Richard Nixon

AFTER the Bill of Rights, the next amendment to the Constitution was the 11th, in 1798. It says that federal courts may not hear suits against a state by citizens of another state or foreign country. Reflecting struggles at the birth of the country, that amendment has not seemed crucial lately.It is now, thanks to three 5-4 decisions with which the Supreme Court ended its term. Because of the narrowness of the vote, these did more to open than close the argument.The issue of state vs. federal sovereignty is reignited.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton was at the top of his formidable game in his press conference after the Senate rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty he had signed back in September 1996.He was presidential in argument, literally, invoking the names of Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy as the fathers of arms control treaties in the 1950s and 1960s.He also echoed the attacks of President Richard Nixon (without using that name) on "new isolationists" in the 1970s.There is irony to that, of course: Nixon was frustrated by liberal Democrats wanting America to come home from Vietnam; President Clinton's target was conservative Republicans who don't want passports or anything else that smacks of internationalism.

HENRY Kissinger, like an aging rock star who keeps squeezing one more year out of the same old hits, has embarked on yet another comeback tour.The former secretary of state recently released "Years of Renewal," a 1,100-page behemoth about his service to President Ford. Meanwhile, Robert D. Kaplan recently lionized Mr. Kissinger in Atlantic magazine. And Mr. Kissinger is popping up on TV screens with alarming frequency.Mr. Kissinger, of course, has never gone entirely out of fashion. His press savvy, charm and resolute courtship of the rich and powerful have ensured that he always remains plenty visible.

A FUNERAL oration for Barry Goldwater:Friends, Arizonans, countrymen, listen up and listen good. He was a flop as a senator and a flop as a presidential candidate, the defining essentials of his career. He was one of the least successful senators ever to serve so long. If you seek his monument, don't bother to look in the U.S. Code or U.S. Senate histories.Part of the reason for that is that he was in the minority for 22 of his 30 Senate years. The Senate is a body in which chairmen of committees and subcommittees produce most of the results and get most of the credit.

After Kurt SchmokeDoes Baltimore need a return to William Donald Schaefer's "do it now" approach or more of the cerebral but detached style of Kurt L. Schmoke? Or something else?Send us your thoughts on the skills, experience and management style Baltimore should seek in its next mayor, who will lead the city into the 21st century.Letters should be no longer than 200 words and should include the name and address of the writer, along with day and evening telephone numbers.Send responses to Letters to the Editor, The Sun, P.O. Box 1377, Baltimore 21278-0001.

Kurt Schmoke is mayor of the City of Baltimore."Succeeding Against the Odds" by John Johnson. I felt so strongly about the messages in this book that I personally purchased enough copies to give one to every ninth-grade student in the academy of finance program at Lake Clifton-Eastern High School. It apparently encouraged a great number of them to pursue careers in business that they originally thought were not open to them.Monica Crowley served as foreign policy assistant to former President Richard Nixon from 1990 to his death in 1994 and is the author of "Nixon Off the Record" (1996)

THE Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee have made it clear that the impeachment action against President Clinton is a payback for the impeachment articles drawn up against Richard Nixon. Nothing more, nothing less.Committee member Rep. Howard Coble, a North Carolina Republican, gleefully pointed this out Friday in his reference to the Nixon impeachment when the Democrats were in the majority in Congress: "It's a lot easier to throw grenades than to catch them."The GOP's need for revenge was going to corner a Democratic president, any Democratic president -- when the GOP controlled Congress and the time was right.

EVERYBODY'S favorite talking heads were talking about China and President Clinton, and, as it always does on such occasions, the old "only-Richard-Nixon" theory (or myth) came up. I thought of a headline that never appeared but could have:President Humphreyarrives in China"Michael," said PBS' Jim Lehrer, "as a matter of history, how important was the Nixon trip?""We've had 25 years of Chinese-American relations," replied historian Michael Beschloss. "That might have been 10 years or five years or actually even zero years had Nixon not gone . . And just imagine what it would have been like had some other president been the one to create this opening into China in 1971 or '72.Global strategist"Kennedy would have loved to do that.

It was 30 years ago this year that the Beatles gave us reason to cheer.I could have let 1997 slip by without paying homage to the 30th anniversary of the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album, but I feared John Lennon's ghost would have haunted me forever. Here, then, is a tribute to the most extraordinary album of perhaps the most extraordinary music group of all time.I didn't hear "Sgt. Pepper" until two years after the album hit the charts. I graduated from Baltimore City College in 1969 - rumor had it my departure was more in the nature of a parole - and took a job in the mail room at the Johns Hopkins University's Milton S. Eisenhower Library.

