Donald Trump takes the oath of office today and officially becomes the 45th president of the United States. While I didn't vote for him, I still plan to tune in. The peaceful transfer of power has been a hallmark of American democracy since Thomas Jefferson defeated John Adams for the presidency in 1800. Though I disagree with Trump on a bevy of issues, loathe his antics (Twitter, anyone?), and have found many of his remarks toward women and other groups to be reprehensible, I still wish him well. The bottom line is that if he succeeds, America succeeds, and if America succeeds, the entire world succeeds. America spoke loud and clear in last year's election. Tired of the broken system in Washington, it wanted to see an outsider take the country in a whole new direction. Whether Trump can live up to all the promises he made on the campaign trail remains to be seen. He enters office with the worst approval rating of any president in modern history, so surely he has ...

Below are two key historic events that took place on March 29 -- 139 years apart: 1790 : Future President John Tyler is born in Charles City County, Virginia. He was the last president to hail from the colonial Virginia planter class that also gave us Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe. Family connections helped him secure a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates in 1811. He then went on to serve in the army during the War of 1812 and in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1816 to 1821. Tyler was elected as William Henry Harrison's vice president in 1841 and became acting president when Harrison died one month into his term. Because of this, Tyler was given the derisive moniker "His Accidency." No commander has had more children than Tyler, a whopping 15 in total. He had eight with his first wife, Letitia (who died early into his presidency) and seven with his second wife, Julia, who was 30 years his junior. He w...

Did you watch the Republican Presidential Debate last night? It made for entertainment television, that's for sure. Here were a few of my observations: The FOX moderators came out swinging, and they especially put Donald Trump on the spot. Some people think the barrage of tough questions asked of Trump signal that right-leaning FOX News is leading the charge to undermine his campaign. The only issue is that Trump could not rule out running as a 3rd party candidate if he were to not win the nomination. If that ends up happening, it'll split the Republican vote, effectively handing the campaign to the Democratic nominee (presumably Hillary Clinton).  Wouldn't it be something if Trump were in cahoots with one of the parties? I keep thinking whether his entry into the presidential race is part of a furtive scheme concocted with the Democrats to split the vote and get Hillary into the Oval Office. After all, Trump, a former Democrat, was known to cozy up with the Clintons....