John F Kennedy

Joan Waxman happened to be in the nation's capital on an elementary school trip that week in 1963 when John F. Kennedy was buried. She was in town for a wedding when former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis died. This weekend, as the body of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy was laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery, Waxman, 53, and her husband, Howard, were moving their son in for his junior year at George Washington University. Before heading back to New Jersey, they decided to pay their respects to the last of the fabled Kennedy brothers after watching his funeral cortege on Saturday.

Audacity is a useful, but unstable element in the fictional equation: When it succeeds, we can see the familiar anew, often from unexpected yet edifying angles; when it fails, the results can range from the merely ridiculous to the frankly distasteful. English writer Jed Mercurio's new novel "American Adulterer" -- a daring attempt to imagine President John F. Kennedy's inner life -- too often strays into that latter category.

On Tuesday, millions in Washington, D.C., and billions around the world will watch as Barack Obama takes the oath of office as president of the United States. In 1961 on the same date -- Jan. 20 -- John Fitzgerald Kennedy took the same oath. The comparisons with JFK began long before the first ballot was cast and the two leaders' similarities become even more apparent during a walk through the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum in Boston.

Addressing civil rights activists in Selma, Ala., a year ago, Sen. Barack Obama traced his "very existence" to the generosity of the Kennedy family, which he said paid for his Kenyan father to travel to America on a student scholarship and thus meet his Kansan mother. The Camelot connection has become part of the mythology surrounding Obama's bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. It is a touching story -- but key details are either untrue or grossly oversimplified.

VINCENT BUGLIOSI is an American master of common sense, a punishing advocate and a curmudgeonly refreshing voice of reason. His targets have been the loopy and the deranged, the deceitful and the violent. And so, a career launched with the prosecution of Charles Manson and honed with a book parsing the defense of O.J. Simpson has, with seeming inevitability, come around to 20th century America's great repository of poor reasoning: the assassination of President Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963.

A recently discovered home movie shows a brief but clear glimpse of President Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, seconds before his assassination. The silent, 8-mm color film is "the clearest, best film of Jackie in the motorcade," said Gary Mack, curator of the Sixth Floor Museum, which focuses on Kennedy's life and assassination. The film was unveiled on the museum's website, www.jfk.org. The assassination is not shown in the 40-second clip.

Patricia Kennedy Lawford, a sister of President John F. Kennedy whose wedding to actor Peter Lawford in the 1950s was one of the first marriages of politics and Hollywood and provided her brother with many of his closest entertainment industry ties, has died. She was 82. Lawford died Sunday at her home in New York City of complications from pneumonia, according to a statement from the Kennedy family. "My sister Pat is irreplaceable," Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) said in the statement.

Two flags that flew from the convertible that President John F. Kennedy was riding in when he was assassinated in 1963 sold at auction for $450,000. The banners, one an American flag, the other bearing the presidential seal, were among the most-sought items at the three-day auction of memorabilia from the lives of John and Jacqueline Kennedy. Guernsey's auction house declined to identify the buyer.

A gold Rolex watch believed given by Marilyn Monroe to the late President Kennedy, inscribed "Jack with love as always Marilyn May 29th 1962," has been sold for $120,000, an auction house said Monday. The watch was sold in Boston with a poem titled "A heartfelt plea on your birthday," typed in black on a paper disk placed at the bottom of the gold case containing the watch. The two are rumored to have had an affair around that time.

An oak rocking chair that President John F. Kennedy used to rest his bad back sold for $96,000 to an anonymous telephone bidder at the opening of a three-day auction of property from the Kennedy family's homes. The bidding at Sotheby's New York showroom this week was brisk, with many lots selling for 10 to 20 times their presale estimates. A sugar bowl estimated at $100 to $150 sold for $7,200, and a group of assorted baskets worth $150 to $250 fetched $1,560.