Sun didn't say the same thing about NixonThe Sun, defending its opinion (May 28) that the Paula Jones lawsuit should be delayed until Bill Clinton leaves office, feels ''the office of the presidency remains a constant and crucial force in the smooth operation of the federal government'' and that delaying justice in this case ''protects the interests of every U.S. citizen."

In February, America celebrated the bicentennial of its most revered president, Abraham Lincoln. Its most controversial president - Richard M. Nixon - resigned 35 years ago today. Richard Nixon fascinates me. This began when his old nemesis Alger Hiss visited one of my classes at the Johns Hopkins University, and grew when I worked for former Rep. Helen Bentley, once an official in the Nixon administration. Along the way, I devoured every Nixon biography I could find. Sharing this news typically elicits offers of intervention from concerned friends.

A summer Sunday in an old Midwestern river town, walking down the avenue under the elms past yards burgeoning with vinous and hedgy things and multicolored flowerage, the industry of each homeowner shown in the beauty offered to the passerby. The children of these homeowners may be telling their therapists harrowing tales of emotional deprivation suffered in this very home, and yet back in April and May, weekends were devoted to making this front yard splendid, and that is worth something.

Ron Howard has made his best movie with Frost/Nixon, an electric political drama with a skin-prickling immediacy. Howard and his screenwriter, Peter Morgan (who also wrote the original play) have the wit to portray British TV interviewer David Frost (Michael Sheen) and disgraced former President Richard Nixon (Frank Langella) as David and Goliath. Frost's slingshot is a weapon that proved deadly to Nixon once before, during the Nixon/Kennedy TV debates: the all-seeing eye of the close-up lens.

Finally, blessedly, it's over. After the longest, most expensive campaign in American history, the voters have decided who will be the next Great Man to take the helm of our ship of state. Sen. Barack Obama has been swept into the presidency on a wave of contrasting yet complementary emotions. There is the positive enthusiasm generated by the 47-year-old's "transformational" identity, the idea millions of Americans have seized upon that here is a leader who reflects the multicultural, multiracial reality of present-day America, who seems thoughtful and careful and is a full generation younger than his opponent.

I was all set to be a raven for Halloween and don a long, black cape and a beak and feathery wristlets, but I got stuck that afternoon at the neurologist's, whom I'd gone to see about chronic headaches, and I sat in his waiting room reading old People magazines until finally he put me through the neurology dance - tap tap tap, touch your nose, stand on one foot, close your eyes, hop hop hop - and by the time he'd decided he didn't know what caused the...

Jimmy Carter might have violated an unwritten code for former presidents when he dismissed President Bush's foreign policy as the "worst in history," but Bush is taking pains to tamp down a feud with a predecessor. "I get criticized a lot from different quarters," Bush said yesterday, making his first public comment on Carter's remarks. "And that's just part of what happens when you're president." In an interview published Saturday by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Carter faulted Bush's record in sweeping terms, denouncing the administration's handling of foreign affairs, the Middle East, nuclear proliferation and church-state separation.

Once, when I was teaching a university composition class, I flew back from New York for class and neglected to get back on Central Standard Time. I came bustling into the classroom and walked to the front, took off my coat, set my briefcase on the table, smiled at the students assembled, and was about to open my mouth and start talking about the importance of structure in comic writing, and then something struck me as Not Right. Familiar faces were missing. I leaned down and said to a girl in the front row, "This isn't composition, is it."

MOON METRO: NEW YORK CITY Avalon Travel / $16.95 Moon Metro's "Unfold the City" series has just made New York easier to navigate. In a book the size of a Zagat guide are 10 laminated maps that open to Manhattan's most-visited neighborhoods. An overleaf introduces each grid with a neighborhood profile, then opens to reveal the map, with keys to hotels, restaurants, shops, theaters and other landmarks. That accounts for almost half of the book's thickness. The remainder is a directory that describes major sights, hotels, restaurants and so forth.

Although he provided few details about the depression that drove him out of the governor's race yesterday, Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan mentioned two factors that often converge and trigger the condition - a family history and stress. "One thing that is clear is that vulnerability to depression is a mixture of genetic vulnerability and some kind of stress," said Jennifer Payne, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. "You will almost always find a family history of depression in a patient."

WASHINGTON -- Once, there was a certain order to the opening of the baseball season as predictable and familiar as the seventh-inning stretch. The American League season began with the Washington team hosting the first game. The president - from William Howard Taft to Richard Nixon - usually tossed out the first pitch. The National League season began the same day in Cincinnati. For Washingtonians, that rite of spring ended when the Washington Senators left town after the 1971 season and became the Texas Rangers.