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Word Pictures

We all have questions about Ronald Reagan, but few look for answers on sites devoted to improving our fishing skills.

“Albacized,” AKA Rich in Framingham, knows no such limitations:

“I know that at some point before he got into politics (at least ‘big time politics’) he did some sports broadcasting. Is there any audio available on line of Reagan calling a game? I checked out YouTube and ‘struck out’…”

He was many things, but in our world Philip Agee will be remembered for his associations with the Bush family.

President Bush senior shared the intelligence community view of Agee’s 70s actions in revealing CIA names and methods, largely from public records.

“In 1989, Vice President George H.W. Bush – a former CIA director – said he had “nothing but disdain” for Mr. Agee: “Those who go around publicizing the names of CIA people abroad are despicable.“

Agee’s acts, and the 1975 assassination of the Athens CIA Station Chief led to the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, an effort after the fact to criminalize what Agee did. The father’s quote later provided a useful club to beat George W. Bush during the investigation into the leaking of Valarie Plame’s name and status with the Agency.

Agee tangled with another Bush as well.

“Mr. Agee sued Bush’s wife, Barbara, over an allegation in her autobiography that Mr. Agee had exposed the CIA’s Greece station chief, Richard Welch, who was later killed by leftist terrorists…She settled the issue by dropping the reference to Mr. Agee, who had not mentioned Welch in his book. Instead, she blamed a magazine Mr. Agee worked for that also named alleged CIA agents. Mr. Agee’s defenders said that Welch’s identity was already known.“

“a small field of usefulness*”

Who’s Firemens Field’s friend?

The question is posed by dueling Oyster Bay Long Island web sites.

www.savefiremensfield.org was formed by opponents of a proposed Teddy Roosevelt Museum to be located on Firemens Field near the town center. A mischievous proponent of the project then launched www.savefiremansfield.org, apparently to snare the unwary.

The Theodore Roosevelt Association wants to build the museum, and claims no relationship with either site. But the pro-museum site uses a TR photo with the Association’s permission on it’s banner:

What was Roosevelt saying and to whom in this endlessly quoted “Man In The Arena” speech?

Roosevelt’s speech was in part a mash note to the French from America, “the only two republics among the great powers of the world.” Roosevelt swooned for France, how “the lesson her whole history teaches, that a high artistic and literary development is compatible with notable leadership narms and statecraft*.”

The French were certainly up to their necks in the “rough work of the world*” as they stumbled into a century of slaughter and surrender at home, and then massacre and withdrawal from their colonies.

The speech and most of Roosevelt’s public persona today are a relic, a fetish for nostalgists pining for the days of manly, unapologetic imperialism over the lesser races. And some spectacularly wordy tough talk.

*Who’s the Man?

Seen at the Crime

Rehab efforts continue at the Nixon Library.

Hundreds gathered to mark Nixon’s 95th birthday, the Navy sent a wreath, and Admiral Raymond Berube identified the Disgracedformerpresident as that fail-safe superlative, a difference maker.

“He inherited a country weighed down with war and political instability,” the Orange County Register quotes Berube, implying Nixon in some way moderated these phenomena.

One Register reader ain’t buying it:

“He woul dhave been 95 and if there was justice in this country he would just now be eligible for parole.”

Ronnie Goes to Russia?

“Spengler” sees disaster ahead:

“Everything that could go wrong has gone wrong in American policy, but not as wrong as it will go now. As in 1980, a lame-duck administration will confront economic and strategic reverses. But it is worse than 1980, for no Ronald Reagan is waiting in the wings to set things right. “

And sends forth the call for the smack of firm government:

“Vladimir Putin, the most talented political leader of our time: what might he have done at the helm of the world’s only superpower, instead of salvaging the hulk of the defeated Soviet Empire? Why not give him the chance? Watching the last round of American political debates, it occurred to me that it’s time to think out of the box…Putin will finish his second term of office as Russian president early in 2008, just when the next American president takes office. There is plenty of time to naturalize him as an American citizenand amend the constitution to permit a foreign-born president. The alternative is to elect another incarnation of the political type that got America into trouble in the first place. “