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The director and two stars of the Oscar-nominated "Avatar" flew to the aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower last week for a visit and a special screening of the movie in the ship's hangar bay. Actors Michelle Rodriguez and Stephen Lang signed autographs and posed for photos with the crew, according to a Navy news release. They also toured the guided-missile cruiser Hue City. They were accompanied by director James Cameron, producer Jon Landau and Cameron's brother John, a former Marine and the movie's military consultant. The Eisenhower left Norfolk on Jan. 2 for a six-month deployment to the Middle East....

[Archibald Carey, a black preacher from Chicago, was a friend of Republican President Dwight Eisenhower. Eisenhower had Mr. Carey speak at the 1952 Republican Convention in Chicago. The text below is from the speech Mr. Carey gave at that convention. Next to it the link is text from MLK Jr.'s speech.]

The Brown-Coakley Senate race has echoes of another time, another era when a Mass. Senate race generated extraordinary enthusiasm and created a seismic shift in voter attitudes that came to define a lasting political realignment. In 1952, a young Irish Catholic Democratic Congressman named John F. Kennedy took on sitting Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, who had previously defeated three similar Irish Catholic candidates. Lodge, of course, was from one of the "first families" of Massachusetts, and with his WASP pedigree and Republican heritage, typified New England political structure of the time. However, solidifying the trends of the previous decades, New...

At a time when there seems to be a lack of heroes, especially in the Presidency during the last decades, the biography of Dwight D. (Ike) Eisenhower is a reminder of the pride Americans felt for the General, the man and the country.

George W. Bush's State of the Union address must have baffled anyone who voted for him based on his pledge to cut the size of government. That speech has been properly and efficiently pilloried by Joseph Stromberg, Alan Bock, and others. The speech was both Wilsonian and Clintonian, which is to say that it proposed a political solution for all human problems and backed this idea with a promise of massive increases in federal spending on just about everything. But should we really be so surprised? Contrary to popular myth, every Republican president since and including Herbert Hoover has increased...

Most of us know that President Eisenhower, in his farewell speech, warned of the danger of the "military-industrial complex". Regardless of your particular stand on military spending, there is no doubt that he was substantially right about the enormous abuse of power and fraud in the defense industry. Less known is the Eisenhower's second warning in the speech. Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in...

CBS News Early Show

SIXTY-FIVE years ago, in November 1944, the war in Europe was at a stalemate. A resurgent Wehrmacht had halted the Allied armies along Germany’s borders after its headlong retreat across northern France following D-Day. From Holland to France, the front was static — yet thousands of Allied soldiers continued to die in futile battles to reach the Rhine River. One Allied army, however, was still on the move. The Sixth Army Group reached the Rhine at Strasbourg, France, on Nov. 24, and its commander, Lt. Gen. Jacob L. Devers, looked across its muddy waters into Germany. His force, made up...

ABOARD USS RONALD REAGAN AT SEA, July 6, 2009 – The Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group relieved the Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group today in command of Task Force 50 and launched its first sorties in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. An F/A-18F Super Hornet assigned to Strike Fighter Squadron 22 launches from the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, July 6, 2009. Ronald Reagan relieved USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in command of Task Force 50 and launched its first sorties into Afghanistan to support Operation Enduring Freedom. U.S. Navy photo by Seaman Apprentice Oliver Cole  (Click...

It is in this arena that Eisenhower excelled and that, I believe, Obama will fail us. As Barack Obama spends his precious time talking about the challenges of the day by noting the shortcomings of the past administration, Eisenhower went to work. As Obama rubs shoulders with Hollywood elites and runs the late night talk show circuit, Eisenhower addressed the bottom line needs of the country. As Obama triples the country’s debt and nationalizes the free market system, Eisenhower gave us economic prosperity after the bloodiest of wars.

Historical comparisons have to be drawn with caution. No two events are identical. The pitfalls of historical analogy are as numerous as its benefits. However, comparing events in history can clarify and sharpen our understanding of the phenomenon under discussion. Obama delivers remarks at Cairo University on Thursday. Photo: AP In this spirit, it's possible to draw a comparison between President Barack Obama's new policy toward Israel and that pursued by president Dwight Eisenhower and his administration from 1953 until 1957, when it also changed the direction of US policy toward Israel. The similarities are quite striking. Eisenhower and his...

