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: NYT
January 16, 2008
Looking dapper in a bow tie and a crisp suit, the founder of the Turkish republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, stared fiercely into a dark room. He was made of wax and standing in a museum, but for some visitors last week, he might as well have been alive and breathing.
“If they let me I would kiss his hand,” exclaimed a middle-aged man with a bushy black mustache. “My heart is burning.”
Almost 85 years after Ataturk formed the modern state of Turkey from the remains of the
Source: Time
January 18, 2008
Golfweek magazine replaced the editor responsible for illustrating the current cover with a noose and apologized Friday for its depiction of a Golf Channel anchor's use of "lynch" in a comment about Tiger Woods.
Source: Time
January 18, 2008
[HNN: Click the SOURCE link above to see the montage.]
Source: Newsletter of the New York American Revolution Round Table
January 16, 2008
For decades, Anna Plumstead of Wiscasset, Me had a treasure in her attic: a 1776 copy of the Declaration of Independence. It had been sent to the town in that decisive year as part of a campaign to spread its message throughout the 13 rebelling colonies. At that time, Wiscasset was part of Massachusetts. When Ms Plumstead died, her heirs cleaned out the attic and found the copy. It was sold at an estate auction and has since changed hands several times. Most recently it was bought by a private c
Source: WaPo
January 18, 2008
The White House possesses no archived e-mail messages for many of its component offices, including the Executive Office of the President and the Office of the Vice President, for hundreds of days between 2003 and 2005, according to the summary of an internal White House study that was disclosed yesterday by a congressional Democrat.
The 2005 study -- whose credibility the White House attacked this week -- identified 473 separate days in which no electronic messages were stored for o
Source: Seattle Times
January 18, 2008
Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne should reject a proposal that would foreclose the ability of scientists to shed light on American prehistory.
Proposed new rules likely would preclude the examination of remains such as the 9,300-year-old Kennewick Man, found on federal land along the Columbia River in 1996. Tribes no longer would have to prove a connection to the remains beyond the coincidence the remains were found on their ancestral lands, despite prolific evidence of the widesp
Source: Washington Times
January 18, 2008
Reviving yet another iconic image from Soviet days, Russia's military announced plans to stage a parade of ballistic missiles, tanks and platoons of soldiers this May through the Kremlin's Red Square.
The display of military hardware, the first of its kind since 1990, will be held May 9, the day Russians mark the victory over Germany in World War II, and could coincide with the inauguration of Dmitry Medvedev, close aide to outgoing President Vladimir Putin, as Russia's new leader.
Source: CNN
January 17, 2008
Reacting to criticism by his own party that he is too liberal, Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is highlighting his conservative, evangelical Southern credentials to South Carolina primary voters.
The Iowa caucus winner weighed in Thursday on the state's perennial debate over displaying the Confederate flag, expressing sympathy with those who believe the rebel banner should be flown. The flag is also considered by many to be a symbol of slavery.
"You
Source: Spero News
January 18, 2008
Last year, "Titanic" director James Cameron and TV-director Simcha Jacobovici said that the Jesus family tomb had been found. The archaeological community dismissed their contention completely, and now Princeton's James Charlesworth has completed a Jerusalem conference that brought together over 50 scientists to discuss the issue.
Last year, James Cameron declared that it had been determined "beyond any reasonable doubt" that the tomb of Jesus and his family had
Source: NYT
January 18, 2008
As a federal court-ordered overhaul of California’s prison medical system begins, the storied prison overlooking San Francisco Bay is tearing down several outmoded buildings on the 432-acre property, including the original 1885 hospital built in the institutional Italianate style. A $146 million, state-of-the-art primary care health services complex will open in 2010.
Before demolition, state historians called in to survey the site discovered the significance of what had been a forg
Source: LiveScience
January 17, 2008
New research on mice shows the brain processes aggressive behavior as it does other rewards. Mice sought violence, in fact, picking fights for no apparent reason other than the rewarding feeling.
