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WASHINGTON, Jan. 16, 2007 – With flags around the nation still at half staff in memory of the late President Gerald R. Ford, Vice President Richard B. Cheney called today’s naming of the Navy’s newest aircraft carrier in Ford’s honor an even more fitting tribute because it looks to the future. Speaking today at the Pentagon naming ceremony for the ship, Cheney joined Navy Secretary Donald C. Winter and other officials and servicemembers in naming the first of the new CVN-21 class of aircraft carrier the USS Gerald R. Ford. The new class will replace the USS Enterprise and...

DUBLIN, Calif. - A woman who once tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford says she regrets the murder attempt and joins Americans in mourning his recent death. Sara Jane Moore was only 40 feet away from Ford outside the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco when she fired a single shot at him on Sept. 22, 1975. As she raised her .38 caliber revolver, Oliver Sipple, a disabled former U.S. Marine who was standing next to her, pushed up her arm as the gun discharged. The bullet flew over Ford's head by several feet, ricocheted off the side of the...

Justice Appointed by Ford Remembers the Late President Exclusive Interview: John Paul Stevens Recalls Ford's Selection Over Conservative Favorite By JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG WASHINGTON, Jan. 2, 2007 — - Today Justice John Paul Stevens remembered the president who nominated him to the Supreme Court more than three decades ago, a decision that changed Stevens' life and the makeup of the Court. In his only network TV interview, Stevens recalled meeting President Ford for the first time. "My two very firm impressions from that meeting were, one, he was a fine lawyer; and two, he was the kind of person I...

Video link here: http://video.ap.org/v/en-ap/v.htm?g=B5D36D03-D975-466B-A811-81330FED9619&t=s60&p=ENAPus_ENAPus&&f=MOKAS

Gerald Ford, who died last week at age 93, lived longer than any other president and survived after leaving office longer than any other president but Herbert Hoover. So we've had time to reflect on where he and his presidency stand in history. As commentators have been reminding us, Ford healed the wounds of Watergate and provided steady leadership in difficult times. But there is more to be said. Ford came to office when the postwar consensus on foreign and economic policy was in ruins. The nation seemed on a downward trajectory at home and abroad. By dint of hard...

In addition to seeing my video tribute to President Ford on my personal website, it is now on youtube so you can share and not have to worry about my bandwidth.

Subject: The Book of Proverbs Come to Life Did anybody happen to notice yesterday the picture God painted for us as we watched the events of the day unfold on every news station around the world. The portrait of three men's lives shown clearly through the events of their deaths. One a wise man, one a foolish man and one a wicked man. Three men captured the world's attention by their lives and their deaths. Their funerals spoke volumes about the course of life they had chosen to pursue with the few short years God had granted to them. Yesterday,...

The United States Capitol Rotunda       Remembering President Gerald R. Ford (1913-2006) 8:11 P.M. EST THE VICE PRESIDENT: Mrs. Ford, Susan, Mike, Jack, and Steve; distinguished guests; colleagues and friends; and fellow citizens: Nothing was left unsaid, and at the end of his days, Gerald Ford knew how much he meant to us and to his country. He was given length of years, and many times in his company we paid our tributes and said our thanks. We were proud to call him our leader, grateful to know him as a man. We told him these things, and there is...

Funeral plans for President Ford. All times are local: Friday, Dec. 29 — Palm Desert, Calif. 12:20 p.m. President Ford's casket arrives at St. Margaret's Episcopal Church in Palm Desert, Calif. Mrs. Ford and the family will have a private prayer service. 1:15 p.m. Close friends and guests will arrive at St. Margaret's for private visitation. The Ford family will return to their residence. 4:20 p.m. Public repose begins at St. Margaret's. The church will remain open until 8 a.m. on Saturday.

Gerald R. Ford was a professional politician who tempered the practice of his trade's deceits with innate decency. That was demonstrated to me on April 1, 1971, in an incident unique in my half-century as a Washington reporter. I had been tipped that House Republican Leader Ford was performing a confidential mission at President Richard Nixon's request: to ask Republican members of Congress how they would react to presidential clemency or even a pardon for Lt. William Calley, sentenced a day earlier for the murder of 22 Vietnamese civilians. I called Ford to ask whether Nixon had met with him...

