Man With a Plan 
Not satisfied with claiming executive powers based on fanciful yet secret legal reasoning and “losing” millions of White House emails, the Bush White House has moved to bury a small advance for the public’s prying eyes.
New Freedom of Information Act legislation created an office to track FOIA requests and promote greater transparency. So Bush’s new budget would dump it in the Justice Department, which among other things defends agencies sued for denying FOIA requests.
Done and Done!
Memories Are Made of This 
Maryland State Senators are mobilizing to make Ronald Reagan Day a beloved state tradition every February 6th, and they are straining for personal anecdotes.
Senator Roy Dyson is a former Congressman bumped down to the minors. He told legislators a touching tale of Reagan gift cuff-links, but the effect was diminished by Dyson’s sloth.
“I have a pair of cufflinks, he gave them to me and asked me to give them to my father who was dying that year,” said Roy Dyson, who brought the slightly rusty cufflinks to show the committee but forgot them in his car.”
Virginia too looks ahead. The House of Delegates voted for a state Ronald Reagan Day, with a single dissenting vote. The reward for Delegate Lionell Spruill was to be mocked by family values Republicans for sponsoring a bill to prohibit motorists demonstrating their manhood by hanging rubber testicles beneath their vehicles.
Georgia is also addressing the loss of America’s President
. The Georgia Senate voted for a lengthy resolution crediting the late communicator with all things sunny and bright, with a shout out last clause alerting the fount of naming-anything-stationary-and-some-that-aren’t for Reagan, Grover Norquist:
“BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Secretary of the Senate is authorized and directed to transmit an appropriate copy of this resolution to the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project.”
Delaware too has fallen to the forces of infectious optimism, and the Wisconsin House passed a resolution with some dissent. With Reaganesque inattention to detail.
“Despite all the rhetoric, no one in that hallowed chamber pointed out that the resolution was to recognize “Feb. 6, 2007″ as Reagan day.”
01/30/07 Update:
Dover Delaware joins the parade.
Utah pauses to remember, although they seem a little uncertain:
“He seemed to speak with passion…”
Ill-starred Presidential filmmaker Oliver Stone now threatens a George Bush biopic, with a leading man offering all the “same drive and charisma that Americans identify with Bush.”
Stone’s “JFK” was an incoherent mash-up of as many conspiracy theories as sleepy Kevin Costner could carry, and “Nixon” was just dull. 
My personal hope is that Stone’s Bush takes a flashback to the Reagan/Bush 80s and 90s, and somehow finally explains what the hell Jim Belushi’s “Doctor Rock” character was doing in Salvador. 
“Stone Says I’ve Got It” 
Bush marks MLK Day.
“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.”
Truth & Consequences 
Ronald Reagan’s miracle working powers are a staple of Republican writing and rhetoric .
Now comes a theory that the infectious optimism from beyond can smote Democrats, even from the grave. OpenLeft’s Matt Stoller suggests that “swing liberals” heard Barack Obama’s comments on the sunlit days of the Reagan Era, and that was enough to flip them to Hillary Clinton.
“We have been fighting Ronald Reagan’s psychologically diseased followers and predecessors since, well, since they called themselves the Confederacy and fought for slavery. And we will keep fighting them if we are to retain a republic. That’s why the self-identified very liberal Democrats swung away from Obama and took Nevada from him. Because he very self-consciously explained that he is not part of that fight, and they want a leader who is.”
Days of Yore 
