Murky Record 
She was billed as a singer during the Truman Administration, but the late Margaret Truman achieved greater fame for cashing in with an interminable stream of Murder At The [insert known DC landmark here] novels carrying her name.
Perhaps the definitive excavation of the Margaret Truman books and who may have actually written them appeared in The Weekly Standard. Jon L. Breen toured the murky world of celebrity ghost written novels, with a hard stare at the Truman industry.
Breen fingers Donald Bain, whose works under his own name have a respectable following. Perhaps now we’ll learn the facts. Or maybe not. The long dead Eliot Roosevelt continues to pump out the paper.
And when imagination completely failed: 
Strongmen Weep 
The death of the monstrous Suharto throws new light on the recently beloved Gerald Ford. Suharto presided what couldn’t possibly described as a “decent” regime, and from the massacre of a million Reds to the East Timor genocide he had the foursquare support of six Us Presidents.
Thrill once more to Ford and Kissinger signing off on the invasion of EastTimor, with the horrors that unfolded. The National Security Archives has packaged up their Suharto greatest hits, and there’s more.
They’ve included a link to an upcoming book with perhaps the coolest title ever in international relations,
Economists with Guns. 
Local Hero 
President Bush has hinted before that he’ll live in Dallas after this year, but he’s dropping more. 
He referred to Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert at a recent meeting, saying “I have to be good because my mayor is in the room.” The Presidential Library presumptive at SMU continues to be plotted behind closed doors, and the temporary home for his archives has been rented in a Dallas suburb. 
He should be able to find a house. The region is a national leader in home foreclosures.
“My frame of reference is what worksâ€
Thank goodness Barack Obama isn’t invested in the 60s like those tiresome boomers.
But he appears to replace their obsessions with his own free-floating grab bag of Time “Man of the Year” cliches. If he doesn’t care for the 60s perhaps he can catch up on the 80s.
Obama’s Reagan Mania recalls the grimly practical Deng Xiaoping, ”It doesn’t matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.”
And has Democratic Hall Monitor Paul Krugman points out, the Reagan Era wasn’t such a buoyant time, boyish charm aside.
“… the great failure of the Clinton administration — more important even than its failure to achieve health care reform, though the two failures were closely related — was the fact that it didn’t change the narrative, a fact demonstrated by the way Republicans are still claiming to be the next Ronald Reagan…Now progressives have been granted a second chance to argue that Reaganism is fundamentally wrong: once again, the vast majority of Americans think that the country is on the wrong track. But they won’t be able to make that argument if their political leaders, whatever they meant to convey, seem to be saying that Reagan had it right.”
The New Home of Swank 
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s property manager has announced a new St. Petersburg location for the Presidential Library.
The Library will move from the Senate building to the Synod building. “Before the end of next year we will open the library’s representative office here – but this is going to be the first stage. The works will continue,†Vladimir Kozhin told Tass.
Shirtless to Serve You Better 
