History 17B

Impeachment of Clinton

After nearly 14 hours of debate, the House of Representatives approves two articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton, charging him with lying under oath to a federal grand jury and obstructing justice. Clinton, the second president in American history to be impeached, vowed to finish his term. Leading to the impeachment, Independent Counsel Ken Starr turned over documentation to the House Judiciary Committee. Chief Prosecutor David Schippers and his team reviewed the material and determined there was sufficient evidence to impeach the president. As a result, four charges were considered by the full House of Representatives; two passed, making Clinton the second president to be impeached, after Andrew Johnson in 1868, and only the third against whom articles of impeachment had been brought before the full House for consideration (Richard Nixon resigned from the presidency in 1974, while an impeachment process against him was underway). The trial in the United States Senate began right after the seating of the 106th Congress, in which the Republican Party began with 55 senators. A two-thirds vote (67 senators) was required to remove Clinton from office. Fifty senators voted to remove Clinton on the obstruction of justice charge and 45 voted to remove him on the perjury charge; no member of his own Democratic Party voted guilty on either charge. Clinton, like Johnson a century earlier, was acquitted on all charges.

Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)

After the 19th Amendment affirming women's right to vote was ratified in 1920, suffragist leader Alice Paul introduced the ERA in 1923 as the next step in bringing "equal justice under law" to all citizens. In 1972, the ERA was finally passed by Congress and sent to the states for ratification.

Rosie the Riveter

American women entered the workforce in unprecedented numbers during World War II, as widespread male enlistment left gaping holes in the industrial labor force. Between 1940 and 1945, the female percentage of the U.S. workforce increased from 27 percent to nearly 37 percent, and by 1945 nearly one out of every four married women worked outside the home. "Rosie the Riveter," star of a government campaign aimed at recruiting female workers for the munitions industry, became perhaps the most iconic image of working women during the war.

Anti-war Movement

An anti-war movement (also antiwar) is a social movement, usually in opposition to a particular nation's decision to start or carry on an armed conflict, unconditional of a maybe-existing just cause. The term can also refer to pacifism, which is the opposition to all use of military force during conflicts.

Brown v. Board of Education

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional.

McCarthyism

At a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, on February 9, 1950, McCarthy proclaimed that he was aware of 205 card-carrying members of the Communist Party who worked for the United States Department of State. This speech set off an era of paranoia and accusation and propelled McCarthy into the national spotlight.

Bush/Gore Election Dispute

Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000), was a decision of the United States Supreme Court. It resolved the dispute surrounding the 2000 presidential election. ... On December 9, the Court had preliminarily halted the Florida recount that was occurring.

Consciousness Raising Groups

Consciousness raising. Consciousness raising (also called awareness raising) is a form of activism, popularized by United States feminists in the late 1960s. It often takes the form of a group of people attempting to focus the attention of a wider group of people on some cause or condition.

Containment Policy

Containment was a United States policy using numerous strategies to prevent the spread of communism abroad. A component of the Cold War, this policy was a response to a series of moves by the Soviet Union to enlarge its communist sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, China, Korea, and Vietnam.

Isolationism

During the 1930s, the combination of the Great Depression and the memory of tragic losses in World War I contributed to pushing American public opinion and policy toward isolationism. Isolationists advocated non-involvement in European and Asian conflicts and non-entanglement in international politics. Isolationism is a policy of remaining apart from the affairs or interests of other groups, especially the political affairs of other countries.

Eisenstadt v. Baird

Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438 (1972), is a United States Supreme Court case that established the right of unmarried people to possess contraception on the same basis as married couples.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin D. Roosevelt was in his second term as governor of New York when he was elected as the nation's 32nd president in 1932. With the country mired in the depths of the Great Depression, Roosevelt immediately acted to restore public confidence, proclaiming a bank holiday and speaking directly to the public in a series of radio broadcasts or "fireside chats." His ambitious slate of New Deal programs and reforms redefined the role of the federal government in the lives of Americans. Reelected by comfortable margins in 1936, 1940 and 1944, FDR led the United States from isolationism to victory over Nazi Germany and its allies in World War II. He spearheaded the successful wartime alliance between Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States and helped lay the groundwork for the post-war peace organization that would become the United Nations. The only American president in history to be elected four times, Roosevelt died in office in April 1945.

Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina was one of the deadliest hurricanes ever to hit the United States. An estimated 1,833 people died in the hurricane and the flooding that followed in late August 2005, and millions of others were left homeless along the Gulf Coast and in New Orleans.

Redstockings

I After centuries of individual and preliminary political struggle, women are uniting to achieve their final liberation from male supremacy. Redstockings is dedicated to building this unity and winning our freedom. II Women are an oppressed class.

Montgomery Bus Boycott

Image result for what was Montgomery Bus Boycottwww.history.com Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955-1956) Sparked by the arrest of Rosa Parks on 1 December 1955, the Montgomery bus boycott was a 13-month mass protest that ended with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public buses is unconstitutional.

Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

Image result for what was Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)www.history.com The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, often pronounced /ˈsnɪk/ snick) was one of the most important organizations of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. It emerged from a student meeting organized by Ella Baker held at Shaw University in April 1960.

The Kitchen Debate

Image result for what was the The "kitchen debate" The Kitchen Debate was a series of impromptu exchanges (through interpreters) between then U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev at the opening of the American National Exhibition at Sokolniki Park in Moscow on July 24, 1959.

Levittown/suburbanization

In 1947, entrepreneur Abraham Levitt and his two sons, William and Alfred, broke ground on a planned community located in Nassau County, Long Island. Within a few years, the Levitts had transformed the former farmland into a suburban community housing thousands of men—many of whom were veterans returned from World War II—and their families. The Levitts would go on to create two other communities in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and the legacy of the first Levittown has become a legend in the history of the American suburbs. Even at the time, the iconic community represented for many all that was hopeful and wholesome for the estimated twenty million Americans who followed Levittown's lead and made the trek to suburbia in the 1950s. 1 But underneath the uniform houses lining the curved, meticulously gardened roads of Levittown lies a much more turbulent story. Although 1950s suburbia conjures visions of traditional family life, idyllic domesticity and stability, the story of the suburbization of America is also one of exclusion, segregation and persecution. Levittown itself arguably embodied the best and worst of the postwar American story; it was a result of the entrepreneurship and ingenuity that has come to define the American spirit, but it also participated in the violent prejudice that has also been part of American history.

Griswold v. Connecticut

In Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), the Supreme Court ruled that a state's ban on the use of contraceptives violated the right to marital privacy. The case concerned a Connecticut law that criminalized the encouragement or use of birth control.

The Iraq War

Iraq War. noun. A protracted military conflict in Iraq that began in 2003 with an attack by a coalition of forces led by the United States and that resulted in the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime. US combat troops were withdrawn in 2010

Gulf War

Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein ordered the invasion and occupation of neighboring Kuwait in early August 1990. Alarmed by these actions, fellow Arab powers such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt called on the United States and other Western nations to intervene. Hussein defied United Nations Security Council demands to withdraw from Kuwait by mid-January 1991, and the Persian Gulf War began with a massive U.S.-led air offensive known as Operation Desert Storm. After 42 days of relentless attacks by the allied coalition in the air and on the ground, U.S. President George H.W. Bush declared a cease-fire on February 28; by that time, most Iraqi forces in Kuwait had either surrendered or fled. Though the Persian Gulf War was initially considered an unqualified success for the international coalition, simmering conflict in the troubled region led to a second Gulf War-known as the Iraq War-that began in 2003.

Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941

Just before 8 a.m. on December 7, 1941, hundreds of Japanese fighter planes attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor near Honolulu, Hawaii. The barrage lasted just two hours, but it was devastating: The Japanese managed to destroy nearly 20 American naval vessels, including eight enormous battleships, and more than 300 airplanes. More than 2,000 Americans soldiers and sailors died in the attack, and another 1,000 were wounded. The day after the assault, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan; Congress approved his declaration with just one dissenting vote. Three days later, Japanese allies Germany and Italy also declared war on the United States, and again Congress reciprocated. More than two years into the conflict, America had finally joined World War II.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr. was a Baptist minister and social activist, who led the Civil Rights Movement in the United States from the mid-1950s until his death by assassination in 1968

Napalm

Napalm is a flammable liquid used in warfare. It is a mixture of a gelling agent and either gasoline (petrol) or a similar fuel. It was initially used as an incendiary device against buildings and later primarily as an anti-personnel weapon, as it sticks to skin and causes severe burns when on fire.

Marshall Plan

On April 3, 1948, President Truman signed the Economic Recovery Act of 1948. It became known as the Marshall Plan, named for Secretary of State George Marshall, who in 1947 proposed that the United States provide economic assistance to restore the economic infrastructure of postwar Europe.

Social Security Act

On August 14, 1935, the Social Security Act established a system of old-age benefits for workers, benefits for victims of industrial accidents, unemployment insurance, aid for dependent mothers and children, the blind, and the physically handicapped.

Korean War

On June 25, 1950, the Korean War began when some 75,000 soldiers from the North Korean People's Army poured across the 38th parallel, the boundary between the Soviet-backed Democratic People's Republic of Korea to the north and the pro-Western Republic of Korea to the south. ... The Korean peninsula is still divided today.

Election of Barack Obama

On November 4, 2008, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois was elected president of the United States over Senator John McCain of Arizona. Obama became the 44th president, and the first African American to be elected to that office. He was subsequently elected to a second term over former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

September 11, 2001 attacks

On September 11, 2001, members of a terrorist group called al-Qaeda hijacked, or took over, four airplanes in the United States. The terrorists flew two of the planes into the World Trade Center in New York City. The third plane was flown into the Pentagon, near Washington, D.C

Executive Order 9066

On this day in 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066, initiating a controversial World War II policy with lasting consequences for Japanese Americans. The document ordered the removal of resident enemy aliens from parts of the West vaguely identified as military areas. The West Coast was divided into military zones, and on February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 authorizing exclusion. Congress then implemented the order on March 21, 1942, by passing Public Law 503.

Reaganomics

Reaganomics is a popular term used to refer to the economic policies of Ronald Reagan, the 40th U.S. president (1981-1989), which called for widespread tax cuts, decreased social spending, increased military spending and the deregulation of domestic markets.

Jane

Settlement house founder and peace activist Jane Addams (1860-1935) was one of the most distinguished of the first generation of college-educated women, rejecting marriage and motherhood in favor of a lifetime commitment to the poor and social reform.

Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)

Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is an African-American civil rights organization. SCLC, which is closely associated with its first president, Martin Luther King Jr, had a large role in the American Civil Rights Movement.

Housing Act, 1949

The American Housing Act of 1949 (Title V of P.L. 81-171) was a landmark, sweeping expansion of the federal role in mortgage insurance and issuance and the construction of public housing. It was part of President Harry Truman's program of domestic legislation, the Fair Deal.

Civil Rights Act, 1964

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Pub.L. 88-352, 78 Stat. 241, enacted July 2, 1964) is a landmark civil rights and US labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

Cuban Missile Crisis

The Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1962. The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 was a direct and dangerous confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War and was the moment when the two superpowers came closest to nuclear conflict.

Domino Theory

The Domino Theory and Growing U.S. Involvement in Vietnam. After Eisenhower's speech, the phrase "domino theory" began to be used as a shorthand expression of the strategic importance of South Vietnam to the United States, as well as the need to contain the spread of communism throughout the world.

