News

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...

Over the last six months we've heard quite a bit from the major players in the Frost/Nixon film - director Ron Howard, writer Peter Morgan, and stars Frank Langella and Michael Sheen - but it's been somewhat difficult to find interviews with the supporting cast...

In The New Republic, John Judis writes: Almost four months after his inauguration, President Barack Obama is still riding high in the polls. According to Gallup, 66 percent of Americans approve of the job he is doing. But I expect that Obama's popularity will begin to...