Today is President Jimmy Carter's 100th birthday. James Earl Carter Jr.was born on October 1, 1924 at the Wise Sanitarium, in Plains, Georgia. He was the first president to be born in a hospital.


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An October surprise is a news event that may influence the outcome of an upcoming November Presidential election, whether deliberately planned or spontaneously occurring. Because election day is in early November, events that take place in October have greater potential to influence the decisions of prospective voters and allow less time to take ( Read more... )

On August 27, 1908 (116 years ago today) Lyndon Baines Johnson, the 36th President of the United States, was born in Stonewall, Texas in a small farmhouse on the Pedernales River. His parents were Samuel Ealy Johnson, Jr. and Rebekah Baines. His father served five terms in the Texas legislature.


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In October of 2013, former Nixon speechwriter Ben Stein was a guest on the Late Show with Craig Ferguson. Asked about the role of the Republican party in the then current US government shutdown because of their objection to the Affordable Care Act, Stein said that his old boss, Richard Nixon, had proposed similar legislation and Stein had written a ( Read more... )

Alternate Presidents is a collection of 28 short stories edited by Mike Resnick, speculating on what history might have been like if the outcome of 28 presidential elections would have been different. This anthology was released on February 15, 1992. This book is a delight to read. Resnick, a Hugo Award winning science fiction writer, also ( Read more... )

The story of Thomas Eagleton isn't so much a scandal as it is a shameful example of how dirty politics can be sometimes. Eagleton was a Democratic Senator from Missouri and for 18 days he was a candidate for Vice-President of the United States. He was dumped from the ticket by Democratic Presidential Candidate George McGovern. Eagleton's sin? He ( Read more... )

Aaron Burr served one term as Vice-President of the United States (under President Thomas Jefferson) from 1801 to 1805. When he left the office at the end of his term in 1805, he headed west of the Allegheny Mountains and down the Ohio River Valley into the lands acquired in the Louisiana Purchase. Burr had leased 40,000 acres of land, known as the ( Read more... )

Edward VIII, the King of England, and President Richard Nixon have at least one thing in common. Both of them gave up their offices before the end of their terms. In the King's case, he abdicated the throne after less than a year in order to marry a woman who was an American socialite, who had been divorced twice, at a time when such a thing was ( Read more... )

Richard Nixon is the only President to have resigned the office. Nixon realized that he would not only be impeached as the result of the Watergate scandal and his attempted cover-up of it, but that he would be convicted in a likely impeachment trial. Seeing the writing on the wall, Nixon resigned the Presidency on August 9, 1974 after addressing ( Read more... )

Some have compared President Joe Biden's recent decision not to run for re-election to that of Lyndon Johnson, who, in March of 1968, announced to the nation his decision not to seek another term in office. But Johnson's decision was not based on concerns of competency or age (Johnson was not yet 60 when he decided not to seek another four years in ( Read more... )