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: Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog, US News
May 26, 2009
It's been widely reported that Judge Sonia Sotomayor would be the first Hispanic on the Supreme Court, though a few people (including some TV commentators) have wondered whether Justice Benjamin Cardozo (on the court from 1932-1938) should not in fact be counted as such.The answer seems to be that Sotomayor would in fact be the first Hispanic, but it also points up the problem inherent in
Source: BBC
May 26, 2009
Divers say they have found the wreck of a vessel which may have been sent to relieve Bonnie Prince Charlie after his 1746 defeat at the battle of Culloden.
The team says artefacts recovered from the ship, found off the Anglesey coast, suggest it may have been bringing supplies from the King of France.
The Prince - Charles Edward Stuart - was at the time in hiding after the failure of the Jacobite Rebellion.
Source: CNN
May 25, 2009
The high-tension atmosphere of the presidency strengthened his marriage, Bush said.
"There's a lot of pressure in the White House, as I'm sure you can imagine. Pressure sometimes can make a marriage stronger or weaker. In my case because of her patience and her enthusiasm, it made our marriage a really good marriage," Bush said.
The pressure of the presidency, he said, weighs most on family members.
"It's much harder to be the son of the pre
Source: BBC
May 25, 2009
The Pope has told Chinese Catholics of the officially tolerated Patriotic Church and those who worship secretly to take steps towards reconciliation.
Beijing broke off formal diplomatic relations with the Vatican in 1951, and Catholic worship is only permitted in officially recognised churches.
But members of the underground church have kept their allegiance to Rome.
It is estimated that, altogether, there are more than 10m Catholics throughout China.
Source: The Indianapolis Star
May 25, 2009
Bones found in the basement of an Albany barbershop belong to three prehistoric American Indians, Delaware County Coroner Jim Clevenger said.
While officials have identified whom the bones belonged to, it remains a mystery how the bones ended up in the basement of a building in downtown Albany, about 70 miles northeast of Indianapolis, where Gary Engelbrecht runs Fading Tradition barbershop.
The building housed a bank until 1965 and has been an insurance office, a consi
Source: NYT
May 25, 2009
Within an hour after the bodies arrive in their flag-draped coffins at Dover Air Force Base, they go through a process that has never been used on the dead from any other war.
Since 2004, every service man and woman killed in Iraq or Afghanistan has been given a CT scan, and since 2001, when the fighting began in Afghanistan, all have had autopsies, performed by pathologists in the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System. In previous wars, autopsies on people killed in combat were unco
Source: CNN
May 25, 2009
Fifteen years after his death, and after his family fought a very long bureaucratic battle with the government, Enrique Valdez's name was added to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
Valdez was a Marine gunnery sergeant wounded by shrapnel in August 1969, combat that left him a quadriplegic.
Since his death in 1994, his family has been waiting for the Defense Department to answer their requests that Valdez be included on "The Wall."
On Memorial Day,
Source: NBC
May 25, 2009
Visit msnbc.com for
Source: NYT
May 25, 2009
President Obama observed Memorial Day on Monday just as his predecessors have: by placing a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns here. But Mr. Obama added a new twist: he sent a second wreath to a memorial honoring African-Americans who fought in the Civil War.
Presidents since Warren G. Harding have marked Memorial Day by visiting Arlington National Cemetery, where white rows of tombstones mark more than seven generations of America’s war dead. But with the nation’s first African-Ame
Source: The Boston Globe
May 25, 2009
Brisk trade in WWII planes thwarts efforts to recover missing fliers.
To the US military, Carter Lutes, a pilot who vanished in Papua New Guinea in April 1944, is one of the lost heroes of World War II. The Pentagon still hopes to recover him. Until then, it considers his jungle crash site a sacred place - and the last known clue to finding him.
Yet while the military was making plans to search for Lutes's remains, other visitors arrived on the site seeking different re
Source: BBC
May 25, 2009
The Italian art world is in a messy "is it or isn't it" debate over a wooden sculpture that may or may not have been made by Michelangelo.
