Can we blame Richard Nixon for Pakistani Strongman Pervez Musharraf’s weekend coup?
Agence France-Presse reports his passion for Nixon. The General’s own web site asks”What book have you read recently and really enjoyed?” His answer: “‘Leaders’ by Richard Nixon.” Musharaff made sure to tell a 2005 interviewer that he had thanked Henry Kissinger that year in New York for his and Nixon’s “very good role” in 1971. That was when the Pakistani Army massacred as many as 3 million people in East Bengal with the silence and covert aid of the Nixon Administration.
Musharaff also shares his role model’s penchant for mysterious real estate holdings.
We’ll see how the State of Siege goes for our man in Pakistan. He’s kept his calendar clear for November.
Make It So!
Ominous rumblings from West Africa.
A candidate for Presidet of Ghana has pledged to build a Presidential Library for Kwame Nkrumah, the nation’s first President.
Never-mind he already has a mausoleum 
built on the spot he declared Ghana’s independence 50 years ago, and an attached museum. 
The pledge of course came during a campaign swing through Nkrumah’s home region.
Nkrumah was a major big deal in his day. He was leader of the first post-colonial independent African nation and a promoter of Pan Africanism, but that didn’t work out.
The existing mausoleum/museum complex may reflect the difficulties of man and movement. The designers struggled to reconcile Nkruman’s professed admiration for both Ghandi and Lenin, apparently by having the supersized statue in front dressed modestly. 
Bill says back off
The fine details escape me and most Americans, but Bill Clinton does have a point when he denounces press and rival campaign accusations that he and the Mrs. are withholding papers.
As he says, and is true, he has released more and faster than his predecessors . And the mechanics of this are convoluted even if all parties pulled as one.
For example, Judicial Watch has gotten endless press over it’s requests for Clinton papers and dark mutterings that the Clinton fix is in. Turns out the Associated Press discovered that the Archives hasn’t even processed Judicial Watch’s request yet. Clinton’s minions have yet to touch it.
The fine details of Clinton’s Archives letter matter, and I doubt he wants to help his enemies, but on the broader front he is correct and his critics ignore the history of the law and past Presidential Libraries.
Say he let it rip as the Washington Post recently proposed, releasing everything without review. And in this mythical world President Bush quickly signed off on everything, and the National Archives had staff to shovel it all through. Let’s write the headlines:
“Let’s Do Lani Guinier’s Taxes!”
“Publicly Close, Clinton wrote Infrequently to Mother”
“They Believed In Bill, Now Failed Clinton Nominees Privacy Exposed”
It’s an issue, and a headache for Candidate Clinton, but the pretense that there is a snappy solution to this is getting tiresome.
I
The Bush Administration put out word that it’s no camera torture briefing was somehow inspired by a photograph of an Eisenhower White House event. 
Eisenhower had other redeeming qualities. In the photo below he is witnessing a demonstration of torture techniques at the just liberated Ohrdruf concentration camp.
[Unlike Ronald Reagan, Eisenhower actually witnessed the camps.]
The Los Angeles Times provides a Chief Executive map of the stars in the wake of Dennis Kucinich’s claim to have seen UFOs.
And a link for what one hopes is the definitive site on the topic: www.presidentialufo.com .
Kucinich joins the chain of greats from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan
Even salt-of-the-earth Gerry Ford would bow to the Alien Interest on occasion:
