Presidential inaugurations are quadrennial moments of renewal. No matter how bitter and angry a campaign has been, Americans tend to stand back, focus on the good qualities of their newly elected leader, and give him a break for at least a while. That's why most new presidents get a honeymoon, however brief, from their critics, and why the first months of a new administration tend to be among the most productive.

What Americans want in an inaugural address is a sense of vision and reaffirmation of what's best in their country. Actually, the most memorable of such speeches also capture and encourage the zeitgeist of their times. In 1861, Abraham Lincoln called on Americans to preserve their Union and heed "the better angels of our nature." In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt inspired courage amid the Depression when he said, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." In 1961, John F. Kennedy called for passing the torch to a "new generation." In 1981, with the long-running Iran-hostage crisis and growing economic woes, Ronald Reagan gave a dispirited nation new hope when he declared, "We're not, as some would have us believe, doomed to an inevitable decline. I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing. So, with all the creative energy at our command, let us begin an era of national renewal."

Great expectations. Striking this balance between vision and effort, between hope and sacrifice, will be especially important when Barack Obama stands on the Capitol's West Front on January 20 and takes the oath of office as the 44th president—and the first African-American to hold that office. "The inaugural address has got to soar," says Ken Duberstein, former White House chief of staff for Reagan. "What America needs right now is inspiration. This is not about beginning a new chapter. This is about opening a new book."

Presents, traditional foods and loved ones — a sure sign of Hanukkah, the dedication of miracles.

"It's a common misconception, but Hanukkah is not the 'Jewish Christmas.' There is no parallel in Judaism," said Rabbi Bernard Gerson of Denver's Congregation Rodef Shalom. "Presents and the time of year tend to make the two holidays seem more similar than they are."

Celebrated Dec. 21 through Dec. 29 this year, Hanukkah, known as the Festival of Lights, commemorates the victory of the Maccabees over the Syrians, a miracle according to Jewish history. Hanukkah is the Hebrew word for "dedication."

The rededication of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem had just enough consecrated oil to fuel the temple's eternal flame for one day. That one day's supply miraculously burned for eight days and nights.

"We light the menorah in remembrance," Gerson said, adding that the oil miracle is why signature Hanukkah foods are fried.

Historian Julian Zelizer calls Vice President Dick Cheney the most influential vice president in history. Lanny Davis agrees with Joe Biden that Cheney was “the most dangerous.” To Grover Norquist, Cheney’s story is a “tragedy.”

To Steven G. Calabresi, the tragedy was the “Borking” of Cheney by his opponents. The nation should be thankful, said business executive Steve Steckler, that Cheney, not Biden, was “manning the tower walls” when the country was attacked on 9/11.

Such were the contrasting views of Cheney presented Monday by contributors to Politico’s Arena forum in a debate that inevitably will play out for decades to come. It followed Cheney’s appearance on Fox News Sunday, in which he would only go so far as to call himself a “consequential” vice president.

The conversation came as a CNN poll reported that nearly a quarter of those surveyed nationally thought Cheney was the worst vice president in history. Another 41 percent rated his performance as “poor.”

Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a still-highly confidential FBI report, admitted to federal investigators that he rewrote talking points for the press in July 2003 that made it much more likely that the role of then-covert CIA-officer Valerie Plame in sending her husband on a CIA-sponsored mission to Africa would come to light.

Cheney conceded during his interview with federal investigators that in drawing attention to Plame’s role in arranging her husband’s Africa trip reporters might also unmask her role as CIA officer.

Cheney denied to the investigators, however, that he had done anything on purpose that would lead to the outing of Plame as a covert CIA operative. But the investigators came away from their interview with Cheney believing that he had not given them a plausible explanation as to how he could focus attention on Plame’s role in arranging her husband’s trip without her CIA status also possibly publicly exposed. At the time, Plame was a covert CIA officer involved in preventing Iran from obtaining weapons of mass destruction, and Cheney’s office played a central role in exposing her and nullifying much of her work.

Amidst a massive bombing campaign over North Vietnam, Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon candidly shared their evident satisfaction at the “shock treatment” of American B 52s, according to a declassified transcript of their telephone conversation published for the first time today by the National Security Archive. “They dropped a million pounds of bombs,” Kissinger briefed Nixon. “A million pounds of bombs,” Nixon exclaimed. “Goddamn, that must have been a good strike.” The conversation, secretly recorded by both Kissinger and Nixon without the other’s knowledge, reveals that the President and his national security advisor shared a belief in 1972 that the war could still be won. “That shock treatment [is] cracking them,” Nixon declared. “I tell you the thing to do is pour it in there every place we can…just bomb the hell out of them.” Kissinger optimistically predicted that, if the South Vietnamese government didn’t collapse, the U.S. would eventually prevail: “I mean if as a country we keep our nerves, we are going to make it.”

