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Harry Truman is the one president widely admired today who was generally reviled in his own times. There was no cult of personality around Truman while he was in the White House; to the contrary, he eventually logged the lowest approval ratings in Gallup’s history, just nudging out Richard Nixon on the eve of resignation. His legislative record was anemic. He failed to curb the anti-communist fervor known as McCarthyism, and the carnage of the Korean War is part of his resume. The fact Truman endures is a testament to two factors: the first, his exemplary decision to assert American...

It’s often been said that Barack Obama is an audacious leader. But perhaps it's better to consider the possibility that he is just a politician who lacks a sense of irony, at least when it comes to himself. For example, last weekend in Detroit, the president said: The time for Washington games is over. The time for action is now. No more manufactured crises. No more games. Now is not the time for the people you sent to Washington to worry about their jobs; now is the time for them to worry about your jobs. This would perhaps be a...

War Strategy: When Bush and Petraeus proposed the surge in Iraq, Democrats demanded that the general testify before Congress. So why has the Senate blocked a similar invitation to our commander in Afghanistan? Those with memories longer than the 24-hour news cycle recall that in the dark days of the Iraq War, David Petraeus was summoned to Washington to explain the surge strategy that would eventually lead to victory in Iraq. Democrats hoped for a show trial. MoveOn.org took out a full-page ad in the New York Times labeling the commanding general of our efforts in Iraq "General Betray-us." Then...

Here is video of Sen. John McCain nearly two years ago saying that President Harry Truman did the right thing in dropping the atomic bomb on Japan on August 6, 1945. McCain was asked if it was the right thing to do while campaigning in New Hampshire on August 10, 2007, and he responded that it was. McCain pointed out that the decision actually saved both American and Japanese lives. EXIT QUESTION: I wonder how President Obama would answer that question if asked today? . . . . . (Watch Video)

The first country to recognize the State of Israel was the United States. That recognition almost didn't happen. It was by the will of the President, Harry Truman, that the UN Partition Plan was implemented. Throughout the months leading up to May 1948, the president made his wishes clear, he wanted a Homeland for the Jewish People, not because of political reasons, but because it was the right and moral thing to do. The Secretary of State who Truman called the greatest living American, was just as opposed to the creation of the nascent Jewish state as the president supported...

Poe: "They are leftists, dedicated to overthrowing our Constitutional system," and "they will go to any length to conceal their radicalism from the public." Understanding the Alinsky Method of "Community Organizing" Written by Bob Dill Sep 24, 2008 at 12:00 AM Meet the Real Obama and Cult of Alinsky " The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 1:9 KJV) It is becoming readily apparent that the "change" being proposed vaguely by Sen. Barack Obama is...

Full Article at Political Capital Before you read this article, take a couple steps back from your political opinions - because I can already hear the partisan bickering. I want you to approach this and analyze it in an antiseptic, neutral way - regardless of whether you are a Bush lover or Bush hater. I think both camps will find things to love, and hate in this article. But, reserve judgment please - because this is an article about how history will remember George W. Bush, it is not a political judgment on his presidency. Indeed, you will find several...

After 50 years, an American state secret has been revealed, about the arrest of 12,000 people because of Hoover’s “red” paranoia. The former director of the FBI, Edgar Hoover made plans for the arrest of 12,000 American citizens which he considered to be threats to national security – documents reveals that no longer bear the status of state secret. Hoover sent this request to the president at the time Harry Truman at the beginning of the Korean war during the 50s. He justified the move as necessary for protection from “treason, spies and sabotage”. For now there is no evidence...

This morning I received an e-mail from a crusty lady in Sheridan Wyoming who happens to be a Fred Thompson supporter. This lady has e-mailed me before adding a little to each of my articles supporting Fred Thompson. Charlotte isn’t the only one who tells me they are behind Fred Thompson 100%. I would have used the popular Democratic statistic of 110% except like so many things Democratic 110% doesn’t exist. Democrats are always trying to convince the voters they can go several steps beyond what’s physically possible. Every time Hillary opens her mouth she goes 110% beyond reality, she’s...

Former President Harry Truman has received much opprobrium from left-wing circles in the U.S. and elsewhere for his decision to substitute two atomic bombs in place of a D-Day type invasion of Japan in 1945. It was interesting to me to observe during Ken Burn’s current documentary, “War”, that Burns reported that credible estimates of the human cost of such an invasion were in the neighborhood of 500,000 dead Americans and 6,000,000 dead Japanese.

