It's been nearly 50 years since President Richard Nixon was brought down by his own crimes and arrogance. But the left is acting as if it were only yesterday.

I guess you can't blame them. Watergate was their ultimtae triumph - overturning the results of an election where their candidate, George McGovern, was beaten as badly as any candidate from either party in American history. They firmly believed it wasn't his toxic policies, his redistribution schemes, his pacifism in the face of growing Soviet aggression. They convinced themselves that Nixon cheated and forced the American people to vote for him.

So it's not suprising that the left would contiuously relive those glory days, finding similarities between Watergate and incidents during the administrations of every Republican president who has served since then.

But Walter Schaub of Slate Magazine goes off the rails when he compares the exit of Attorney General Jeff Sessions with the infamous "Saturday Night Massacre" - "in slow motion" he says.

To refresh your memory, the inquiry into Watergate was, like the Mueller investigation today, branching out into all sorts of areas that had nothing to do with the original suspected crime - the break in at Democratic headquarters. At that time, Archibald Cox was the special prosecutor in charge of the investigation. Nixon finally had enough of Cox and ordered Attorney General Eilliot Richardson to fire him. Richardson refused and resigned. The job of firing Cox then fell to Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus. He, too, refused to obey the president and resigned. Finally, Ruckelshaus deputy Robert Bork did the president's bidding and Cox was gone.

The resulting blow up known as "The Saturday Night Massacre" resulted in the appointment of Leon Jaworski, who pursued the president to the end.

How is this anything like the firing of Sessions?

In 2018, we again find ourselves charting new territory. The argument that Comey’s firing might not be a catastrophe for democracy was that we now had Robert Mueller in the role of special counsel. The argument that Sessions’ firing might not be a catastrophe for democracy is that Mueller’s investigation may yet overcome any obstacles and reach its natural conclusion.

Maybe, maybe not. But whatever the outcome of Mueller’s investigation, America is establishing new precedents. One precedent is that President Trump fired the FBI director—and Congress did nothing. Another is that Trump admitted the FBI’s investigation of his campaign motivated the firing—and Congress did nothing. A third precedent is that Trump fired the attorney general after having railed against him publicly for refusing to intervene in the investigation—and Congress has done nothing. A fourth precedent is that Trump circumvented the Justice Department’s order of succession so he could replace the attorney general with an individual who has directed partisan attacks at the special counsel, has described publicly how a new attorney general could undermine the investigation, has had a personal and political relationship with an individual involved in the investigation, and has been associated with a company that is the focus of a separate FBI investigation.

Trump can't fire the FBI director? The president can fire the FBI director if he doesn't like the cut of his suit. And with Comey, he had cause - not because he was investigating Russian collusion but because he had received the recommendation of deputy director Rosenstein to fire Comey based on the botched investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails. The inspector general of the Justice Department agreed 100% that there were monumental errors in the email investigation, so firing Comey for gross incompetence was a no brainer.

Trump fired Sessions for reasons that had something to do with the special counsel's investigation, but more to do with the personality clashes between the two. They did not get along. Trump wanted Sessions to ride herd on Mueller to stop him from expanding his witch hunt into matters like the Stormy Daniels payoffs and other issues that had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Russian "collusion." Sessions couldn't do that because he didn't have the authority. He had also recused himself from the investigation early on - another bone of contention with Trump.

The idea that Trump can't fire his own attorney general because it will initiate a "constitutional crisis" is ludicrous. Is the AG a power unto himself? Is he accountable to no one? 

Schaub can fantasize and daydream about the "Saturday Night Massacre in slow motion" all he wants. His thesis is beyond reason, beyond logic, and beyond belief. He and his fellow leftists should put Watergate to rest and stop finding idiotic comparisons to Nixon every time a Republican president does something that can be twisted into a "another Watergate."