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A First for the United States: Jefferson to Face Forward on 2006 Nickel WASHINGTON – The Nation’s circulating coins have featured the profiles of presidents for nearly a century. The United States Mint is announcing that for the first time in history, the image of President Thomas Jefferson will face forward on the 2006-dated 5-cent coin (nickel). This new image, based on a Rembrandt Peale painting of Jefferson in 1800, is expected to grace the nickel for years to come. The United States Mint will launch into circulation the 2006 nickel, called “Jefferson, 1800,” early next year, concluding the Westward...

WASHINGTON (Oct. 5) - After nearly 100 years of depicting presidents in somber profiles on the nation's coins, the Mint is trying something different: The new nickel features Thomas Jefferson, facing forward, with the hint of a smile. "It isn't a silly smile or a smirk, but a sense of optimism that I was trying to convey with the expression," says Jamie Franki, an associate professor of art at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. His drawing was chosen out of 147 entries. In unveiling the design Tuesday, Mint officials said they believed the new image of Jefferson was an appropriate...

As helping refugees from New Orleans continues, a few people are turning some attention to the long-term future of that City. Begin with this: there must be a new New Orleans. As I write this, New Orleans is flooding again, from the long distance effects of Hurricane Rita. There is a law of hydraulics that great masses of water can be controlled or channeled, but not absolutely stopped. This law is as inexorable as gravity. Thomas Jefferson understood the vital importance of the Mississippi River and the Port of New Orleans to the whole nation. Aaron Burr recognized the same...

Starting this year, every educational institution receiving federal aid must teach about the U.S. Constitution on the September 17 anniversary of its signing (September 16 in 2005...) The requirement is ironic, given that it came from the Senate's leading Constitutional scholar, yet clearly conflicts with the Constitution, and on many grounds. Last year, Senator Robert Byrd (D.-W.Va.) inserted it into a spending bill packed with pork that was blatantly inconsistent with Americans' general welfare, which is the Constitution's rationale. There is nothing in the document that permits the federal government to tell local schools what they can and cannot teach....

Moral Capital and the Courts The Left is destroying traditional morality. By Rick Santorum EDITOR'S NOTE:: This is the first in a series of five excerpts from It Takes a Family, by Sen. Rick Santorum. Together they comprise chapter 23, “The Rule of Judges.” The village elders (a.k.a. left-wing members of Congress) introduce very few bills — almost none that attract more than one or two cosponsors. There are no hearings where Congress and the public can hear arguments about the merits to society of changing its moral fabric. Did Congress pass a law that said it was illegal to...

CHILLICOTHE, Ohio (AP) - In their first meeting away from Thomas Jefferson's estate in Virginia, about 65 people who believe they are descendants of the nation's third president and slave Sally Hemings gathered for a weekend reunion in southern Ohio. "My son is only 4, so I want him to meet his black cousins," said Lucian Truscott of Los Angeles, a Jefferson descendant who has spoken at several previous reunions. Two of Hemings' surviving four children, who claimed to be Jefferson's sons, settled in southern Ohio: Madison Hemings settled in Pike and Ross counties, while his brother, Eston Hemings, moved...

Biography Channel had an hour on Jefferson. Being Canadian I never learned anything about this great man. Some one on this site lamented that they would never want to listen to a thing he said because he was a slave owner. Yet Jefferson tried in the state legislature and the colonial legislature to end slavery. It didn't happen in his time. And no, he only freed those slaves that he felt had the skills to survive. But maybe he worried that they would be marginalized in the white man's world and end up in shanty towns? What really impressed me...

All through the years 2003 and 2004 one used to hear it: "So, you think your Iraqi friends are about to adopt Jeffersonian democracy . . ." (pause for hilarious nudge, sneer, snigger or wink). After a bit too much of this at one debate in downtown New York, I managed to buy some time, and even get a laugh, by riposting that Iraqi democracy probably wouldn't be all that "Jeffersonian," since none of my Iraqi comrades owned any slaves. But I was conscious, here, of trading partly in the stupid currency of my opponents. (I would now phrase matters...

The Jefferson DNA Case: Propaganda and Myth "Their amalgamation with the other color produces a degradation to which no lover of his country, no lover of excellence in the human character can innocently consent." – Thomas Jefferson (letter to Edward Coles, Aug. 1814). DNA Evidence of a family connection between the Jefferson line and a descendent of the slave Sally Hemings will play "a pivotal role in dispelling the myth of separation between blacks and whites." -- U.S. News & World Report (9 Nov. 1998) New Republican Archive. James F. Burke Several years ago, at the height of the Clintonista...

