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This year marks not only the 50th anniversary of the shooting of John F. Kennedy but also the 45th anniversary of the shooting of Robert F. Kennedy, which occurred in June 1968. Was there a common source motivating the assassins of both Kennedys—that is, Lee Harvey Oswald and Sirhan Sirhan? That renowned political philosopher Mick Jagger speculated on a source. “I shouted out ‘Who killed the Kennedys?’” asks the lyrics in the 1968 song by The Rolling Stones. “When, after all, it was you and me.” The song was titled, “Sympathy for the Devil.” It was, The Rolling Stones suggested,...

In all of the many film documentaries, news stories and other media programs about the life and death of President John F. Kennedy, few if any mention one of his major legacies: cutting taxes to, in his words, "get America moving again." Democrats and President Obama, for whom "tax cuts" is an "expletive deleted", despise the idea and never talk about JFK's across-the-board, income tax rate reductions which led to a decade- long burst of economic growth. What Kennedy proposed and got through a Democratic Congress deserves our attention now more than ever. With the Obama economy still "stuck in...

The ninth of November marked the twenty-fourth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, probably the most important historical event since World War II and the most important lesson about human freedom experienced within the living memory of most of us. Presumably, next year there will be more of a commemoration, but the salient question now is how this lesson is being taught in the nation’s classrooms. For while those of us in our forties and older remember the fall of communism and its causes, today’s teenagers are wholly in the dark. What, then, are the high-school students of...

Ronald Reagan Speaks out Against Socialized Medicine, 1961http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kgx9qpCsfX0

I'll just share one more memory of a real leader before I get back to my regular programming....Keep the memory of Reagan alive and we can win again!I've told the story of working in the Reagan White House many times. But this is the first time I have shared this memory. 25 years ago on Wednesday, November 9, 1988 White House staff gathered in the Rose Garden to cheer the President as he walked to the Oval Office in the morning after the big win for George H.W. Bush in the presidential election which cemented the legacy of the Reagan...

A perennial and personal favorite...At this point the mask could be any of O's predecessors, even Jimmy Carter.

A squadron of Hindenburgs? A flotilla of Titanics? A rash of Hurricane Sandys on steroids? Any might have been a better analogy for the monumental mess that is Obamacare than the lame one Jon Meacham proposed on today's Morning Joe. The presidential historian somehow sought to analogize the Obamacare fiasco to . . . the classification of ketchup as a vegetable. Huh? View the video here.

"Bye Bye Birdie" is an old musical that survives in high school productions and in some people's memory bank. It debuted on Broadway in 1960 and was made into a film in 1963. One of the songs from the show might serve as an inspiration, if not a theme, for Republicans in the winter of their discontent over President Obama and congressional Democrats: "Put on a Happy Face." A problem Republicans have had since the "glory days" of Ronald Reagan is that too many have forgotten how to be positive and affirming. Nobody likes to be around a sourpuss....

The competition to be the next Ted Cruz is extremely hot within the Republican Party, where a number of emerging challengers are hoping to capitalize on the newest brand name in conservative politics.In Kansas,Milton R. Wolf opened his fundraising pitch to supporters last week by asking them whether he could be the next Cruz candidate. In Mississippi,Chris McDaniel announced his campaign to unseat Sen. Thad Cochran last week and welcomed the comparison to Mr. Cruz, calling it “a compliment.”hen there’s Ben Sasse,a university president running for Nebraska’s U.S. Senate seat,who set state fundraising records by opposing Obamacare. He told the...

The old Norm McDonald joke was “Germans love David Hasselhoff.” The liberal talk radio equivalent is “Thom Hartmann really hates Ronald Reagan.” On Thursday afternoon’s show, Hartmann blamed Reagan for this whole Tea Party trend of “anti-American crazies who hate our government,” with that unpatriotic hatred somehow including veterans of every war, and George Washington, who “signed the first legislation that provided housing, food, medical care, and clothing to poor people.” Footnote, please? THOM HARTMANN: Ronald Reagan came along and, in his first inaugural address, said the government is the problem, and ever since then there's been this small group...

It was enough to make a conservative yearn for the good old Bush-era days of "Dissent Is Patriotic" . . . For there on Morning Joe today was former Obama official Melody Barnes, warning Americans to "back off" their Reagan-inspired opposition to big government in general and Obamacare in particular. Instead, instructed Barnes, Americans should focus on making Obamacare work. View the video here.

Thirty-two years ago, Ronald Reagan gave his first Inaugural Address. His words still illuminate. "We are a nation that has a government -- not the other way around," he said. "And this makes us special among the nations of the Earth." For the past nearly two weeks, some of the temporary custodians of our government -- President Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, to name two -- have impressed upon the nation their scorn for this same founding principle. That, of course, means their scorn for Us, the People. Above all, in trying to force House Republicans...

Hollywood put out some great movies in 1939, films such as Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. But one movie that year—now largely forgotten—served a purpose even greater than helping a Depression-ravaged American public forget their dire straights, not to mention the storm clouds gathering around the world. It was called, Code of the Secret Service, and it starred a handsome young actor named Ronald Reagan. Jerry Parr was nine years old the day his dad took him to a Miami theater to see Reagan play a...

After 240 years, its time we threw a Tea Party for the Longshoremen (and all other trade and industrial unions) I’ve been intrigued with the sudden awakening of the trade and industrial unions to the fact they’ve been had by Obama and his Sorosian handlers. The union movement got its spiritual base about 122 years ago with Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum – on Capital and Labor. It also explains why Catholics continue to cling to the Democrat Party even though it left its principles in the sump of an outhouse decades ago. Ronald Reagan–the nation’s only labor leader...

On TCM, Tuesday at 1:45 PM (ET) September 24, 2013 Starring Ronald Reagan, Ginger Rogers, Doris Day Brief Synopsis: A model on vacation discovers that her sister's husband is a murderous Ku Klux Klansman. Drama 1951 TCM, Storm Warning

The following are photos taken on Friday, September 20, 2013 at the Ronald Reagan Sports Park in Temecula, California. The Reagan statue and monument was likely vandalized either the night before or in the early morning hours of Friday September 20. The cause of the damage appears to be vandalism by arson. Local police were called to the scene and an investigation is ongoing. - Photo of the Reagan Monument with missing damaged tiles. - The missing/vandalized tiles were removed by city staff ... notice the burn marks at the base of the structure. - Burned/damaged tiles on both side...

In the Syrian rubble of Barack Obama’s foreign policy lies a moment of opportunity for conservatives. It is a moment for building a muscular foreign policy based on a recognition of good and evil; on an unapologetic conviction that the United States stands firmly on the right side of that ledger because it stands for the liberty and equal dignity of every human being; and, therefore, on an unwavering commitment to have our interventions guided solely by American national interests. It is a Ronald Reagan moment. Now, all we need is a Ronald Reagan. For now, we have only pretenders,...

40th U.S. President Ronald Reagan aims a rifle from a window onboard Air Force One; circa 1983

On Jan. 20, 1981, Michael Deaver, a political aide, peered into a bedroom in Blair House, across from the White House, and said to the man still abed, “It’s 8 o’clock. You’re going to be inaugurated as president in a few hours.” From beneath the blankets, Ronald Reagan said, “Do I have to?” Some are so eager to be inaugurated in 2017 that the 2016 campaign has begun 28 months before the 1.4 percent of Americans who live in Iowa and New Hampshire express themselves. It is, therefore, not too soon to get a head start on being dismayed. Consider two...