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The Harvard Alumni Association has announced the recipients of the 2010 Harvard Medal: Nina Archabal ’62, M.A.T. ’63, Paul Buttenwieser ’60, M.D. ’64, C. Kevin Landry ’66, and Dean Whitla, Ed. ’60.

The Harvard Medal was first given in 1981, and the principal objective of the awarding of the medal is to recognize extraordinary service to Harvard University. President Drew Faust will present the medals during the annual meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association on the afternoon of Commencement, May 27.

Nina Archabal cares deeply for Harvard, and her service has been substantial. A member of Harvard’s Board of Overseers from 1997 to 2003, she served as vice chair of its executive committee and chair of its standing committee on Schools, the College, and Continuing Education. She also served as an Overseer liaison for the Center for Hellenic Studies, Dumbarton Oaks, and the Committee on Women Undergraduates. As chair of the visiting committee for the Peabody Museum, she shares her insight on how to advance the core mission of all of Harvard’s museums. Additionally, she was a member of the committees to visit the Department of Anthropology and the University Library.

A resident of Minnesota since 1965, she was a longtime member of the Radcliffe Club of Minnesota and supports the work of the Harvard Club of Minnesota. She has been with the Minnesota Historical Society since 1977, and has served as chair, director, and state historic preservation officer. Additionally, she has chaired the United States Committee of the International Council of Museums since 2005, and she served as a trustee of the Library of Congress American Folklife Center and as chair of the American Association of Museums. President Clinton awarded her the National Humanities Medal in 1997.

She and her husband, John, have a son, John.

Paul Buttenwieser is unequaled in the breadth of his involvement across the University, and beyond Harvard he is deeply involved in causes that address issues in education, the arts, poverty, and social justice.

As an Overseer from 2001 to 2007 he served on visiting committees to the Graduate School of Education, where he participated in shaping the new Doctorate in Education Leadership program, as well as to the College, and the Departments of Music, English, Psychology, Visual and Environmental Studies, and Government.

He has been deeply involved in class reunion fundraising and is co-chair of the Reunion Gift Steering Committee for the Class of 1960’s 50th reunion. He also co-chaired his 35th and 40th reunions and was a member of the 25th Reunion Gift Committee. He is a member of the Boston Major Gifts Committee, Harvard Art Museum’s Director’s Advisory Council, and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) Science, Teaching, and Research Planning Committee, and he is a trustee of the American Repertory Theater. Additionally, he was a member of the Phillips Brooks House Association Committee, the FAS Financial Aid Council, and Harvard Medical School’s Campaign Committee.

A practicing psychiatrist, novelist, arts advocate, and community volunteer, Buttenwieser and his wife, Catherine, founded the Family-to-Family Project in response to the crisis of family homelessness. They have three children, Stephen ’89, M.D. ’01, Susan, and Janet.

C. Kevin Landry is unparalleled in his support for Harvard College and is a leader among Boston-area alumni as a co-chair of the Boston FAS Major Gifts Committee. Additionally, Landry serves as a member of the Committee on University Resources and the FAS Dean’s Council, and has been a leader of his College Class, co-chairing the class’s 25th, 30th, 35th, 40th, and 45th Reunion Gift Committees. He received The Flood Leadership Award and the David T.W. McCord ’21 Award in recognition of his extraordinary leadership and service to the Harvard College Fund.

Landry has played a significant role in how hands-on science is taught to undergraduates through the funding of the Jeremy Knowles Undergraduate Teaching Laboratory, the first interdisciplinary teaching space on campus that supports active learning across the sciences and engineering. He is also a loyal fan of the Department of Athletics, endowing the women’s ice hockey head coach position and improving the overall conditions of the Bright Hockey Center.

He is chairman of TA Associates, one of the oldest private equity firms in the country, and is a member of the Private Equity Hall of Fame. Additionally, he is a trustee of the Museum of Fine Arts and a former trustee of Middlesex School.

He and his wife, Barrie, have three children, Kimberly ’93, Ed.M. ’01, Jennifer ’99, and Christopher.

Dean Whitla is one of Harvard’s quiet heroes. Having served as founder and director of Harvard’s Summer Institute on College Admissions for 45 years, he researched and advocated for better practices in the use of nationwide tests and for stronger financial aid programs for underrepresented, low-income college students, enabling admissions committees everywhere to accommodate the changing educational and social climate.