The mouse brain is thought to be analogous to the human brain in this study, which could shed light on our fascination with brutal sports as well as our own penchant for the classic bar brawl.
In fact, the researcher say, humans seem to crave violence just like they do sex, foo
Source: Scoop
January 17, 2008
The Police Commissioner Howard Broad jointly with the Chief of the Army, Major General Lou Gardiner, announced today the largest reward ever offered in New Zealand for information leading to the safe return of the medals stolen from the Army Museum last month.
Commissioner Broad and General Gardiner said the reward of $300,000 is being offered through the generosity of Lord Michael Ashcroft, the owner of the largest collection of Victoria Crosses, and a New Zealand businessman who w
Source: AP
January 18, 2008
The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is offering to help survivors and their families navigate a vast Nazi archive that promises to document their persecution and provide clues to the fate of loved ones.After months of work on more than 100 million digital images from the International Tracing Service archive in Bad Arolsen, Germany, the museum announced that it would begin answering requests from survivors and their families.
'This moment is a wonderful victory f
Source: Cutting Edge
January 17, 2008
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum today launched an ambitious and daunting new program of “individualized research” program to help Holocaust survivors obtain precious documentation about their Nazi enslavement.
The new program “begins right now,” said Arthur Berger, USHMM director of external communications in a Museum corridor just moments after a closed-door briefing with survivors, details of which were provided first to The Cutting Edge News. The “individualized resea
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
January 18, 2008
The Queen wasn't invited, the Pope's not coming, and as Quebec City begins its 400th birthday celebrations, it's even facing a challenge to its claim to being Canada's oldest city. Only three weeks into the festivities, the city's big 400 has hit a bumpy road that threatens to turn the planned 10-month celebrations into a major bust.Despite high hopes and heavy lobbying, Pope Benedict XVI yesterday declined an invitation to celebrate mass at a major religious gathering in Qu
Source: The Trail: WaPo Blog
January 17, 2008
They've argued health care, free trade, immigration reform. Yucca Mountain? Been there, done that. But here's a debate no one saw coming in the Democratic primary: the legacy of Ronald Reagan.
Sen. Barack Obama opened the door when he said the following in an interview with the Reno Gazette-Journal:
"I don't want to present myself as some sort of singular figure. I think part of what's different are the times...I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of Americ
Source: NYT
January 17, 2008
Volunteers making telephone calls for Senator John McCain in South Carolina last weekend noticed something odd: Four people contacted said in remarkably similar language that they opposed Mr. McCain for president because of his 1980 divorce from his first wife, Carol, who raised the couple’s three children while Mr. McCain was a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
By Tuesday afternoon, a group calling itself Vietnam Veterans Against McCain had sent out a crude flier accusing the candidate o
Source: AP
January 16, 2008
The White House has acknowledged recycling its backup computer tapes of e-mail before October 2003, raising the possibility that many electronic messages - including those pertaining to the CIA leak case - have been taped over and are gone forever.
The disclosure came minutes before midnight Tuesday under a court-ordered deadline that forced the White House to reveal information it has previously refused to provide.
Among the e-mails that could be lost are messages swap
Source: ROGERS CADENHEAD at the website watchingthewatchers.org
January 17, 2008
On Jan. 17, 1998, Matt Drudge reported that Newsweek had spiked Michael Isikoff's story about President Clinton's sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky, the first shot in the war between the corporate and cautious culture of mainstream journalism and the completely batshit blogosphere.
Six weeks later, I registered Drudge.Com. It's hard to believe that Matt Drudge remains one of the most important journalists in the U.S., 10 years after he nabbed somebody else's scoop. I wish someone h
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
January 16, 2008
Pope Benedict XVI, who got a firsthand look at sometimes-violent student activism as a German university professor in the late 1960s, evidently has no wish to repeat the experience.
After some 50 students at the University of Rome La Sapienza briefly occupied the rector’s office today to protest the pope’s scheduled appearance at the university, the Vatican announced that Benedict would not be coming after all.
“Following the widely noted vicissitudes of recent days … i
