By John Solomon
How the government's punishing of the exposure of official wrongdoing can linger for years
The Republicans who can't wait to talk impeachment should sit down, shut up, and be patient. President Obama may yet deserve impeachment, but we're not there yet. Patience, as anyone old enough to remember Watergate knows, is how this game is played.
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.
"If the Congress won't do it's job, the people will," declares the Citizens Hearing on Disclosure, set to take off in the main ballroom of the National Press Club on Monday. Disclosure? Are we talking health care here, or gun control? No, we're talking extraterrestrial. Of course, the nation's capital may seem like another planet at times, but no matter.
When C.P. Snow arrived to lecture at Harvard in 1960, he was riding a wave of fame that followed his talk on "The Two Cultures" at Cambridge University the year before when he pointed out that the intellectual world was becoming increasingly divided between science and the humanities.
Slighting an old friend when there's a death in his family, sending a bouquet of wilted petunias by the chauffeur, is trashy behavior no matter who orders it.
Margaret Thatcher is getting her revenge on the Nancy men who mocked her in life, and who continue to throw rocks at her in death. Her reputation as "the Iron Lady" who towered over a plastic age is secure, and she's getting a funeral that her girlhood idol Winston Churchill got before her.
British lawmakers returned early from an Easter recess Wednesday to pay tribute to former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, as preparations got underway for a funeral filled with military ceremony — and security headaches.
Just when America and the West needed a shot of testosterone, with Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard settling in to swallow Kuwait's oil, Margaret Thatcher stepped up with a word from the warrior queen. "Don't go wobbly on us, George," she told President George H.W. Bush. He didn't, and the West won.
They were more than angry, those days when Adolf Hitler devastated Europe while America fretted about non-intervention.
Just when you think there can be nothing fresh to be said about the long life of Winston Churchill, along comes biographer Michael Shelden's page-turner about Churchill from age 26 to 40 (1901-1915). His book begins shortly after Churchill returned to Britain following his extraordinary military adventures in India and Africa, all of which Churchill himself chronicled.
Earlier this week, the top brass of the U.S. and British militaries huddled at Fort McNair to discuss the future of Anglo-American defense cooperation. This meeting was in the spirit of the Combined Chiefs of Staff conferences held throughout the 1940s to formulate Anglo-American military strategy for World War II and the postwar world.
A House Republican introduced a resolution Thursday to award the Congressional Gold Medal to the two former Navy SEALs who were killed as they defended American diplomats and CIA officers from Islamic extremists in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11.
"To jaw-jaw," Winston Churchill once wisely said, "is always better than to war-war." Anyone who has seen war up close would agree with Sir Winston, who saw a lot of shooting wars. But obstinate mullahs in Iran push that proposition to the max.
Although he never held elective office, Harry Hopkins was arguably the most important figure in President Franklin Roosevelt's administration. As a federal relief administrator, he dispensed billions of dollars to the relief programs that were a hallmark of the New Deal. Then, even though he had absolutely no foreign policy experience, he became the wheelchair-bound Roosevelt's personal envoy to Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin in forging a joint war policy.
A poet laureate comes to Washington. Yawn. In the world capital of the sound and fury that often signifies not very much, the disciplined sentiments of a poet sound as alien as a tax cut for millionaires.
Josef Stalin wanted to mark the final surrender on May 9, but Winston Churchill, the British prime minister, agreed only to a 24-hour delay.
Winston Churchill, who fancied a cigar with his champagne, once explained the allure of the stogie: "Smoking cigars is like falling in love.
