'Your papers, please' must never be heard in America
Since the Eisenhower administration, every president with the exception of Jimmy Carter has made varying use of an outside advisory panel that authors Kenneth Michael Absher, Michael C. Desch and Roman Popadiuk term "one of the smallest, most secretive, least well-known, but potentially influential parts of the U.S. intelligence community."
The congressional outcry over the leaking of secret information about military operations by the Obama administration reminds me of what happened during the Nixon-Kennedy battle for the presidency in 1960 ("Top lawmakers pledge to crack down on leaks," World, Friday).
The U.S. Air Force celebrates the 50th birthday of its youngest B-52 Stratofortress this year. This historic warrior and its counterparts predate the Cuban missile crisis, Vietnam War and Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon.
Here's the thing about March Madness, and by extension big-time college sports: If you're a true, markets-know-best believer in the prosperity-creating, All-American double helix of economic opportunity and liberty, you ought to find the whole extravaganza infuriating. Not the dribbling and dunking. The system.
No matter what the outcome in the early-voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire, the race for the Republican nomination for president truly doesn't begin until campaigning starts south of the Mason-Dixon line. That's because by late January, the barrage of negative attack ads against GOP candidate Newt Gingrich will have grown old.
Those of us who lived through long decades of the Cold War can look back to mistaken views of a world scene played out on many stages. Then, as now, drama tended to overshadow more important currents.
Former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, who served longer as a Republican than anyone in the chamber's history, died in a plane crash Monday during a fishing trip in the state's rugged southwest coast. He was 86.
