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The former presidents traveling road show of George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton pulled into New Orleans yesterday for a gig with the National Automobile Dealers Association. Everybody knows that you're supposed to open a speech with a joke, but who knew that Mr. Bush...

Ben Alpers of Oklahoma University put up a quite interesting blogpost this week tracing the roughly fifteen-year heyday of the "White House intellectual." President Kennedy began the tradition by bringing in acclaimed historian (and walking definition of savoir-faire)...

Caroline Kennedy's maladroit Senate bid has finally ground to a halt with the anticipated noontime appointment of Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand to Secretary Clinton's coveted seat.  The choice added insult to injury for the Camolites: not only isn't it Caroline, it's almost...

President Obama’s executive order regarding presidential records is a victory for future historians. (See here) Truly it is a new day for GWBs future historians. Before January 20, 2009, the future biographers of GWB faced a difficult road in the true telling of their...

The nominations for this year's Academy Awards were announced this morning, and the list may not be one to bring a wide Opie-style grin to the face of Ron Howard. The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button led the nominations with thirteen -- many of them in predictable...

A lot is being made, and justifiably so, out of a number of previous Inaugural Addresses.  Just the other night, all the Obamas read, on the north wall of the temple in which the 16th President's memory is enshrined forever, the model to which the President Elect has...

I took two walks earlier today. Despite the dire warnings of the media about the ghastly human gridlock that was (and probably will be tomorrow) inevitable, I braved the Metro system, and wandered around the Mall and the White House precincts for about an hour this...

Good friends we have had, Oh, good friends we've lost along the way. In this great future you can't forget your past. The Gilberto Gil cover of "No Woman No Cry" has been working its way to the top of my TNN Weekly Weekend Reward queue for several months. This concert...

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,But to be young was very heaven! Wordsworth's vision of 1789 is no less true in 2009 as hordes of young uns descend on Washington to begin their jobs in the Obama administration. JFK brought numbers of younger-than-usual staffers...

The BBC's excellent arts magazine radio program  The Strand invited several writers and poets to compose "open letters" to Barack Obama on the occasion of his inauguration. The two that most impressed and moved me were those by journalist, author, broadcaster Aminatta...