Richard Nixon

Vietnam veteran and ex-Senator Chuck Hagel (R-Isolation) made a stunning impression in his audition for the role of secretary of defense yesterday, though it was not quite the one that he wished. "Though he was being asked about things he had said over the course of the past 15 years, it was what Hagel said yesterday…that had his defenders reeling in shock and even his critics aghast at how poorly he handled himself," wrote John Podhoretz in the New York Post. Said Roger L. Simon, "They had to send him a note in the middle of the proceedings to remind him of the administration’s position on Iran and 'containment,' and even then [he] got it wrong."

Over a decade ago, Joe Loconte profiled Chuck Colson for THE WEEKLY STANDARD:

Since 1963 Theodore C. Sorensen has been subsisting on his eight-year career as a ghostwriter for John F. Kennedy, and faithful readers of the New York Times have come to rely on his periodic contributions to the editorial pages during the past 47 years. Here Sorensen has repeated, with emphasis, his simple, three-part formula for understanding modern American history:

Reading Norman Podhoretz's The Bloody Crossroads (1986), I came across this striking passage from his essay "

A number of names are being tossed about in the sweepstakes to succeed Justice John Paul Stevens, and the three front-runners at the moment seem to be Merrick Garland and Diane Wood, both federal appeals court judges, and Solicitor General Elena Kagan, former dean of the Harvard Law School. My own preference would be for Elena Kagan. This is not because of any particular virtue in Kagan, or defect in Wood and Garland--all three of whom, I'm sure, are eminently qualified to serve--but because Kagan, if appointed and confirmed, would be the first Supreme Court justice since Sandra Day O'Connor (1981) who had never been a federal appellate judge.

I, too, was surprised by Sen. Evan Bayh's decision not to run for a third term. In an institution where members have a habit of hanging on until they leave the chamber feet-first--casting votes while attached to IVs, being wheeled in and out for quorum calls--it is always noteworthy when a relatively young senator voluntarily steps down. (At 54, Bayh is two years older than his father, Sen. Birch Bayh, was when the elder Bayh was defeated for re-election by Dan Quayle in 1980.)

Sixty-seven-year-old Chuck Colson looks almost spry as he threads his way through the New Jersey State Prison, a maximum security facility in Trenton, New Jersey. The barbed wire, watchtowers, and 15-foot walls suggest a pretty exclusive club: Only men who've committed crimes earning them 25 years to life are admitted here.