The transcript of the April 15, 1972, phone conversation is one of over 15,500 documents in a unique, comprehensively-indexed set of the telephone conversations (telcons) of Henry A. Kissinger—perhaps the most famous and controversial U.S. official of the second half of the 20th century. Unbeknownst to the rest of the U.S. government, Kissinger secretly taped his incoming and outgoing phone conversations and had his secretary transcribe them. After destroying the tapes, Kissinger took the transcripts with him when he left office in January 1977, claiming they were “private papers.” In 2001, the National Security Archive initiated legal proceedings to force the government to recover the telcons, and used the freedom of information act to obtain the declassification of most of them. After a three year project to catalogue and index the transcripts, which total over 30,000 pages, this on-line collection was published by the Digital National Security Archive (ProQuest) this week.

Kissinger never intended these papers to be made public, according to William Burr, senior analyst at the National Security Archive, who edited the collection, Kissinger Telephone Conversations: A Verbatim Record of U.S. Diplomacy, 1969-1977. “Kissinger’s conversations with the most influential personalities of the world rank right up there with the Nixon tapes as the most candid, revealing and valuable trove of records on the exercise of executive power in Washington,” Burr stated. For reporters, scholars, and students, Burr noted, “Kissinger created a gift to history that will be a tremendous primary source for generations to come.” He called on the State Department to declassify over 800 additional telcons that it continues to withhold on the grounds of executive privilege.

The documents shed light on every aspect of Nixon-Ford diplomacy, including U.S.-Soviet détente, the wars in Southeast Asia, the 1969 Biafra crisis, the 1971 South Asian crisis, the October 1973 Middle East War, and the 1974 Cyprus Crisis, among many other developments. Kissinger’s dozens of interlocutors include political and policy figures, such as Presidents Nixon and Ford, Secretary of State William Rogers, Governor Nelson Rockefeller, Robert S. McNamara, and Soviet Ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin; journalists and publishers, such as Ted Koppel, James Reston, and Katherine Graham; and such show business friends as Frank Sinatra. Besides the telcons, the Kissinger Telephone Conversations: A Verbatim Record of U.S. Diplomacy, 1969-1977 includes audio tape of Kissinger’s telephone conversations with Richard Nixon that were recorded automatically by the secret White House taping system, some of which Kissinger’s aides were unable to transcribe.

A series of unforgettable moments are captured in the transcripts, not least involving Kissinger’s complex and difficult relationship with Richard Nixon. Repeatedly, the national security adviser used his skills in flattery and connivance to help build up the president’s image and stay in his good graces. During the Jordan crisis in September 1970, Kissinger told the media that he had awakened the President to brief him on King Hussein’s military actions against Palestinian guerillas. But a transcript of his call to the President the next day recorded him as informing Nixon: “in light of the fact that there was nothing you could do, we thought it best not to waken you.”...

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By their count, Mary and Chuck Schantag of the P.O.W. Network have exposed close to 1,900 impostors since 1998, when they began to check POW claims. They say they have exposed another 2,000 men who claimed they were in elite units.

"It's taken over our lives," said Mary Schantag."We check reports of phonies when we get up in the morning and before we get to bed at night."

Their motivation is simple."The lies are changing history. It's wrong. It causes the real heroes to be grouped with the phonies and frauds," she said."The integrity and honor should be given to those who really earn it."

Their job is made easier because, compared with World War II, the Vietnam War produced relatively few American POWs—766—and the military has thoroughly documented them, said Larry Greer, a spokesman for the Department of Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office.

Villagers in Arunachal Pradesh have stumbled upon a World War II camp-cum-observation post used by American forces, close to a graveyard where over 1,000 soldiers of the Allied Forces are buried, officials said Tuesday.

A government spokesman said villagers discovered the post, spread over about 500 square metres, near Wintong village in Changlang district, about 600 km east of state capital Itanagar.

'The area was probably used as a monitoring and observation camp by American soldiers who were part of the Allied Forces to monitor air strikes during World War II,' said Arunachal Pradesh assembly speaker Setong Sena.

