News

Will Mr. Obama Seize His Big Mac Moment?

This Tuesday, Barack Obama will travel to the United States Military Academy at West Point to deliver the most important address of his young presidency. He has obviously chosen the site for the speech with great care and in the hope that the backdrop – a storied...

The Pardon In The Rose Garden

President Obama's pardon yesterday of a turkey named Courage was the latest exercise of a clemency that may (or may not) have first been extended by President Truman in 1947.  Because it's Thanksgiving and children may be reading ---and because the l-tryptophan is...

November 1969 — Giving Thanks

A Nixon Family portrait from 1969 --- their first year in the White House. On Thanksgiving Day 1969 ---their first year in the White House--- the Nixons invited more than two hundred residents without any families from nineteen DC area old age homes to join them at...

Palin and Nixon

At Air America and The Huffington Post, Mark Green compares Sarah Palin and Richard Nixon.  He notes an obvious difference: RN "was vastly more experienced and sophisticated."  He has a point, but one could make the same point about most other political figures,...

Everybody Knows The Bird Is The Word

A couple of months ago the First Lady made a guest appearance on the opening episode of the 40th anniversary season of Sesame Street.   (And last month I saluted the charming PSA that resulted.) Sesame Street premiered in November 1969, and a year later --- on 12...

RN, A Man Before His Time On Healthcare

During his second term, RN made expanding health coverage to all Americans a centerpiece of his domestic agenda. “If the Government pays all the medical bills, then only the Government has a stake in holding down medical costs. This means that Government officials...

The Pink Lady Revisited

The Beauty in the Beast: The Daily Beast's choice of illustrations hints at the hatchet job that follows in the excerpt from Sally Denton's new book about the 1950 California Senate Race between Richard Nixon and Helen Gahagan Douglas. The Daily Beast is offering an...