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: WaPo
Jun 22, 2008
Sen. Barack Obama's historic victory in the Democratic primaries, celebrated in America and across much of the world as a symbol of racial progress and cultural unity, has also sparked an increase in racist and white supremacist activity, mainly on the Internet, according to leaders of hate groups and the organizations that track them.
Neo-Nazi, skinhead and segregationist groups have reported gains in numbers of visitors to their Web sites and in membership since the senator from I
Source: WaPo
Jun 22, 2008
As Sen. Barack Obama opens his campaign as the first African American on a major party presidential ticket, nearly half of all Americans say race relations in the country are in bad shape and three in 10 acknowledge feelings of racial prejudice, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Lingering racial bias affects the public's assessments of the Democrat from Illinois, but offsetting advantages and Sen. John McCain's age could be bigger factors in determining the next occu
Source: NYT
Jun 22, 2008
In a makeshift prison in the north of Poland, Al Qaeda’s engineer of mass murder faced off against his Central Intelligence Agency interrogator. It was 18 months after the 9/11 attacks, and the invasion of Iraq was giving Muslim extremists new motives for havoc. If anyone knew about the next plot, it was Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.
The interrogator, Deuce Martinez, a soft-spoken analyst who spoke no Arabic, had turned down a C.I.A. offer to be trained in waterboarding. He chose to leave
Source: Times (UK)
Jun 22, 2008
Israel’s iconic leader Golda Meir was blamed for her country’s near-defeat in the Yom Kippur war. But secret government files reveal that while the war hero Moshe Dayan considered surrender, it was Golda who pulled victory from the jaws of defeat.
###When Meir became prime minister of Israel in 1969, the Jewish state that she had done so much to bring into existence was barely 20 years old and faced Arab nations committed to its destruction. Al
Source: Sam Tanenhaus in the NYT
Jun 22, 2008
Odd though it may seem, ideological conservatives used to be fierce critics of “executive supremacy.” For instance, in 1940, when Franklin D. Roosevelt sought a precedent-breaking third term, the archconservative Herbert Hoover warned that Roosevelt was a virtual dictator whose growing “personal power over the last seven years” came at the expense of a “disastrous weakening of the legislative and judicial branches ” with Congress “reduced to a rubber stamp for the executive.”
As the
Source: NYT
Jun 22, 2008
Few things are certain in presidential politics, but here are three: it will be expensive; it will get negative; and, at some point, former Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia will be mentioned as a possible Democratic running mate.
The latter has been true in every presidential election since 1984 with the exception of 1996 (when the running mate was the incumbent vice president, Al Gore). It might have even been true going back to 1976 except that year’s Democratic nominee — Jimmy Carter
Source: NYT
Jun 22, 2008
For most people, "Swift boat" has become a political verb, a synonym for the kind of attack that helped destroy the presidential campaign of Senator John Kerry in 2004.
But for a group of Vietnam veterans at the center of the attacks, it is still a fresh fight.
On Friday, the group, who served with Mr. Kerry in Vietnam, sent a letter to T. Boone Pickens, the billionaire Texas oilman who helped finance the 2004 attack advertisements, taking him up on a challeng
Source: AP
Jun 21, 2008
Mexico recovered more than 900 pre-Columbian artifacts seized from smugglers in the U.S. and Canada, including 800-year-old fiber sandals, spears and hunting bows looted from nomadic caves, officials said Friday.
The artifacts were seized over seven years by customs agents in Texas, Arizona and Toronto, said Alfonso de Maria y Campos, the director of Mexico's National Anthropology Institute. It took several years to recover the objects because of the bureaucracy involved in identify
Source: http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette
Jun 21, 2008
The Grade 10 provincial history exam has always been a pressure-cooker test for many students because they need to pass the course to graduate.
It might have been more stressful this year because several history teachers say Monday's provincial exam for the History of Quebec and Canada course was the toughest they've seen in years.
"We're seeing very high failure rates and we're worried about that," said Ken Elliott, director of educational services at the Lester B.
Source: Letter to IraqCrisis newsletter
Jun 21, 2008
Saad Eskander,
Director General,
Iraqi National Library & Archives
An Open Letter to the Director of Hoover Institute
I have read Mr. Sousa's letter to Mr. Mark Greene, President of the Society of American Archivists (dated 06-06-08), Mr. Al-Jaberi's statement (dated 27-04-08) and the article published by Stanford University's official site regarding the illegally seized documents of the former Iraqi state and the archive of the Ba'ath Party (dated 18-
Source: WSJ
Jun 21, 2008
With his two Purple Hearts, three tattoos and spoiling-for-a-fight attitude, Sen. Jim Webb is emerging as the Democrats' point man on two of the most profound matters facing the electorate this November: national defense and the military.
