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: http://www.examiner.com
November 29, 2007
The Smithsonian has all the money it needs to complete renovation of the National Museum of American History and reopen the site this summer, but it still has not set a firm opening date.
Officials will commit to a reopening date this February, according to director Brent Glass. The project has finished the demolition phase and is now moving into new construction; the property closed in September 2006.
Fundraising accounted for $39.1 million of the cost of the project,
Source: ECNmag.com
December 5, 2007
The 40-ft. x 32-ft. American flag at Fort McHenry in 1814 was made just a few years after the dawn of the incandescent lamp, and now Smithsonian preservationists intend to protect it further with modern LED technology.
Best known as the Star-Spangled Banner, because of the Francis Scott Key poem that became the national anthem, the flag will return to public display when the National Museum of American History completes its renovation in summer 2008. The new gallery being constructe
Source: AP
December 6, 2007
Israeli archaeologists uncovered a 2,000-year-old mansion believed to have been home to Queen Helene of Adiabene, whose clan ruled a region now in Iraq.
The remains of the building were unearthed just outside the walls of Jerusalem's Old City, underneath layers of a more recent settlement that was hidden until recently under the asphalt of a small parking lot in east Jerusalem.
Israel captured east Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 Mideast War. Palestinians see the east
Source: http://www.inrich.com
December 5, 2007
Colonial Beach, VA - After decades of fits and starts to honor the birthplace of James Monroe, a new visitors center is rising in the Westmoreland County woods where the fifth president of the United States roamed as a boy centuries ago.
Built of modern materials such as steel, glass, insulated roof panels and concrete siding, the 1,000-square-foot center will look like an 18th-century tobacco barn. It will contain exhibits about Monroe and bathroom facilities for visitors.
Source: WaPo
December 6, 2007
One of the many quirks of Ron Paul's unexpectedly vigorous campaign for the Republican presidential nomination has been that he has been able to generate such a fervent following despite a campaign manner that verges on the grandfatherly. But in a brief interview in New Hampshire a few days ago, Paul showed that he is capable of delivering a barbed line or two, albeit wrapped in a kindly septuagenarian smile.
Asked what he made of John McCain's comments at last week's GOP debate com
Source: http://www.indystar.com
December 5, 2007
The Indiana History Center's elegant brick building on the Downtown Canal is most often visited by dedicated researchers or well-dressed adults attending evening receptions.
Soon, it might begin to look a bit more like Disney's Epcot Center.
Major changes are in store for the center, which is adding four permanent attractions that will be known as "The Indiana Experience."
New exhibits include a re-created 1940s nightclub and three-dimensional dis
Source: NYT
December 7, 2007
The 427 suitcases, trunks, crates and bundles recovered after Willard closed in 1995 turned out to belong to patients who had spent decades in this vast state mental institution. In them were the remnants of lives left behind when their owners entered the locked gates.
Now a handful of artifacts once packed away, and the stories behind them, are on display at the New York Public Library’s Science, Industry and Business Library in Midtown through Jan. 31.
“The history of
Source: NYT
December 6, 2007
For some four decades, William D. Walsh browsed auction catalogs in search of the ancient artifacts that would gratify his passion for classical antiquity.
From Greek terra cotta vases to Roman marble heads to Etruscan urns, he gradually assembled a private gallery of more than 200 pieces of varying shapes, sizes and materials at his home in Menlo Park, Calif.
Today nearly all of those antiquities are to go on view at Fordham University in the Bronx as a permanent gift
Source: NYT
December 6, 2007
The campaign of Rudolph W. Giuliani began running a new television advertisement yesterday in New Hampshire and Boston.
Mr. Giuliani says: “I remember back to the 1970s and the early 1980s. Iranian mullahs took American hostages, and they held the American hostages for 444 days. And they released the American hostages in one hour, and that should tell us a lot about these Islamic terrorists that we’re facing. The one hour in which they released them was the one hour in which Ronald
Source: NYT
December 7, 2007
Mitt Romney asked the nation on Thursday not to reject his presidential candidacy because of his religion, assuring evangelical Christians and other religious voters that his values matched theirs in a speech that used the word “Mormon” only once....
