This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: CNN
May 25, 2009
The high-tension atmosphere of the presidency strengthened his marriage, Bush said.
"There's a lot of pressure in the White House, as I'm sure you can imagine. Pressure sometimes can make a marriage stronger or weaker. In my case because of her patience and her enthusiasm, it made our marriage a really good marriage," Bush said.
The pressure of the presidency, he said, weighs most on family members.
"It's much harder to be the son of the pre
Source: Timothy Noah in Slate
May 28, 2009
We can argue whether Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama's nominee to replace retiring Justice David Souter, would be the first Hispanic to serve on the Supreme Court. It's beyond dispute that she would be the first Puerto Rican. Sotomayor was born and raised in the Bronx, but her parents migrated to New York from Puerto Rico, and Sotomayor retains a strong ethnic identification with that Caribbean island....
Almost from the beginning, the U.S. was at a loss about what to do with Puert
Source: NYT
May 27, 2009
In nearly 11 years as a federal appeals court judge, President Obama’s choice for the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, has never directly ruled on whether the Constitution protects a woman’s right to an abortion. But when she has written opinions that touched tangentially on abortion disputes, she has reached outcomes in some cases that were favorable to abortion opponents.
Now, some abortion rights advocates are quietly expressing unease that Judge Sotomayor may not be a reliable vo
Source: NPR
May 28, 2009
The National Archives on Thursday added a new prize to its collection of historic documents — a letter written in 1863 by President Abraham Lincoln.
Lincoln penned the two-sentence missive about a personnel issue to Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase on executive mansion stationery on Nov. 14, 1863 — just five days before delivering the Gettysburg Address.
Historians were aware of the letter's existence because it was ripped from a volume of U.S. Treasury Departm
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 28, 2009
Sara Jane Moore, the woman who attempted to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1975, has said that she believed the US would change only through a violent revolution.
Moore, who spent 32 years in prison for firing a shot that missed the president's head by several feet, admitted in an interview that she now realises that her actions were "wrong ... a serious error".
At the time, the 45-year-old divorced mother had become immersed in leftist groups in Califo
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 28, 2009
China has intensified a campaign to silence dissidents and students in an attempt to make sure next week's 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre goes unmarked.
Beijing has taken steps to prevent dissent in response to a groundswell of pressure for the authorities to atone for what happened.
Students at Beijing and Dalian Universities have been banned from giving any interviews to the foreign media until after the anniversary. Uni
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 28, 2009
Poland has been forced to move its celebrations to mark the 20th anniversary of the country's first free elections away from the city regarded as the birthplace of the democracy movement in the Soviet bloc.
The government has announced it is moving events away from Gdansk because of a threat of violent protests from the Solidarity trade union.
Gdansk Shipyard was the birthplace of the Solidarity trade union movement, whose opposition to the Soviet regime led to the en
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 28, 2009
They pledged to leave no man behind, so for 43 years the mystery of what happened to Huey 808 has tortured veterans of the First Air Cavalry.
The helicopter and its four-man crew failed to return from a routine mission in December 1965, soon after braving enemy fire at the battle of Ia Drang, America's first great clash of arms in Vietnam.
Pilots spent months scouring the jungle looking for traces of a crash site, and for years afterwards, comrades of the lost crew mad
Source: BBC
May 25, 2009
The Pope has told Chinese Catholics of the officially tolerated Patriotic Church and those who worship secretly to take steps towards reconciliation.
Beijing broke off formal diplomatic relations with the Vatican in 1951, and Catholic worship is only permitted in officially recognised churches.
But members of the underground church have kept their allegiance to Rome.
It is estimated that, altogether, there are more than 10m Catholics throughout China.
Source: BBC
May 27, 2009
A series of controlled explosions has sunk a World War II US troop ship to create an artificial reef off Florida.
The General Hoyt S Vandenberg sank in less than two minutes after experts detonated explosives off Key West.
Officials hope the reef will attract divers, boosting the economy by $8m (£5m). They also say fish, coral and other marine life will be drawn to it.
