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: AP
July 9, 2007
Congress and the White House appear headed for a showdown over President Bush's decision to invoke executive privilege to deny documents to House and Senate committees and prevent former aides from testifying about the firing of U.S. attorneys.
Lawmakers, in turn, have threatened to hold subpoenaed officials in contempt of Congress....
Q: Where in the Constitution does it say Congress can hold someone in contempt for not testifying?
A: It's not in the Const
Source: http://www.thisisthenortheast.co.uk
July 10, 2007
STONE Age Britons from across the North-East flocked to a prehistoric "Glastonbury festival" marked by mysterious rituals, a major archaeological discovery suggests.
Experts believe tools, pottery and timber stakes unearthed near Durham City show a site within view of Durham Cathedral was a place of mass worship as far back as 3,000 BC.
What the Neolithic-era North-Easterners did during the meetings is still buried in history, but possible activities include c
Source: Nixon Library
July 11, 2007
Today the National Archives and Records Administration opened the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. The new Library joins eleven other federally-operated libraries for Presidents from Herbert Hoover onward. Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein made the announcement at an 8 a.m. (PDT) ceremony for staff and friends at the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, CA.
By agreement between the private Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace Foundation and the National Archives, control ov
Source: Herald (Australia)
July 11, 2007
The Vietcong are as distant a memory as the ‘Grunts’ of the US forces who fought them during the Vietnam War – except in the pitches of the country’s bizarre tourist trade....
The Cu Chi Tunnel complex is one of Asia's stranger holiday fantasies, with its firing range of Vietnam War weaponry, displays of booby-trap bamboo spikes, tunnels to crawl through and dioramas of waxwork GIs setting fire to villages.
It amounts to a Vietnam War theme park on the site of one of th
Source: AP
July 5, 2007
They fought together in Vietnam, but recently two veterans groups battled each other over a symbol both respect, the Vietnam wall.
Both have built replicas of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. The replicas consist of two walls constructed more than a decade ago by a Michigan group, and replica a Florida group unveiled last year. In the past few months, both groups have fired off volleys of e-mails over a trademark dispute and threatened each other with legal action.
Source: WaPo
July 3, 2007
Certain things are immediately apparent about the six human skulls lined up on the metal cabinet in a back room of Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
First, there is the graffiti scrawled across them, abrasive as wartime expressions can be: "Today's pigs are tomorrow's bacon" on one, "Stay high stay alive" on another, trippy thick stripes of bright blue, red and yellow on a third. Two eye sockets are filled with red candle wax, as though the skull had been used to
Source: Columbian
July 10, 2007
A woman who sold her accordion during World War II to pay for lessons so she could fly airplanes in the war effort made her last flight into Vancouver Tuesday.
Then she gave her favorite airplane to Pearson Air Museum.
It wasn’t just any airplane, either. It was the 1953 model Cessna that in 1956 and 1957 she flew solo around the world.
“I’m not crying out loud — not yet,” said pilot Jan Wood, 85, of Reseda, Calif. She was a little unsteady on her legs in t
Source: CBC News
July 10, 2007
The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal has ordered a fine of $4,000 against an Ottawa man who operated a website and internet forum called the Canadian Nazi Party.
Bobby James Wilkinson has also been ordered to "cease and desist" from communicating or helping to communicate messages that would likely expose people to hatred or contempt for being part of an identifiable group protected by law against discrimination, tribunal member Athanasios D. Hadjis ruled Tuesday following a
Source: http://www.radio.cz
July 10, 2007
In recent months, there have been increasingly frequent reports of Czechs trying to pass themselves off as veterans of the Second World War. And real veterans are far from impressed - groups such as the Czech Freedom Fighters' Assocation have spoken out against such behaviour, and even raised the question of whether such a practice should be outlawed.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 11, 2007
The world's oldest working car is set to go under the hammer - and it is expected to fetch up to 1 million pounds.
The four-wheeled car, called La Marquise, was built in 1884 for the Count De Dion, one of the founders of the automobile manufacturers De Dion-Bouton et Trepardoux. It has only had two other owners since, according to Gooding & Company, the auction house selling it.
