Today we talked about Osama Bin Laden's death and everything that happened with that. Mr. Bruns also assigned the last blog assignment. My topic is the history of the internet. This blog is worth 40 points and will be due in two weeks. Then we got back into blog discussions continuing with Richard Nixon.
President Richard Nixon (Republican 37th):
- Vice-President of Eisenhower
- Lost 1960 election to JFK
- Was the only person to be elected twice to both the Presidency and the Vice Presidency
- Only President to resign from office (he was about to be impeached)
- Nixon was very paranoid and thought that everyone was out to get him
- Nixon's Presidential Accomplishments:
- Vietnam Conflict dominated much of his presidency and war became very unpopular
- Promised to end the war---"Peace with honor"
- Expanded the war to Cambodia and Laos-bombing Ho Chi Minh Trail
- Started pulling troops out of Vietnam as promised
- The Nixon Doctrine--"Vietnamization" of the war which was pulling our troops out and let the Vietnamese fight their own war
- Paris Peace Accords signed in 1973 stopped the fighting and got the US out of the war
- Environmental Decade:
- Nixon was the first president to actually do a lot to help the environment
- Passed a lot of acts to clean up the environment and established a lot of governmental agencies
- Declared war on drugs in 1971
- Started Supplementary Security Income which provided money to low-income people who are either 65 years or older, blind, or disabled
- Saw large scale integration of schools in the south
- Supported affirmative action
- Signed Title IX (1972) which prohibited gender discrimination in all federally funded schools
- Equal Employment Opportunity Act enforces law against workplace discrimination based on an individual's race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age, perceived intelligence, disablity, or sexual orientation
- Abortion was legalized durign Nixon's presidency in the Roe v. Wade case in 1973
- US astronauts landed on the moon in 1969
- Nixon approved the development of NASA's Space Shuttle program
- In 1972, President Nixon traveled to China where the president was to have direct talks with Mao Zedong and Chou En-lai
- This ease relations with the US and China as we agreed to recognize them
- Nixon visited the Soviet Union and went to Moscow in 1972
- There he signed the SALT I which limited nuclear weapons
- Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty was also signed which banned the development of systems designed to intercept incoming missiles
- This led to a new era of "peaceful co-existence" and detente with the USSR
Watergate Scandal:
- Five men were caught breaking into Democratic party headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington D.C. on June 17, 1972 to find dirt on the Democratic party
- They wanted to find embarassing information about the Democrats to hopefully foil their chances of winning the next presidential election
- Two Washington Post reporters, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, investigated the story
- The men were caught with hundred dollar bills in their pockets and were trying to bug the phones
- Woodward and Bernstein relied on an FBI informant known as "Deep Throat" to link the men to the Nixon White House---said "follow the money"
- Ended up being Mark Felt who was high up in the CIA
- Woodward and Bernstein traced the money and caught them
- Nixon was not involved at first but found out the next day
- Then he tried to cover it up saying they were only trying to prevent him from getting re-elected
- FBI eventually confirmed that Nixon aides had attempted to sabotage the Democrats--many began resigning and faced prosecution
- Because Nixon tried to cover it up, he was breaking the law and should have been impeached but he resigned first
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