Not An Enemy. They Just Wanted To Beat Him.

In a "60 Minutes" profile of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, correspondent Steve Kroft said that Goodell's father, Sen. Charles Goodell (R-NY), was on the Nixon White House enemies list. Not true. The list is here; a longer list of political opponents is here. Neither contains Goodell's name.

Nor, however, was he on the White House secret Valentine list. Gov. Nelson Rockefeller appointed Goodell, a congressman, to finish Sen. Robert Kennedy's term after his 1968 assassination. Because of his opposition to the Vietnam war, in the 1970 midterms Goodell lost the support of the state's powerful Conservative Party, which nominated James Buckley, who won -- and later made history by calling for Nixon's resignation during Watergate.

Goodell may have concluded that he was on somebody's list after Vice President Spiro Agnew called him "the Christine Jorgensen of the Republican Party" for waxing from a conservative congressman to a liberal, anti-war senator (and therefore, presumably, less of a man, according to the mentality of Agnew, the proto-Newt Gingrich of the Republican Party). Jorgensen, who'd had gender reassignment surgery, asked Agnew for an apology; he refused.

So Goodell wasn't an official enemy. Nixon just wanted him out of the Senate. I can well understand why his family might consider this a distinction without a difference. But we fight for every yard in a cloud of dust at The Episconixonian.

How To Save America

Teachers as at-will employees -- no contracts, no tenure. Because the principal fired most of his administrators to afford his reforms, the teachers run the school. Here's the catch: He pays them $125,000 a year. Look at the kids' faces and tell me it's a bad idea.

The Great Reconciler

What a blessing to contemplate the life of the great Nelson Mandela. "60 Minutes" did so tonight.

Quote Of The Day

Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, interviewed tonight on "60 Minutes":

If 9/11 happens again, I want to be the first to die.

I learned something else from Scott Pelley's report. Hundreds of Muslims have been worshiping in the Cordoba House building for over a year, ever since a nearby mosque lost its lease. Do Newt Gingrich and Renee Ellmer propose to evict them?

Calming Down The House

Saying that he doesn't want to govern out of anger, President Obama tells "60 Minutes" that he opposes the House bill to confiscate bonuses paid to AIG executives:

I think that as a general proposition, you don't wanna be passing laws that are just targeting a handful of individuals. You wanna pass laws that have some broad applicability. And as a general proposition, I think you certainly don't wanna use the tax code to punish people. I think that you've got an pretty egregious situation here that people are understandably upset about. And so let's see if there are ways of doing this that are both legal, that are constitutional, that upholds our basic principles of fairness, but don't hamper us from getting the banking system back on track.