Afterward, Mr. Romney’s advisers said privately that they hoped the speech would help him with his other, arguably larger, obstacle: lingering questions about the firmness of his convictions given his shifting positions and tone on issu
Source: NYT Video
December 7, 2007
Mitt Romney's speech drew inevitable comparisons to another speech from a half-century earlier by John F. Kennedy.
Source: LAT
December 7, 2007
Families with ties to the military, long a reliable source of support for wartime presidents, disapprove of President Bush and his handling of the war in Iraq, with a majority concluding the invasion was not worth it, a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll has found.
The views of the military community, which includes active-duty service members, veterans and their family members, mirror those of the overall adult population, a sign that the strong military endorsement that the administ
Source: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk
December 5, 2007
In addition to giving the world James Joyce, Daniel O'Donnell and the strap-on leprechaun beard, Ireland can now apparently take credit for a fair chunk of the English language as spoken today, including slang.
According to a (mildly controversial) new book, words such as 'gimmick', 'scam' and even 'dude' are all corruptions of the Irish used by the tens of thousands of migrants who arrived in the United States throughout the 19th century.
"Irish was a back-room la
Source: US Dept. of Defense
November 30, 2007
The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today that the remains of two U.S. servicemen, missing from the Vietnam War, have been identified.
They are Maj. Robert F. Woods, of Salt Lake City, Utah, and Capt. Johnnie C. Cornelius, of Maricopa County, Ariz., both U.S. Air Force. Cornelius was buried with full military honors on Nov. 10 in Moore, Texas, and Woods’ burial is being set by his family.
On June 26, 1968, Wo
Source: US Dept. of Defense
December 5, 2007
The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office announced today that the remains of a U.S. serviceman, missing in action from the Korean War, have been identified and will be returned to his family for burial with full military honors.
He is Pfc. Donald M. Walker, U.S. Marine Corps, of Springfield, Ky. He will be buried Dec. 7 in Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, D.C.
Walker was assigned to the Service Company, 1st Service Battalion, of the 1st
Source: AP
December 7, 2007
A few dozen graying Pearl Harbor survivors observed a moment of silence on Friday in honor of their comrades who perished in the Japanese bombing of Oahu 66 years ago.
Wearing aloha shirts and orchid flower lei, the veterans stood on a pier overlooking the sunken hull of the USS Arizona and saluted the flag as a sailor sang "The Star Spangled Banner."
Survivors of each of the nine battleships bombed in the attack took turns setting wreaths before life preserve
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 7, 2007
A century-old mystery surrounding the fate of the “Mad King” who built Bavaria’s celebrated fairytale castles has taken a new twist after an historian claimed that he was murdered.
The allegation comes from an art expert turned sleuth who claims that contemporary portraits of Ludwig II prove that far from killing himself in a fit of melancholy, he was assassinated to put an end his extravagant spending.
Ludwig’s body was found on June 13, 1886, in the knee-deep waters o
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 12, 2007
Germany will be asked to explain why Bavarian courts failed to hand over a former SS/Obersturmfuehrer , indicted as a Nazi war criminal, to the Danish authorities at a meeting of European Union justice ministers.
Last week The Daily Telegraph reported that Germany continues to shelter Søren Kam, a Dane who is accused of murder and is wanting for questioning for his alleged role in the deportation of hundreds of Danish Jews to Nazi concentration camps.
Source: AP
December 7, 2007
A onetime other woman in Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s life has said she is considering voting for the former first lady.
“I can’t help but want to support my own gender, and she’s as experienced as any of the others — except maybe Joe Biden,” the woman, Gennifer Flowers, said in a recent telephone interview from her home here.
Ms. Flowers said that she was undecided, but that she backed abortion rights and had long wanted to see a female president. “I would love to
Source: AP
December 7, 2007
In the year 1215, a group of English barons handed King John a document written on parchment. Put your royal seal on this, they said. John did, and forever changed the relationship between the monarchy and those it governed.
The document was the Magna Carta, a declaration of human rights that would set some of the guiding principles for democracy as it is known today.
While that original edict was initially ignored and John died the next year, its key ideas were includ
