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I guess they're celebrating up in Plymouth Notch VT today, as it's the birthday for the only President born on the Fourth of July: Calvin Coolidge (I think a couple died on July 4 though). Republican, former gov. of MA, one who loved the people and scenery of his home state of Vermont. I paid a brief visit to the Coolidge State Historic Site the other day. "Don't expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong." "The business of America is business." (actually the word "Chief" appears before "business"--kind of a misquote as he goes on to...

It’s tempting to say that Ronald Reagan was the best U.S. president of the past century, and I’ve certainly demonstrated my man-crush on the Gipper. But there is some real competition. I had the pleasure yesterday of hearing Amity Shlaes of the Council on Foreign Relations make the case for Calvin Coolidge at the Mont Pelerin Society Meeting in Australia. I dug around online and found an article Amity wrote for Forbes that highlights some of the attributes of “Silent Cal” that she mentioned in her speech. As you can see, she makes a persuasive case. … the Coolidge style...

Today’s episode of Glenn Beck’s “Founder’s Friday” looked deeper into the presidency of Calvin Coolidge. ‘Silent Cal’ was Ronald Reagan’s favorite president. Historian Amy Shlaes, author of “The Forgotten Man”, was a guest and referred to Coolidge not as a ‘reformer’ but as a ‘refrainer’. Coolidge knew when not to act, which is usually better than acting and doing the wrong thing. Which, of course, is what our current president, Barack ‘Hoover’ Obama, is doing. Each and every decision Obama has made since taking office has been an error, except perhaps allowing the Navy SEALs to do their job to...

PLYMOUTH, Vt. (AP) -- In the Vermont hamlet where Calvin "Silent Cal" Coolidge was born, folks will celebrate his star-spangled birthday the way they always do....

January 18, 2010, 4:00 a.m. Have Faith in MassachusettsHow Scott Brown’s campaign evokes memories of Calvin Coolidge. By Shawn Macomber Upon learning that Calvin Coolidge had been nominated at the 1920 Republican Convention to run for the vice presidency, Woodrow Wilson’s vice president, Thomas Marshall, sent a pithy wire to the Massachusetts governor: “Please accept my sincere sympathy.” Ninety years later, political junkies were no doubt inclined to tweet similar condolences to Scott Brown at the outset of his quest to win the late Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat. Little was expected of the state senator. Maybe he would get...

I came across this and it almost blew me away. http://www.archive.org/details/coolidge_1924 Hope the linky thingy works for you. If not just copy and paste into your browser adress bar.

Recently, the new head of the National Endowment for the Arts, Rocco Landesman, gushed that "if you accept the premise, and I do, that the United States is the most powerful country in the world, then Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar." He skipped right over Calvin Coolidge.

Speech on the Occasion of the One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Calvin Coolidge July 5, 1926 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania We meet to celebrate the birthday of America. The coming of a new life always excites our interest. Although we know in the case of the individual that it has been an infinite repetition reaching back beyond our vision, that only makes it the more wonderful. But how our interest and wonder increase when we behold the miracle of the birth of a new nation. It is to pay our tribute of reverence and respect to those...

Eugenics … death of the defenceless The legacy of Darwin’s cousin Galton By Russell Grigg Few ideas have done more harm to the human race in the last 120 years than those of Sir Francis Galton. He founded the evolutionary pseudo-science of eugenics. Today, ethnic cleansing, the use of abortion to eliminate ‘defective’ unborn babies, infanticide, euthanasia, and the harvesting of unborn babies for research purposes all have a common foundation in the survival-of-the-fittest theory of eugenics. So who was Galton, what is eugenics, and how has it harmed humanity?...

The Republican Party of the 1920's swept into power during a financial crisis. Errors in the Fed’s monetary policy in 1919 in kept rates too low to benefit the sale of Victory bonds. The Fed then tightened excessively due to inflation, creating a financial shock and depression from 1920 to 1921. At that time, the Republican Party viewed increasing tariffs as good policy. Thus, during the sixty seventh Congress, the Emergency Tariff Act of 1921 was passed as a temporary measure until a more comprehensive measure could be drafted. Ultimately, Fordney-McCumber passed in 1922, imposing an ad valorem rate of...

