Dead Celebrity Alert

Washington — Peter Rodino Jr., the Democratic New Jersey congressman and House Judiciary Committee chairman who rose from relative obscurity to national prominence while presiding over articles of impeachment that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974, died Saturday of congestive heart failure at his home in West Orange, N.J. He was 95.

Rodino, who represented a Newark district from 1949 to 1989, was among those whose reputations were enhanced through television coverage of the impeachment hearings. A dapper man with a slow and deliberate speaking style, he was seen as a calm and nonpartisan presence in one of the country’s most politically charged episodes. …

Rodino spoke before the House that February [1974]: “Whatever the result, whatever we learn or conclude, let us now proceed with such care and decency and thoroughness and honor that the vast majority of American people, and their children after them, will say: That was the right course. There was no other way.” … Read full obituary

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