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Please don't be obtuse. Nixon resigned because he was about to be impeached and convicted, and he knew it. The articles of impeachment passed out of the judiciary committee with clear majorities, in a couple of weeks he was gone.

If Nixon was protected from criminal investigation, and if United States v. Nixon wasn't a unanimous ruling against Nixon's demands for unrestricted Presidential immunity from the judicial process but instead went the other way as Kavanaugh would prefer, then Nixon would have been in a far safer position to defend against his removal.

If a president is immune from investigation and scrutiny, then it is far more difficult for anyone to contain a criminal president, impeachment is an impotent check if must be carried out in the dark. And well, if what you really want is an unconstrained criminal president (such as Nixon was at his very worst), then I have no patience for you.

Using the powers of the office of President of the United States, Richard M. Nixon, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in disregard of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has repeatedly engaged in conduct violating the constitutional rights of citizens, impairing the due and proper administration of justice and the conduct of lawful inquiries, or contravening the laws governing agencies of the executive branch and the purposed of these agencies.

This conduct has included one or more of the following:

1. He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavoured to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposed not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be intitiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.

...

In all of this, Richard M. Nixon has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.

Wherefore Richard M. Nixon, by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office.
Adopted 28-10 by the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives.

The relevant bit of history is Nixon's enemies list, in which he ordered IRS audits to "screw" his political enemies. In that case, the IRS commissioner Donald Alexander also refused to follow the order to perform the audits, and stored the order in the sealed envelope in his safe until the enemies list was outed by WH Counsel John Dean.

As an aside: there are other bits of that article of impeachment that Trump's folks have been accusing his political enemies of violating, particularly with the FBI and surveillance. That's a neat trick of acting Nixonian whist accusing your enemies of acting Nixonian, I don't know if that counts as projection or muddying the waters, or if it even reaches the heights of Orwellianism. Or perhaps it is simply a childish "no, you are!"

Maybe explain why article 1 states Nixon obstructed justice because you make it sound like a sitting president is not capable of obstructing justice. Secondly the pardoning powers were never intended to self pardon so that you may continue your crime spree in office while congress tries to act fast (fast is months to years), there is absolutely no precedent for that. The real danger is the creep we are seeing in political openness to stating they are openly corrupt - this is getting worse on both D and D sides as they get more and more comfortable being above the law.

No, it wasn't. Did you even read it? Nixon was never tried, never convicted, and never admitted guilt. The pardon was both free (no prerequisites such as admitting guilt) and absolute (again, not conditional).

Now, THEREFORE, I, GERALD R. FORD, President of the United States, pursuant to the pardon power conferred upon me by Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, have granted and by these presents do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9, 1974.

At that point, since there was no trial to determine the actual facts of any criminality on his part, the pardon had to include the "or may have". Not doing so would have required him to admit guilt or be found guilty. By including hypothetical situations, it didn't need a finding of guilt or even an admission.

Courts do the same thing all the time when they dismiss charges against an accused before a trial. No admission of guilt necessary as an a priori condition to their accepting the court's granting them immunity from further prosecution.

Manning was a serviceman that took an oath, if that is meaning less.
Snowden is not convicted, He can't be pardoned yet.

Wrong and wrong. Maybe you're too young to remember Ford pardoning Tricky Dick .

Security clearances are independent of any alleged military oaths. There's established law which (theoretically; in practice you just go to jail) allows people to report illegal activity that happens to be revealed in classified material.

Remember: One of the reasons Democrats listed for the Impeachment of Nixon was that he talked to his aides (caught on tape) about the possibility of using the IRS against his political opponents (the Democrats carefully-worded the charge to say "he "endeavoured to" rather than "did" as you will note below:

Article 2, charge 1:

"He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavoured to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposed not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be intitiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner."

[bold emphasis is mine]

Note: Obama has ACTUALLY DONE these things. Obama's IRS got the donor records of a pro-traditional-marriage group and gave them to the groups pro-gay-marriage opponents. Obama's IRS has stalled the tax-exempt processing of TEA Party groups for YEARS. Obama's IRS has forwarded personal tax information of TEA Partiers and Republicans to Democrats on Capitol Hill. And there is evidence (admittedly still unproven, but statistically too crazy to be accidental) that the IRS passed info on the president's enemies to the ATF, EPA and FBI which was then used to harass TEA Partiers.

