New Stamps: Old TV, Liberal Activist Judge, Poe, Others

The Post Office has announced its commemorative stamps for 2009. Alaskan and Hawaiian statehood are honored, which should please Sarah Palin and Barack Obama, and four stamps depict stages in the career of Abraham Lincoln on the bicentennial of his birth. Literature is represented by Edgar Allen Poe and Richard Wright, Hollywood by Bob Hope and Gary Cooper, fine arts by Edward Hopper, and there's a slew of Civil Rights stamps.

The traditional USPS boomer sop is the "Early TV Memories" series, with black-and-white tube images of Ozzie and Harriet, Joe Friday, Lassie, Howdy Doody, et alia. Conservatives will enjoy the marriage-promoting Wedding Cake and Wedding Rings stamps, while liberals will snap up the William Brennan stamp in the Supreme Court Justice series. "King and Queen of Hearts," this year's "Love" stamp, "pays clever tribute to what is said by many to be world's favorite 'game.'"

The series closes with a bunch of winter holiday stamps including (though we are assured nobody celebrates it anymore) Kwanzaa.