the sec'y of state being the recipient of a VP's resignation letter was a plot point in that Tom Clancy book where Jack Ryan takes over as president after a joint session of congress gets 9/11'ed
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oh, worth remembering that Agnew had resigned only a year earlier, and Calhoun had resigned 140 years before that. Who did they address their resignations to?
aug 26, 2025, 12:41 am • 1 0 • view
I can't find a copy of Calhoun's. The Secretary of State at the time would have been Edward Livingston. Had I to guess, I would guess that his letter *was* to Livingston, and that that's why Agnew addressed his letter to Kissinger.
aug 26, 2025, 12:44 am • 3 0 • view
(If there was no precedent, I don't think lawyers in 1973 would have settled on the Secretary of State.)
aug 26, 2025, 12:46 am • 2 0 • view
(Also, presumably Calhoun wrote to *somebody*, and that document was available. If he had written to Jackson, or to the president pro tem, or to the Secretary of the Senate, presumably Agnew would have done the same.)
aug 26, 2025, 12:53 am • 0 0 • view
that's the only jack ryan book i ever read (i was travelling for a month in italy pre-smartphones and someone had left it behind in the place where i was staying) and parts of it are seared into my memory, it's so bananas
aug 26, 2025, 12:33 am • 4 0 • view
Trying to figure out if your use of “Jack Ryan book” versus “Tom Clancy book” is a sly way of saying you’ve read Red Storm Rising (his best book)
aug 26, 2025, 1:41 am • 1 0 • view
ha, no, i was racking my brain for a bit but i don't think i've read any of the other ones. (i actually ~may~ have read red october in high school but i think i might be conflating that with seeing the movie)
aug 26, 2025, 1:42 am • 1 0 • view
i think a lot about how president jack ryan uses the annihiliation of the US gov't as an opportunity to get rid of the capital gains tax, explaining at length at a press conference about how it's double taxation while indignant lib reporters sputter about rich people not paying their fair share
aug 26, 2025, 12:34 am • 6 0 • view
This is significantly more coherent than the stuff far right people are talking about today
aug 26, 2025, 12:47 am • 2 0 • view
say what you will about ghw bush-era conservatism but at least it's an ethos
aug 26, 2025, 1:15 am • 4 0 • view
The Bear and the Dragon might be even crazier
aug 26, 2025, 12:38 am • 3 0 • view