Whitla’s own research explored college teaching and learning, and how to increase student diversity and educational effectiveness. Chief Justice Sandra Day O’Connor cited his research during the landmark University of Michigan cases Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger, which allowed the continuance of affirmative action.

Earlier in his career he worked in Nigeria to help improve the offerings of a Harvard-sponsored secondary school.

He served as director of the Office of Instructional Research and Evaluation, the Harvard-Danforth Center for Teaching and Learning, and its successor, the Bok Center for Teaching and Learning. A former Allston Burr Senior Tutor in Lowell House, he was a lecturer in the Graduate School of Education, chairing its program in counseling and consulting psychology. Additionally, he twice directed the reaccreditation process for the University, and was a longtime member of the Harvard College Committee on Admissions.

He continues his service as a freshman adviser, a member of the Lowell House Senior Common Room, co-director of a research project at the Medical School, and an adviser to the Harvard Faculty Club Board of Advisors.

Fredric Woodbridge Wilson, curator of the Harvard Theatre Collection and resident of Watertown, Mass., died on May 15 of pancreatic cancer. He was 62.

In his 13 years at Harvard, Wilson curated more than 40 exhibitions, many of which explored his favorite corner of theatrical history, 19th century British theater, including theatrical caricatures, pantomime, Toy Theater, and Gilbert and Sullivan operas, a subject in which he was widely considered an expert.

Wilson was born in Point Pleasant, N.J., on Sept. 8, 1947. Raised on the Jersey shore, Wilson attended Lehigh University, initially as a physics major, but became the university’s first-ever music major, graduating in 1969. At Lehigh he developed a deep interest in choral music, and from there pursued a graduate degree in musicology at New York University, where he conducted several choirs.

In 1981, Wilson was appointed to the staff of the Pierpont Morgan Library, now the Morgan Library and Museum, after having become a familiar presence there as a researcher in music and opera. At the Morgan Library, Wilson curated several exhibitions — most importantly a show in 1989 on the Gilbert and Sullivan operas that was one of the library’s largest exhibitions ever — before coming to Harvard. A week after taking his new position, Wilson was awarded a fellowship by the Guggenheim Foundation for research in the history of theatrical publishing.

Wilson is the author of many books, including most recently, “The Theatrical World of Angus McBean” (2009). He lectured widely; was an active member of the Society of Printers, the Harvard Musical Association, the Old Cambridge Shakespeare Association, the Signet Society at Harvard, and the Senior Common Room of Lowell House; and was a proprietor of the Boston Athenaeum. At Harvard, he organized major symposia on the choreographer George Balanchine in 2004. His last (and largest) exhibition, which opened in April 2009, was a centenary celebration of Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes.

He is survived by a sister, Elaine Chapman Mazzara, a brother-in-law, Walter Mazzara, and two nieces. Arrangements are private.

At a Meeting of the Faculty of Medicine, May 20, 2010, the following Minute was placed upon the records.

Daniel Charles Tosteson, former Dean of the Harvard Faculty of Medicine and Caroline Shields Walker Distinguished Professor of Cell Biology died on May 27, 2009, after a long and courageous struggle with Parkinson’s disease. His 20 year’s leadership of the Harvard Medical Faculty was marked by innovation, change and renewal. His imprint on the Medical School will be felt for generations to come. The works of his stewardship included: a robust and revolutionary course-of-study for medical students; a vitalized graduate program in the medical sciences generally acknowledged for its excellence; exceptional appointments to leadership positions in basic and clinical departments; new initiatives in the social as well as the life sciences basic to medicine; improved and expanded physical facilities for teaching and research; and extraordinary increments to the Medical School’s resource base.

Dan Tosteson was born in Milwaukee on February 5, 1925. His father, Alexis, was a civil engineer and his mother, Dilys, was the youngest of 13 children born into a Welsh coal mining family that had immigrated to the United States. Dan had a childhood interest in sailing begun with a small center-board boat on Lake Michigan. A daring skipper, he once capsized and sank his craft; this did not deter him from a life-long love affair with the sea and sailing. At Wauwatosa High School he played quarterback on the football team. On matriculating at Harvard College in 1942, he continued to play football, seriously injuring one knee.

