In his coordinated smear campaign against Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA), Karl Rove slipped the same phrase into the comments of his White House spokesman (Ari Fleischer) and his Carlyle Group spokesman (Chris Ullman). Ari said McKinney "must be running for the Hall of Fame of the Grassy Knoll Society." Chris said, "Did she say these things while standing on a grassy knoll in Roswell, New Mexico?" But one year ago, the Washington Post itself reported, "The House Assassinations Committee may have been right after all: There was a shot from the grassy knoll." This was based on a peer-reviewed article in Science and Justice by "D.B. Thomas, a government scientist and JFK assassination researcher, said it was more than 96 percent certain that there was a shot from the grassy knoll to the right of the president's limousine, in addition to the three shots from a book depository window above and behind the president's limousine." The media never followed up on that important story. Why not???

Geoffrey Perret's new biography of JFK, 'Jack: A Life Like No Other,' takes a serious look at JFK's foreign policy, and finds continuity with Dwight Eisenhower's policies. According to reviewer Michael Lind, "The claim that the Vietnam War and the successive Cuban crises were avoidable disasters that resulted from the personality or misguided moralism of Kennedy finds no support from Perret, who documents the overall continuity in American policy toward Indochina and Cuba between the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations. On Jan. 19, 1961, shortly before Kennedy's inauguration, Eisenhower advised him that if the alternative were Communist takeovers throughout Indochina, 'unilateral intervention would be our last desperate hope... We may have to fight.' When they got around to Cuba, Kennedy asked, 'Should we support guerrilla operations in Cuba?' 'To the utmost,' Eisenhower replied. 'We cannot let the present government there go on.'"

"The documents from the KGB file on Lee Harvey Oswald that President Boris Yeltsin presented to President Clinton have now been translated. There are no sensations, but there are interesting sidelights on the two years that Oswald spent in before he came back to the United States and eventually assassinated President Kennedy… Of ironic interest is that Oswald joined the factory's hunting club, but was never able to hit anything. A fellow worker shot a rabbit for him…Various documents reflect the KGB decision not to recruit Oswald for any intelligence assignment, because he was considered too unstable, or perhaps even a CIA agent…Over the years, there have been many - including, at one point, President Johnson - who believed a communist plot lay behind the assassination of President Kennedy. No credible evidence of that emerged, nor is there any in this KGB file." So writes NPR's Daniel Shorr in the Christian Science Monitor.

What's in the water at the JFK Library? They are giving a "Profile in Courage" Award to Gerald Ford for pardoning Richard Nixon! Perhaps if Nixon had gone to jail, Presidents would think twice about committing Obstruction of Justice (Article 1), Abuse of Power (Article 2), and Contempt of Congress (Article 3) - not to mention all of Nixon's other crimes. Ford's pardon allowed Nixon to avoid taking personal responsibility for his crimes, and placed him forever above the law. Send your complaints to foundation@kennedy.nara.gov

"Tax reduction alone, however, is not enough to strengthen our society, to provide opportunities for the 4 million Americans who are born every year, to improve the lives of 32 million Americans who live on the outskirts of poverty." That was the real President John Kennedy, outlining his basic priorities in his third and final State of the Union speech to Congress on Jan. 14, 1963. So writes Boston Globe columnist Tom Oliphant.

The House Assassinations Committee may have been right after all: there was a shot from the grassy knoll. A new, peer-reviewed article in Britain's Science and Justice journal says the House committee was right, and the Warren Commission was wrong. If that's true, then who killed JFK?