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: New York Daily News
Jan 11, 2009
It took 60 years for the Tuskegee Airmen to get a second invite to a presidential inauguration, and this time they'll actually be able to go.
When President Harry Truman took the oath of office in 1949, the first inauguration after World War II, Watson and 11 other airmen from the famed all-black unit were limited to a flyby over the parade - and they never set foot in the still-segregated capital.
This Jan. 20, the Presidential Inaugural Committee will be more welcom
Source: Newsday
Jan 11, 2009
President-elect Barack Obama's mother-in-law, Marian Robinson, is moving into the White House at least temporarily to join Michelle Obama and the two children, transition officials said.
"Throughout history there have been many extended first families in office," said Robert Watson, author of "Life in the White House." Ulysses S. Grant's father-in-law, Richard Dent, stayed for several years. Harry S. Truman's mother-in-law, Madge Gates Wallace, lived there, too,
Source: Newsday
Jan 11, 2009
The unvarnished review of George W. Bush's presidency reveals a portrait of America he never would have imagined.
Bush came into office promising limited government and humble foreign policy; he exits with his imprint on startling free-market intervention and nation-building wars.
Grading Bush's performance has its limitations. History offers a warning about judging a president and his tenure in the moment: The wisdom and decisions of a leader can look different years l
Source: Foxnews
Jan 11, 2009
Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders says language next to president's portrait is misleading because it says the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks led to the war in Iraq.
Sanders, a strong opponent of the Iraq war, has asked the Smithsonian to rewrite the text that says Bush's two terms in office were "marked by a series of catastrophic event" including the "the attacks on September 11, 2001, that led to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq."
Sanders says
Source: IHT (UK)
Jan 11, 2009
The countdown clocks that President George W. Bush's chief of staff distributed 990 days ago are still ticking; his advisers tallied their remaining time last week and calculated fewer than 300 hours to go. Cardboard cartons are stacked in the West Wing, as files are carefully catalogued for the archives. By Friday, the last official work day of the Bush White House, all but the most senior officials will have turned in their government-issued BlackBerrys and badges.
This is what Bu
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 11, 2009
China's most prominent liberal philosopher is defying demands by the Communist Party to retract his signature from a ground-breaking call for reform, elections and freedom of speech that has infuriated the government.
Police and Party officials have threatened and harassed more than 100 of the 300 leading intellectuals, lawyers and activists who signed Charter 08, a call for a new politics consciously modeled on dissident movements in the former Soviet bloc.
The Charte
Source: The Sunday Times (UK)
Jan 10, 2009
Outrage has greeted plans by Pope John Paul II’s would-be assassin to sign multi-million-dollar book and film deals after his release from prison this month.
But in a handwritten letter sent to The Sunday Times, the Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca insisted this weekend that there was "great interest from Japan to Canada" in film and television documentary projects.
Almost three decades after he shot the Polish Pope in St Peter’s Square, Rome, in 1981, it remain
Source: NYT
Jan 10, 2009
“The relationship with India is one of the few success stories of the Bush administration’s foreign policy,” said Teresita C. Schaffer, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, who ran the State Department’s South Asia desk under the first President Bush.
George W. Bush’s critics often link his idiosyncratic temperament to his administration’s diplomatic misadventures. But among Indians, who in the main have no love for his ideology, even his cr
Source: NYT
Jan 10, 2009
From the moment he became president, Dwight D. Eisenhower barely spoke to Harry Truman. Franklin Delano Roosevelt practically banned Herbert Hoover from the White House. Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter were the best of friends, but only after both left office; they bonded on a long plane flight to Cairo, when Ronald Reagan sent them to the funeral of Anwar Sadat.
And George W. Bush has telephoned Bill Clinton on a regular basis over the last several years — a discovery that might shock
Source: New York Daily News
Jan 10, 2009
Nine days before fleeing to what he calls "the Promised Land" of Texas, President Bush seems almost wistful about departing a town he's always disliked.
In a moment of rare public introspection, Bush acknowledged his diminished standing but without apology when he recently told an interviewer: "I have done my duty to the country. I have given it my all."
"His legacy is in cement," predicted Curt Smith, a speechwriter for President George H.