A highly decorated war veteran who opposes the Iraq war, Sen. Webb is considered by many Democrats to be the best person to go into battle against another war hero, expected Republican nominee Sen. John McCain. The ex-Marine, who hails from the imp
Source: Annenberg Political Fact Check
Jun 21, 2008
Obama has released his first post-primary ad, a 60-second spot that's airing in 18 battleground states. In effect, "Country I Love" is Obama's first ad of the general election campaign, and as such it invites scrutiny. (FactCheck will address McCain's first general election ads in a separate article.) We don't find this ad egregiously misleading, but it paints a picture of Obama's accomplishments that could leave viewers with a misimpression or two.
His description of his
Source: AP
Jun 20, 2008
Jimmy Carter has been among the country's most active retired presidents, but even the peripatetic Georgian might not have anticipated having his name bandied about in a presidential campaign 28 years after leaving the White House.
Sen. John McCain, who will carry the Republican presidential flag in this fall's campaign, has repeatedly invoked the former president's name on the campaign trail, and with it the less-than-stellar memories of his White House years. Some high-profile all
Source: AP
Jun 20, 2008
The expansion of a limestone quarry at one of the nation's most endangered Civil War battlefields threatens a mecca for re-enactors of a key Union victory, the National Trust for Historic Preservation warns.
The Cedar Creek Civil War battlefield each year attracts thousands of history enthusiasts for one of the largest battle re-enactments in the nation. The battlefield is located in the northwest corner of Virginia near Middletown.
The National Park Service owns 3,50
Source: AP
Jun 20, 2008
British detectives are back on the trail of a Cold War-era killer who used a poison-tipped umbrella to slay a communist defector.
British detectives acknowledged Friday that they had questioned suspects in the 1978 death of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov. The playwright and broadcaster was a stern critic of his country's communist regime in reports for the British Broadcasting Corp. and Radio Free Europe.
Markov was jabbed in the thigh with an umbrella tip as he wait
Source: Times (UK)
Jun 20, 2008
This week's polls showing Barack Obama with small, but significant, single-digit leads among likely voters are certainly welcomed by Democrats, but recent history hasn't been kind to early frontrunners.
In fact, only one of the last five June election-year polling averages has correctly predicted the popular vote winner in November - Bill Clinton in 1996. Even then, the polls missed his win-margin by more than 9 percent.
As hard as it may be to believe, Michael Dukakis
Source: AP
Jun 20, 2008
A former White House spokesman told Congress on Friday that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney wanted him to say that Cheney's chief of staff wasn't involved in the leak of a CIA operative's identity, an assertion that turned out to be false.
Scott McClellan, Bush's spokesman from 2003-2006, said he had reservations about publicly clearing the name of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff at the time. Later, Libby was convicted of obstructing the inv
Source: Fox News
Jun 20, 2008
Tours chronicling the rise of notorious dictator Adolf Hitler have been met with a flurry of interest by foreign tourists in the southern German city of Munich, where Hitler nurtured the Nazi Party and mounted the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch.
The guided walking tours showcase historical city sites where significant events in Hitler's life took place, many of which most Munich natives today are no longer aware of, including the world-famous Hofbraeuhaus beer hall, where Hitler gave his fir
Source: NYT
Jun 20, 2008
The French Education Ministry has effectively scuttled a plan, proposed by President Nicolas Sarkozy in February, to require that every fifth grader study the life of one of the 11,000 French children killed in the Holocaust, the newspaper Le Monde reported. The plan had already been changed to suggest that each fifth-grade class study one dead French child; now classes will simply study the young Holocaust victims as a whole, including survivors. In fact, study of the Holocaust in general has b
Source: WaPo
Jun 20, 2008
When the nation's first major 9/11 memorial is dedicated on the grounds of the Pentagon's western side this September, it will change the iconic building into something it was not intended to be: a tourist destination.
Since the day the symbol of the country's military might was attacked nearly seven years ago, a great deal of effort has gone into further limiting public access to the site. It has been wrapped in barricades, elaborate security systems and signs prohibiting photograp
