Washington is far too often remembered for its scandals than its triumphs—a reality that would have stunned and saddened our first president. Yet history’s true measure lies with those who chose conscience over expedience, and duty over ambition.  Their choices came at a cost, but they show us what integrity in public life looks like—and how it can still guide...

On Christmas Eve, 1974, John Dean, former counsel to President Richard Nixon, was sitting in Fort Holabird prison in Baltimore, Maryland, talking to a Mafia guy. “Let me ask you something, if you don’t mind. You look a little bit wet behind the ears to be the President’s lawyer. How’d you get there so young? Your old man put in...

“The blacklist was a time of evil… [Looking] back on this time…it will do no good to search for villains or heroes or saints or devils because there were none; there were only victims.” – Dalton Trumbo, Laurel Award acceptance speech delivered to the Writers Guild of America West, April 1970. Note: I will be live-streaming, @jimlichtman, on the January 6...

Sitting before the Senate Watergate hearings on June 25, 1973, former counsel to Richard Nixon, John Dean, described a meeting with the president. “I began by telling the president that there was a cancer growing on the presidency and that if the cancer was not removed the president himself would be killed by it.” In our current context, the president...

An ABC News/Washington Post poll on the Mueller report (Apr. 26), found that 58 percent of those polled believe that Trump did not tell the truth about the investigation. A slimmer margin, (47 percent vs. 41 percent), believe the President obstructed justice. And 56 percent believe that Congress should not begin impeachment proceedings. Nonetheless, 31 percent believe the report “Cleared...