By Christopher Gregory | Colorado Politics, Commentary
Colorado is haunted by the ghosts of Watergate. Through his preemptive pardon of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford blunted the rule of law by preventing our country from ever directly addressing the wrongfulness of Nixon’s conduct and having public discourse as to what accountability was appropriate. The evolution of Colorado’s judicial scandal has been very similar to the chronology of Watergate. In it I have found my own spiritual camaraderie with Justice Melissa Hart’s grandfather, Archibald Cox. Like me, Cox was retaliated against and fired just as his investigation of Nixon discovered critical evidence.
The greatest danger to the American republic is not who voters choose to represent them but rather the selective enforcement or non-enforcement of our nation’s and our states’ public corruption laws and civil rights protections. In his 1776 Thoughts on Government, John Adams stated: “A republic is the best form of government, a government of laws, not arbitrary rule. (T)here is no good government but what is Republican. (T)he very definition of a Republic, is “an Empire of Laws, and not of Men.”