Billie Sol Estes, a flamboyant Texas huckster who became one of the most notorious men in America in 1962 when he was accused of looting a federal crop subsidy program, has died. He was 88.
Call it "Oval Office Couch Syndrome." By the second term "inside the bubble," presidents have completely lost touch with reality.
Surrenders, like modern wars, are not what they used to be. Tuesday marks the 68th anniversary of the surrender of the German armies that ended the European half of World War II. The last explosions of the war were the popping of champagne corks at 3 o'clock in the morning in the city of Reims in northern France.
More than 500 people were killed in Chicago last year. Yet Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel still found time to berate the fast-food franchise Chick-fil-A for not sharing "Chicago values" apparently because its founder does not approve of same-sex marriage.
Prudence and common sense appear to be absent in the Obama administration and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, who during the current crisis with North Korea, falsely reassure the American people that Pyongyang cannot deliver on its threats to make a nuclear attack on the U.S. mainland.
Lee Westwood's mum walked away from the ninth hole, waving her hand in front of her face on a balmy spring day.
A Serbian nationalist assassinated Austria's Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. What should have been a local conflict in the Balkans triggered the World War I. The end result was millions dead, the destruction of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires, and the subsequent rise of fascism and communism. An outbreak of hostilities on the Korean Peninsula today could lead to a similar, disastrous fate — World War III.
In a town short these days on good political manners, let alone magnanimity, Washington would do well to recall the remarkable contribution of former President Herbert Hoover to the nation's bipartisan history. The 31st chief executive, a Republican, was the only one to write a biography of another one, Woodrow Wilson -- number 28 and a Democrat. Hoover not only was admiring in his book, but he accomplished the endeavor when he was in his eighties.