I would call your attention to the Articles of Impeachment against Richard Nixon, specifically Article II, Section 1. For further information, please see the letter from Rep. Darrell Issa (Admittedly, a bit a a partisan firebrand) to Lois Lerner, the IRS official at the head of this controversy dated 27 March, 2011. I would particularly call your attention to the list of demands that begin on page 2.

It seems possible that this is all what Ms. Lerner is claiming, the actions of a few low level employees seeking a way to streamline an admittedly arduous process, but if so, it demonstrates a level of political tone deafness so high as to boggle the mind.

The upshot is that something here stinks. Particularly given that President Obama has made jokes about auditing those he is unhappy with. This needs to be investigated, and investigated NOW.

A fine example of strike fast while they're distracted.

Nixon.

Clinton's technical impeachment was trivial, partisan and he was acquitted. It was one of IIRC three attempts, the other two of which never reached trial. It was essentially an abuse of the impeachment process and didn't work. It was technically an impeachment but in spirit a waste of time.

Proceedings towards Nixon's impeachment received bipartisan support from the House Judiciary Committee, appropriately targeting an abuse of power with the Articles of Impeachment. Everyone knew what the outcome would be and the proceedings resulted in Nixon's removal - forcing a corrupt president's removal being one of the aims of such proceedings. He resigned before the impeachment proceedings reached the stage which is technically labelled "impeachment", but that is irrelevant.

Nixon's was the last impeachment proceeding which worked, and Clinton's was simply partisan abuse. The efforts to impeach Bush, who had behaved in a manner far worse than poor Nixon dreamt of, fell on deaf ears within the Judiciary Committee.

But I apologise for not demonstrating the necessary level of pedantry. I should have said, "the President not only could be affected by impeachment proceedings, but was affected by impeachment proceedings, shows how great things were. You think that's going to happen again?"

Well, they've already got the speech ready:
http://watergate.info/nixon/moon-disaster-speech-1969.shtml

Reading that makes you wonder what would have happened, had they been stranded.

I assume the public wouldn't have lost interest in manned exploration nearly as quickly...

Well, they've already got the speech ready:
http://watergate.info/nixon/moon-disaster-speech-1969.shtml

Wait, what?

He resigned before the articles of impeachment were voted on and therefore couldn't be a trail by the senate... What alternate universe are you from?

Given American history, you are right, that he would have likely escaped jail. If you ask me he should have been arrested for treason. I disagree with you that Nixon was a good president - he was paranoid, secretive and thought himself above the law.

Well, Nixon opened relations with China, he got our troop out of Vietnam, although a little uncleanly but he stopped them from dieing because of politicking in Washington. He implemented desegregation in the south after the supreme court ruled segregated schools against the law. He commissioned the development of the space shuttle and promoted science and the space program by making the world longest long distant phone call to the moon when Neil Armstrong and the appolo 13 went. He negotiated the salt 1 and anti-ballistic missile defense treaties with russia and eased tensions durring the cold war. he created OSHA, NOAA, OMBE, and the EPA, Indexed social security for inflation so a $200 payment would still be worth $200 three years later. He created the SSI program that helped disabled persons draw social security from family member's payments without penalties to them and had a default if that wasn't availible. He attempted to get Comprehensive Health Insurance for the people. Although that plan turned into the HMO act that congress passes later and didn't have coverage for every American, he specifically called for it in his 1974 state of the union speech. There is a ton more that he did which I'm not sure much of it could be considered bad. If you look past Watergate, you will see that Nixon was pretty busy and had a lot of success in what he wanted done.

Once the courts forced him to hand over the tapes it was revealed that he knew what was going on ( http://www.watergate.info/tapes/72-06-23_smoking-gun.shtml ). During the investigation he fired the independent investigator for refusing to cover up the crime (after first firing the attorney general and his deputy for refusing to fire the investigator) ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Night_Massacre ).

