Ed Nixon In South Carolina

Last night Ed Nixon, the last survivor (and youngest) of the five brothers that included the 37th President, spoke to a meeting of the Spartanburg County (South Carolina) Republican Party about his new book, The Nixons: A Family Portrait. (The audience included...

More About The Story The New York Times Missed

It’s been four days since an article by Richard Pérez-Peña in the New York Times told the story of how Robert M. Smith, a reporter in that paper’s Washington bureau, learned from FBI Acting Director L. Patrick Gray in late August of 1972 something about...

TMI

Over at Salon today Carina Chocano writes about “the magical moneymaking properties of humiliating self-exposure.”  Her cases in point are last night’s ratings grabber season opener of John & Kate Plus 8, and Elizabeth Edwards’ recent, unfortunate, Resilience....

Reading Material

UC Davis history professor Ari Kelman has written a long and interesting review article for the latest TLS, surveying four recent books about Abraham Lincoln. He makes a particularly compelling case for Looking for Lincoln: The making of an American icon, by the...

5.25.09

  The tradition of a day of remembrance for those who died on both sides in the Civil War —known as Decoration Day— began in the late 1860s.  In 1882 the name was changed to Memorial Day and the fallen of other wars were also honored.  In 1971 President...

Loose Lips Sink a Presidency

Read how overhearing a lunch conversation could have broken the Watergate story, kept Woodward and Bernstein cub reporters, and allowed Deep Throat to be only a bad skin flick.