46 years, 5 months ago on 17 May 1973 the Senate Special Committee on Watergate started holding open hearings. This was just the start of the public investigation that lead to the Impeachment of President Nixon. It would be many many more months before the House Judiciary Committee would start hearing on impeachment after a great many shocks and revelations of truly stunning and shocking things. Like many Americans I watch as much of all the hearing as I possibly could. I remember clearly coming home from morning classes and being glued to the TV watching the Senate hearing with my mother and my friends.

We discussed endlessly what we were seeing and just what it meant. Some of it serous and some of it not. (I remember quite clearly objecting to how John Dean’s wife (who was sitting directly behind him while he testified) was dressed (Mom thought she was shamelessly going Braless.). But just what does that have to do with what happened today? Simply put the first few days of the Senate Hearings nothing seemed to happen. But we were wrong. We started to see just how remarkable team Senators Evin and Baker were. Here were to dedicated Party Members, one Democratic and the other Republican but more than that here were two men totally dedicated to the Senate and the Constitution. These two men set the tone of the hearings and kept a firm hand on the rains so that most of the time no one fell into Partisan politics. What most people then, as now didn’t realize was that Senator Ervin was the Senate’s recognized Constitutional Scholar. An we would soon be grateful for were the words of Senator Baker “What did the President know and when did he know it?”

I do not hold out much hope that this nation will get as lucky now as we did then, but we can hope. Today we House of Representatives take the first steps to public hearings on the actions of President Trump and if they are worthy of impeachment. I do have a suggestion for the hearings. Let’s seek the answer to this question:

“What did the President do and when did he do it?”

Once we know the answers to these questions we can then move on to tacking the issue of if he has done something worthy of impeachment.

46 years ago we thought this nation was badly split between Conservatives vs Liberals but it was nothing like it is now. The GOP was able in the ensuing years split the conservative Democrats off from the party with it’s famous ‘Southern Strategy’. At the same time it drove the liberal ‘Romney’ Republicans from their party with the famous RINO drive. It is now next to impossible to find a Republican who is financially conservative and socially liberal nor can you find many Democrats who are socially conservative and financially liberal. Personally I’m in the school of Political Science thought that says this is why the two parties seem to be shrinking while independents is growing. In any case this is now that was then. We are facing a great political battle that will be fought out with the background of Partisan Politics and it is up to the American Electorate to slap members of Congress upside the head when it get too out of hand. We must remind them that the country and the constitution comes before party.