Topic - Franklin D. Roosevelt

• Lawmakers react to biggest job gain in months

  Fresh off news of the biggest U.S. job gain in nine months, policymakers and lawmakers took to the airwaves Sunday morning to offer their spin on the plodding economic recovery - and to say whether they praise or blame President Obama for it.

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  HANSON: Fidelity and the presidency

  The news media seem obsessed with the serial affairs of a younger Newt Gingrich back in the last century. The anger of his second of three wives mysteriously became national news on ABC's "Nightline" on the eve of the South Carolina primary. Millions watched Mrs. Gingrich II complain that Newt and the current Mrs. Gingrich III had done to her (while ill) just about the same thing that she and Newt had earlier done to Mrs. Gingrich I (while ill).

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  PATTERSON: Social Security: The birth of Big Brother

  Nearly eight decades after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law in 1935, the program remains the most popular ever instituted by the U.S. government. Just last year, 79 percent of respondents to a CNN/ORC poll rated Social Security "good for the country." In the same survey, an astonishing 73 percent agreed that "Social Security is something that the U.S. Constitution allows the federal government to do."

• BOOK REVIEW: 'Marshall and His Generals'

  The U.S. Army entered World War II with distinct assets and liabilities. On the debit side, it was small in terms of personnel. Much of its equipment was inferior to the Germans' in both quality and quantity. And its senior officers had no combat experience to compare with that of the enemy.

• Inside Politics

  he House of Representatives has passed a bill confirming the use of religious symbols at military memorials. It was also voting on legislation to order that a prayer issued by President Franklin Roosevelt on D-Day be installed at the World War II Memorial in Washington.

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  LAMBRO: Finally voters start to get a say

  Voters go to the polls next month to begin choosing a candidate who can put America back to work, and that means preventing Barack Obama from winning a second term.

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  EDITORIAL: The Pez-dispenser presidency

  It was just over three years ago that Barack Obama echoed the words of great men in his much-ballyhooed speech on race: "We the people, in order to form a more perfect Union ... ." That occasion was guaranteed to chart a new course for the country, all to no avail. Despite being promoted as a "landmark" occasion, not even the most ardent liberal can recite a poignant line or concrete result from the event. That's because Mr. Obama dispenses supposedly momentous addresses like a Pez dispenser.

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  BOOK REVIEW: 'Admiral Nimitz'

  Brayton Harris' "Admiral Nimitz" is the easy-to-read story of the career of the nation's foremost Navy flag officer of the 20th century. Mr. Harris has done an admirable job of condensing a long and colorful career into a mere 256 pages.

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  TYRRELL: Return of the Episodic Apologists

  They're back. I speak of the Episodic Apologists, who have been a phenomenon of the Clinton saga since its earliest days, back when the Clintons were flipping real estate and exchanging bad checks in Arkansas. The Episodic Apologists, like the legendary "court historians" of Franklin D. Roosevelt's time, are an essential ingredient of the era in which they labor.

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  COLE: Obama should quit emulating others

  Pundits and politicians, perhaps struggling to make sense of their own era, are fond of finding parallels between contemporary figures and those

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  LYONS: Lessons never learned

  As we mark the 70th anniversary of Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor of Dec. 7, 1941, America is on the verge of committing the same mistakes that helped plunge our nation into its most grievous war.

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  TRIPP: The myth of bipartisanship

  While some in Washington try to solve and others obstruct fixing our fiscal mess, we hear the liberal lament: "Our political system is broken because of partisanship." This is untrue, even absurd. This argument tries to pit politics against principle. Democrats are using their own convoluted brand of partisanship, a cynical, feel-good version of "Can't we all just get along?" after they already have stacked the deck against reform. They assert there is something wrong with the political system, rather than with their policies, when they don't get their way. The political claim prevents discussion of the real problem the nation faces: insolvency. The liberal hypocrisy finally has been brought to trial.

• BOOK REVIEW: 'December 1941'

  When 1941 dawned, about half the nation wanted to stand aside from "Europe's wars," and about half thought "preparedness" was imperative to help the embattled British and rearm ourselves. Few actually thought we would be dragged into a war.

• Embassy Row

  Richard M. Nixon would shock the sensibilities of today's politically correct world of diplomacy with his blunt view of career diplomats as "eunuchs," his salty assessment of a well-endowed envoy, and his defense of political donors as ambassadors.

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  SIMMONS: Head Start just another failed notion

  Something very intriguing occurred this week when President Obama made his high-profile pronouncement about education policy. If you read or listened closely, you noticed how adept the president was at channeling predecessors Lyndon Baines Johnson and George W. Bush - and simultaneously, at that.

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