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
December 18, 2007
George Romney had big ideas for his youngest child.
In 1957, Mitt Romney, 10, with his father, George W. Romney, at their home in Detroit. More Photos >
Mitt Romney had already made millions as the founder of a giant buyout firm. But his father wanted Mitt to follow him into politics, convinced he could unseat Senator Edward M. Kennedy in Massachusetts.
“It was Mitt’s dad that kicked us over that one,” Ann Romney, Mitt Romney’s wife, recalled of the losing 19
Source: National Security Archive
December 18, 2007
The House of Representatives at 5:18 pm today unanimously passed the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) reform bill (S. 2488) that passed the Senate by unanimous consent on December 14. The bill aims to fix some of the most persistent problems in the FOIA system, including excessive delay, lack of responsiveness, and litigation gamesmanship by federal agencies. Following today’s approval by the House, the OPEN Government Act will be sent to the President's desk for approval.
“Our s
Source: AP
December 18, 2007
A 4,000-year-old clay tablet authorities suspect was smuggled illegally from Iraq was
pulled from eBay just minutes before the close of the online auction, authorities said Tuesday.
Criminal proceedings have been launched against the seller, identified only as a resident of
Zurich, officials said.
Source: Romenesko (media column)
December 17, 2007
A caller to the Tampa Tribune wanted to know why the media weren't reporting a story about Hillary Clinton and the Black Panthers -- a tale the woman had heard on Paul Harvey's "The Rest of the Story." Joseph H. Brown writes: "The reason the press hasn't 'covered' this story is that it's totally untrue. It's an urban legend that's been snaking its way across the Internet for years."
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists
December 18, 2007
The National Archives says it is exploring new methods to accelerate
the disclosure of records at Presidential libraries.Archivists "decided to undertake an in-house study in the spring of
2007 to review ways to achieve faster processing of Presidential
records," stated Emily Robison, acting director of the Clinton
Presidential Library, in an October 2 declaration that was filed in a
lawsuit brought against NARA by Judicial Watch."As a result of thi
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists
December 18, 2007
The U.S. intelligence community is reverting to old patterns of cold
war secrecy, warned the former Chairman of the National Intelligence
Council (NIC), to the detriment of U.S. intelligence."The reality that I see is an Intelligence Community that is retreating
into greater secrecy and old cultural habits, even in the short time
since I left the NIC in early 2005," said Amb. Robert L. Hutchings in
recent testimony."Try to get a CIA analyst to go on
Source: AP
December 17, 2007
White House visitor logs are public documents, a federal judge ruled Monday, rejecting a legal strategy that the Bush administration had hoped would get around public records laws and let them keep their guests a secret.
The ruling is a blow to the Bush administration, which has fought the release of records showing visits by prominent religious conservatives.
Visitor records are created by the Secret Service, which is subject to the Freedom of Information Act. But the
Source: Inside Higher Ed
December 17, 2007
Most academic disciplines largely trust a decentralized approach to policing potential instances of plagiarism, counting on scholars to report situations when they occur, and journal editors or academic administrators to respond to and punish breaches upon learning about them. The assumption that wrongdoing will eventually become known, and that a cheater’s reputation will be destroyed (along, not unimportantly, with fears of legal dangers for getting involved) has led most scholarly societies t
Source: Deborah Lipstadt at her blog
December 17, 2007
According to MEMRI, Syrian Cleric Muhammad Sa'id Ramadhan Al-Bouti said on Al Jazeera that Benjamin Franklin had called upon Americans to Deport Jews from the U.S.
Simply put: this is completely false. No proof of this statement has been found in anything Franklin said. In addition, it contains language that was not used in Franklin's times, e.g. homeland. Moreover, the statement never surfaced before the 1930s. And it comes from a book which no one has ever seen.
If y
Source: Bloomberg News
December 17, 2007
Shlomo Venezia was a slave laborer in the crematoriums at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
For eight months in 1944, he loaded the corpses of his fellow Jews into the Nazi ovens -- 12 hours a day, seven days a week, cadaver after cadaver until it became a mechanical task, like feeding a heating furnace with cords of wood.
"Men are animals,'' Venezia says, recalling in a conversation in his Rome clothing shop how he hardened himself. "They resist things you can't ever imagi
Source: Times (London)
December 13, 2007
She was the English aristocrat who became so enamoured with Hitler that she shot herself in the head at the outbreak of war.
