News

Here's a link to an article about the upcoming election by Joan Didion. It's a short piece with a long provenance; it is brought to you via The Daily Beast (where it is nicely titled "Slouching Toward Washington"), from today's Salon (where it is given the rather...

Few Americans remember Quemoy and Matsu, but they were a key issue in the 1960 debates between Kennedy and Nixon.  These Taiwanese-governed islands lie just off the coast of mainland China.  A couple of times during the 1950s, the communists had shelled these islands,...

There is now a website on which fellow academics are invited to express solidarity with the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Education's Distinguished Professor: It seems that the character assassination and slander of Bill Ayers and other people who have...

Late this afternoon, John McCain will at last ---at long last--- stride onstage at the Ed Sullivan Theater, acknowledge the applause, shake hands with the host, and sit down in the guest chair.  The first order of business will be taking his medicine from David...

Ron Howard's film Frost/Nixon made its debut in Leicester Square last night, as the opener of the London Film Festival.  And the early reviews (four of them, and from the quality papers as you might expect) are now in. But before we get to them ---second things...

I think Antonio Gonzalez, head of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, was correct when he said on the Tavis Smiley show tonight that while Sen. John McCain scored the most points in tonight's debate with Sen. Barack Obama, he did not score a knockout...

The featured article at Wikipedia today is about First Lady Pat Nixon.

Several weeks ago I presented a list of actors who had played President Nixon, and other historical figures whom they had portrayed, and invited readers to match the actor to the person from history.  Below is a list of the answers. 1-j.  Beau Bridges, who played RN...

With just a little more than three weeks to go before America goes to the polls to elect the next president, Barack Obama maintains a lead in the polls. To use a Richard Nixon phrase from election night in 1960, “if the trend continues…” he will be our next president....

The period between late 1929 and the beginning of the 1940s is, of course, known as the Great Depression. But in a real sense, it could be called the Great Depressions. There was more than one massive downturn in all things economic during those days of deprivation....