The ship was last used by the US Air Force to track missiles and spacecraft.
Source: AP
May 28, 2009
Japan's government says it will consider revising the criteria to determine which survivors of the 1945 U.S. atomic bombings of two Japanese cities are entitled to free medical care after an appeals court ordered it to officially recognize more victims.
Thousands of atom bomb survivors still seek official recognition after the government earlier rejected their eligibility for compensation. Last year, the government eased the requirements for recognition following criticism that the
Source: CNN
May 28, 2009
An Arizona collector handed over to the federal government Thursday a rare handwritten letter from Lincoln to Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase. The letter, dated four days before Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address in 1863, had been missing for more than 60 years.
Federal officials, who have not ruled out its possible theft from a government collection, discovered it two years ago during routine monitoring of online auctions.
They have been negotiating for its re
Source: CNN
May 28, 2009
Bill Clinton's campaign-year resentment of President Obama is a thing of the past, according to a lengthy profile of the former president in Sunday's New York Times Magazine — but he hasn't quite come to terms with the Kennedy family's decision to back Obama over Hillary Clinton during the primary season.
Clinton reportedly has yet to make his peace with Sen. Ted Kennedy and the Massachusetts senator's niece, Caroline, over their high-profile endorsements of Barack Obama during the
Source: http://www.thereaganfiles.com/
May 28, 2009
Almost five-years after President Ronald Reagan’s passing, and just over twenty-years since Reagan left office, records from the Reagan Administration are just now revealing what it was like to be in the room with President Reagan when decisions were made that shaped the 21st century.
Until now, only a few of these NSC/NSPG meeting minutes have ever been published.
Here is some of what President Reagan told his advisers during his NSC and NSPG meetings:
“My
Source: NYT
May 27, 2009
Preservationists say the demolition of the Old City section of Kashgar
is a blow to China’s Islamic and Uighur culture.
A thousand years ago, the northern and southern branches of the Silk
Road converged at this oasis town near the western edge of the
Taklamakan Desert. Traders from Delhi and Samarkand, wearied by frigid
treks through the world’s most daunting mountain ranges, unloaded
their pack horses here and sold saffron and lutes along the city’s
cramped streets. Chinese trader
Source: Time Magazine
May 27, 2009
Judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court is a historic milestone for Latinos, but it resonates well beyond Hispanic pride. It is perhaps the most potent symbol yet of a 21st century rapprochement between the U.S.'s two largest minorities, Latino Americans and African Americans, who in the 20th century could be as violently distrustful of each other as blacks and whites were....
By the '90s, the frustrations turned violent. In 1991 blacks rioted for days in Cuban-
Source: World Net Daily
May 26, 2009
When WND Editor and Chief Executive Officer Joseph Farah launched his billboard campaign focusing attention on Barack Obama's constitutional eligibility for office, he predicted the effort would attract media curiosity – perhaps even more than the central issue of whether the president is truly a "natural born citizen."
Less than a week after the billboard campaign began, media have already begun showing interest – even though, so far, only one billboard, an electronic one
Source: NYT
May 27, 2009
In the months leading up to Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s selection this week, the White House methodically labored to apply lessons from years of nomination battles to control the process and avoid the pitfalls of the past, like appearing to respond to pressure from the party’s base or allowing candidates to be chewed up by friendly fire.
The selection process for Mr. Obama’s first Supreme Court nomination brought together a group that had been thinking about this moment for a long time,
Source: Center for Public Integrity
May 6, 2009
The top subprime lenders whose loans are largely blamed for triggering the global economic meltdown were owned or backed by giant banks now collecting billions of dollars in bailout money — including several that have paid huge fines to settle predatory lending charges. The banks that funded the subprime industry were not victims of an unforeseen financial collapse, as they have sometimes portrayed themselves, but enablers that bankrolled the type of lending threatening the financial system.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 28, 2009
Photographs of alleged prisoner abuse which Barack Obama is attempting to censor include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, it has emerged.
At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.
Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.