Sometimes, in what may be the only country whose people rhapsodize about a national dream, what the people need most is something less fanciful: integrity, common sense and a common touch, without flourishes, rhetorical or otherwise. Gerald Ford brought those qualities to a troubled country at the right moment. His accidental presidency may not be rated highly by historians, but Ford was the kind of man a nation in agony needed. Uniquely, Ford served as both vice president (named to the post after President Nixon's vice president, Spiro Agnew, resigned in disgrace over a bribery scandal) and then president without...

HIS NAME was dirt after he pardoned Richard Nixon in 1974, but President Gerald R. Ford did it anyway. His approval rating plummeted from 71 percent to 36 percent in less than a year. The unconditional pardon may well have cost Ford his bid to win the White House in 1976, but it is a reason Americans may look at Ford with gratitude and respect in 2006. Consider Ford's example as a lesson in how actions that might seem all wrong in the heat of the moment, can look so right in retrospect. Nixon chose Ford to replace Vice President...

Life lessons From A President Gerald Ford is best known for pardoning Richard Nixon. His extraordinary early life is too often ignored Brian Kalt, National Post Published: Thursday, December 28, 2006 Unusually for a presidential library, Gerald Ford's is in a simple, unassuming building, tucked away in a remote corner of the University of Michigan's campus in Ann Arbor. Gerald Ford and his presidency often seem tucked away, as well. His service was the briefest in the last 125 years. The most prominent parts of his presidency -- the parts mentioned in the first line of every obituary -- were...

In a 2004 interview, former President Ford said he wouldn't have gone to war in Iraq. Ford told Bob Woodward of The Washington Post that he "very strongly" disagreed with President Bush's reasoning. Ford asked that the interview be held until after his death. Ford was also critical of Vice President Cheney -- his White House chief of staff -- and then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who also served as Ford's chief of staff and later was his secretary of defense. The former president said the two "made a big mistake" in pushing weapons of mass destruction as a justification for...

Last lunch with a legend Speaks candidly about the WMDs and war in Iraq BY THOMAS M. DeFRANK DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF Thomas DeFrank, the Washington bureau chief for the Daily News, is seen in this 1996 photo talking to Gerald Ford. The men struck up a friendship that lasted three decades. Below, the two chat on Air Force One. Daily News Washington Bureau Chief Thomas M. DeFrank interviewed Gerald Ford more than three dozen times during the late President's retirement years. He saw Ford in November at his California home and spent more than two hours with him...

"Portrait of Gerald R. Ford, named Leslie Lynch King, Jr. until 1916, around ten months old." "A photo provided by the Gerald R. Ford Library shows Gerald Ford a student in elementary school in 1923." "A photo provided by the Gerald R. Ford Library shows Gerald Ford in 1936 as a ranger at Yellowstone National Park." "A photo provided by the Gerald R. Ford Library shows Navigation Officer Gerald Ford using a sextant aboard the USS Monterey in 1944." "A photo provided by the Gerald R. Ford Library shows Gerald Ford as a naval officer in 1945." "Former US...

Funeral events will begin Friday when the casket, accompanied by Mrs. Ford and family members, will arrive at St. Margaret's Episcopal Church in Palm Desert. A private prayer service for family will be held, followed by visitation for invited friends before a public viewing begins about 4:20 p.m. PST. On Saturday, the casket will be taken from St. Margaret's at 9 a.m. PST to Palm Springs International Airport, where it will depart at 10 a.m. PST for Andrews Air Force Base, Md. On arrival, a motorcade will take the casket to Washington, D.C., stopping en route for a ceremony at...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Comedian Chevy Chase, who became famous in the 1970s portraying Gerald Ford as an amiable klutz, praised the former president on Wednesday and said they later became friendly in spite of the biting comedy routines. Chase, 63, was an original cast member on the trend-setting late-night comedy television show "Saturday Night Live" and frequently opened the show pretending to be Ford stumbling and falling. The parody in 1975-6 helped reinforce a popular image about Ford's clumsiness, even though the president had been a star athlete in college. "He had never been elected period, so I never...

LOS ANGELES - Gerald R. Ford, who picked up the pieces of Richard Nixon's scandal-shattered White House as the 38th and only unelected president in America's history, has died, his wife, Betty, said Tuesday. He was 93. "My family joins me in sharing the difficult news that Gerald Ford, our beloved husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather has passed away at 93 years of age," Mrs. Ford said in a brief statement issued from her husband's office in Rancho Mirage. "His life was filled with love of God, his family and his country." The statement did not say where Ford...

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