Jimmy Carter

White House Diary Jimmy Carter Farrar, Straus & Giroux: 570 pp., $30

Jimmy Carter gets revenge on Barack Obama with the help of James Earl Jones in a Chicago Blackhawks locker room.

Jimmy Carter is the only person to use the U.S. presidency as a stepping stone to bigger and better things. RON WHITTAKER Simi Valley

The Oscar for best picture was won by "Argo," the true tale of a secret rescue mission in Iran during the Carter administration. It beat out "Lincoln," the story of how black Americans were rescued from slavery. Does this mean that Jimmy Carter's stock is on the rise? Nope, but Ben Affleck has certainly become a blue-chip player in Hollywood. Politics -- not the Hollywood kind, but the Washington kind -- played a significant role in public perceptions of both films, as well as a third that was nominated for best picture.

"Sour grapes" Jimmy Carter thinks our country has the reputation of being the world's warmonger. If we had not maintained a strong military, the Russians would never have come to the bargaining table. George Will, noted columnist, said that "the money spent to fight the cold war was the best investment we ever made. It bought freedom for millions of people." Lest Carter has forgotten, it happened during President Reagan's tenure. FREDERICK D. MULLEN, Upland

Former President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Jimmy Carter arrived in Jamaica to monitor national elections and said he believed the Caribbean nation could hold a safe vote despite recent campaign violence. Carter, who leads a delegation of about 60 foreign observers for the elections Wednesday, said he believed Jamaica's political leaders understood that their nation's ability to hold safe elections would play a big role in its economic prosperity. Jamaica, with a population of 2.

Re "This isn't the real America," Opinion, Nov. 14 Does anyone actually listen to what Jimmy Carter has to say? The 39th president rambles on and on and fails to use one supporting piece of evidence in his attack on President Bush and his administration. Carter yearns for the old days? Here's my suggestion: Let's go back to the times when former presidents actually retired from politics and kept their personal feelings to themselves. KEITH G. MILLER Sherman Oaks Like Carter, I too am ashamed, alarmed and even frightened by what has happened in the last five years in this country.

The process for administering the death penalty in the United States is broken beyond repair, and it is time to choose a more effective and moral alternative. California voters will have the opportunity to do this on election day. Although our government has a fundamental responsibility to protect its citizens, there is little evidence that the death penalty acts as a strong deterrent to murder and other violent crimes. One recent study found that 88% of the nation's leading criminologists believe that swift and certain punishment is the best deterrent.

If Mitt Romney wins the Nov. 6 election, would he become our most religious president? It's an odd question, but one that has come up in recent days after writer Nicholas Lemann said as much in a profile of Romney that ran in the New Yorker magazine. “If elected,” Lemann wrote, “Romney, scion of an old, distinguished Mormon family (his ancestors had a direct connection to Joseph Smith and Brigham Young), would arguably be the most actively religious president in American history.” There are a couple of key qualifiers there -- the use of the words “arguably” and “actively.” Still, the claim begs a question -- in fact, more than one. What president would Romney displace from the title of most religious?

WESTLAKE, Ohio - With Mitt Romney lying low on the opening day of the Democratic National Convention, Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan pounded President Obama's economic record Tuesday and tried to blunt a new round of expected attacks on Romney's investment history. The Wisconsin congressman drew comparisons between Obama and former President Jimmy Carter at a lunchtime rally in a gymnasium in this Cleveland suburb. By a number of measures - unemployment, bankruptcies, delinquent mortgages - conditions are worse now, Ryan said, than they were when the last Democratic president lost a campaign for reelection in 1980.

TAMPA, Fla. - Nearly 32 years have passed since a Republican ousted a Democratic president. Now Mitt Romney is trying to pull it off in much the same way that Ronald Reagan did. The newly anointed Republican nominee, echoing Reagan, says his presidency would bring not just a revival of America's moribund economy, but also a repair of its self-image, "the feeling we'll have that our country's back," as one Romney TV ad puts it. Romney also on...

There's plenty to criticize in this week's back and forth between President Obama and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney over the anniversary of Osama bin Laden's killing. Obama stretched credibility in suggesting that Romney would not have pursued Bin Laden; Romney laughably minimized the significance of Obama's success in authorizing the operation that ended the terrorist's life. But one claim stands out for its impropriety. Commenting on Obama's decision to green light the raid on Bin Laden's compound, Romney said that "even Jimmy Carter" would have made that call.

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. - Mitt Romney on Monday rejected claims by President Obama's campaign that he would not have ordered the killing of Osama bin Laden. “Of course, of course,” he said, when asked by reporters whether he would have gone after the terrorist. “Even Jimmy Carter would have given that order.” The Obama campaign raised the matter over the weekend, roughly one year after the president ordered the targeted killing of the terrorist leader inside of Pakistan.

Presidents Day 2012 is a day to officially remember our first president , George Washington - cherry tree lore and all. But while we're at it, let's take a look at the lore of a few other American leaders. There's plenty to be found. President Reagan will always be remembered for reaching   an arms-reduction treaty with the Soviet Union and for helping to make it possible for Mikhail Gorbachev to begin restructuring Soviet society. But his unintentionally funny lines are also memorable.

Doomsayers are already warning that we're seeing a remake of Iran's Islamic revolution in Cairo. And on the surface, there are certainly parallels. Then, as now, a popular uprising caused the United States to nudge a longtime ally, and autocratic leader, toward the exit. And then, as now, the White House searched for a way to hold the country together. In Iran's 1979 version, Islamic radicals were waiting in the wings and installed a virulently anti-American religious dictatorship.