It has happened again. Our gaffe-prone president has filed another blunder on his presidential record. At the dedication of George W. Bush's presidential library, he invoked history with his usual mastery of detail. He placed President John F. Kennedy in Air Force One, "on the flight back from Russia, after negotiating with Nikita Khrushchev at the height of the Cold War."
Van Cliburn, the internationally celebrated pianist whose triumph at a 1958 Moscow competition helped thaw the Cold War and launched a spectacular career that made him the rare classical musician to enjoy rock-star status, died Wednesday after a fight with bone cancer. He was 78.
For a time in Cold War America, Van Cliburn had all the trappings of a rock star: sold-out concerts, adoring, out-of-control fans and a name recognized worldwide. He even got a ticker-tape parade in New York City.
Van Cliburn, the internationally celebrated pianist whose triumph at a 1958 Moscow competition helped thaw the Cold War and launched a spectacular career that made him the rare classical musician to enjoy rock-star status, has died. He was 78.
A Chinese-made J-7 fighter-interceptor jet crashed into a civilian residential area earlier this month, injuring four people on the ground.
Better known in the West for promising to "bury" the capitalist world, Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev is also remembered by Russians for banning works that didn't conform to the Communist Party's notion that art should be straightforward, realistic and appeal to workers and peasants.
After leaving the White House in 1961, Dwight D. Eisenhower fretted about what future generations would think of his legacy, stating that the peace and prosperity that marked his two terms "didn't just happen, by God." But as Evan Thomas writes in his study of the Eisenhower presidency, "[Ike] had trouble articulating just how that had happened. He never could admit that he had kept the peace by threatening all-out war. His all-or-nothing strategy worked brilliantly."
President George H.W. Bush had a problem so important he sent a memo to White House staff asking them to take a pledge. His dog, Ranger, was packing on the pounds.
The terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, makes it clear we cannot afford to continue to overlook our many national security issues that have been neglected and must be addressed. Sequestration only compounds the problem.