Unity Mitford, the daughter of Lord Redesdale, had been so entwined in the Führer’s inner circle that British secret services described her as “more Nazi than the Nazis”. But could this cousin of Winston Churchill have been closer to Hitler than anyone suspected?
An article published today raises the possibility that Mitford, who survived her suic
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 17, 2007
The Queen will this week pass another milestone in her reign when she becomes the oldest monarch in the history of the nation.
On Saturday she will overtake Victoria, one of her most illustrious predecessors, but the event will pass without any fanfare at Buckingham Palace.
The Queen will spend the day at Windsor Castle with the Duke of Edinburgh. There will be no public pronouncements.
Victoria died on Jan 22, 1901, aged 81 years, seven months, four weeks
Source: BBC
December 15, 2007
The origins of a pint of Guinness appear to be much humbler than the man who gave the world "the black stuff" wanted us to think.
Recent testing by Trinity College Dublin of Guinness family DNA has shown that Arthur Guinness's claims of being a descendant of the Magennis chieftains of Iveagh, County Down, were nothing more than aspirational.
Despite this, when he married in 1761, he is even said to have had a silver cup engraved with the Magennis crest, which
Source: Independent (UK)
December 17, 2007
It's gone down as the social event of the age – Robert Dudley's three-week bash for Elizabeth I. Now new documents reveal just how lavish it was.
***
If you want to marry the Queen, you have to know how to party. At least, that seems to have been the Earl of Leicester's thinking more than 400 years ago.
Almost no one in England had a good word to say about Robert Dudley, one of the most colourful figures from the years when Elizabeth reigned – apart from th
Source: NYT
December 17, 2007
Nashville | On Saturday morning, cars jammed the street outside James and Laura Jane Bowen’s home. Friends chatted in the yard, hands around coffee cups.
With history buffs and curious neighbors looking on, an archaeologist directed the excavation of the Bowens’ lawn in search of a 201-year-old grave and, possibly, the resolution of a long-standing historical puzzle.
The dig’s goal was to solve a mystery over the grave of Charles Henry Dickinson, who was killed in an 1
Source: Earth Times
December 15, 2007
A German museum has announced plans for 16 screenings of the ultimate Nazi hate movie, Jud Suess, as part of an exhibition picking apart how Nazi propaganda worked. The 1940 costume melodrama was used to stoke up hatred of Jews in 21 nations. It was a favourite of Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, who had funded it.
"The film is an overwhelming success. The audience was seething," he gloated in his diary in 1940. "This is the first really anti- Semitic film."
Source: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net
December 13, 2007
Hunters of the fabled Yamashita treasure are leaving trails of destruction in Mt. Banahaw and are frustrating efforts to rehabilitate the mystical mountain, according to a top official of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.
Saying the “real treasure” is Banahaw itself, Sally Pangan, DENR protected area supervisor, appealed to the believers of the Yamashita treasure to stop their futile search. She said she had yet to hear any reports of discovery.
Legen
Source: Sunday Mail
December 16, 2007
IN the dying days of the Second World War, the Nazis fought a desperate battle to develop the atomic bomb before the Allies.
More than 60 years later, a scientist has revealed how he hid the secret of creating the catastrophic weapon from Adolf Hitler.
Erwin Klinge had been hired by the dictator to create the ultimate weapon of mass destruction. But the German-born pastor - who has lived in Scotland for 20 years - and his team buried the plans to stop the Nazis aquiring
Source: Earth Times
December 16, 2007
Charles Jeffrey Gray, a former British pilot, who carried out World War II bombing raids over Germany has joined a campaign to rescue Berlin's most famous wartime ruin - the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, near the Kurfuerstendamm. The church, which was built at the end of the 19th century, was destroyed during a British air attack in November 1943. Only its gaping, ruined tower remained and was later restored as a dark reminder of the war.
Now, the tower is in a dire state of decay
Source: Charleston Gazette
December 9, 2007
Seven months after the Civil War ended and one week before ratification of the 13th Amendment made slavery unconstitutional, two West Virginia companies of an all-black Union Army regiment gathered near Philadelphia to receive their final pay and discharge papers.
The date was Dec. 13, 1865, and the place was Camp Cadwalader, an Army base a few miles from Camp William Penn, where the men of the 45th U.S. Colored Infantry began their basic training in June 1864.
Among th
