Republicans kept up the pressure on the Obama administration this weekend by calling for a special independent counsel to investigate the Justice Department’s monitoring of journalists’ records and the I.R.S.’s targeting of right-wing groups.
Talk of overreach and possible criminality have led some in the G.O.P. to make perhaps tenuous comparisons to events 40 years ago.
However, in the case of Watergate, at the heart of the scandal was a President directly orchestrating and conspiring against his enemies. And it all played out in front of the camera’s when the Watergate Committee hearings began almost exactly 40 years ago.