Two hundred forty-two years ago we declared our independence from Great Britain, which the American Colonies rightly accused of tyranny and despotism. The list of our grievances is recorded in our Declaration of Independence , which is on permanent display at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. While I’m not quite old enough to remember the signing of the Declaration of Independence, I am old enough to remember the calamitous Nixon presidency (1969-1974) that caused a Constitutional crisis and greatly damaged our nation. Nixon’s assault on our democracy Richard Nixon, as president, faced charges of obstructing justice by covering up illegal activity of his re-election committee, such as the break-in of the Democratic National Committee’s Watergate office. He fired attorney general Richard Kleindienst amid a Senate investigation into the Watergate scandal (special prosecutor Archibald Cox also was investigating Watergate). Nixon later fired Kleindienst and his d