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: Inside Higher Ed
February 25, 2008
Despite the concerns of many of its faculty members and historians nationwide, Southern Methodist University agreed to terms Friday for becoming the home of President Bush’s library and of an institute that will promote the president’s views and that will not be controlled by the university.
Presidential libraries — which are managed by the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration — have generally been considered a plum for a university to obtain. Scholars are attracted by
Source: CNN
February 25, 2008
Why are people drawn to sites of inexplicable horror or tragedy?
"People need to confront the reality of a disaster," says Dr. Grace Bellotti, a Bronx-based psychiatrist with the New York University Department of Psychiatry. "It's so unbelievable they need to go and look for themselves.'"
For some, the journey is intensely personal. "It was unbearable," Holocaust survivor Sol Rosenkranz, 90, of New York City, says of his trip five years ago
Source: AP
February 25, 2008
China has agreed to a long-standing U.S. request for access to sensitive military records that Pentagon officials believe might resolve the fate of thousands of U.S. servicemen missing from the Korean War and other Cold War-era conflicts, a Pentagon official said Monday.
The arrangement is scheduled to be publicly announced Friday in Shanghai after a final set of talks to work out certain details, according to Larry Greer, spokesman for the Pentagon's POW-MIA office.
Th
Source: International Herald Tribune
February 25, 2008
There is a hushed worry on the minds of many supporters of Senator Barack Obama, echoing in conversations from state to state, rally to rally: Will he be safe?
In Colorado, two sisters say they pray daily for his safety. In New Mexico, a daughter says she persuaded her mother to still vote for Obama, even though the mother feared that winning would put him in danger. And at a rally here, a woman expressed worries that a message of hope and change, in addition to his race, made him m
Source: CNN
February 25, 2008
Think Barack Hussein Obama has it rough campaigning for president with a name like that? The Illinois senator has nothing on Frankenstein Momin. Or Billy Kid Sangma. Or Adolf Lu Hitler Marak.
The three men are among dozens of others with equally colorful names who are competing for legislative seats in Meghalaya, a remote northeast Indian state, on March 3.
There are about 60 seats up for grabs, 331 candidates vying, and no shortage of unusual names.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 25, 2008
The Oxford laboratory that declared the Turin Shroud to be a medieval fake 20 years ago is investigating claims that its findings were wrong.
The head of the world-renowned laboratory has admitted that carbon dating tests it carried out on Christendom's most famous relic may be inaccurate.
Professor Christopher Ramsey, the director of the Oxford University Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, said he was treating seriously a new theory suggesting that contamination had skewed
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 25, 2008
A city philanthropist has called for the controversy over the fourth plinth at Trafalgar Square to be permanently resolved by offering to fund a statue in tribute to the man who played a key role in saving Britain from Nazi invasion.
For the past decade, millions of pounds of taxpayers' money has been spent on the displays after being subject to lengthy consultation committees at the order of Ken Livingstone, the London mayor.
But Terry Smith, the chief executive of Tul
Source: CNN
February 25, 2008
Pingpong helped thaw relations between China and the United States more than three decades ago. Now the catalyst of that thaw wonders whether music can do the same for the U.S. and North Korea.
Zhuang Zedong, a three-time world champion in table tennis, also known as pingpong, faced a quandary one April day 37 years ago.
He was sitting at the back of his Chinese team's bus, waiting to drive to the stadium during the 1971 world championship in Japan.
Perhap
Source: ABC News
February 22, 2008
The Hillary Clinton campaign pushed to reporters today stories about Barack Obama and his ties to former members of a radical domestic terrorist group -- but did not note that as president, Clinton's husband pardoned more than a dozen convicted violent radicals, including a member of the same group mentioned in the Obama stories.
"Wonder what the Republicans will do with this issue," mused Clinton spokesman Phil Singer in one e-mail to the media, containing a New York Sun
Source: News Obsersver
February 24, 2008
The Hump, American air crews called it. Or, when they were in a darker mood, the Aluminum Trail. The World War II supply route from India into China was dotted with their wreckage.
By whatever name, the route was critical, an aerial highway over some of the world's highest mountains, a path flown by hundreds of U.S. aircraft ferrying supplies to the Chinese Army so it could stay in the fight against Japan.
The cost in planes and lives was staggering. More than 400 U.S.
