Usually I don't plague my half-dozen loyal readers with more than one post in a single day, but I couldn't resist pointing out this article:

A recent editorial by Thomas Fleming in the Wall Street Journal asks the question, "Was George W. Bush such a bad president?"  I mean, look at...Thomas Jefferson, for example! He really whiffed on that embargo thing.  Read Fleming's litany of Low Moments in the American Presidency and decide for yourself...

Well, it took me all day but I plowed through all of the Google Alerts I've gotten in the past week (even the weekend ones, that's how dedicated I am), just as I said I would, and came up with the following numbers: A total of 22 websites quoted TJ in some form or fashion.  (Mind you, the Alert catches only new material cropping up on the Web, not material that's already there.)  The total quotes used came to 85, 35 of which were spurious.  So if you choose to take my sampling

A few days ago I set up a Google Alert to let me know when any new material appeared on the Internet (or technically speaking, in Google's index of the Internet) with the phrase "Thomas Jefferson." Amidst all the reportage of Thomas Jefferson High School's basketball triumph over West Diddlyfunk and so forth, in each day's update is a huge preponderance of blogs, columns and news articles that quote Jefferson.

One of our alert former fellows brought Hillary Clinton's quotation of Jefferson during her recent Secretary of State confirmation hearings to my attention.  Of course I can't help myself from checking to make sure that famous people quoting TJ have actually gotten their quotes correct, because a) I'm a stickler, and b) someone else will surely ask about it.

. . . with the news of Barack Obama's election?  Historian (and former ICJS Fellow) Joseph J. Ellis wrote an interesting opinion piece in the L.A. Times yesterday addressing this very question:

It's a topic that has proved endlessly fascinating for a long time (and has inspired quite a body of writing): Thomas Jefferson and his love of wine. It's probably because a lot of us can sympathize.

It was announced this week that the Homestead Resort in Bath County intends to restore the historic bathhouses that surround their famed mineral pools (now called the Jefferson Pools).  Thomas Jefferson is just one of the thousands of Virginians, aristocratic and ordinary, who have sought the comforts of the waters over the course of two and a half centuries. In his Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson wrote of the "Warm spring" that was to become the resort:

An alert patron alerted me to the following: "American Revolution Flags Sell for $17.4 Million."  Apparently Col. Banastre Tarleton was quite the flag collector, and a descendant has sold at auction several flags that he captured during the American Revolution and brought back to England.  The flags are in remarkably good shape, it turns out.  Go figure. 

Ask Ace has Asked Anna again.  This time the burning question regards TJ's celebration of his birthday (or, as it turns out, lack thereof).  I do like the Houdon bust festooned with a pointy party hat.