan loyalists and apologists have been busy counterattacking the press and prosecutors. Leonard
Garment, Robert McFarlane's attorney, deserves special rebuke for his fantastical claims that the Ethics in Government Act has had the "perverse net result" of increasing "secrecy at high levels of American government," and that the president's critics have a "strong material stake in it." Others like Pat Buchanan, the president's former director of communications, have labored hard to find prior
presidents who arguably ignored the law, citing Lincoln's suspension of habeaus corpus during the Civil War and Franklin Roosevelt's lease of 50 aging destroyers to Britain during the summer of 1940. These
analogies collapse. Lincoln and Roosevelt acted in the open and with national survival at stake. Reagan has acted with no such national exigency present, and in secret, hiding the truth from his own cabinet, Congress and the country.

What has been Ronald Reagan's response to the widening scandals haunting his administration? He remains as oblivious to reality and history as ever. Indeed, when asked recently about what he hopes the Reagan legacy will be, he replied, "I hope the imprint will be one of
high morality." Ultimately Reagan's obtuseness about law and ethics has infected his whole administration. His is a government that, when it comes to the law, as Gertrude Stein once remarked of another California landmark, "there's no there, there."

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