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: NYT
Jul 2, 2007
The Freedom of Information Act requires a federal agency to provide an initial response to a request within 20 days and to provide the documents in a timely manner. But the oldest pending request uncovered in a new survey of 87 agencies and departments has been awaiting a response for 20 years, and 16 requesters have been waiting more than 15 years for results.
The survey, to be released on Monday, is the latest proof of a fact well-known to historians and journalists who regularly
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 2, 2007
Lee Harvey Oswald could not have acted alone in assassinating President John F Kennedy, according to a new study by Italian weapons experts of the type of rifle Oswald used in the shootings.
The new findings will encourage conspiracy theorists
In fresh tests of the Mannlicher-Carcano bolt-action weapon, supervised by the Italian army, it was found to be impossible for even an accomplished marksman to fire the shots quickly enough....The official Warren Co
Source: NYT
Jul 2, 2007
On a hot Sunday evening in June, thousands of fans in a packed stadium here in the Croatian capital gave a Nazi salute as the rock star Marko Perkovic shouted a well-known slogan from World War II.
Some of the fans were wearing the black caps of Croatia’s infamous Nazi puppet Ustashe government, which was responsible for sending tens of thousands of Serbs, Gypsies and Jews to their deaths in concentration camps.
The exchange with the audience is a routine part of Mr. Pe
Source: Time Magazine
Jul 2, 2007
John F. Kennedy's loyal White House aides, Kenneth O'Donnell and Dave Powers, titled their 1972 J.F.K. memoir Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye—despite the fact that they had served him since his days as a scrawny young congressional candidate in Boston. So it's no surprise that Americans are still trying to figure out nearly half a century after his abbreviated presidency who Jack Kennedy really was. Was he a cold war hawk, as much of the history establishment, Washington pundit class and presidential
Source: National Security Archive
Jul 1, 2007
As a growing number of Colombian government
officials are investigated for ties to illegal paramilitary terrorists, a
1979 report from the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá raises new questions about the
paramilitary past of the current army commander, Gen. Mario Montoya Uribe.The declassified cable, the focus of a new article being published today on the Web site of Colombia's Semana magazine, answers long-simmering questions about a shadowy Colombian terror ogran
Source: NYT Book Review
Jul 1, 2007
t is one of the paradoxes of the Bush administration that the senior official whose face is among the most recognized around the world, and who is consistently ranked as the most popular at home, is perhaps the least known. Condoleezza Rice has regularly enjoyed poll numbers 20 points higher than those of the man she serves; in 2006 she topped an Esquire survey of the women men would most like to take as a date to a dinner party, ahead of Angelina Jolie, Julia Roberts, Oprah Winfrey and Jennifer
Source: Boston Globe
Jul 1, 2007
Diners at Union Oyster House have probably seen cocktail napkins and placemats advertising the restaurant as America's oldest, "est. 1826." Visitors to Harvard Yard have likely seen a tour guide point to the ivy-covered buildings of America's oldest university. They are icons; their names conjure up images of men in tricornered hats.
But in New England, where families trace their roots to the Mayflower, no place is too minor to stake a claim on history. Basketville in Putn
Source: USA Today
Jul 1, 2007
More than a century after his death, people are still trying to understand Charles Darwin. And a new report says those who label him anti-religion are wrong. The 19th Century English biologist famous for his theory of evolution supported Christian missionary work his entire adult life, reports a cultural historian.
"The march of improvement, consequent on the introduction of Christianity, through the South Seas, probably stands by itself on the records of the world," Darwi
Source: Anchorage Daily News
Jul 1, 2007
KENNICOTT (Alaska) -- Sometimes the comparatively few tourists who make their way to the end of the road here in America's largest national park get confused.
hey stare across the nearly 5-mile-wide, rubbled expanse of the Kennicott River valley, say National Park Service officials, and lament the mess left in the wilderness by the Kennecott Copper Corp. some 70 years ago.
The Kennicott valley is, indeed, a barren expanse of rock, gravel and sand that looks like the mot
Source: BBC
Jul 1, 2007
A number of events have taken place across N[orthern] I[reland] to mark the 91st anniversary of the Battle of the Somme.
Belfast Lord Mayor Jim Rodgers led a procession of politicians and senior members of the armed forces to lay a wreath at the cenotaph in the city.
The Duke of Gloucester visited the Somme Heritage Centre in Conlig and was given a tour of the simulated trenches.
