Newt Gingrich, the know-it-all former Speaker of the House who now rides atop the polls for the Republican nomination for president, has been shooting his mouth off lately. He called himself a celebrity who makes $60,000 a speech. Another favorite is, “I helped Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp develop supply side economics.  I helped lead the effort to defeat communism in the Congress.” I didn’t realize communism in Congress was an issue, but I digress. Read full article > >

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Jonathan Capehart:
Newt Gingrich’s disgusting remarks about ‘really poor children’

According to the polls and the pundits, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are the two front-runners for the Republican nomination for president. That means both of them will spend the next few weeks trying to show that they are more competent, conservative, and generally Reagan-like than the other. But I’m a uniter, not a divider. I don’t want to focus on the differences between Romney and Gingrich. I want to focus on the commonalities. Because these two men have a lot in common with not only each other but also with President Obama. Read full article > >

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What Gingrich, Romney and Obama have in common

Is John W. Hinckley Jr., the gunman who in 1981 nearly killed President Reagan and wounded three other men, ready for more freedom from the psychiatric hospital where he has been held for three decades? A series of hearings starting Wednesday in the District’s federal court will determine just that. Since being found not guilty in the shooting by reason of insanity in 1982, Hinckley has spent most of his time confined at St. Elizabeths Hospital. In recent years, however, he has been granted more privileges and liberty, especially when it comes to visits to his mother’s luxury community in Williamsburg. Read full article > >

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More freedom for John Hinckley Jr. to be debated

Is John W. Hinckley Jr., the gunman who in 1981 nearly killed President Reagan and wounded three other men, ready for more freedom from the psychiatric hospital where he has been held for three decades? A series of hearings starting Wednesday in the District’s federal court will determine just that. Since being found not guilty in the shooting by reason of insanity in 1982, Hinckley has spent most of his time confined at St. Elizabeths Hospital. In recent years, however, he has been granted more privileges and liberty, especially when it comes to visits to his mother’s luxury community in Williamsburg. Read full article > >

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More freedom for John Hinckley Jr. to be debated

A move by Congress may allow members of the board that oversees Reagan National and Dulles International airports to be removed by their appointing bodies and increase the size of the panel, which is supervising the construction of the Metrorail extension to Loudoun County . Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.) has pushed for legislation that would expand the board of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority from 13 to 17. Under his plan, Virginia would get two new appointments and Maryland and the District would each get one additional member. Read full article > >

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Transportation bill would expand board of Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority

Travel records this year for the authority that oversees Reagan National and Dulles International airports show reports in disarray, sloppy bookkeeping for some expenses and an instance in which the authority overpaid reimbursements to one board member. The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority , which is also overseeing the $6 billion Dulles rail project, has come under increased scrutiny about whether it is transparent enough and how it is monitoring the construction of the Metrorail extension. Read full article > >

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Travel records in disarray for authority overseeing Reagan and Dulles airports

There was something tragic about the plea made to Chris Christie this week by a woman who wants the coy New Jersey governor to run for president. “I really implore you,” said the woman, after listening to Christie speak at the Reagan Library , “as a citizen of this country to, please, sir, to reconsider. . . Go home and really think about it, please. Do it — do it for my daughter. Do it for our grandchildren. Do it for our sons. Please, sir, don’t — we need you. Your country needs you to run for president.” Read full article > >

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Chris Christie can’t save us

On the same July day that Donald Rumsfeld was patted down by airport security at Chicago’s O’Hare airport, I underwent an upper-body pat-down at Reagan National. I was posing spread-eagle in the full body scanner, in compliance with various mandates of the federal Transportation Security Administration, when something set off a female TSA agent, who began mumbling anxiously into her walkie-talkie. Read full article > >

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How my shirt flummoxed the TSA

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Former Sen. Malcolm Wallop, who became a leading conservative voice during the Reagan era in fighting for space defense and a tough anti-communist policy in Central America, died Wednesday. He was 78. Kerrie Kimmel of the Kane Funeral Home said Wallop died at his home near the small community of Big Horn in northern Wyoming. Family friend and Cody Enterprise Publisher Bruce McCormack said Wallop has been ill for the last couple of years. Read full article > >

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Former US Sen. Malcolm Wallop dies at 78 in Wyoming; was leading voice on foreign affairs

The Nixon and Reagan libraries are near one another in California, but far apart in philosophy.

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What’s a Presidential Library to Do?

LOS ANGELES — It didn’t take long after Wednesday night’s Republican debate for Mitt Romney’s advisers to show they believed that Rick Perry had made a Texas-size blunder when he reasserted that Social Security has been a failure and a “monstrous lie” to future generations. In the spin room at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, one after another Romney’s advisers hammered the Texas governor. As spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom put it, “I think it would be a disaster for the Republican Party to nominate Rick Perry.” Read full article > >

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Social Security stance makes Perry a target

Yesterday, I caught Penny Nance, head of Concerned Women for America , by phone as she was leaving New Hampshire. She sits atop an influential social conservative group with 500,000 members and 620 chapters in 34 states. Although economic issues are critical, Nance says “We can have it all,” meaning a strong social conservative who is also stalwart on economic issues. She was generally pleased with the way social issues were addressed in Monday’s debate. “I thought there was no Reagan moment” she said, acknowledging that “the media wanted more fight out of Pawlenty.” Much as she hastened to add that he and the other top contenders, to one degree or another, would impress her members. As for the newcomer, she said, “ [Rep.] Michele [Bachmann] hit it out of the ballpark.” People who don’t know her, Nance said, would have expected the figure that the media has strived to “Palinize.” But Nance is plainly a fan. Read full article > >

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Concerned Women for America size up the GOP field

The transportation secretary has ordered a staffing review and a second controller in the Reagan National tower.

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Airports with one air traffic controller on duty are unsafe, union says

The air traffic supervisor who apparently fell asleep on the job at Reagan National Airport early Wednesday first claimed he had gone silent because his microphone broke, according to an audio tape of his radio transmissions.

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Airport controller referenced ‘stuck mike,’ was apparently snoozing

Two pilots at Reagan National Airport in Washington D.C. were forced to land their passenger airliners without direction early Wednesday morning after the control tower at Reagan International went silent-possibly because its only graveyard-shift…

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Airport Control Tower Goes Silent