The official presidential portrait of John Fitzgerald Kennedy tells quite a story. His pensive expression, curled shoulders and folded arms are not mere emblems of the physical ailments he so manfully absorbed; they help cut the figure of a northeastern liberal -- a Democrat -- who through inspired oratory and steely resolve faced down Soviet communism. This, at a time when many were resigned to the inevitability of its expansion. But Kennedy -- historic though his presidency was, and beatified though it has become -- in his time was not breaking the mould of the Democratic party in the United...

When all government, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the Center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated. -- Thomas Jefferson, 1821 Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain, quoted in A.B. Paine's Mark Twain: A Biography (Harper, 1912, Vol. 2, page 724). The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop. --...

From The American Forum During the Korean Conflict, press censorship went through different stages. Censorship was voluntary until the Chinese Army entered the war. U.S. military commanders complained that correspondents had released information about troop movements, recovery of American prisoners from the Chinese and the use of a new combat airplane. Tougher restraints were imposed upon the press. All news stories were required to submit news reports and film to Army and Air Force censors. On March 13, 1951, all news stories and film were also required to be approved by censors in Japan. In January 1953, a Joint Field...

An NRO Q&A Elizabeth Edwards Spalding, assistant professor of government and director of the Washington program at Claremont McKenna College calls Harry Truman the First Cold Warrior. She recently took questions from NRO Editor Kathryn Lopez about her book, The First Cold Warrior: Harry Truman, Containment, And the Remaking of Liberal Internationalism. Kathryn Jean Lopez: Why isn’t FDR the first Cold Warrior? Elizabeth Edwards Spalding: FDR thought he could keep the Soviet Union satisfied through spheres of influence and his personal style of diplomacy. So FDR was willing to legitimate the Kremlin in a way that Truman never allowed. Even...

The Euston Manifesto refers to a coming together of a group of British liberals who have come to understand the extent of the threat to civilized values represented by the Islamic fundamentalists. They proclaimed their public recognition of this threat and, while not all of them support the war in Iraq, they proclaim their support of the British government's anti-terrorism programs. A group of American liberals, seeing the Euston Manifesto, and coming to similar conclusions, have decided to issue an American version of the Euston Manifesto, and have created a website where American liberals can add their voices and their...

Though it has been a long 53 years since former President Harry S. Truman was in office, he was the hot topic of conversation at The Hudson Institute on Monday, July 17, where a panel discussed his legacy and influence on current policies. Truman’s defense-laden foreign policy has recently been compared to President George W. Bush’s tactics for the War on Terror; an association that was a major point of discussion for the three members of the panel. While the speakers all had their own specific opinions of the Bush-Truman comparison, they all praised Truman’s policies while he was in...

President George W. Bush strides across the world stage as much as the U.S. dominates the world's stage. This is very good news for those of us who still believe in decency and democracy. So forget what some slanted opinion polls say about the leadership of the 43rd president and his patriot countrymen. Recall, Sir Winston Churchill was once one of the most detested men in Britain, then went on to save the free world. That's Churchill's undisputed legacy. In another era it may be Bush's legacy, too. This past week, Australian Prime Minister John Howard, one of America's strongest...

THOUSANDS OF TROOPS have died fighting a war he chose to fight--a war that increasingly appears to be a microcosm of something much larger than what the American people had bargained for. He seems to be stretching presidential power beyond what his predecessors ever imagined. His approval ratings hover around the freezing point. It's no coincidence that his party is beginning to stray from him, and the press is writing him off as a failure.What sounds like a thumbnail sketch of George W. Bush in 2006, is actually a description of Harry S. Truman's nightmarish 1950. In fact, these underestimated...

On Wednesday, January 18, I received an e-mail from someone identifying himself as “Ahmed.” He wrote to me that he was a “Muslim activist” and that he wanted me to come on his radio show to discuss my work, or, in his words, “to give [my] side of the story.” In doing a simple web search on his e-mail address, it turned out that this individual was none other than the Director of Communications for the Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Ahmed Rehab. While I didn’t know his motives in contacting me, I had recalled when...

Description American Gunfight is the fast-paced, definitive, and breathtakingly suspenseful account of an extraordinary historical event -- the attempted assassination of President Harry Truman in 1950 by two Puerto Rican Nationalists and the bloody shoot-out in the streets of Washington, D.C., that saved the president's life. Written by Pulitzer Prize-winner Stephen Hunter, the widely admired and bestselling novelist and author of such books as Havana, Hot Springs, and Dirty White Boys, and John Bainbridge, Jr., an experienced journalist and lawyer, American Gunfight is at once a groundbreaking work of meticulous historical research and the vivid and dramatically told story of...