Thursday, February 12, 2009

They don't write speeches like this anymore

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.


Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865)

Happy 200th birthday, Mr. President.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Blogging history made

President Barack Obama's first prime-time press conference made history of a sort. The President called upon a blogger to ask a question.
Sam Stein of the liberal Huffington Post ... asked about a cause popular on the left, the creation of a truth and reconciliation commission to investigate Bush administration wrongdoing. The president said he hadn't seen the proposal by Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.).

At His First Prime-Time News Conference, Obama Is Serious and Expansive
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Whether Vice-President Dick Cheney is guilty of war crimes at worst or obfuscation at best is indeed another issue ... and the President obviously ducked that pointed question.