One of us (AR), started at Harvard College with Dan as Tuition Scholars working at the Harvard Union. Dan’s youthful enthusiasm and zest for life coupled with a fearless willingness to address problems made an impression on his classmate who thought of him as a “young Viking”, one with a vigorous and aggressive outlook. Both joined the Harvard program for training naval officers. Dan, taking the war-time accelerated plan, enrolled at Harvard Medical School in 1944.

As a student at HMS, Dan was intrigued by salt and water homeostasis and spent a year working with Eugene Landis, Head of the Department of Physiology. This interest in ion-transport absorbed him for the rest of his life. During his residency at The Presbyterian Hospital in New York City he became curious about the properties of red-blood-cell membranes and pursued that curiosity as a post-doctoral fellow at Brookhaven, NIH, Copenhagen, and Cambridge.

Dan’s first faculty appointment, in 1958, was to the Physiology Department at Washington University. Within three years, he was called to chair the Physiology and Pharmacology Department at Duke University, and later appointed a James B. Duke Distinguished Professor. While at Duke, he played an increasingly active role in the American Physiological Society, ultimately becoming its President. At the same time, he began to fervently address issues in the education of medical students, playing a major role in an imaginative curricular reform at Duke as well as actively engaging colleagues at the American Association of Medical Colleges. Addressing the Association as the Alan Gregg memorial lecturer in 1980, he said:

“We are in early stages of a profound transformation of all aspects of medical education. The depth of this transformation reflects the radical changes in our views of man as organism that are arising from new discoveries in molecular and cellular biology. These changes constitute one of the great revolutions in the history of human understanding, comparable to the structure of the solar system, or of electricity, or of atoms, or of biological evolution … we are, in some ways, at dawn on the eighth day of creation”.

Dan was clearly marked for high academic leadership. In 1975, he was appointed Dean of the Pritzker School of Medicine at the University of Chicago. Two years later, he was called by one of us (DB) to Harvard Medical School.

With an ambitious agenda for his time as Dean of the Harvard Faculty of Medicine as well as Dean of Harvard Medical School, Dan’s first thought was to the organization of his office. He expanded the existing leadership group by creating separate offices for clinical, student, academic, and administrative affairs, recruiting senior individuals to fill those positions. He began immediately, as he did each summer, to review the situation at the School with this group and select a very short list of key priorities. He worked with them to develop a strategy for achieving each one and made sure throughout the year that he was never too diverted from his priorities by the endless duties and crises, great and small, which crowd the calendar of every dean. Once he chose an objective, he was tireless in pursuing it. When one goal was reached, he would turn his attention to the next. In any single year, the number of priorities may have seemed small. Over the entire span of his deanship, however, he was able to accomplish much more than he could possibly have done had he attempted to deal with every issue at once. The result was a record of accomplishment that is remarkable by any measure.

His approach to reform of medical education is an example. He appreciated that the explosion in molecular biology and rapid advances in medical technology meant that the canon of medical knowledge would continually be modified in every medical student’s professional lifetime and preparation for rapid change needed to be the basis for learning the elements of biomedical and clinical science. Moreover, in addition to providing students with tools for gaining and evaluating new knowledge, medical schools needed also to be responsible for the acquisition of those skills and attitudes that all nascent physicians should share.

At a summer decanal retreat in 1979, two years into his deanship, a three-part strategy was annunciated. 1) generate faculty interest; 2) plan a new curriculum; and 3) obtain faculty approval. In time, a fourth imperative became apparent: find funding for the enterprise.

Generating faculty interest was approached through a series of annual workshops and symposia. The symposia brought in outside speakers who addressed various educational issues inside and out side of medicine. The workshops were wide-ranging internal dialogues among the School’s students and faculty.

In 1982, Dan felt there were sufficient numbers of faculty engaged to begin a planning process. Planning groups produced a thoughtful set of attitudes and professional characteristics, skills, and knowledge on which to build a course-of-study. Other groups built on these to fill out the details of a curriculum that would incorporate case-based, small-group learning

In the winter of 1985, this new curriculum, known as the New Pathway, was approved as a demonstration project for 24 students. The number was increased to 40 in the next year and in the following year was adopted for the entire first-year class except for those in the Harvard-MIT (HST) program. At the same time, a new educational building was completed, designed to accommodate the tutorials and societies that were hallmarks of the New Pathway.

