News
9 January 2009: RN’s 96th Birthday
I was born in a house my father built. My birth on the night of January 9, 1913, coincided with a record-breaking cold snap in our town of Yorba Linda, California. Yorba Linda was a farming community of 200 people about thirty miles from Los Angeles, surrounded by...
Still America’s Finest Darrell Hammond Impersonator
Sometimes you can't make this stuff up. From "Political Theater," the new column by Joe Curl in today's Washington Times, describing yesterday's historic meeting of four Presidents and a President-elect in the White House: [A]s always, the president impeached after...
1600 Penn Ave’s Fantastic Five
Yesterday, four men lunched at the White House at the invitation of President Bush. But not just any four. They were President-elect Obama and former Presidents Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. This was the very first time all present and former...
Can You Spot The Birthday Boy?
The answer is: Elvis (on right in photo above), born 8 January 1935. But tomorrow the correct answer will be: RN, born 9 January 1913.
Sir David Reminisces, And A Correction
"Someone has to be pretty fascinating, pretty enigmatic, pretty Nixonian to keep one fascinated for 28 3/4 hours." So says Sir David Frost about President Nixon in this CNN article (with accompanying video clip). Frost also discusses his visit to San Clemente with...
Panetta’s New Assignment: Bring It Together
The initial wire-service reports this afternoon of President-elect Obama's appointment of Leon Panetta to become director of the CIA made mention of his work in the Clinton Administration's first term as director of the Office of Management and Budget and as White...
The Day RN Got Behind The Wheel
Silver Spring, Maryland, where I live, has a number of ties to the 37th President. A half-mile north of my house, two teenagers lived on Harvey Road in the 1950s and early 1960s, the best of friends. One was future Nixon speechwriter Ben Stein; the other, future...
J.D. Salinger At 90
Today, J[erome] D[avid] Salinger, famed worldwide for his one novel The Catcher In The Rye (and, to a lesser degree, for such classic stories as "A Perfect Day For Banafish" and "For Esme With Love and Squalor") reaches the age of ninety. If he's having a party, it's...
The Barack Ballad of Abraham, Franklin, And John
With apologies to Dion and his now 40-year-old song - Abraham, Martin, and John - I see the ghosts of three past presidents standing slightly off stage as the nation watches the approach of inauguration day. The ancient Israelites tended to name-drop a patriarchal hat...
RN Wishes Old Friends A Happy New Year
On 31 December 1971, RN was in the Lincoln Sitting Room working on the text of one of the most important ---and still understudied--- documents of his administration. It was the strategic overview of his vision of foreign policy that would be sent to Congress on 9...