Free Republic

Abigail Adams, best known for her articulate writing and her involvement in the presidency of her husband, John, is the subject of a yearlong commemoration by the Massachusetts Historical Society that begins Sunday with a walking tour that explores the Adams family’s presence in Boston. “It’s a long walking tour, but it’s a really fun one,” said Nancy Haywood, a lead guide for the two-hour excursion. “It’s a nice way to really explore the city and learn more about this significant family.” The tour, organized by Boston By Foot, runs just two times annually, but this year, with the 200th...

President Donald Trump liked a painting of him having drinks with Abraham Lincoln, Richard Nixon and Teddy Roosevelt so much that he called the artist on the phone and then put a print of it in the White House. Called “The Republican Club,” the print of 10 Republican presidents sitting around a table could be seen briefly in the background of Trump’s interview with “60 Minutes” Sunday, and an image of that moment went viral on social media.

Former presidents are among the wealthiest people in the country. The “poorest” of them, Jimmy Carter, is worth $8 million, placing him near the fabled “one percent” of richest Americans. Bill and Hillary Clinton earned a reported $229 million in the fifteen years after the conclusion of his second term as president. And despite this fantastic wealth, taxpayers subsidize former presidents to the tune of $4 million per year because of an antiquated benefit system.Since 2000, taxpayers have paid out $63 million in benefits and office allowances to the five living former presidents (plus $5 million to President Ford and $4 million...

William & Mary Police are investigating after a statue of James Monroe was graffitied with the words “slave owner” late last month. A crime log the school sent out Monday says a “non-student” was detained for writing on a statue at 1:36 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 29 outside Tucker Hall. University spokeswoman Erin Zagursky said William & Mary Police have identified and spoken to a suspect, but no charges had been sought as of Monday afternoon.

James Madison traveled to Philadelphia in 1787 with Athens on his mind. He had spent the year before the Constitutional Convention reading two trunkfuls of books on the history of failed democracies, sent to him from Paris by Thomas Jefferson. Madison was determined, in drafting the Constitution, to avoid the fate of those “ancient and modern confederacies,” which he believed had succumbed to rule by demagogues and mobs. Madison’s reading convinced him that direct democracies—such as the assembly in Athens, where 6,000 citizens were required for a quorum—unleashed populist passions that overcame the cool, deliberative reason prized above all by...

The White House Blue Room is getting a new old look. Melania Trump has announced the restoration of a collection of furniture made for the White House by Frenchman Pierre-Antoine Bellange. The first lady says a team of curators has spent more than a decade restoring the furniture. The Committee for the Preservation of the White House approved the restoration project. President James Monroe bought the Bellange suite in 1817. Almost all of it had been auctioned off in 1859....

Jimmy Carter must be pleased. He got to surrender his “worst postwar president crown” to Barack Obama, and now with Obama’s recent return to public appearances, Jimmy is hopeful that his award for “worst postwar ex-president” will soon be gone as well. The real question for the rest of us is whether Obama will help or hurt the Dems in November. Carter and Obama are competing in the same category: reactive presidents. In 1976 Carter seemed the antidote to the scandal-plagued Nixon years. The church-going peanut farmer from Georgia appeared to be the principled outsider who could cleanse the stains...

Calvin Coolidge died from heart-failure at his home in Northampton Massachusetts on January 5th 1933 aged 60. In keeping with his wishes there was no state funeral and the ceremonial was kept to a minimum. Following the funeral attended by President Hoover and family representatives of President-Elect Roosevelt, Coolidge was taken back to his native Vermont and laid to rest in the village cemetery of Plymouth Notch next to his beloved son Calvin Jr. who had died in 1924 aged 16 and near his father and mother. To date he is the last president to be buried in a public...

Carter also said an additional statement Trump issued under fire is “still not as enthusiastic as it should be.” Jimmy Carter remains unimpressed with President Donald Trump’s belated effort to take note of and honor the late Sen. John McCain’s service to the U.S. In fact, the 93-year-old former president characterized it as “at best adequate.” Carter spoke with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell on Tuesday about Trump’s responses after McCain ― who endured torture as a POW during the Vietnam war, served more than 45 years in Congress and was the 2008 GOP presidential nominee ― died at his home in...

