All Living Presidents Will Attend Kennedy's Funeral

43rd president will represent family at service

(NEWSER) - George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush won't attend Ted Kennedy's funeral tomorrow, the AP reports. All of the living presidents had been expected at the senator's service in Boston, but the 85-year-old Bush changed his mind after learning his son would be among the mourners, a rep says. Bush 41 will "amply and well represent" the family, the spokesman says. More»

Stress causes grays and wrinkles, but nobody agrees whether presidents die early

(NEWSER) - Four to eight years as leader of the free world gave George W. plenty of wrinkles and gray hairs—but just what are the presidency’s long-term aging effects? One doctor found that presidents generally have shorter-than-average lifespans, the Boston Globe reports, while another pegs two years for every one spent in the Oval Office. "For eight years in office, they age 16 years,” he argues. More»

(NEWSER) - Barack Obama is moving to DC this weekend, and he's already got an interesting lunch date lined up next week with some fellows named George Bush (both of them), Clinton, and Carter, ABC News reports. Wednesday's meeting at the White House will bring together the president-elect with all the living former presidents for the first time. More»

Longevity expert debunks myth that White House duty shortens life

(NEWSER) - President Obama's graying hair has set off the typical chatter that serving as president is so stressful it's bound to take years off a person's life. Not so, says a longevity expert in the Journal of the American Medical Association. In fact, our presidents tend to live longer than the rest of us. S. Jay Olshansky of the University of Illinois crunched the numbers involving 34 presidents who died of natural causes and found that 23 exceeded the life expectancy of men in their era, reports Reuters . More»

(NEWSER) - President Obama paid homage to the "greatest legislator of our time" today in his eulogy of Ted Kennedy—"the baby of the family who became its patriarch, the restless dreamer who became its rock." He ticked off the personal and public tragedies of Kennedy's life, "a string of events that would have broken a lesser man," CBS reports. "But that was not Ted Kennedy." More»