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the second and third presidents of the United States, respectively, die on this day, the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Both men had been central in the drafting of the historic document; Jefferson had authored it, and Adams, who was known as the "colossus of the debate," served on the drafting committee and had argued eloquently for the declaration's passage. After July 4, 1776, Adams traveled to France as a diplomat, where he proved instrumental in winning French support for the Patriot cause, and Jefferson returned to Virginia, where he...

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,...

PRESIDENTIAL NEWS OF THE DAY: President Bush is spending the weekend at Camp David. He will travel to Morganstown, West Virginia, on Monday to participate in 4th of July celebrations there. The First Lady has been away from Washington recently. However, she will be traveling with the President to Europe this coming week. Our beloved Dubya will mark his 59th birthday on July 6. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MR. PRESIDENT! And a rousing HAPPY 229TH BIRTHDAY to our great nation. Laura Bush to visit Tanzania 2005-07-01 07:09:58 By Guardian Reporter US First Lady Laura Bush will visit Tanzania later this month. She...

Reflections on the Pursuit of Happiness by Thomas Jefferson edited by Eric Petersen Were Thomas Jefferson alive to read this book, he would recognize every sentence, every elegant turn of phrase, every lofty, beautifully expressed idea. Indeed, every word in the book is his. In an astonishing feat of editing, Eric S. Petersen has culled the entirety of Thomas Jefferson’s published works to fashion thirty-four original essays on themes ranging from patriotism and liberty to hope, humility, and gratitude. The result is a lucid, inspiring distillation of the wisdom of one of America’s greatest political thinkers. From his personal motto—“Rebellion...

"Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition."--Thomas Jefferson Ever wonder how dependent the American people have become on the federal government compared to, say, a generation ago? Now, thanks to The Heritage Foundation's new study, "The 2005 Index of Dependency," we can answer that question -- but be forewarned; the data doesn't paint a pretty picture. This informative study explores the degree, nature and effects of our dependence on government, examining five broad categories of socio-economic federal intervention: housing assistance, healthcare and welfare assistance, retirement income, post-secondary education...

Boulder, Colo. Founding a democracy, rather like living in a democracy, can be very tough on friendship. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson began as friends. The tensions and frictions of the early Republic took care of that. Then, after years of silence between them, a mutual friend persuaded them to write to each other. In 1812, they launched into a correspondence that continued until it was ended by their deaths. That ending point was on their minds and drove their correspondence. As Mr. Adams wrote Mr. Jefferson, "You and I ought not to die, before we have explained ourselves to...

Following dramatic remarks by a clearly conflicted Board President Nancy Riddle, the Berkeley Unified School District Board of Directors voted 3-2 Wednesday night to deny a petition to change the name of Jefferson Elementary School to Sequoia. Her voice breaking up and visibly close to tears, Riddle told a hushed crowd that “I know that I will be disappointing some people who I care about, but I can’t support this.” Riddle’s succeeding no vote on the petition broke the 2-2 deadlock on the board that was known two weeks ago when the remaining board members publicly announced how they would...

AURORA GENERAL ADVERTISER, Philadelphia, February 1, 1802 This issue contains on page 2 a contemporary newspaper printing of the famous Thomas Jefferson letter to the Danbury Baptist Association regarding the separation of church and state, reading in part: "...believing with you that religion is a matter which lies soley between Man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith of his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law...

On April 22 I was presented with the 2005 Media Award by the New Jersey Family Policy Council at their annual banquet. While honored to receive such recognition, upon deeper reflection, I can’t help but ask myself the question: Was there no one else more qualified? Is there really such a dearth of professional, family-friendly journalists in newsrooms across our state that the Family Policy Council felt compelled to award a businessman moonlighting as a columnist? Apparently the answer is yes. A University of Connecticut Department of Public Policy study found that journalists who were surveyed picked Democrat John Kerry...

BERKELEY — A tree beat out a former slave-owning president in the long-running campaign to change the name of a Berkeley elementary school, according to results released Wednesday. Students, parents and staff members voted 239 to 177 to change the name of Thomas Jefferson Elementary School to Sequoia Elementary School. "It was pretty close," said district spokesman Mark Coplan. The Berkeley Unified School District's Board of Education must approve the name change at its meeting Wednesday, Coplan said. "They could say no. ... I think it will bring out some pretty interesting discussion," Coplan said, adding that some fear a...

When history buff Garrett Redmond bought a filly out of the Colonial Affair mare Jefferson's Secret, he thought he had the perfect name: Sally Hemings. Hemings was a slave of President Thomas Jefferson and might have been his mistress. Although the exact nature of their connection is in dispute, Hemings and Jefferson are thought by some historians to have had a decades-long relationship and at least one child - and possibly more - together. "To name a horse after someone is an honor," said Redmond, owner of Ballycapple, a farm in Paris. "I have a horse here named after my...