News

For many years I had a degree of respect ---a minimal degree and a reluctant respect to be sure--- for Richard Ben-Veniste.  This was partly because he had dated Mary Travers (although that may have merited props more than respect); and partly because, although I felt...

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...

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 the larger...

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....

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...

  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 Nixon...

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.

Yesterday David Chambers, whose grandfather Whittaker Chambers was one of the two primary figures in the case that brought Richard Nixon to the notice of the whole nation and then the world, reviewed Susan Jacoby's Alger Hiss And The Battle For History in the...

In today's installment of his WaPo column "The Fix," Chris Cillizza profiles Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels: "Republican Revolutionary." The good news is: the profile is interesting and instructive.  The bad news is: Daniels has foresworn any further political...

Yesterday Christopher Beam of Slate discussed some historical precedents for the action that President Obama took in recent days when he appointed Gov. Jon Huntsman of Utah, a prospective candidate for the GOP's presidential spot in 2012, as Ambassador to China. Beam...