A team of biologists at Lebanese American University estimates that 1 in 17 persons around the Mediterranean carries genetic markers distinctive to the ancient Phoenician people who resided in what is now Lebanon. The Phoenicians spread out in a trade diaspora two millennia ago, establishing colonies from Spain to Cyprus. The team also found that one third of Lebanese have the markers for Phoenician descent, and that these are spread evenly through the population, among both Christians and Muslims. In fact, all Lebanese have broadly similar sets of genetic markers. The lead researcher commented, "Whether you take a Christian village in the north of Lebanon or a Muslim village in the south, the DNA make-up of its residents is likely to be identical . . ."

In a Lebanese context these findings are politically explosive. There is a longstanding conflict among Lebanese as to whether th ey are Arabs or Phoenicians, with adherents of the Phoenician identity predominantly Christian. This sort of identity politics fed into the civil wars. In fact, Arabic is a language, not a race, and Phoenician descent is a heritage of all humankind by now.

I don't want to sound like a broken record, but the presence those distinctive "Phoenician" haplotypes on the Y chromosome only tells us about a fraction of the descendants of Phoenicians. Let's say you had a Phoenician father in the port of Tyre in 50 BC who only had two daughters and no sons. And let us say he married one daughter to a resident Greek merchant. The sons and male descendants of the Greek merchant would lack the Phoenician signature on their Y chromosome, but would have a genetic inheritance from their Phoenician female ancestor. Since most genes get mixed up in every generation, there just would not be any way, after a while, to tell it.

Almost everyone in the world by now probably has some Phoenician ancestry. What the LAU team is finding is those lineages that retain markers for it. It is conceptually a difficult thing to keep in mind, but I am alarmed that a kind of Y chromosome or mitochondrial DNA fundamentalism will make people divide themselves up on these grounds and create new forms of racism.

On the other hand, any finding that might convince the Lebanese that they are all one family would be all to the good. Many Lebanese Muslims reject the idea that they are descendants of converts to Islam from Christianity and prefer to trace their ancestry to Arabia. The LAU team is finding that the Lebanese don't differ much among themselves.

Police seize 2,600-year-old artifacts after man tries to sell them.

A farmer working his land south of Rome dug up hundreds of artifacts from a 2,600-year-old sanctuary, but ran afoul of police when he tried to sell the ancient hoard, officials said Wednesday.

After spotting fragments of pottery in soil dug up by the farmer, authorities searched his home last month and seized more than 500 artifacts, including perfume vials, cups and miniature vases used as votive objects.

The art squad of the Carabinieri paramilitary police said the farmer was placed under investigation for allegedly trafficking in antiquities. Ancient artifacts found in Italy are considered state property, and finds must be reported to authorities.

This morning in the Vatican the Holy Father received the members of the Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology along with their grand chancellor, Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski.

In his address the Pope praised the "precious and fruitful cultural, literary, and academic work that the Institute carries out in the service of the Church and of culture in general", affirming that "in the traditional sphere of archaeology, the ordinary and specialized courses your Institute gives have great scientific importance, offering knowledge of paleo-Christian monuments, above all in Rome with wider references to other regions of the 'Orbis christianus antiquus', ".

"The Institute's admirable objective is precisely the study of the traces of ecclesial life through the centuries. You offer the opportunity, for those who choose this discipline, of being immersed in a complex reality, that of the first centuries of the Church, in order to 'understand' the past, making it present to people today".

"When this means describing the history of the Church", the Pope stated, "... the archaeologist's patient investigation cannot be separated from also penetrating into supernatural reality, without however, renouncing the rigorous analysis of archaeological finds".

There are Democrats and Republicans, liberals and moderates, Hispanics and Asians, whites and blacks, Northerners and Westerners.

But one group arguably was missing when President-elect Barack Obama rounded out his 15-member Cabinet Friday — Southerners.

The only Southern appointment came when he named former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk U.S. trade representative, a lower-level post. Nobody else from below the Mason-Dixon Line made the cut, not even from the newly blue states of North Carolina, Virginia or Florida.

Protestants still constitute a majority of the Congress of the United States, but in terms of religious beliefs, the House and Senate, just like the constituencies they represent, are more diverse than they were nearly a half-century ago, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

Today's Pew study, called "Faith on the Hill" among members of the incoming 111th Congress, found that Catholics, Jews, and Mormons are among religious groups better represented in Congress than in the nation as a whole. The most glaring difference between the makeup of the new Congress, which will be sworn in Jan. 6, and the population is among those who are not affiliated with any religious tradition.

Only five members of the new Congress -- less than one percent -- "did not specify a religious affiliation, according to information gathered by Congressional Quarterly and the Pew Forum, and no members specifically said they were unaffiliated." By contrast, a recent Pew survey of more than 35,000 Americans, found that about one in six -- 16.1 percent -- said they are not affiliated with any faith.