The news about the president is shocking. Behavior that would get most people fired has taken place, and something must be done. Are we, as a nation, not up in arms when a president: --Is repeatedly and humiliatingly unfaithful to his wife? --Engages in sexually exploitative conduct with young women working for him? --Is credibly accused of sexual misconduct by more than one woman? --Uses racial slurs to describe African-Americans, in the crudest possible terms? --Lies to the American public repeatedly? --Spies on journalists and denies them access to the White House? --Interferes with investigations into foreign nationals suspected of...

The retired peanut farmer, 93, has been less vocal than other former commanders in chief about the goings-on in the White House, but in a recent interview with The Washington Post, Carter seared Trump’s policies and character. “I think he’s a disaster … In human rights and in treating people equal,” the 39th president said before his wife, former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, 91, jumped in. “The worst is that he is not telling the truth, and that just hurts everything,” she added. Cohen implicated Trump in a federal crime when the lawyer admitted to a federal judge that, at...

PLAINS, Ga. -- Jimmy Carter finishes his Saturday night dinner, salmon and broccoli casserole on a paper plate, flashes his famous toothy grin and calls playfully to his wife of 72 years, Rosalynn. "C'mon, kid," he says. She laughs and takes his hand, and they walk carefully through a neighbor's kitchen filled with 1976 campaign buttons, photos of world leaders and a couple of unopened cans of Billy Beer and then out the back door. Three Secret Service agents wait. They do this just about every weekend in this tiny town where they were born -- he almost 94 years...

They have no chef and they cook for themselves, often together. They make their own yogurt. On this summer morning, Rosalynn mixes pancake batter and sprinkles in blueberries grown on their land. Carter cooks them on the griddle. Then he does the dishes.

I'm looking for historical ratings of Presidents from a Conservative source. Most I've read are done by "liberal" political scientists. One example? Jimmy Carter ranked higher than George W. Bush? C'mon, that's preposterous.

By now you’ve probably heard of polls that say Americans believe that “Donald Trump is the worst president in history” or that presidential scholars have ranked Trump “dead last.” I can tell you right now to ignore the polls and the so-called experts. While it may be too early to properly gauge presidential rankings for recent presidents, I am confident that history will ultimately judge Barack Obama as the worst president our nation has ever seen. The mountain of evidence that condemns his presidency to the bottom of the barrel is overwhelming. In my just re-released book, The Worst President...

President Trump has once again drawn the sneers and condescension of the Leftist establishment media with his claim that “I am the most popular person in the history of the Republican Party—92 percent. Beating Lincoln. I beat our Honest Abe.” Lincoln, sniffed Newsweek, “died a decade before the telephone, which is used for polling, was even invented, and about 80 years before job approval polls for presidents started.” CNN intoned magisterially, “That’s a hard claim to back up.” But lost in the media contempt was the salient fact that Lincoln, as revered as he has been since his death, was...

Americans have tossed former President Bill Clinton aside and now say that former President Barack Obama was the “best” president of their lifetime -- by a huge gap of 31 percent to 13 percent. But a new Pew Research Center survey of 2,002 adults found that President Trump topped Obama as the best president of their lifetime at this stage of his presidency.

President Coolidge crushes PROGRESSIVISM 4 July 1926 If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. Calvin Coolidge

It is a fact of American history that three of the five Founding Father Presidents died on the Independence Day anniversary. But was it just a coincidence? Back on July 4, 1831, James Monroe, the fifth President, died at the age of 73 at his son-in-law’s home in New York City. Monroe had been ill for some time and newspapers had reported on Monroe’s illness before his passing. Local and national newspapers were also quick to report after Monroe’s death that they thought his July 4th passing was a “remarkable” coincidence, at the least, since Thomas Jefferson and John Adams...

President Trump received a lot of criticism for his historic meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, who is known for his human rights abuses. The only thing new that Trump is doing is establishing friendly relations with a new country. (video)