Franklin Roosevelt
Battle Wary
The Bible recounts that, after conquering Jericho, Joshua sent a party to reconnoiter toward Ai. Upon returning, the scouts assured their commander that this quarter of the Promised Land would fall easily. There would be no need to use the entire army. "Spare the whole people such a toil," the scouts urged. "The enemy are not many." Joshua detached only a token force to subdue the region. But the people of Ai, unimpressed with the reputation of Joshua's army, resisted fiercely and turned back the attackers. READ MORE >>
King Newt
The Father of Spin Control
For King and Country: The Maturing of George Washington, 1748-1760 by Thomas A. Lewis (HarperCollins, 203 pp., $27.50) Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation by Richard Norton Smith (Houghton Mifflin, 424 pp., $24.95) READ MORE >>
The Imperial Temptation
The Power, The Glory, The Media, The Men, The Money, The Irony, The Symbols, America, The Meaning of It All.
The Powers That Be by David Halberstam (Knopf; $15) READ MORE >>
Anything but Sweet
What would this country be without all those candies and cookies and cakes and sugar-coated cereals? It would be healthier and wealthier, with more good teeth and more to spend on products more essential than sugar. We are the world's most voracious consumers of sweets, as we are of everything else. An average American consumes about 100 pounds of sugar a year (not counting 30 pounds of other liquid sweeteners), a figure that marks him as a sugar addict when compared to his ancestors. READ MORE >>
Choosing Supreme Court Judges
The Founding Fathers, who met in the summer of 1787 to draw up a Constitution for the United States, gave relatively little attention to the judiciary. Clearly they had only a hazy notion of the vital role the judiciary was to play in umpiring the federal system or in limiting the powers of government. Article III of the Constitution says nothing whatever about the qualifications of judges, or about the mechanics of choice. Indeed it says practically nothing about the mechanics of the judicial system itself. READ MORE >>
He’s a Happening
Robert Kennedy is on to something. He hovers over it like a pig in the Perigord sniffing a truffle. It is just below the surface; he can't quite see it; he doesn't know its size or shape or worth or even what it's called. He only knows it's there, and he is going to get it. READ MORE >>
The Tax Thieves of 1951
Andrew W. Mellon “planned, schemed, contrived and devised a comprehensive scheme and plan of tax evasions and tax avoidance while he held the office of the Secretary of the Treasury of the US.” That was the charge of the Treasury Department when Mellon left. Treasury officials claimed that Mellon defrauded the government of about $2 million in taxes owed by him for 1931, his final year as Secretary. Mellon answered simply that he had computed his own return. He added: “The result was what I think was a fair amount for me to have paid the government in that year.” READ MORE >>