Watergate

The Watergate scandal began early in the morning of June 17, 1972, when several burglars were arrested in the office of the Democratic National Committee, located in the Watergate complex of buildings in Washington, D.C. This was no ordinary robbery: The prowlers were connected to President Richard Nixon's reelection campaign, and they had been caught wiretapping phones and stealing documents. Nixon took aggressive steps to cover up the crime afterwards, and in August 1974, after his role in the conspiracy was revealed, Nixon resigned. The Watergate scandal changed American politics forever, leading many Americans to question their leaders and think more critically about the presidency.

Works Progress Administration (WPA)

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was instituted by presidential executive order under the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of April 1935, to generate public jobs for the unemployed. The WPA was restructured in 1939 when it was reassigned to the Federal Works Agency.

House Un-American Activities Commission (HUAC)

The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and those organizations suspected of having Communist ties.

Iron Curtain

The Iron Curtain was the name for the boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. The term symbolizes the efforts by the Soviet Union to block itself and its satellite states from open contact with the West and non-Soviet-controlled areas.

Lend-lease Act

The Lend-Lease Act was passed by Congress on March 11, 1941. It provided that the president could ship weapons, food, or equipment to any country whose struggle against the Axis assisted U.S. defense. By retooling U.S. industrial output to the demands of war, Lend-Lease formally eliminated any semblance of neutrality.

Counterculture

The counterculture of the 1960s refers to an anti-establishment cultural phenomenon that developed first in the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US) and then spread throughout much of the Western world between the early 1960s and the mid-1970s, with London, New York City, and San Francisco being hotbeds of early countercultural activity. The aggregate movement gained momentum as the Civil Rights Movement continued to grow, and would later become revolutionary with the expansion of the U.S. government's extensive military intervention in Vietnam.[3][4][5] As the 1960s progressed, widespread social tensions also developed concerning other issues, and tended to flow along generational lines regarding human sexuality, women's rights, traditional modes of authority, experimentation with psychoactive drugs, and differing interpretations of the American Dream. Many key movements related to these issues were born or advanced within the counterculture of the 1960s.[6]

Mattachine Society

The Mattachine Society, founded in 1950, was one of the earliest homophile (gay rights) organizations in the United States, probably second only to Chicago's Society for Human Rights. Harry Hay and a group of Los Angeles male friends formed the group to protect and improve the rights of gay men.

National Recovery Administration (NRA)

The National Recovery Administration was a prime New Deal agency established by U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) in 1933. The goal was to eliminate "cut-throat competition" by bringing industry, labor, and government together to create codes of "fair practices" and set prices

First & Second New Deals

The New Deal was a group of U.S. government programs of the 1930s. President Franklin D. Roosevelt started the programs to help the country recover from the economic problems of the Great Depression. They included both laws passed by Congress as well as presidential executive orders during the first term (1933-37) of the Presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. ... Many historians distinguish between a "First New Deal" (1933-34) and a "Second New Deal" (1935-38), with the second one more liberal and more controversial. It was certainly successful in both short-term relief, and in implementing long-term structural reform. However, as Roosevelt's political enemies fought him, the New Deal failed to end the Great Depression. ... Still, despite failing in its most important objective, the New Deal forever changed the country.

The Truman Doctrine

The Truman Doctrine was an American foreign policy created to counter Soviet geopolitical expansion during the Cold War. It was first announced to Congress by President Harry S. Truman on March 12, 1947 and further developed on July 12, 1948 when he pledged to contain Soviet threats to Greece and Turkey.

US Patriot Act

The USA PATRIOT Act is an Act of Congress that was signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2001. With its ten-letter abbreviation (USA PATRIOT) expanded, the full title is "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001".

Emmett Till and Mamie Bradley Till

The murder of Emmett Till, a 14-year old African-American boy, in August 1955 shocked the nation, and provided a catalyst for the emerging civil rights movement. A Chicago native, Till was visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi when he was accused of harrasing a local white woman.

Wagner Act

This bill was signed into law by President Franklin Roosevelt on July 5, 1935. It established the National Labor Relations Board and addressed relations between unions and employers in the private sector.

March on Washington

This program listed the events scheduled at the Lincoln Memorial during the August 28, 1963, March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The highlight of the march, which attracted 250,000 people, was Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech.

