Journalist James Reston accompanied and reported on that historic meeting. I clearly recall reading Reston's account of talking directly afterward with a visibly shaken Kennedy, who admitted the meeting went badly for him.

I was unable to find to find this account in a cursory search with the key words "Reston Kennedy Kruschev", however Historians pretty much agree that the inexperienced Kennedy was no match for Kruchev.

Here's one link to several that those key words brought up.

http://www.swans.com/library/art11/lproy26.html

However, I certainly agree with Obama's assertion that there is merit in meeting with enemies, given much State Department preliminary planning and meetings prior to those by heads of state.

Good Move Obama

Now, do us a favor and stay away from all church issues

Actually, I thought Obama was initially doing a good job of running a secular campaign for a secular office until CNN had that outrageous "Values" program with candidates, thereby institutionalizing religion as a criteria for public office candidacy; a electronic nullification of sorts of the No Religous Test Clause in the Constitution. Unlike Hillery, et. el., he emphasized the secularity of the office.

Even after the videos of Wright surfaced, Obama responded to the issue of race; he never played the God card.

However, I share you frustration, Jeannette. As a 75-year-old atheist, I'll probably never live long enough to see a president who choses to be inaugurated by affirmation, not by swearing on a Bible, but perhaps I'll get to finally have a president who stays firmly on the State side of the Wall of Separation. I have no doubt Obama will. No more National Days of Prayer!

"The rules of decorum forbid me from giving away the family brownie recipe, but let's just say it's not any more respectable."

Where did you get the recipe?

High Times?

...who got it from Alice B. Toklas.

What are you talking about? Obambi has done absolutely nothing to earn my vote. Nothing. And he won't, because he doesn't give a whit about

"bitter" white middle aged women like me. I speak for countless HRC supporters when I say that I'd rather put up with 4 more years of crummy but predictable republican leadership than ever vote for this inexperienced, dishonest, race-baiting, mysoginist flip-flopping (but oh so empathetic and sensitive - LOL) nominee.

For the life of me, as a 75-year-old, feminist woman, I am totally baffled by your rage against your own self interests as a woman. Get a grip on history here. At my age, with one hand I can reach back to my mother, who was 14 when the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, and with the other, I can reach out to touch the present where women are regarded as legitimate, serious candidates for political office, winning elections from governors to senators. Furthermore, look at the polls. Women break out as a major progressive bloc on every, single major issue. We are finally on the cusp of arrival as a base, baby. Pay attention and don't squander your vote on some silly pout that the political reality is that a woman doesn't get a shot at the presidency this time.

You're middle-aged? May you live to see a woman president, not because she is a woman, but because she ran the best campaign and consequently was the choice of the people in key states. Only then, will all of us - genderwise - be truely franchised, same goes for race, and all other ugly bugbears by which we are so wickedly distracted.

I am proud to claim I made it into the Red Squad files also.

P.S. When I began teaching in Detroit during the late '50s, there were older faculty members who remembered the DFT's purging of its communist members, thereby losing the best damn labor organizers it had.

CNN has emulated the style and format of FOX. Infotainment trumps journalism.

I heard McCain interviewed on CNN the other day. He was, surprisingly, aggressively challenged by someone I regretfully can't identify. McCain was asked how his assertion that the deficit could be substantially reduced by 2013, given his plan to continue and increae tax cuts. He said he was going to bring the best experts - Nobel recipients - into his administration to advise him.

When pressed by the interviewer, who cited budget analyses that refuted McC's plan, he "repecfully disagreed" that cuts would exacerbate, not reduce, the deficit. He insisted that there were "many" economists who agreed with him that tax cuts would be effective; that tax increases always "reduced revenue".

The senator got a bit testy toward the end, interupting and talking over the interviewer's follow-through questions to McC's non-answers.

How long are the media going to let McCain get away with his crackpot economics?

I, too, was thinking "Alice in Wonderland" until I came to this passage:

During the emergency hearing, DOJ attorney Anthony Coppolino demanded that the Document be turned over to the FBI for storage in a top-secret repository called a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF.

Isn't there a second "I" missing from SCIF?