Newt Gingrich told NPR his GOP colleagues should worry “about the risk of appearing to be too eager as they dig into the scandals now dogging the Obama administration.”

Said Gingrich: “I think we overreached in ’98 — how’s that for a quote you can use?”

He added: “They need to be calm and factual. For example, a [House] subcommittee … should invite every single tea party, conservative, patriot group that was messed over by the IRS — every single one of them — to come in and testify, so that they build this deadening record of how many different people were having their rights abused by this administration.”

“I find the comparison — that whoever is making the analysis is challenged in their understanding of history.”

— Former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean, quoted by the Boston Globe, on comparing the current Obama scandals to Watergate.

Joe Klein: “Previous Presidents, including great ones like Roosevelt, have used
the IRS against their enemies. But I don’t think Barack Obama ever
wanted to be on the same page as Richard Nixon. In this specific case,
he now is.”

The Guardian reports that David Stein and his organization, Republican Party Animals, “drew hundreds to regular events in and around Los Angeles, making him a darling of conservative blogs and talkshows. That he made respected documentaries on the Holocaust added intellectual cachet and Jewish support to Stein’s cocktail of politics, irreverence and rock and roll.”

“There was just one problem. Stein was not who he claimed. His real name can be revealed for the first time publicly – a close circle of confidants only found out the truth recently – as David Cole. And under that name he was once a reviled Holocaust revisionist who questioned the existence of Nazi gas chambers. He changed identities in January 1998.”

“Cole’s brazen reinvention as a social networker and political pundit deceived a roll-call of conservative politicians, filmmakers, journalists and broadcasters who had no clue about his past.”

Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor told the Chicago Tribune she isn’t sure the high court should have taken the Bush v. Gore case that decided the 2000 presidential election.

Said O’Connor: “It took the case and decided it at a time when it was still a big election issue. Maybe the court should have said, ‘We’re not going to take it, goodbye.'”

The case “stirred up the public” and “gave the court a less-than-perfect reputation.”

She added: “Obviously the court did reach a decision and thought it had to reach a decision. It turned out the election authorities in Florida hadn’t done a real good job there and kind of messed it up. And probably the Supreme Court added to the problem at the end of the day.”

“She was the one who set the stage for Adolf Hitler. She didn’t copy him, he copied her. Planned Parenthood — it’s unbelievable how evil they were in the early days.”

— Pat Robertson, on The 700 Club, saying Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger was a model for Hitler.

Two weeks after Boston bombings, President Obama will have to walk a line between heartfelt and funny at this weekend’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Former Clinton speechwriter Mark Katz writes in the Daily Beast about how the the Oklahoma City Federal Building tragedy kept President Clinton from delivering a very funny speech.

Here’s the speech he never gave at the 1995 dinner.

I had the great honor to know Hugo Young, a well-known British author and columnist for The Guardian. He wrote an amazing epitaph for Margaret Thatcher just days before he died in 2003. It’s finally being published today.

DNAinfo has photos of the demolition that began this week on the apartment building where President Ronald Reagan lived as a child.

“The University of Chicago bought the building in 2004 as part of a decadelong effort to buy all residential property immediately north of the hospital… Preservationists had tried to save the building, but were unable to persuade city or university officials that the gas-lit apartment where Reagan lived from ages 2 to 3 was historically significant.”

Retronaut: President Abraham Lincoln unknowingly carried a secret message in his pocket watch.

After a quick review, Daniel Drezner was able to find at least two major misleading statements in every State of the Union address in the past decade.

Coming soon: The Forgotten Presidents: Their Untold Constitutional Legacy by Michael J. Gerhardt

Dan Amira: “It’s unclear whether Christie would be the heaviest president in
American history, but he would certainly share one of the top two spots
with William Howard Taft, who served as our 27th president from 1909 to
1913. And though that was a long time ago, in a much different era,
there may be a thing or two that Christie can learn from Taft’s
experience.”

Two former Democratic presidential nominees are in the news: John Kerry was just confirmed as Secretary of State and Al Gore is making the interview rounds for his new book and answering questions about the sale of his Current TV to Al Jazeera.

First Read: “As the saying goes, there are always second acts in politics. And it’s interesting to see the two VERY different paths Kerry and Gore have taken. The other aspect of watching these two men who both came so close to the presidency: Kerry appears to be the same guy he was in 2004. Gore, on the other hand, seems quite different.”

This looks really good: Junius and Albert’s Adventures in the Confederacy: A Civil War Odyssey by Peter Carlson.

“Albert Richardson and Junius Browne, two correspondents for the New York Tribune, were captured at the Battle of Vicksburg and spent twenty months in horrific prisons before escaping and making their way to Union territory.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “is convinced that a lone gunman wasn’t solely responsible for the assassination of his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, and said his father believed the Warren Commission report was a ‘shoddy piece of craftsmanship,'” the AP reports.

Said Kennedy: “The evidence at this point I think is very, very convincing that it was not a lone gunman.”

Out next week: King: A Filmed Record… From Montgomery to Memphis.

Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie (D) is the co-author of a novel about terrorists who barge into the crowded House of Representatives and open fire, killing or wounding more than 100 lawmakers and staffers.