Sixty-five years ago, Gen. Eisenhower prepared himself for D-Day with hope and trepidation. Having made the decision to go earlier on the day of June 5, he spent time during the afternoon with the paratroopers who would be the first to leave for France. Although he said that he found it hard to look men in the eye on the eve of battle, knowing that many of them would soon be dead, he forced himself to the task - - it was his responsibility; ultimately, all of what would happen the next day, for better or for worse, was his...

US President Barack Obama made a major gesture of conciliation to Iran on Thursday when he admitted US involvement in the 1953 coup which overthrew the government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. "In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government," Obama said during his keynote speech to the Muslim world in Cairo. It is the first time a serving US president has publicly admitted American involvement in the coup. (snip) Obama also said: "For many years, Iran has defined itself in part by its opposition to...

Three descendants of Venus' son, who was called West Ford, say that according to a family tradition two centuries old, George Washington was West Ford's father. They hope to develop DNA evidence from Washington family descendants and his hair samples to bolster their case... There is, however, reason to believe that if the child's father was not Washington, it might have been someone closely related to him. The cousins' claim has several elements of truth, enough to set up a historical mystery as to the identity of West Ford's father and to add a new strand to the emerging links...

Political Science 101 May 18, 2009 — Ideally, science should be non-partisan and stay out of politics.  That ideal is not always met, as the following recent stories illustrate. The intellectual president:  New Scientist published a commentary, “Hail to the intellectual president,” by Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science.  Opening line: “If you liked George W. Bush, it wasn’t because of his brain.”  Ronald Reagan, John McCain and Sarah Palin were other targets labeled anti-intellectual in the article, along with McCarthy and Eisenhower.  Obama, by contrast, is “the intellectual president,” in his opinion.  “With the coming of...

On the morning of April 12th, 1945 General Eisenhower met Generals Bradley and Patton at Ohrdruf Concentration Camp. Afterward Eisenhower also ordered every American soldier in the area who was not on the front lines to visit Ohrdruf and Buchenwald. He wanted them to see for themselves what they were fighting against. On this Yom HaShoah their words are much more moving then anything I could say : During the camp inspections with his top commanders Eisenhower said that the atrocities were “beyond the American mind to comprehend.” He ordered that every citizen of the town of Gotha personally tour...

Much has been written in recent weeks of the Obama administration's possible tilt toward a more evenhanded U.S. Middle East policy. Contrary to popular perception, however, if such a change were indeed implemented, it would constitute not so much a new and revolutionary approach as it would an old and reactionary one. It would, in fact, be several giant steps backward to the approach pursued by the U.S. for the first decade and a half of Israel's existence, never more faithfully than during the eight-year tenure of Dwight Eisenhower, who died 40 years ago on March 28 at the age...

On Saturday January 17, 2009, during the Fox 4 0′clock news hour, Shepard Smith recalled the anniversary of President Eisenhower’s famous 1961 farewell address to the nation, but he only mentioned one of Ike’s threat warnings, the one that reminded us to beware of the "Military Industrial Complex." This warning came from a military man, so it’s been a turn of phrase that slobbers off the lips of suspicious lefty infants shortly after they’re forced to abandon the nipple and accept Marx.

WHY WE DON'T CELEBRATE 'HISTORIANS DAY'February 18, 2009Being gracious winners, this week, liberals howled with delight at George Bush for coming in seventh-to-last in a historians' ranking of the presidents from best to worst. This was pretty shocking. Most liberals can't even name seven U.S. presidents. Being ranked one of the worst presidents by "historians" is like being called "anti-American" by the Nation magazine. And by "historian," I mean a former member of the Weather Underground, who is subsidized by the taxpayer to engage in left-wing political activism in a cushy university job. So congratulations, George Bush! Whenever history professors...

A friend asked me to consider Dwight Eisenhower as the last "fiscally responsible" President. Until the launch of Sputnik and the subsequent advent of the Space Race, he says that Eisenhower tried hard to blunt Soviet expansion and meet them head-on during his administration while also doing his utmost to keep the budget of the government balanced and its growth checked. Basically, once Sputnik was launched and the CIA caught flat-footed on estimates about the advanced level if the Soviet rocketry program and ICBM capabilities, subsequent administrations spared no expense in meeting any perceived threat. This sort of "spare no...