Dan’s aspirations for HMS went beyond the education of medical students. An active scientist from his days as a medical student, he had forged a noteworthy career in the field of membrane transport. He brought this interest with him on returning to Harvard; his wife Magdalena was an active collaborator and maintained their laboratory on a day-to-day basis. Thus, it was natural that Dan be concerned about the School’s activities in the sciences basic to medicine, as he called them. Shortly after his arrival a new Department of Genetics was established and one of us (PL) came from NIH to lead it. (Serendipitously, the MGH shortly afterwards started an effort in molecular biology which was incorporated into the new department, now represented both at the School and in a hospital.) In time, all with the interests of strengthening and integrating core basic sciences, other new or reorganized departments emerged representing contemporary thrusts in biomedical research. For each of these, a world-wide search was conducted to find the best possible leader.

With this new emphasis, it was imperative to grow and reorganize graduate study in the Division of Medical Sciences. With dedicated work from within the science faculty, new courses-of-study were fashioned for graduate students and their numbers greatly increased. The program became and remains of the greatest attraction to undergraduates from this country and abroad. This emphasis on both medical and scientific education converged in the MD-PhD program, and this activity was expanded dramatically. At the same time, physical aspects of scientific research were not neglected; laboratories were refurbished and additional space created.

The social sciences basic to medicine were also not overlooked. A Department of Social Medicine under Leon Eisenberg gathered faculty members concerned with anthropology, sociology, history, ethnography, and medical economics. A Department of Health Care policy was established under one of us (BM) with a span of interests that included: health care financing; quality of, access to, and costs of care; among other areas.

Dan cared deeply about each function and every constituency of the Medical School. He cared about the achievements of faculty members, enjoying their successes and working tirelessly and fulfilling gaps wherever he detected them. He cared about students, not just about their education, but about the quality of the lives they led during their years at the School. One of us (RS) recalls fondly that whenever approached by a student, most commonly during his walks through the Quadrangle, he was always ready to listen and respond to student suggestions, providing prompt follow-up as needed. He was most proud of student achievements inside and outside of academia.

Dan’s accomplishments were recognized both at home and abroad: ten honorary degrees including one from Harvard; the Abraham Flexner Award for Distinguished Service to Medical Education; presidency of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; membership in the Institute of Medicine, fellowships in the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Danish Royal Society; as well as appointment to numerous advisory and visiting committees.

Despite all of this, he was easily approachable and a good listener. He was passionate about medicine and science and his enthusiasm for discovery was infectious. He was a tireless advocate for HMS: he took its causes seriously and wanted his listeners to feel them also. This sincerity is what made him such an effective spokesperson and fundraiser; under his stewardship the School’s endowment burgeoned.

After retiring form the deanship, Dan was able to spend more time at his retreat on the Damariscotta River. He loved sailing with family and friends on his sloop, Balena, beyond the seal-packed rocks out of East Boothbay. On such occasions, he would often, and enthusiastically, sing sea chanteys; his intimates sung one as the bell sounded and his ashes distributed in this hauntingly beautiful surround.

Dan Tosteson is survived by his wife, Magdalena, a brother, Thomas, his sons Joshua and Tor, his daughters Ingrid, Zoe, Heather, and Carrie; and five grandchildren. They are joined by many others in mourning the loss of his company.

Respectfully submitted,

Derek Bok
Philip Leder
Barbara McNeil
Alexander Rich
Michael Rosenblatt
Robert Sackstein
James Adelstein, Chair

Wired’s Danger Room blog took a trip on Commando Solo, the US Air Force plane that’s been specially modified for the Psychological Operations or PsyOps division to create instant radio and television stations to broadcast persuasive messages to the people below.

As you might expect, the article doesn’t reveal a huge amount and there’s lots of close angle photos that look like the sort of thing a military aviation perv might take on the subway.

However, it does reveal a little about what it’s like to work in the mobile studio and it does mention the difficulty with measuring impact of their work – a constant point of contention with PsyOps work.

Measuring the effectiveness of a bomber or a strike fighter is fairly straightforward: The art of bomb damage assessment, measuring the size of a bomb crater or effective blast radius of airdropped weapons. What about when your weapon is a television or radio signal, and your goal is the somewhat more nebulous aim of “influencing” a target?

“The biggest challenge is measuring our effectiveness,” said Rice. “We don’t have a way to look at it — we don’t have BDA.

Link to Danger Room ‘Inside the Air Force’s Secret PsyOps Plane’.