The Four Freedoms

This speech was significant in that FDR went beyond the regular freedoms insured by the constitution and claimed these new rights as American values. They became symbols for Americans to rally around during the turbulent times of World War II. "In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression—everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the world. Four Freedoms definition. Four kinds of freedom mentioned by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a speech in 1941 as worth fighting for: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. Roosevelt spoke of the Four Freedoms before the United States entered World War II.

Title IX

Title IX of the Education Amendments is enacted by Congress and is signed into law by Richard Nixon. The sponsors of Title IX are Birch Bayh (Senate) and Edith Green (House of Representatives). Title IX prohibits sex discrimination in any educational program or activity receiving any type of federal financial aid.

Bracero Program

Under this program, Mexican workers, many of whom were rural peasants, were allowed to enter the United States on a temporary basis. Between 1942 and 1964, the year the program ended, it was estimated that approximately 4.6 million Mexican nationals came to work in the U.S. as braceros. December 1, 1964-more than nineteen years after the end of World War II. Braceros worked on farms and on railroads, making it possible for the U.S. economy to meet the challenges imposed by the war effort. existed and viewed the Bracero program as a way for the U.S. to obtain cheap labor.

Baby boom

United States. The term "baby boom" most often refers to the post-World War II baby boom (1946-1964) when the number of annual births exceeded 2 per 100 women (or approximately 1% of the total population size). There are an estimated 78.3 million Americans who were born during this period.

Betty Friedan and the Feminine Mystique

With her book The Feminine Mystique (1963), Friedan broke new ground by exploring the idea of women finding personal fulfillment outside of their traditional roles. She also helped advance the women's rights movement as one of the founders of the National Organization for Women The Feminine Mystique. The Feminine Mystique is a book published on February 19, 1963 by W.W.Norton. It was written by Betty Friedan which is widely credited with sparking the beginning of second-wave feminism in the United States

Agent Orange

Agent Orange was a powerful mixture of chemical defoliants used by U.S. military forces during the Vietnam War to eliminate forest cover for North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops, as well as crops that might be used to feed them. The U.S. program of defoliation, codenamed Operation Ranch Hand, sprayed more than 19 million gallons of herbicides over 4.5 million acres of land in Vietnam from 1961 to 1972. Agent Orange, which contained the chemical dioxin, was the most commonly used of the herbicide mixtures, and the most effective. It was later revealed to cause serious health issues-including tumors, birth defects, rashes, psychological symptoms and cancer-among returning U.S. servicemen and their families as well as among the Vietnamese population.

Iran-Contra Affair

Eugene Hasenfus is captured by troops of the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua after the plane in which he is flying is shot down; two others on the plane die in the crash. Under questioning, Hasenfus confessed that he was shipping military supplies into Nicaragua for use by the Contras, an anti-Sandinista force that had been created and funded by the United States. Most dramatically, he claimed that operation was really run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The news of Hasenfus's revelations caused quite a stir in the United States. Congress, reacting to complaints about corruption and brutality against the Contras, had passed the Boland Amendment in 1984, specifically forbidding the CIA or any other U.S. agency from supporting the Contras. President Ronald Reagan, who saw the Sandinista government in Nicaragua as a puppet of the Soviet Union, had secured U.S. funding for the Contras in 1981 and signed off on the Boland Amendment reluctantly. If Hasenfus's story was true, then the CIA and Reagan administration had broken the law. Despite denials from the president, Vice President George Bush, and other Reagan officials that the CIA had nothing to do with the flight, persistent investigations by journalists and Congress began to unravel the so-called Iran-Contra scandal. The scandal involved the secret sale of U.S. weapons to Iran (which was supposed to help in the release of U.S. hostages in the Middle East). Some of the proceeds from these sales were used to covertly fund the Contra war in Nicaragua. A Congressional investigation, begun in December 1986, revealed the scheme to the public. Many figures from the Reagan administration were called to testify. These included Marine Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, who was the action officer in charge of coordinating both the arms sales and funneling of money to the Contras. His testimony, in particular, demonstrated the cavalier attitude taken by the Reagan administration toward the flaunting of congressional resolutions and acts. The resulting scandal rocked the Reagan administration and shook the public's confidence in the U.S. government; 11 members of the President's administration eventually were convicted of a variety of charges related to the scandal. Hasenfus was tried and sentenced to 30 years imprisonment by a Nicaraguan court, but was released just a few weeks later.

