Can't stop reading...

...about the inauguration.

This from the Washington Post:

Obama laid his hand on the burgundy-velvet-covered Bible that Abraham Lincoln used for his inauguration in 1861, and history again trembled. The chief justice that day was Marylander Roger B. Taney, who wrote the Dred Scott decision that said blacks could never be citizens. The Constitution, he said, recognized blacks as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations.

"History again trembled." What a great phrase. I teach about Taney and Dred Scott every year, but I did not put together until I read this that Taney was the Chief Justice that had sworn in Abraham Lincoln.

I also teach every year -when I teach the articles of the Constitution and the oath of office- that the President-Elect may choose whatever he (or she, someday) wishes to swear on when they take the oath. I did hear yesterday that Obama's swearing in was the first time Lincoln's Bible had been used since Lincoln used it himself.

I want to know from whom that truly brilliant idea came.