Ed Patru, spokesman for Linda McMahon’s U.S. Senate campaign, had this to say in response to today’s Q poll showing his candidate down by 25 percentage points:

Barnes and Noble has finally released the eReader application for the iPad. The new reader application has functionality similar to the Kindle for iPad app, and can read e-books for the B&N Nook as well as from the eReader bookstore. It has connectivity with the user’s B&N online bookstore and purchased library, and like the Kindle app searching for new e-books fires up the Safari browser.

BN eReader does bring one cool feature from the Nook — the LendMe option. Some e-books can be lent to friends for 14 days; such books are clearly marked as indicated in the screen shot below. Lending an e-book disables it so make sure you read it before loaning it to another eReader user.

Related research on GigaOM Pro (sub. req’d): Irrational Exuberance Over E-Books?

A good credit score can save you tens of thousands of dollars over your lifetime. I don’t know about you, but that’s the kind of thing that’s worth my time and effort to make sure I get right. Unfortunately most people don’t know much about credit scores. Frankly, I don’t blame them. No class in my school system even uttered the phrase “credit score.” I’m too Lazy to conduct an informal man on the street survey, but I’m guessing that people don’t know their FICO from their FDIC. Today, I thought I’d go into a details on what a good credit score entails. There is more to it than you might think.

In case you are one of those people who don’t know what FICO is, let’s start there. The Fair Isaac COrporation (FICO, get it?) created a formula for consumer credit more than fifty years ago. The three major credit reporting agencies use this model in defining the number universally known as the “FICO score.” Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion all use FICO software, but calculate their own credit score numbers. Each considers factors such as payment history, types of debt, as well as the level of current debt when creating a score. If you have pulled your credit report, you may have noticed that the numbers vary between agencies. They differ because these bureaus weigh these factors according to their own criteria. What are the formulas? It’s a well-guarded secret leading to little credit score transparency.

What, then, is a good credit score? Fortunately, lenders are in consensus as to how they view that number on the page. However, while any score above 700 should be considered good, it is not necessarily the excellent score that many assume. The top tier of FICO scores ranges from 760-849. Lenders view a score in this range as outstanding; the borrower should qualify for the best possible loan terms and interest rates.

Below this tier lies the 700-759 range; if your score is in this range, fear not! You should still qualify for excellent credit terms from most lenders.

Scores within the 659 to 580 range, as one might expect, remain less attractive to lenders. Keep in mind that it is quite possible to still get a loan if your credit score is in this range, but the terms will not be good.

A poor score falls within 580-619, the lowest tier. In this economy, the borrower may find some lenders unwilling to lend at all. All three major reporting agencies view a score below 579 as extremely poor – so you definitely want to stay out of that range.

Different lenders also have different criteria. These criteria remain subject to larger economic trends. For example, during the housing boom, banks lent money to borrowers with a 680 score in the belief that housing equity would remain high. Now mortgage brokers save their preferred rates and terms to those with a higher score, such as a 720 or better. This relative nature of credit scores makes it difficult to pin down exactly what a good credit score is.

Understanding what constitutes a good credit score has become a fundamental cornerstone in making wise decision when it comes to spending and saving. If you are looking to improve your credit score, I recommend you learn how to fix your credit at my other site, How To Fix.

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Materials: Expedit 2×4, Expedit 4×4

Description: It all started with placing two Expedit units on top of each other; I ended up with something very colourful. There are way too many stages in this project to explain it all in 5 pictures. If you’d like to see more, go here.

1. As I wanted to separate my dining table from my office I fixed two Expedit units on top of each other, with on the wallside a small storing space (for long objects).

2. Even though it was very functional, it still looked very much like, well.. two stacked Expedit units. And I wanted something a bit more groovy. Also, I wanted to separate my office/work room a bit more.

3. Adhesive plastic foil was used to stick on the insides of the compartments: yellow, orange, blue and black, in a semi-random fashion.

4. From 2 large sheets of 4mm MDF new fronts were made, covering more compartments on the side of the dinner table, so I could use them for office stuff without exposing it in the living room.

5. More MDF parts were attached to it, creating a doorway on the right, and a large mirror on top, right under the ceiling.

6. The sides of the expedit unit were covered in black adhesive plastic foil.

7. The fronts were treated with a paint that has iron particles. After that a couple of layers of acid (ferrochloride) were applayed to make the iron rust very fast (within a couple of days). The rusty metal gives it sort of an industrial feel.

