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("L'Amerique Septentrionale Divisee En Ses Principales Parties ..."  This map of North America, from Pierre Mortier's Atlas Nouveau, was printed in either Amsterdam or Paris in 1692.  It depicts California as an island and and represents six, rather than five, Great...

  Both the Republican Poker Party “Grand Ol’ Gang” and Democratic Poker Party “True Blues” are reproductions from paintings by Andy Thomas.  Mr. Thomas does Civil War, Oil Well and Western Prints.  There is a local art gallery in town, “The Galloping Goose” that has...

(Cross posted from Epic Journey) Orange County, birthplace of Richard Nixon, may be on the cusp of political upheaval. In the Orange County Register, Dena Bunis reports: Orange County Democrats have become so emboldened by how well President Barack Obama did here on...

During recent remarks to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, President Barack Obama waxed a bit defensive in response to mounting criticism that he may be spreading himself, his vision, and his obvious political capital too thin in these early days of his...

One thing that becomes apparent if one's followed the world of books for a while is that when the anniversary of a famed personality's birth (or sometimes death) comes up, there are likely to be one or more volumes to mark the occasion. In the world of literature,...

When President Obama, during his period of transition, announced that he was appointing onetime Nixon White House aide Leon Panetta to head the CIA, the former Clinton chief of staff's appointment, after a few initial stirrings of dissatisfaction, sailed through the...

On March 12, the touring production of Peter Morgan's play Frost/Nixon with Alan Cox and Stacy Keach in the title roles opens at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles, and this weekend Keach talked about the experience of portraying RN with the Orange County Register's...

Eleanor Clift, in a Newsweek article on Sen. Ted Kennedy's effort to get a comprehensive health-insurance program through Congress, reminds readers that he once had a chance to help reach that goal but let it slip through his hands in the name of political...

On NPR's weekly comedy ---at least they claim it's comedy--- news-based quiz show Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, the final segment is a round robin of the panelists making humorous predictions about the future. Today's edition featured WaPo's Roxanne Roberts making this...

When Lyndon Johnson was a boy growing up near the Pedernales River in the Texas hill country his parents would regularly play a record on their Victrola. But it wasn’t music. It was William Jennings Bryan, the Great Commoner, who was known for his charismatic oratory...