Sam Ervin
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"Samuel James "Sam" Ervin, Jr." was an United States/American politician. A United States Democratic Party/Democrat, he served as a United States Senate/U.S. Senator from North Carolina from 1954 to 1974. A native of Morganton, North Carolina/Morganton, he liked to call himself a "country lawyer", and often told humorous stories in his Southern drawl. During his Senate career, Ervin was a legal defender of the Jim Crow laws and racial segregation, as the South's constitutional expert during the congressional debates on civil rights. Unexpectedly, he became a liberal hero for his support of civil liberties. He is remembered for his work in the investigation committees that brought down Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1954 and especially his investigation in 1972 and 1973 of the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation in 1974 of President Richard Nixon.

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The President seems to extend executive privilege way out past the atmosphere. What he says is executive privilege is nothing but executive poppycock.

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I'll have you understand I am running this court, and the law hasn't got a damn thing to do with it!

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Polygraph tests are 20th-century witchcraft.

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I'm not going to let anybody come down at night like Nicodemus and whisper something in my ear that no one else can hear. That is not executive privilege; it is poppycock.

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If the many allegations made to this date are true, then the burglars who broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate were, in effect, breaking into the home of every citizen.

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Divine right went out with the American Revolution and doesn't belong to the White House aides. What meat do they eat that makes them grow so great?

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There is nothing in the Constitution that authorizes or makes it the official duty of a president to have anything to do with criminal activities.

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I used to think that the Civil War was our country's greatest tragedy, but I do remember that there were some redeeming features in the Civil War in that there was some spirit of sacrifice and heroism displayed on both sides. I see no redeeming features in Watergate.

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