8. There are 4 “tv shaped” compartments with a removable panel, which fit exactly an LP record cover, so I can make some changes to it every now and then.

See more of Bram’s Expedit room divider.

~ Bram D., Netherlands

Avalanche Studios has made it known that they’re well-aware of the reception of movie-games, and they’re constantly trying to prove that Toy Story 3 will be different. From the looks of things, they seem to be on

Please take a look at this interesting 3D Car design concept

Stimulus Raised GDP 4.2% in First Quarter
The massive U.S. stimulus package put up to 3.4 million people to work and boosted GDP by up to 4.6 percent in the first three months of 2010, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said on Tuesday. CBO’s latest estimate does not differ significantly from its previous assessments of the impact of the $893 billion package, passed in 2009.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before
BP is optimistic there is mud in your pipe.

(pic from Kevin Dooley via Flickr)

Hey look everybody, everything is looking like it’s no problem — yet again!

BP Plc Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said on Wednesday it appears drilling mud, not oil, was gushing from a ruptured undersea well six hours into an effort to halt a month-old oil spill.

And we’ve no reason to ever doubt their word, so surely this means the corner has been turned and we can go back to being eviscerated by big banks again. Or maybe not them alone.

?

BP Goes In for the Top Kill
The news that British Petroleum began its latest attempt to contain the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill Wednesday afternoon with the “top kill” stopgap strategy would be more heartening if it didn’t come so late in the game—and if there was more of a guarantee that it would do the job.  —KA The New York Times: The Coast Guard gave BP approval on Wednesday morning to move forward with the maneuver after consulting with government scientists, as technicians completed preparatory diagnostic work. A live video feed of the leak was available online throughout the procedure, BP officials said. Tony Hayward, chief executive office of BP said, it would be “a day or two before we can have certainty that it’s worked.” On the other hand, failure could become apparent within minutes or hours, a technician involved in the procedure said. Either way, President Obama will return to Louisiana on Friday to survey the spill’s damage, the White House said. The consequences for BP are profound: A successful capping of the leaking well could finally begin to mend the company’s brittle image after weeks of failed efforts, and perhaps limit the damage to wildlife and marine life from reaching catastrophic levels. Read more

The news that British Petroleum began its latest attempt to contain the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill Wednesday afternoon with the “top kill” stopgap strategy would be more heartening if it didn’t come so late in the game—and if there was more of a guarantee that it would do the job.? —KA

The New York Times:

The Coast Guard gave BP approval on Wednesday morning to move forward with the maneuver after consulting with government scientists, as technicians completed preparatory diagnostic work. A live video feed of the leak was available online throughout the procedure, BP officials said.

Tony Hayward, chief executive office of BP said, it would be “a day or two before we can have certainty that it’s worked.” On the other hand, failure could become apparent within minutes or hours, a technician involved in the procedure said.

Either way, President Obama will return to Louisiana on Friday to survey the spill’s damage, the White House said.

The consequences for BP are profound: A successful capping of the leaking well could finally begin to mend the company’s brittle image after weeks of failed efforts, and perhaps limit the damage to wildlife and marine life from reaching catastrophic levels.

Read more

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WASHINGTON–In another boost for Alexi Giannoulias’ Illinois Democratic Senate campaign, David Plouffe, President Obama’s campaign manager, hits Chicago on June 30 for a grass roots fund-raiser. Plouffe ran the presidential campaign from its Chicago headquarters and helped mastermind the strategy that expanded the Obama electorate, bringing younger and first time voters in the process.

Giannoulias is looking to broaden his fund-raising base and jazz up and organize the troops with Plouffe. After the campaign, the Obama for America organization was folded into the Democratic National Committee, reconstituted as Organizing for America. Last month, Obama helped OFA kick off its “Vote 2010” mid-term election drive to get those first time Obama voters to the polls in November. Plouffe is advising OFA on its mid-term election strategy.

Plouffe is no stranger to Illinois Senate contests. Joining the Chicago-based firm founded by now White House Senior Advisor David Axelrod in 2001, Plouffe was a strategist for Obama’s 2004 Illinois Senate contest.

Plouffe is the third figure from the Obama White House orbit coming to Chicago to help Giannoulias, locked in a battle with GOP nominee Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) Education Secretary Arne Duncan–the former Chicago Board of Education chief– arrives June 17 for a fund-raiser and a press event. On June 19 Jim Messina, Deputy Chief of Staff–he works for Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel–travels to Chicago for a fund-raiser.