Korematsu v. United States

Fred Korematsu, 23, was a Japanese-American citizen who did not comply with the order to leave his home and job, despite the fact that his parents had abandoned their home and their flower-nursery business in preparation for reporting to a camp. Korematsu planned to stay behind. He had plastic surgery on his eyes to alter his appearance; changed his name to Clyde Sarah; and claimed that he was of Spanish and Hawaiian descent. On May 30, 1942, about six months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the FBI arrested Korematsu for failure to report to a relocation center. After his arrest, while waiting in jail, he decided to allow the American Civil Liberties Union to represent him and make his case a test case to challenge the constitutionality of the government's order. Korematsu was tried in federal court in San Francisco, convicted of violating military orders issued under Executive Order 9066, given five years on probation, and sent to an Assembly Center in San Bruno, CA. Korematsu's attorneys appealed the trial court's decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals, which agreed with the trial court that he had violated military orders. Korematsu asked the Supreme Court of the United States to hear his case. On December 18, 1944, a divided Supreme Court ruled, in a 6-3 decision, that the detention was a "military necessity" not based on race.

Freedom Summer

Freedom Summer was a 1964 voter registration project in Mississippi, part of a larger effort by civil rights groups such as the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to expand black voting in the South.

Ho Chi Minh

He led the Việt Minh independence movement from 1941 onward, establishing the Communist-ruled Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1945 and defeating the French Union in 1954 at the battle of Điện Biên Phủ. ... After the war, Saigon, the former capital of the Republic of Vietnam, was renamed Hồ Chí Minh City.

Tet Offensive

On January 31, 1968, some 70,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces launched the Tet Offensive (named for the lunar new year holiday called Tet), a coordinated series of fierce attacks on more than 100 cities and towns in South Vietnam.

Vietnam War

The Vietnam War was a long, costly armed conflict that pitted the communist regime of North Vietnam and its southern allies, known as the Viet Cong, against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States.

Madman Theory

The madman theory was a feature of Richard Nixon's foreign policy. He and his administration tried to make the leaders of hostile Communist Bloc nations think Nixon was irrational and volatile. According to the theory, those leaders would then avoid provoking the United States, fearing an unpredictable American response. Nixon's Chief of Staff, H. R. Haldeman, wrote that Nixon had confided to him: I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe I've reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war. We'll just slip the word to them that, "for God's sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about communism. We can't restrain him when he's angry—and he has his hand on the nuclear button" and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.[1] In October 1969, the Nixon administration indicated to the Soviet Union that "the madman was loose" when the United States military was ordered to full global war readiness alert (unbeknownst to the majority of the American population), and bombers armed with thermonuclear weapons flew patterns near the Soviet border for three consecutive days.[2] The administration employed the "madman strategy" to force the North Vietnamese government to negotiate an end to the Vietnam War.[3] Along the same lines, American diplomats, especially Henry Kissinger, portrayed the 1970 incursion into Cambodia as a symptom of Nixon's supposed instability.[4] In 1517, Machiavelli had argued that sometimes it is "a very wise thing to simulate madness" (Discourses on Livy, book 3, chapter 2). In Nixon's Vietnam War, Kimball argues that Nixon arrived at the strategy independently, as a result of practical experience and observation of Dwight D. Eisenhower's handling of the Korean War.[5]

Roe v. Wade

U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas affirmed in part, reversed in part. Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), is a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court on the issue of abortion. It was decided simultaneously with a companion case, Doe v. Bolton.