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The JFK-UFO Connection: Bogus Documents or Unanswered Questions?
By Lee Speigel - AOL NewsDo you like a good UFO detective story? Well, here's one for you. And it's ongoing, so we don't yet know the ending. It involves President John F. Kennedy's interest in UFOs shortly before his death and an allegation that he may have angered officials in his administration when he asked for information on the subject. Recently, the FBI opened a new website, "The Vault," that lets you view a variety of documents, including those regarding UFOs. I looked into one document that appears to include a phony UFO story and mentioned how important it is to be extremely careful when looking at UFO ...
The Challenger Disaster and President Reagan's Gift to a Grieving Nation
By Carl M. Cannon - Politics DailyOn Jan. 28, 1986, Ronald Reagan was scheduled to give his State of the Union address. In a meeting with a bi-partisan delegation of congressional leaders, he and House Speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill Jr. tangled over the issue of unemployment. After they left, Reagan prepared to have the traditional State of the Union lunch with the network anchors while receiving a last-minute briefing from acting press secretary Larry Speakes when several members of the White House staff rushed in with news that the Space Shuttle Challenger had exploded after takeoff. The State of the Union speech was ...
Ranking Former Presidents: JFK Still on Top, Clinton Rises While Carter Falls
By Bruce Drake - Politics DailyThe public perceptions of former presidents in the modern political era have sometimes changed for the better or worse, compared to how they were seen while in office, but the one constant in Gallup's polling of views of nine chief executives who served during the last 50 years is that John F. Kennedy still comes out on top. Eighty-five percent of those surveyed by Gallup Nov. 19-21 said they approved of how Kennedy performed in office, about the same percentage as in 2006. Gallup says Kennedy has consistently ranked first since it started asking the question in 1990. Ronald Reagan comes in ...
JFK Assassination Anniversary: Eternal Flame Flickers but Still Burns
By Walter Shapiro - Politics DailyThe answer – even though I have not been asked the question in perhaps 15 years – is high school chemistry class. My uncomprehending teacher tried to continue with the planned experiment involving a Bunsen burner even after word spread that John F. Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. Forty-seven years later, it all seems part of another world defined by black-and-white television, the black-and-white certainties of the Cold War and black-and-white racial relations. Even if he had served two full terms as president, JFK (born in 1917 and afflicted with Addison's disease) almost ...
Opinion: What's So Bad About Earmarks?
By not in system - AOL News
(Nov. 16) -- Few words are dirtier in Washington than "earmark." Soon-to-be House Speaker John Boehner has vowed to ban them. President Barack Obama has called for earmark reform. The chairmen of the president's debt commission say the practice should be eliminated. And on Monday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., reversed himself and says he now backs an earmarks moratorium. Meanwhile, Rep. Darrell Issa, the California Republican expected to chair the House Oversight Committee next year, called Obama "one of the most corrupt presidents in modern times." He later scaled back his ...
Agent Was 'Chillingly Close' to Shooting LBJ
By Carl Franzen - AOL News
(Oct. 20) -- In a striking admission sure to stoke the imaginations of conspiracy theorists everywhere, a former Secret Service agent reveals how he came "chillingly close" to shooting President Lyndon B. Johnson right outside his home just hours after John F. Kennedy was assassinated. So reads "The Kennedy Detail: JFK's Secret Service Agents Break Their Silence," a new book co-authored by the former agent himself, Gerald "Jerry" Blaine, and writer Lisa McCubbin. In it, the authors vividly recall Nov. 22, 1963, the fateful night of Kennedy's assassination, when Blaine was assigned to watch ...
Opinion: WikiLeaks Is Afghan Version of Pentagon Papers
By Paul Wachter - AOL News(July 26) -- The similarities cannot be overlooked. President Lyndon Johnson did not start America's involvement in Vietnam -- John F. Kennedy did that -- but Johnson inherited a war and then escalated it. So, too, with President Barack Obama and Afghanistan. And then, as now, it didn't take the leaking of classified Pentagon documents to alert the honest observer to troubles with the American war effort. By 1971, when the Pentagon Papers -- the Defense Department's study of American involvement with Vietnam from 1945 to 1967 -- first appeared to the public on the pages of The New York ...
Robert Byrd's Klan History, and the 150 Recruits He Brought With Him
By Mary C. Curtis - Politics DailyA Senate historian, a guardian of the Constitution, an early critic of the Iraq War, Sen. Robert Byrd's colleagues, friends and admirers are offering heartfelt accolades. He grew up dirt-poor in West Virginia, worked hard with his hands and his mind, and eventually gave back with federal funds. Byrd died Monday at the age of 92 and it is always tricky to criticize someone who has just left us. Even if the person is not famous, he or she is a beloved parent or spouse. When the individual is well-known, with a long list of accomplishments, why bring up the bad? But a saint is so much less ...
Robert Byrd's Baffling Career: From Segregationist to Senate Sage
By Walter Shapiro - Politics Daily"He's a real reactionary. The Democrats made him their whip and he was in the Ku Klux Klan when he was young." The speaker was Richard Nixon in 1971, according to H.R. Haldeman's White House diary, as he toyed with appointing West Virginia's Robert Byrd to the Supreme Court after Senate liberals had rejected his first two picks. At that point in time (or any point in time), it was a ludicrous notion because the self-made Byrd had attended law school while serving in the Senate and had never practiced. And even a president who had exploited the white backlash against the civil rights movement ...
Barack Obama is Lyndon Johnson on Steroids
By Peter Wehner - Politics DailyOur major political parties have durable images, both positive and negative. Over the last several decades certain impressions -- fairly or not -- have taken hold, like barnacles on the hull of a ship. On the positive side for Republicans is that they have been widely seen as defenders of traditional values and institutions; strong on national defense and in confronting America's adversaries; in favor of limited government and low taxes; and champions of free-market capitalism. On the down side, Republicans have been viewed as indifferent to the plight of the poor; insensitive on race and ...
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