Beck falsely claims Obama will not “honor our troops” on Memorial Day

Glenn Beck falsely claimed that President Obama “has decided not to honor our troops on Memorial Day.” In fact, Obama will speak at a Memorial Day service at a dedicated Veterans Affairs cemetery in Illinois; Obama is not the first president to commemorate the holiday somewhere other than Arlington National Cemetery.

Beck falsely claims Obama “has decided not to honor our troops on Memorial Day”

From the May 26 edition of Premiere Radio Networks’ The Glenn Beck Program:

BECK: The president has decided not to honor our troops on Memorial Day and go to — can you find out the last president that decided to take a vacation and then go to a Paul McCartney — come back for a Paul McCartney concert, but not for the laying of a wreath on Memorial Day? Maybe this has happened before. I don’t recall it.

Obama will commemorate Memorial Day in Illinois ceremony

Obama will speak at veterans cemetery; Biden to lay wreath at Arlington National Cemetery. A White House press release states: “On Monday, the President will participate in a Memorial Day ceremony at Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Elwood, Illinois. Also on Monday, the Vice President and Dr. Jill Biden will host a breakfast for Gold Star Families at the White House. Afterwards, the Vice President and Dr. Biden will participate in a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery.” Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery is dedicated as a national cemetery within the VA’s National Cemetery Administration. [WhiteHouse.gov, 5/24/10]

Previous presidents have honored Memorial Day away from Arlington Cemetery

1983: Reagan attended summit meeting; Defense Department official Thayer laid wreath at Arlington. Deputy Secretary of Defense W. Paul Thayer laid a wreath at Arlington Cemetery during the Memorial Day ceremony in 1983, according to a May 31, 1983, Washington Post article (retrieved from the Nexis database). The Associated Press reported that President Reagan attended a “summit meeting in Williamsburg, Va., with leaders of the industrialized democracies.”

1992: George H.W. Bush allowed VP Quayle to lay wreath. In 1992, Vice President Dan Quayle laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day, according to a May 26, 1992, Boston Globe article (from Nexis). The Globe reported that President George H.W. Bush attended a wreath-laying ceremony and made brief remarks at an American Legion hall in Kennebunkport, Maine, where he also played a round of golf.

2002: George W. Bush spoke at commemoration in Normandy. On May 27, 2002, President George W. Bush spoke at a Memorial Day commemoration in Normandy, France.

Bush remained in Texas for Veterans Day in 2007

Veterans Day 2007: Cheney attended ceremony to pay tribute at Arlington as Bush remained in Texas. On November 11, 2007, the AP reported that “President Bush honored U.S. troops past and present at a tearful ceremony Sunday for four Texans who died there.” The AP further reported that “Vice President Dick Cheney went to Arlington to pay tribute to Iraq veterans.”

I’m pleased to announce that beginning today and running for a week at the Intersection, we will have daily guest posts from Vanessa Woods, author of the new book, Bonobo Handshake. Vanessa is a Research Scientist in Evolutionary Anthropology at Duke University and studies the cognition of chimpanzees and bonobos in Congo, and her posts will be about her new book. I’ve already seen the content, and it is spectacular….so, let bonobo week begin! The first post appears later today.

Report: Blogger Claiming Affair Has Years Of Text Messages With SC Gov Candidate
The website of the prominent South Carolina blogger who claims he had an “inappropriate physical relationship” with gubernatorial front-runner Nikki Haley is claiming in a new post that there are five years worth of emails, voicemails, and text messages between the two — though the site, FITSNews, isn’t saying much about what the correspondence reveals.


South Carolina – Nikki Haley – Politics – Website – Will Folks

Probe Finds MMS Inspectors Got Free Peach Bowl Tickets, Looked At Porn
An inspector general report on the Lake Charles, LA, office of the Minerals Management Service found that inspectors accepted a free trip to the 2005 Peach Bowl paid for by an oil company.

New Gun-Rights Gambit Sweeping Nation: ‘Firearms Freedom’
Supporters of gun rights have hit on a new gambit that ties in perfectly with the far-right’s fears during the Obama era.


Gun politics – Gun Control – Pro-Gun Rights – Brady Campaign – Peter Hamm