News

Whenever new documents (or in the case of RN – tapes and documents are released), it is an opportunity to reassess a subject.  Or at the very least, provide some nuance into the subject.  Probably the best opportunity we have for this continuing process of discovering...

Robert Strange McNamara died yesterday at his home in Washington.  He was 93. The former Harvard professor , Army vet, Legion of Merit recipient, and Ford Motors wunderkind served as America's eighth Secretary of Defense, from 1961-1968, under Presidents Kennedy and...

The death at age 93 of Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, stirs up a whole host of memories for people of a certain age - as many (and as mixed) as are stirred up by the death of Michael Jackson where a younger generation is...

From Confrontation to Negotiation: RN with Nikita Khrushchev in the famous Kitchen Debate in Moscow in 1959, and with Leonid Brezhnev (who had been part of Khrushchev's official entourage in the Kitchen) on the Truman Balcony at the White House in 1973. In a few...

At CQ Politics, Jonathan Allen contrasts Sarah Palin and Richard Nixon.  "Palin doesn't have Nixon's interest in, or knowledge of, foreign affairs," he writes. "Imagine the reaction if Palin suggested she had a "secret plan" to win the war in Afghanistan."  He is...

The Philippine Republic and the USA share July Fourth as their Independence Day.  On 4 July 1956, Vice President and Mrs. Nixon joined President Ramon Magsaysay  and First Lady Luz Magsaysay in Manila to celebrate the Philippines' 10th and America's 180th birthdays.  ...

Washington National Symphony violinist Glenn Donnellan wanted to make the orchestra's concerts for young people more engaging.  So, naturally, he decided to make a violin out of a Louisville Slugger. As Anne Midgette reports in today's WaPo: Donnellan made his...

Christina Cristoforou's interesting illustration on the op-ed page of today's New York Times places our forty-four first ladies' hair styles in historically cross-hatched perspective.  PN is in the middle of the second row from the bottom.  This reduction doesn't do...

The President held a Town Hall meeting in Annandale, Virginia, on Wednesday.  The logistics were the subject of some controversy. Before: And after (per the WaPo): In the stage-managed event, questions for Obama came from a live audience selected by the White House...