The last of the tea and toast has been taken, the waiters, caterers and cloakroom attendants have all gone home, and a part of the capital city's social history has closed. The Café Royal, where Winston Churchill waited anxiously to know his political future, and Oscar Wilde began the quarrel that ruined him, has served its final cream tea.

The last private party was held in a cellar on Saturday night...

Exceptionally, the closure of the Café Royal is not a story of the recession. The Crown Estate, which owns the building, is embarking on a £500m redevelopment to open up the southern end of Regent Street and create 44,000 sq ft of new open space. After Trafalgar Square, it will be the biggest new open space in central London for 30 years.

The frontage of the Café Royal and the public rooms overlooking Regent Street are all Grade I listed, and will be preserved but the inside of the building will be converted into a hotel run by an Israeli company, Alrov. It is expected to be finished in time to take guests visiting London for the 2012 Olympics.

The discerning eye of a federal Bureau of Land Management employee and the investigative skills of Patrick's Point State Park Ranger Greg Hall led to the arrest of a Eureka man this week on suspicion of looting archaeological items from an ancient tribal village site.

At the center of the investigation was a video the suspect created and subsequently posted on YouTube showing him digging at the village site within Patrick's Point State Park.

”It was a bragging video,” Hall said.

With a search warrant for YouTube, Hall was able to determine the location of the computer used to upload the video and able to identify the suspect by looking at other videos he had posted, since his face was not readily visible in the looting film.

Egyptian archaeologists have found the tombs of two court officials, in charge of music and pyramid building, in a 4,000 year old cemetery from the reign of Pharaoh Unas. The tombs were found buried in the sands south of Cairo and could shed light on the fifth and the sixth dynasties of the Old Kingdom ....

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A Canadian-led research team probing the dirt floor of a hillside cavern in South Africa has discovered proof that the site was occupied by a hominid species two million years ago, making it the earliest known home of our cave-dwelling human ancestors.

Small tools believed to have been used by homo habilis--one of several species of advanced primates that lived in south-ern Africa at that time--were unearthed by University of Toronto archeologist Michael Chazan and colleagues from the Hebrew Universityin Jerusalem and South Africa's McGregor Museum.

Sir Bernard Crick belonged to an endangered species. He was a public intellectual in the mould of the great socialist sages of the first half of the last century — Graham Wallas, G. D. H. Cole, R. H. Tawney and Harold Laski. He was a distinguished political theorist, with three important scholarly works to his credit, as well as one great one.

He also intervened incessantly in public debate, on matters ranging from parliamentary reform to the politics of divided societies. But his academic works and his essays and journalism dealt with the same themes, and were written in the same accessible, slightly quirky and occasionally waspish style.

Not for him the gnarled prose of the self-consciously professional scholar, or the windy exaggerations of the media columnist. He wrote for another endangered species — the educated and thoughtful general reader.

His best-known book is probably his George Orwell: A Life, a biography commissioned by Orwell’s second wife, Sonia, and published in 1980. The biography won Crick great public réclame but led to a breach with Sonia, who thought it had not done justice to the subject.

The streets of south London and a famous corner of Berkshire may hold little interest for treasure-hunters of the fedora-wearing, whip-cracking school, but they are starting to attract a new breed of archaeologists who enjoy plunging their trowels into the very recent past.

Homegrown excavators have started to chronicle modern protest structures while they are still warm, from eco-warriors' treehouses to crisp packets buried at the Greenham Common peace camp.

"The actions and lives of people today are the archaeology of tomorrow," says Anna Badcock, one of the advocates of the movement known as contemporary archaeology. "Their landscapes and habitations are perhaps no less important than what was there before."

Trained on projects such as Bristol University's celebrated excavation of their department's 15-year-old Transit van - which yielded three lost pencils and confetti from a faculty party - teams are "digging" at former parts of the Maze prison in Northern Ireland and the site of the 1981 Brixton riots. Others have travelled to Malta to record links between Valetta's former red light district and British servicemen, while the 1984-5 miners' strike is being checked out by "battlefield archaeologists".

According to John Schofield, an English Heritage archaeologist who "rediscovered" Emerald Camp at Greenham Common, the movement draws its inspiration from work done on military sites such as first world war trenches. "They laid the trail for what has emerged in the last 10 years," he said. "Throughout the 20th century we ... seem to have been catching up on ourselves. The end of the cold war and the closure of coalmines under the Thatcher government forced our hand a bit."