Knowing what happened after the fact isn't the same as knowing what happened when it was happening. This is the point I was attempting to make. Lets say someone breaks into the Election headquarters and rigs the election so you can win. Now lets say that two possible scenarios could have come from it. First is that you knew about it and either supported the action or failed to stop it. Your a crook. The other is that you learned about it after the fact because some guy came in and said "I did X or had X done so you would be elected" and you didn't tell anyone after that.Your still a crook for staying in office after knowing the election was a sham and your not reporting it. But your not in office because of illegal activity that you caused to happen and are only guilty of covering it up after you found out about it. Those are two different levels of crimes there and they deserve punishment separately. Sure, we know that Nixon knew about Watergate. But did he know when it was happening or did he only find out later when they started with the special prosecutor stuff? We will never know for sure and anyone making a claim one way or another is more or less guessing.

I'm sorry but I don't know how anyone could think of him as a good president!

Obviously your aren't as up on Nixon's history as others are. I'm not sure of anyone who can look back past Watergate and claim he wasn't a damn good president that did a lot of good things while in office. You seriously need to look past Watergate and look into what he has done and attempted to do.

We don't know for certain what Nixon's role in Watergate was

Once the courts forced him to hand over the tapes it was revealed that he knew what was going on ( http://www.watergate.info/tapes/72-06-23_smoking-gun.shtml ). During the investigation he fired the independent investigator for refusing to cover up the crime (after first firing the attorney general and his deputy for refusing to fire the investigator) ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Night_Massacre ).

I'm sorry but I don't know how anyone could think of him as a good president!

The original quote was from Gerald Ford's speech when he took the oath of office as President after Nixon resigned, believe it or not. Trudeau (or Zonk) was poking fun at Ford.

-- Laura, feeling pedantic

This brings us to the differences between legislative immunity and a pardon. They are substantial. The latter carries an imputation of guilt; acceptance a confession of it. The former has no such imputation or confession.

It is believed that a trial of Richard Nixon, if it became necessary, could not fairly begin until a year or more has elapsed. In the meantime, the tranquility to which this nation has been restored by the events of recent weeks could be irreparably lost by the prospects of bringing to trial a former President of the United States. The prospects of such trial will cause prolonged and divisive debate over the propriety of exposing to further punishment and degradation a man who has already paid the unprecedented penalty of relinquishing the highest elective office of the United States.

that somebody learned from the mistakes from the past.

http://www.watergate.info/nixon/resignation-letter .shtml

The Watergate Burglars
There were 5 burglars arrested on June 17, 1972 at the Watergate offices of the Democratic National Committee:

1. Bernard L. Barker - a realtor from Miami, Florida. Former Central Intelligence Agency operative. Barker was said to have been involved in the Bay of Pigs incident in 1962.

2. Virgilio R. Gonzales - a locksmith from Miami, Florida. Gonzalez was a refugee from Cuba, following Castro's takeover.

3. James W. McCord - a security co-ordinator for the Republican National Committee and the Committee for the Re-election of the President. McCord was also a former FBI and CIA agent. He was dismissed from his RNC and CREEP positions the day after the break-in.

4. Eugenio R. Martinez - worked for Barker's Miami real estate firm. He had CIA connections and was an anti-Castro Cuban exile. Click here to read Martinez's account of the burglary.

5. Frank A. Sturgis - another associate of Barker from Miami, he also had CIA connections and involvement in anti-Castro activities.

1) Watergate was the national campaign headquarters for a national political party.
2) The Watergate burglars were caught red-handed in the offices

Trying to equate this to Watergate is really weak.

See? By defending the action instead of denying it, you've earned some respect (by way of karma) and come off as a rational human being.

The fact is, I'm not a knee-jerk privacy advocate, but I do believe we should keep an eye on our government to make sure they don't abuse this sort of power. If it's being used to prevent jet-liners from blowing up my place of work, great. If it's being used to intimidate political dissenters, not so great.

I wouldn't trust any administration, Democratic or Republican not to cross that line, but Republicans have certainly shown themselves to be much more eager to do so in the past.

Back in the Watergate era I heard the funniest PSA that I have ever seen in my life. It was set up just like the televised hearings that were going on at the time, and a prosecutor was droning on in a perfect imitation of Sam Ervin. He was beating up on a witness on the stands, and at first I thought it really was a continuation of those interminable hearings:

"Do you mean to tell me, suh, that you freely give out any kind of information to anyone who calls on the telephone, without any form of security or credentials?"

"Yes sir, we do."

"Does this oahganization of yoahs have a name, suh?"

"Yes sir, it is the Houston Public Library."