Source: BBC
Jul 1, 2007
A Viking ship has set sail for Dublin from the Danish port of Roskilde, in an attempt to recreate the voyages undertaken by early Norsemen.
The 30m (100ft) long replica, called Sea Stallion, is said to be the world's largest reconstructed Viking vessel.
It is based on a ship made nearly 1,000 years ago in Ireland, which in 1962 was excavated from the Roskilde fjord.
Source: WaPo
Jul 1, 2007
The wool pants itch, especially around the inner thighs, especially when you're marching. The rifle's heavy. So's the canteen, kit and bayonet, which dig into your haunches. After a good hour of standing at attention and shifting stances in the militant summer sun, the tendons in your right arm burn, sweat slicks your back under the sack coat, and you might wonder, Why live like a Civil War soldier these days if you don't have to?
"Because they can't," says Ray Wetzel, 55,
Source: NYT
Jul 1, 2007
ATLANTA — The Wren’s Nest, the ocher-colored home of Joel Chandler Harris and his famous storyteller, Uncle Remus, has long been shunned by the black neighborhood that surrounds it.
Harris’s characters, including Br’er Rabbit and the Tar-Baby, may have been based on African folktales, but their antiquated and affectionate portrait of life in the old South is not welcome by detractors, and many neighbors have not forgotten the Wren’s Nest’s history of keeping black people out of the
Source: NYT
Jul 1, 2007
In an extraordinary open letter directed to Chinese Catholics and released Saturday, Pope Benedict XVI acknowledged the suffering experienced by Catholics under Communist rule but also concluded that it was time to forgive past wrongdoings and for the underground and state-sponsored Catholic churches in China to reconcile.
Openly hoping for a renewal of relations between China and the Vatican, which were suspended in the late 1950s, Pope Benedict reassured the Chinese government th
Source: HNN Staff
Jul 1, 2007
In his weekly column in the NYT Frank Rich notes that Vice President Dick Cheney first indicated he wanted the power to declassify documents in August 2001. But it wasn't until March 2003 that he was given the authority. Why then? Rich claims it was so he could go after the administration's enemies.
Says Rich:
Timing really is everything. By March 2003, this White House knew its hype of Saddam's nonexistent nuclear arsenal was in grave danger of
Source: NYT
Jul 1, 2007
THE unsealing by the C.I.A last week of the documents it called its “family jewels” was an only-in-America moment. A secret intelligence service freely admitted its crimes and blunders. Americans were reminded of a piece of living history: the time in the 1960s and 1970s when presidents turned the spying powers of American intelligence on the United States itself, searching for an enemy within.
As the “family jewels” make clear, this web of intrigue began in the Kennedy White House.
Source: NYT
Jul 1, 2007
SINCE 1954, liberal and conservative justices have disagreed about the central meaning of Brown v. Board of Education. Was the purpose of Brown to achieve a colorblind society or an integrated one? Last week, in its 5-to-4 decision declaring that public schools in Louisville and Seattle can’t take explicit account of race to achieve integration, the Supreme Court came down firmly on the side of colorblindness. Despite some important qualifications by Justice Anthony Kennedy, at least four conser
Source: NYT
Jul 1, 2007
HELP WANTED: Chief executive of the Smithsonian who won’t use its funds to clean his chandelier, heat his pool, install French doors or pay his chauffeur; who will take fewer than 70 vacation days a year; who won’t keep crucial information from the general counsel, inspector general and chief financial officer; and who won’t decorate his office with a stuffed Bengal tiger from the Natural History Museum.
If the Smithsonian Institution knows what it does not want in its next secretar
Source: Adam Goodheart in the NYT
Jul 1, 2007
Recently, it has seemed that ancient Rome is everywhere — and especially comparisons of modern America to the ancient empire. Moreover, it is one of the few things on which all segments of the political spectrum — left and right, Christian fundamentalists and Islamic radicals, Ivy League professors and renegade bloggers — seem to agree.
Most recently, a book by Cullen Murphy, titled, plainly enough, “Are We Rome?” begins with an extended comparison of President Bush to the emperor
Source: AP
Jun 30, 2007
Jimmy Carter was fresh out of the White House and contemplating his life after the presidency when he envisioned The Carter Center as a platform to work for peace in troubled places.
Carter had brokered the historic peace accord between Israel and Egypt in 1978 at Camp David, and he wanted a similar venue to further his diplomatic work. But 25 years later, the center's focus has expanded from that initial focus on traditional human rights work to addressing basic human needs.
