During the presidency of Ronald Wilson Reagan, during my clerkship for Chief Administrative Law Judge Nahum Litt, my mother visited me in Washington, D.C. My mother and I took a Tourmobile around the city.
We passed Watergate and our guide mentioned only that it was a hotel and shopping center. Nothing about the burglary there that led to the resignation of Richard Milhous Nixon.
We asked the driver, and then the staff at the Tourmobile HQ at Arlington National Cemetery.
'We were told it was "too controversial."
The Department of the Interior and its contractor were guilty of censoring history. How "hopelessly provincial," as my mom would say -- we both laughed and laughed at the supercilious, supine government contractor employees for the Department of the Interior who emitted that falsehood.
Obviously, apparatchiks under Secretary James Watt censored the script.
Tourmobile guides were simply forbidden to say what happened at the Watergate building on June 17, 1972.
We survived Nixon and Reagan. We survived two Bushes.
Our democracy is still under attack today, as in Watergate.
Our democracy is under attack by overbearing Big Money and Big Government.
Here in St. Johns County, our one-party Republican misrule has taken our rights away.
Ask Sheriff David B. Shoar -- but wait, he won't even answer questions from the St. Augustine Record Editor about the Tom Manuel case.
Ask the St. Johns County Visitor and Convention Bureau -- but wait, the St. Augustine Record would not run a letter about its actions, saying it was too "adversarial," and the VCB itself refuses to provide any documents on antitrust and civil rights concerns, despite Florida's Sunshine and Open Records laws and the "Delegation Test" -- VCB is performing a traditional county government function, which has been delegated to VCB.
Ask St. Augustine Beach City Commissioners -- but wait, the SAB's charming Mayor, Sherman Gary Snodgrass, sometimes interrupts public comment speakers, saying people can't make "disparaging" remarks.
Oh, yes we can -- this is not Excelen or Commonwealth Edison.
This is America.
Our First Amendment guarantees our right to speak, ask questions and, if we want to be, to be "pests who never rest" when it comes to unaccountable institutions.
"Ye shall know the truth and it will set you free," scripture teaches us.
In the words of broacaster Barry Farber, "Keep asking questions."
That's how we should celebrate the 41st anniversary of the Watergate burglary today -- "Keep asking questions."
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