Word: rodino
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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When the impeachment proceedings began, Rodino was a little-known Congressman from Newark, a typical big-city liberal, who had learned during his 25 years on the Hill how the House operates -how to get along by going along-but whose leadership had never been tested...
...Italian immigrant worker, Rodino was raised in the fiercely ethnic Little Italy section of Newark, in a neighborhood so rough that he recalls shootings in the streets. Rodino wrote an unpublished novel about his upbringing entitled Drift Street. At one time, Rodino had hopes of becoming a poet-he still loves to recite Shakespeare, Byron, Shelley and Keats-but he diligently worked his way through the University of Newark Law School...
After serving as an Army captain during World War II, Rodino was first elected to Congress in 1948. As a Congressman, he concentrated on ethnic issues...
When the inexorable elevator of seniority made him chairman of the Judiciary Committee in 1973, Rodino was perhaps best known as the man who had made Columbus Day a national holiday...
With this kind of background, Rodino failed to inspire the confidence of the House's Democratic leaders when impeachment became a possibility a year ago, a scant seven months after he had become Judiciary chairman. Speaker Carl Albert pointedly suggested to Rodino that, instead of giving the matter to the Judiciary Committee, the House should perhaps set up a special select body to conduct the inquiry. Rodino flatly refused to go along, and Albert gave way. (Later, the Speaker was to bless that decision: if a special committee had been set up, the Republicans could have stacked their membership...