NEW NIXON MOVE: Archives at the Richard...

NEW NIXON MOVE: Archives at the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace will soon get a huge jump in size. All the books and papers from Nixon’s home and office in New Jersey have been crated and are en route to Yorba Linda. . . . But library spokesman Kevin Cartwright says reports that it will re-create Nixon’s home library the way it has the White House Lincoln study are untrue. The idea has come up, but there are no specific plans.

DUBIOUS NIXON? Two months after the Nixon funeral in Yorba Linda, critics are back at it. Best-selling author David Halberstam, in the Columbia Journalism Review, chastises him for failing to understand the underlying dynamics of the Vietnam War. Esquire magazine this month anoints Nixon as “Most Dubious Achiever of all.” . . . It includes two pages of past Nixon “Dubious Achievement” items, with headlines like “Waiter, There’s a Bug in My Soup” and “Alert! Tricky Dicky on the Loose.”

HE’S CLASSIC: Boyd Coddington is the reason organizers of the three-day, 18th Newport Beach Collector Car Auction say it’s their biggest yet. The famed custom car builder will bring in 19 cars for auction. “Make it unique, and make it better than before,” Coddington, 48, calls his philosophy. He’d built 100 hot rods by the time he was 21. . . . The auction, which starts Friday at the Hyatt Newporter, will include close to 300 classics and collector cars.

POLITICAL SIGN? The city Traffic Commission in Orange had recommended against flashers on a “Signal Ahead” sign on a steep graded stretch of Canyon View Avenue. Research showed only one accident there in three years. But that one involved County Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez, whose car was broadsided by a driver running a red light. And Vasquez joined in with neighbors asking for the flashers. . . . The City Council this week ignored the Traffic Commission recommendation--it ordered two amber flashers be put on the sign.