Source: AP
Jan 10, 2009
President-elect Barack Obama will be under historical pressure to deliver a speech for the ages at his Jan. 20 swearing-in.
The pressure's on for Barack Obama, orator.
History wants something for the ages in his Jan. 20 inaugural speech. Not just pretty words that melt like gumdrops but something that will settle in the nation's soul and be worth making schoolchildren memorize 100 years from now.
Americans want something for the dispiriting times they live in. They have thei
Source: New York Times
Jan 10, 2009
From the moment he became president, Dwight D. Eisenhower barely spoke to Harry Truman. Franklin Delano Roosevelt practically banned Herbert Hoover from the White House. Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter were the best of friends, but only after both left office; they bonded on a long plane flight to Cairo, when Ronald Reagan sent them to the funeral of Anwar Sadat.
And George W. Bush has telephoned Bill Clinton on a regular basis over the last several years — a discovery that might shock
Source: AP
Jan 10, 2009
The unvarnished review of George W. Bush's presidency reveals a portrait of America he never would have imagined.
Bush came into office promising limited government and humble foreign policy; he exits with his imprint on startling free-market intervention and nation-building wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He was the president who pledged not to pass on big problems. Instead, he leaves a pile for Barack Obama.
Source: CNN
Jan 10, 2009
President-elect Barack Obama, who in 10 days will be sworn in using the Bible of his political hero Abraham Lincoln, visited the Lincoln Memorial in Washington on Saturday night with his family.
Obama will be the first president to use the Lincoln Bible for his inauguration since Lincoln used it in 1861. Inauguration organizers have said Obama's inaugural theme, "A New Birth of Freedom," was inspired by Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.
The president-elect also p
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 10, 2009
When Mohammed Becirovic returned to his village he found his home a charred ruin, his wife and two daughters gone - abducted by Serbian militiamen.
But 16 years later DNA testing of war orphans revealed that his infant daughter Senida had miraculously survived the conflict and was living with elderly foster parents in the Serbian capital Belgrade.
Plucked by a Serbian soldier from the ruins of their village, Caparde, on the very first day of the war in April 1992, Sen
Source: BBC
Jan 10, 2009
Digging through thick mud and an ancient swamp of black clay, archaeologists in Istanbul have discovered a grave that proves the city is 6,000 years older than they previously thought.
The skeletons of two adults and two children lie curled-up, perhaps to save space. Alongside them are pots: gifts placed in the grave to use in the afterlife.
The ancient family was unearthed at the site of a 21st Century rail project.
Historians had believed modern-day Is
Source: Gettysburg Times
Jan 9, 2009
The oldest building at the 6,000-acre Gettysburg Battlefield is getting a facelift following years of deterioration.
Gettysburg National Military Park crews began disassembling the historic Patterson House this week in preparation to restore the 146-year-old log home.
“The William Patterson house is the oldest building within the boundaries of Gettysburg National Military Park,” spokeswoman Katie Lawhon said Thursday. “The building retains a high level of integrity to
Source: King 5 news
Jan 9, 2009
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer was published first as “The Gazette” in 1863, serving a Seattle population of about 250.
For 145 years, it has chronicled the lives of Seattleites and of Seattle itself.
“It just seems like a violation of common sense that the P-I should stop,” said Seattle historian Paul Dorpat. He calls the P-I the single most important source for local history.
Source: Associated Baptist Press
Jan 9, 2009
Baptists’ signal contribution to American and world history and political thought, historians almost unanimously agree, is their uncompromising emphasis on religious liberty.
But, they hasten to add, the doctrine of soul freedom that grounds Baptists’ belief in religious liberty is the very reason Baptists of varying stripes have been found on both sides of subsequent political and social controversies.
“Baptists were among the first—if not the first—to say in English certainly by
Source: BBC
Jan 9, 2009
Drawings by Leonardo da Vinci on show at the National Library of Wales were previously stored there during World War II, researchers have found.
Among the other masterpieces stored in the library's secret cave were the Saxon Chronicles, the works of Wycliffe and Chaucer and a large collection of charters including the Magna Carta.
There was also a wealth of autographs and letters from the kings and queens of England, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Francis Drake, Francis Baco