...Likewise, the policy of public ownership of railroads and certain electric utilities met with unmistakable defeat. The people declared that they wanted their rights to have not a political but a judicial determination, and their independence and freedom continued and supported by having the ownership and control of their property, not in the Government, but in their own hands. As they always do when they have a fair chance, the people demonstrated that they are sound and are determined to have a sound government. 13 When we turn from what was rejected to inquire what was accepted, the policy that...

Plymouth Notch, Vermont. August 3, 1998. On this day seventy five years ago Calvin Coolidge became the 30th president of the United States. Vice President Coolidge was visiting his father here, and, in the middle of the night was informed that President Harding died and that he must take the oath of office, as soon as possible. The Secretary of State told Coolidge that any notary public could administer the oath. It turned out that Calvin’s father was a notary. So at 2:47 in the morning John Coolidge, using the family Bible—in a small room with a wood stove and...

May 26, 1924: Coolidge signs stringent immigration law http://www.historychannel.com/tdih/tdih.jsp?category=presidential&month=10272957&day=10272991 http://tinyurl.com/h9uwu On this day in 1924, President Calvin Coolidge signs into law the Comprehensive Immigration Act, the most stringent immigration policy up to that time in the nation’s history. The new law reflected the desire of Americans to isolate themselves from the world after fighting the terrible First World War in Europe, a war that exacerbated growing fears of the spread of communist ideas. It also reflected the pervasiveness of racial discrimination in American society at the time. Many Americans saw the enormous influx of largely unskilled, uneducated immigrants during the...

At 2:30 on the morning of August 3, 1923, while visiting in Vermont, Calvin Coolidge received word that he was President. By the light of a kerosene lamp, his father, who was a notary public, administered the oath of office as Coolidge placed his hand on the family Bible. Coolidge was "distinguished for character more than for heroic achievement," wrote a Democratic admirer, Alfred E. Smith. "His great task was to restore the dignity and prestige of the Presidency when it had reached the lowest ebb in our history ... in a time of extravagance and waste...." Born in...

Calvin Coolidge Inaugural Address Wednesday, March 4, 1925 My Countrymen: NO one can contemplate current conditions without finding much that is satisfying and still more that is encouraging. Our own country is leading the world in the general readjustment to the results of the great conflict. Many of its burdens will bear heavily upon us for years, and the secondary and indirect effects we must expect to experience for some time. But we are beginning to comprehend more definitely what course should be pursued, what remedies ought to be applied, what actions should be taken for our deliverance, and are...

Unfairly forgotten, the 30th president left words that can speak to us today This is a campaign year and the windbags sure are busy, and full of themselves. Some of them are out there on the campaign trail, some of them here on the op-ed page. They love compound sentences and they profess to have complex thoughts. But in politics, as in life, it's often the simple sentence that matters, and the simple thought that endures. Twice in the last month I've professed a weakness for an American politician who has fallen from favor and, finally, from memory. He's Calvin...

<p>WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 (UPI) -- The George W. Bush administration's 2004 Budget announced last week aroused the ire of many conservatives and led me to wonder: if that archetypal small government Republican Calvin Coolidge were brought back to us in 2004, which way would he vote?</p>

About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from...

Filed at 5:23 p.m. ET BOSTON (AP) -- Vito Bruno remembers his father and thousands of others marching through Boston's North End 75 years ago to protest the executions of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. The Italian immigrants were put to death in 1927 after they were convicted of killing two people during a robbery. Many observers -- then and now -- say the trial focused unfairly on their anarchist political beliefs and status as immigrants ``They were being targeted because they were Italian,'' said Bruno, 85, who lived just a few blocks from the funeral parlor where the bodies...