Rodney King Riots

One of the things in this chapter that I really found interesting were the Rodney King riots. It fascinated me that the black community of LA reacted to violence with even more violence. I would think that if they wanted more respect and equality from the white community, they wouldn't create riots over that. Also, although the Rodney King case was a horrible act of police brutality, nobody was killed, in the riots that followed several people were killed. That was interesting to me, as it made the response worse than the action that started it. It's interesting to me how such a little event can set off such great numbers of people.

To impeach or not to impeach? That is the question...

While some people believe that Clinton should have been impeached for the Monica Lewinsky scandal, I do not. First of all, what happened between Clinton and Lewinski didn't affect the nation, nor could it have. You have to think of Clinton as an average person to determine whether or not he should have been impeached. In our country, we don't go around firing people who have affairs. Why should Clinton be treated any differently? Also, there are many instances in the current administration that could have merited an impeachment measure in Congress, but haven't. If you compare the actions of our current and former president, I feel that what has been done in the last five years is considerably worse (wiretapping, lying to the public about matters that concern them, etc.) Some say that the president shouldn't lie to the American people, but if we decided to impeach every single president that ever lied to us, we'd have impeached just about everyone (including George Washington, there's no evidence that he EVER chopped down a cherry tree, let alone told his father about it :D)

Iran-Contra Affair

The Iran-Contra affair was essentially two political scandals in one. Several members of the Reagan administration (unknowingly to Reagan) sold arms to the United States's enemy, Iran, and then, to put the icing on the cake, they took the money made by those sales and used it to fund a Nicaraguan guerilla group, the Contras. They did it to 'influence Hezbollah (a Lebanese terror group) to release American hostages and to improve relations with Iran'. After the missiles and other weapons were shipped, the profits went to the Contras. The Contras tried to overthrow the Sandinista government, and are accused of human rights violations as well. The two main people involved in the scandal, Oliver North and John Poindexter, were indicted, but Reagan was able to rebound from it, probably because of his lack of involvement.