Source: AP
February 23, 2008
It might not even really be George Washington's hair — but it still sold for $17,000.
Four strands reportedly clipped from the first president were sold at auction Friday night to a Richmond man who declined to give his name.
Colorado resident Christa Allen said her father, a Philadelphia attorney, had given her the hair, which was pressed under glass in a locket and accompanied by a watch.
Source: AP
February 24, 2008
A longtime prosecutor agreed while he was in office to give filmmakers access to documents connected to President Kennedy's assassination and helped form a company to take part in the venture, a newspaper reported Sunday.
New details about District Attorney Henry Wade's involvement in the proposed project about the JFK assassination and the trial of Jack Ruby were contained in long-hidden files discovered in a courthouse safe, according to The Dallas Morning News.
Wade
Source: AP
February 23, 2008
It hasn't been easy getting people excited about celebrating the 200th birthday of that tall, gaunt, bearded, Kentucky-bred president who was born in a log cabin and went on to lead his people through a bloody civil war.
No, not Abraham Lincoln. Last week, President Bush himself helped kick off a two-year celebration of the Great Emancipator's Feb. 12, 2009, bicentennial that will include dozens of events in Kentucky, Illinois, Washington and beyond.
It's that other tall, lo
Source: CNN
February 22, 2008
When people think of the 1960s civil rights movement, they think of the leaders and lieutenants ... Martin Luther King Jr., Andrew Young, Jesse Jackson, Ralph Abernathy, Hosea Williams.
They and many more are remembered for challenging segregation, organizing voter registration drives, pushing for equal pay, fighting for union rights, speaking in church and at rallies.
But there were many unsung foot soldiers in the movement -- witnesses to American history.
Source: http://www.nzherald.co.nz
February 22, 2008
A Norwegian museum director says he has discovered cartoons which he believes were drawn by Adolf Hitler during World War Two.
There was no independent confirmation that the drawings were the work of the Nazi leader, who tried to make a living as an artist before going into politics.
William Hakvaag, director of a war museum in northern Norway, said on Thursday he had found the drawings hidden in a painting signed "A.Hitler" that he bought at a German auction
Source: NYT
February 24, 2008
Larry Devlin is 85 now, suffering from emphysema and tethered to an oxygen tank, his Central Intelligence Agency career long behind him. But he recalls with sunlit clarity the day in Congo nearly half a century ago when he was handed a packet of poisons, including toxic toothpaste, and ordered to carry out a political assassination.
“I was totally taken aback,” said Mr. Devlin, sitting in his den, looking out on a small lake in the Virginia countryside. He uttered a mild profanity,
Source: NYT
February 24, 2008
She served as first lady through her husband’s two terms, suffered the indignities of his impeachment and then made history running for his office on her own.
No, not her. It was Miriam Amanda Wallace Ferguson, known as “Ma,” the first woman elected governor of Texas, back in 1924.
So you’ll pardon the women of Texas (and Ma Ferguson was known for her generous pardons) if they don’t go all wobbly over the idea of the first female president.
Texas is no stra
Source: WaPo
February 22, 2008
Southern Methodist University in Dallas will be the home of President Bush's future presidential library and public policy institute, officials announced today, launching a project that could require hundreds of millions of dollars in private donations.
The location of the project has not exactly been a state secret -- representatives of Bush's library foundation have been negotiating with the university for months -- but the announcement means Bush's friends and associates will soo
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
February 22, 2008
Charlie Carr watched as at least 15 friends were thrown overboard because the ship was too heavy. He was shipped from Africa to Georgia 50 years after the overseas slave trade was supposed to have been abolished in 1808. And he fought in the U.S. Colored Troops during the Civil War but never was able to secure a pension for his family.
Emma Davis-Hamilton thinks she is part of Carr's family. She learned about the man, who may be related to her grandfather, after finding his slave re
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
February 22, 2008
Paul Dye never doubted that the stain on the old battle flag was the blood of his ancestor.
When a cousin gave the relic to him and his brother, pulling it out of a dress box she kept under a bed, she told them the story of their kinsman, William D. Whitehead, who was shot down as he carried the banner into combat in Virginia.
Decades later, Dye related that tale to Richard D. Hatch, an auctioneer who plans to sell the heirloom -- one of the rarest Civil War flags in G
