Former President Ford is dead. How do I know? Just turn on a TV at any time today and there’s some portion of his funeral droning on and on. I realize the death of a US President is a rare and major event to which society should give some homage, based on the gravity of the office. And I understand how eulogies can overlook a lot of the bad and magnify the good in a person’s life.

Marc Antony said, "The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones." Not so with the former pres--based on what I have heard and read since Ford's death—this funeral thing has been dragging on for days now—Ford was a saint beyond recall and was as close to a perfect human being as any one could be without actually being Jesus Christ. Even Alec Baldwin said on the Huffington Post about Ford’s most controversial big act: “And when he pardoned Nixon, well....what did you expect him to do?”

One of the comments to that remark took the words right out of my mouth:

Ford was an American in the worst possible way. By pardoning Nixon, Ford as a lawyer circumvented our legal system and prevented justice from being served. When our politicians saw that the rule of law did not apply to them, their lawlessness was the result at the detriment to our republic. Ford's pardon led to the boldness of Iran-Contra which was not prosecuted and the current Bush administration lies and preemptive-Iraq-war going unchecked and unbalanced.

I met Congressman Ford in his office in the capitol in 1970. It was only 7 years since the assassination of JFK, and even closer to the publishing of the Warren Commission report that Ford was a part of. I asked the congressman how he felt about those volumes of white-wash (I didn’t refer to it as white wash, but he knew what I was driving at) lining his book shelves that basically said fughettabout the hundreds of witnesses and evidence to the contrary, Oswald acted alone. His politician’s politician answer was, of course what it always was, that he was very proud of the work of the Warren Commission and stood by its conclusion 100%.

How many of the old guard was protected by that cover-up, which still pales in the blinding light of Nixon’s pardon, which, like the hurried dispatch of Saddam Hussein, buries a lot of incriminating details before they ever see the light of day? Looks like the present group in charge hasn’t lost sight of the lessons taught by the so-called “accidental president,” Ford. Oh, that’s right—he hired Cheney and Rumsfeld for high level positions near the president in the first place.

I could go on, but unlike Ford’s TV funeral goings on, I’m done.