Remembering history the way they wished it had been
 $15.95 While Supplies Last!    
……although in practice the Nixon Library & Birthplace Foundation likes to break little children’s hearts.
The cool kids will also be hanging this Nixonian wisdom on the tree. Â 
A statue expelled from the United States Capitol by Reagan cultists has come home to California.
Thomas Starr King mobilized Californians in the Civil War, squashing secessionist moves in Southern California. His statue graced the halls of Congress for decades, until an especially sleazy Congressman spotted opportunity.
Each state gets two Capitol statues, and there has not been a lot of turnover. But Congress amended the rules in 2003, allowing states to change out existing statues for other local greats.
By some coincidence, the only flips so far have brought us Eisenhower, Ford and Reagan.
Hey Look! It’s Folks In 19th Century Garb!  
California has now dedicated Reagan’s victim in a Sacramento ceremony marred by the now apparently mandatory presence of reenactors.
Better would have been a tableau featuring Representative Ken Calvert, sponsor of the Reagan insertion. Calvert’s colorful past includes police finding him in his car in a pants down situation, Laffer Curve exposed, with a woman not his wife.
Ken Calvert & His Prey 
Lights Out, Nobody Home 
 America was awash with InfectiousOptimism®, as an avuncular Ronald Reagan rolled towards 1984’s crushing of Walter Mondale. Reagan was campaigning in Hammonton New Jersey, when he felt a song coming on…
“America’s future rests in a thousand dreams inside your hearts…It rests in a message of hope in songs of a man so many young Americans admire: New Jersey’s Bruce Springsteen.“
 Bored In The USA 
It was the start of a classic GOP trope*, rope in the youngsters by referencing that rock music. It was also the beginning of musicians asking the Republicans to please stop.
Reagan labored under the misconception that Springsteen shared his cornball vision, and even better, cultural seer and future enemy of denim-clad youth George Will was the fount of this error.
 Hammonton was apparently so thrilled with Reagan’s visit the town ignored the event’s fallout, and plunked down a monument to the legendary day.
The years have not been kind to the stone.
 A recent visitor writes:
*Attempted again in the 2008 campaign, and for Springsteen, twenty-five years on some of the faithful continue tirelessly beating the same horse.
                               
Now Paperless To Serve You Better! 
Faced with demands not to destroy White House emails and account for several million which had gone missing, the Bush Administration ran out the clock. The Bush White House variously claimed there wasn’t a problem, to be working on the problem, and unsure that there was a problem.
Then they all turned into pumpkins and scurried out of town along with the Archivist of the United States, leaving the National Archives and Obama Administration to clean up the mess.
We now learn that some 22 million missing emails have been found, with prospects of more in the woods. But whatever is now found goes into the catacombs of Archives’ Presidential Library system, with all the slow delights that promises. And leaving Bush free to roam about presenting sunny memories unsullied by actual facts.
The Washington Post turns for missing papers perspective to “Scott Stanzel, a former Bush White House spokesman”
Scotty is just so weary of the whole thing, and blames litigators the Committee for Responsibility & Ethics in Washington:
Bias perhaps demonstrated by being not impressed with Scotty’s own role in the saga, offering vague assurances and misdirection until it became someone else’s problem.
