News

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...

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 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...

George Will's latest column in Newsweek discusses President Obama's much-disputed claim, during his just-concluded trip to Asia, that he is America's "first Pacific President" because he was born in Hawaii and raised there and in Indonesia. Other pundits in recent...

Last Saturday, Herbert J. Miller Jr., known as "Jack" to his friends and colleagues, died at age 85 in Rockville, Maryland. Miller, a native of Minnesota, came to Washington after service in WWII, graduated from George Washington University's law school in 1949, and...

Some weeks ago I wrote here about W. Kendall Myers, the State Department employee who, for nearly thirty years, spied for Cuban intelligence in this country, all the while appearing to his friends and neighbors (the latter including some retired "spooks") to be no...

Groundbreaking for the George W. Bush Presidential Center ---the latest addition to  the National Archives' system of Presidential Libraries--- will begin a year from now.  The designs of architect Robert A. M. Stern were unveiled in Dallas on Wednesday....

When RN mistakenly declared Charles Manson guilty during his trial, problems ensued.  From a contemporaneous report in Time: In Los Angeles, the effect of Nixon's remarks on the Manson trial was instant and dramatic. While the Los Angeles Times came out the same...

Forty years ago, on 19 November 1969, RN welcomed Japanese Prime Minister Eisaku Sato to the White House at the beginning of what would be a significant few days in the history of US-Japanese relations. Typically, the meeting was the result of long planning and...

From AP: President Barack Obama appeared to be taking a page from Richard Nixon's playbook Wednesday when he seemed to declare the suspected Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed guilty and deserving of the death penalty.  In Nixon's case, he pronounced cult...