1913-1994

He died 17 years ago tonight, also on a Friday, in New York Hospital. Kathy O'Connor, his last chief of staff, was holding his hand and felt him leave.

Yglesias To Sullivan (Implicitly): Drop Trig

In August 2008 Andrew Sullivan published a fabricated story about Trig Palin's parentage before checking the facts, doing more than anyone else to make it the most effective libel of the campaign. Now the U.S.'s most respected progressive blogger, Matthew Yglesias, has checked the evidence and written:

Sarah Palin is Trig Palin’s mother and nobody has any business claiming otherwise.

Sullivan personally mainstreamed Trig birtherism, an annoying distraction to the country and injustice to the Palin family. Time for him to examine the evidence himself, end his crusade, and apologize. If he doesn't, then on this issue, he'll be the moral equivalent of Donald Trump, who ignored this evidence while leveraging himself into the 2012 campaign.

Holy Leftovers

Reserved sacrament in the Chrysostom chapel at St. John's Church, Good Friday afternoon

Good Friday Sky

Yorba Linda, 10:45 a.m.

The Cupboard Is Bare

The aumbry and altar of St. John's Episcopal Church on Good Friday afternoon, following the stripping of the altar on Maundy Thursday.

Trump Brand Just Devalued By 50%

If Donald Trump really runs for president, he'll experience a different kind of journalism than he's used to as a daily reader of New York City's tabloids. Here's an example, which includes an answer from a recent deposition in which he admits, well, lying (which is just what he's been accusing the president of doing):

Asked in the deposition about his statements in 2007 that his net worth was $8 billion, Trump conceded: "I don't know. I don't think so. Well, maybe I'm adding 4 or 5 billion dollars worth, 3 billion, for the value of a brand. But I don't know."

Thorns And Barbed Wire

The Old City of Jerusalem, viewed from the Mount of Olives. "After twisting some thorns into a crown, they put it on his head. They put a reed in his right hand and knelt before him and mocked him, saying, 'Hail, King of the Jews!'" Matthew 27:29

Birthers And The Big Lie

Two perspectives on Donald Trump, his accusations against the president, and the latest polls. First, from Jonathan Martin at Politico:

With no other Republican hopefuls gaining traction, Trump has become a blinking neon stand-in for a candidate who will go beyond mainstream boundaries and make the case for why Obama isn’t just a bad president presiding over a declining America but perhaps an illegitimate one.

Trump’s mastery of media culture is what’s landed him at least 24 interviews on national network and cable television since his effective debut as a candidate at CPAC in February, providing him with the blanket media attention that his past presidential flirtations never quite enjoyed. But it’s Birtherism that serves as the rocket fuel launching Trump into presidential orbit.

But then Jim Rutenberg, summarizing a New York Times/CBS News poll on the GOP field, cools Trump's jets:

While that might indicate that there is a receptive audience for the real estate mogul Donald J. Trump as he raises questions about Mr. Obama’s citizenship, the poll also pointed to potential roadblocks for him should he pursue a formal candidacy.

Mr. Trump has been getting considerable attention as a possibly strong contender, but just about as many Republicans view him favorably as view him unfavorably — 35 percent favorably and 32 percent unfavorably— and nearly 60 percent of Republicans interviewed said they did not believe he was a serious candidate. (Far more of all voters view him unfavorably — 46 percent — than view him favorably, 25 percent.)

So birtherism hasn't gotten Trump much traction after all. But now that he's taken it mainstream, all those who have taken the birther pledge should at least be held accountable for what they're really saying. They're accusing Barack Obama of the impeachable offense of stealing the presidency by means of fraud and other crimes. They're telling the world that the U.S. doesn't have a legitimate president.

I suppose that it could be construed as some kind of a well-meaning if totally misguided act of patriotism if a sophisticated elite like Trump really believed it, but if not -- if he or anyone else is just saying it to gain an advantage with the 47% of Republicans who have convinced themselves that Obama is a fraud and usurper -- then they should be kept as far from power as possible. The U.S. doesn't need a home-grown version of the big lie.

Mad And M.A.D. In Yorba Linda

Rereading my April 19 post about the war against the Nixon Center by the White House and Bob Haldeman operatives controlling Nixon's foundation in Yorba Linda, I've come to regret suggesting that what is now the un-Nixon center (thanks to angry Watergate revanchists who forked over $2 million of a non-profit organization's assets to diss center president Dimitri Simes) had violated the parties' non-disparagement agreement.

On Monday, the center's journal, "The National Interest," published a post by veteran journalist Marvin Kalb, titled "Diminishing Nixon," about the Nixon-Haldeman foundation's embarrassing, impotent campaign to block the federal government's new Watergate exhibit.

That indeed looked at first like a first strike. But then I reread Ben Smith's analysis at Politico of the foundation's war on Simes, the U.S.-Russia relations expert Richard Nixon chose as center president. Smith names Simes foes such as Tricia Cox (wife of New York GOP chairman Ed Cox) and longtime Cox water carriers Rob Odle (a former CREEP official) and the Nixon White House's Ken Khachigian. All three are foundation board members.

Some of the hits on Simes aren't attributed. If he got wind of the smears as the article was being prepared and concluded that they were coming from persons associated with the foundation, he would naturally have surmised that they considered the agreement they had signed to be (as Nixon press secretary Ron Ziegler might have said) inoperative. Whether or not Simes would have been correct in such assumptions, Kalb's blog post would then have been (in the increasingly apropos mutually-assured-destruction language of the Cold War) a Simes counterstrike.

Two Williams And A Kate

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, talks about a wedding he's got coming up on April 29 in Westminster Abbey:

Any priest or minister conducting a wedding is bound to feel a huge sense of privilege. You’re invited into some intimate places in people’s lives. You’re invited to take part in a very significant moment, a moment of hope; a moment of affirmation about people’s present and future. And I’ve felt very privileged to be part of this event for those reasons. Here are young people sending a message of hopefulness, sending a message of generosity across the world. And it’s my privilege to be able to bless that in the name of God, to witness it in the name of God.

I wonder if he did the counseling. And watch on TV for the moment Prince Charles slaps him on the back and hands him an envelope containing a nice card and £200.