Standing just 40cm (16 inches) high, it depicts Christ on the Cross, but leading art experts simply cannot agree who made it.
This is not a tale about fakery or imitation - everyone says the statue is a Renaissance piece of art from around 1495, when Michelangelo would have been 20.
But who actually crafted i
Source: BBC
May 25, 2009
Lawyers for the former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic have filed papers arguing all charges against him should be dropped.
They say US diplomat Richard Holbrooke promised him immunity from prosecution on condition he gave up politics - something Mr Holbrooke strongly denies.
Mr Karadzic is on trial at the UN tribunal in The Hague, facing 11 charges including genocide.
The tribunal has said that any immunity deal would not be binding.
Source: CNN
May 25, 2009
Following controversy over President Obama's decision to continue a presidential tradition of honoring Confederate war dead on Memorial Day, the White House confirmed Monday that a wreath will now also be placed at a monument to African-American Civil War dead.
Critics had called for an end to the longtime presidential practice of laying a wreath at the Confederate memorial. Last week, in a letter to Obama over the issue, roughly five dozen professors called the tradition offensive
Source: CNN
May 25, 2009
The Women Airforce Service Pilots was born in 1942 to create a corps of female pilots able to fill all types of flying jobs at home to free male military pilots to travel to the front.
In the days after the outbreak of the war, Jacqueline Cochran, one of the country's leading female pilots at the time, went to a key general to argue that women would be just as capable pilots as men if they were given the same training.
She won the argument, and the program was launched.
Source: Newsweek
May 25, 2009
Bush has always been friendly. And maybe, after years of being cordoned off by security, his face time with others carefully choreographed and his days scheduled to the hilt, it's refreshing to him just to have the chance for a spontaneous chat with a neighbor. But Bush's choice of conversational companions may speak to something deeper. He lived in a bubble during much of his time in Washington; having left office with a disapproval rating of 73 percent, he might be forgiven for being a bit hes
Source: NYT
May 24, 2009
The American Civil Liberties Union may not often see eye to eye with the American Center for Democracy, a research group with neoconservative credentials. But the two organizations are united on at least one thing: their distaste for British libel laws, which they say are being exploited to suppress free speech in Britain and beyond.
British courts have always been friendlier to libel claimants than their American counterparts. Until recently that did not matter much to American au
Source: NYT
May 24, 2009
The Watergate break-in eventually forced a presidential resignation and turned two Washington Post reporters into pop-culture heroes. But almost 37 years after the break-in, two former New York Times journalists have stepped forward to say that The Times had the scandal nearly in its grasp before The Post did — and let it slip.
Robert M. Smith, a former Times reporter, says that two months after the burglary, over lunch at a Washington restaurant, the acting director of the Federal
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 24, 2009
The Allied bombing of the French city of Caen on D-Day was "close to a war crime", according to leading historian Antony Beevor.
Ahead of the 65th anniversary of the invasion of France in the Second World War next month, Professor Beevor claimed that an assumption the city had been evacuated had been "wishful thinking on the part of the British".
He said numerous mistakes were made by the Allies in the immediate aftermath of the invasion, and also p
Source: CNN
May 24, 2009
Medieval fishermen first took to the open seas in about AD1,000 as a result of a sharp decline in large freshwater fish, scientists have suggested.
They say the decline was probably the result of rising population and pollution levels.
The study forms part of a series that examines the impact of humans on life beneath the waves throughout history.
The findings will be presented at a Census of Marine Life (CoML) conference in Canada, which begins on Tuesda
Source: CNN
May 24, 2009
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell struck back Sunday at critics of his decision to support Barack Obama's presidential candidacy last year.
Calling for his divided party to widen its ranks, Powell declared, "I am still a Republican."
In an appearance on CBS' Face the Nation, Powell responded to attacks from former Vice President Dick Cheney and talk show host Rush Limbaugh, saying they are "not members of the membership committee of the Republican Pa