The four-seater, fuelled by coal, wood and paper, takes about half an hour to work up en
Source: New York Sun
July 11, 2007
A federal appeals court is expressing skepticism about the CIA's claim that its technique for briefing presidents is so sensitive that it must be protected from public scrutiny, even 40 years after the fact.
Two judges considering a lawsuit seeking access to so-called Presidential Daily Briefs provided to President Johnson during the Vietnam War era cast doubt yesterday on the spy agency's assertion that the way it updates the nation's chief executive is itself an intelligence metho
Source: NYT
July 11, 2007
Pope Benedict XVI restated Tuesday what he said were the “defects” of Christian faiths other than Roman Catholicism, prompting anger from Protestants who questioned the Vatican’s respect for other beliefs.
“It makes us question whether we are indeed praying together for Christian unity,” the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, which represents Protestants in more than 100 countries, said in a statement. The Vatican document repeated many of the contentious claims of a document issu
Source: AP
July 9, 2007
President Bush invoked executive privilege Monday to deny requests by Congress for testimony from two former aides about the firings of federal prosecutors.
The White House, however, did offer again to make former counsel Harriet Miers and one-time political director Sara Taylor available for private, off-the-record interviews.
In a letter to the heads of the House and Senate Judiciary panels, White House counsel Fred Fielding insisted that Bush was acting in go
Source: AP
July 10, 2007
rench President Nicolas Sarkozy, embarking on a trip to former colonies in North Africa on Tuesday, said France should recognize its colonial history but not repent it.
"I am for a recognition of facts, not for repentance, which is a religious notion and has no place in state-to-state relations," Sarkozy said in an interview with the Algerian newspapers El Watan and El Khabar published Tuesday.
"The younger generations, on both sides of the Mediterranean,
Source: BBC
July 10, 2007
Archaeologists excavating the site of a Roman villa say artefacts have been stolen and damage caused by thieves using metal detectors.
The team arrived at the site just north of Lincoln on Thursday morning to find 31 holes had been dug there overnight.
The four-week dig is a joint venture between Lindum Heritage and Bishop Grosseteste University College Lincoln.
Zoe Tomlinson, from Lindum Heritage, said the damage caused would have a lasting impact.
Source: BBC
July 10, 2007
A six-year-old has unearthed 120 million-year-old pterosaur bones while hunting for dinosaur relics during a day out at a beach with his father.
Owain Lewis discovered the extremely rare fossil, part of a flying reptile called a pterosaur, at Compton Bay near Freshwater on the Isle of Wight.
The find comprises delicate wing bones of the extinct flying reptile.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 11, 2007
The sound of unbridled joy seldom breaks the quiet of the British Museum's great Arched Room, which holds its collection of 130,000 Assyrian cuneiform tablets, dating back 5,000 years.
But Michael Jursa, a visiting professor from Vienna, let out such a cry last Thursday. He had made what has been called the most important find in Biblical archaeology for 100 years, a discovery that supports the view that the historical books of the Old Testament are based on fact.
Searc
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
July 10, 2007
On July 10, the Senate Financial Services and General Government Appropriations’ Subcommittee approved its fiscal year 2008 appropriations bill. The bill includes $313.9 million ($1.1 million above the President’s request, $1.1 million less than the House recently approved in its bill (H.R. 2829) and $34.6 million above fiscal year 2007 budget) for operating expenses of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).
As approved, the bill also includes $10 million for the N
Source: WaPo
July 10, 2007
The Washington area suburbs of Virginia, befitting a state that supplied four of the first five U.S. presidents, has public high schools named after all of them, plus a nice sprinkling of famous Virginia generals.
Washington-Lee High School is in Arlington County. Jefferson, Madison, Lee, Marshall and J.E.B. Stuart high schools are in Fairfax County. Fredericksburg's only high school is named after James Monroe, and Prince William County has Stonewall Jackson High.
But
Source: Times (UK)
July 8, 2007
Katrin Himmler knew about great-uncle Heinrich, the Nazi chief, but then she unearthed dark truths about 'innocent' relatives.
For teenage girls to be embarrassed by older members of their family is nothing new. For 15-year-old Katrin, however, it was an experience in another league when her surname suddenly struck one of her classmates during a history lesson.
“Are you related to the Himmler?” she asked.
When Katrin managed to stammer out “Yes”, the rest o
