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
Feb 12, 2007
LECOMPTON, Kan. -- A document that historians say helped usher in the Civil War was back in the room where it was drafted 150 years ago, on display at Constitution Hall over the weekend as part of "Bleeding Kansas '07" events.
The Lecompton Constitution, under which Kansas would have been admitted into the union as a slave state, has been preserved at the Kansas State Historical Society since Rutgers University donated it in 1957 to commemorate the document's 100th anniver
Source: AP
Feb 12, 2007
WASHINGTON -- Republican Mitt Romney's choice of a museum honoring auto pioneer Henry Ford as the site of his presidential announcement was strongly criticized Monday by Jewish Democrats, who noted Ford's history of anti-Semitism.
The former Massachusetts governor, who is scheduled to formally launch his presidential candidacy from the Henry Ford Museum in Detroit on Tuesday, was taken to task by The National Jewish Democratic Council...
"Romney has been traveling
Source: BBC News
Feb 12, 2007
A former member of the Baader-Meinhof gang is to be freed on probation after serving 24 years for her involvement in kidnappings and murders in the 1970s.
A German court ruled that Brigitte Mohnhaupt, 57, qualifies for early release after serving a minimum proportion of her five life sentences.
The group, also known as the Red Army Faction, were behind kidnaps and killings in West Germany.
The prospect of Mohnhaupt's release has sparked a fierce debate in G
Source: Guardian
Feb 12, 2007
ROME -- Alessandra Mussolini, the granddaughter of Italy's late dictator, has said newly found diaries, allegedly kept by her grandfather before the second world war, show that he took Italy into the conflict only with great reluctance.
A controversial Italian senator and bibliophile, Marcello Dell'Utri, told the newspaper Corriere della Sera that the books were with a lawyer at Bellinzona, in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland. He said he examined them last summer and found f
Source: Newsweek
Feb 12, 2007
The president did seem mildly chastened by his party's defeat in the midterm elections—but not inclined to change course dramatically in Iraq.
He compared his situation to the crisis Harry Truman faced in the early days of the cold war. Then, as now, Bush said, the United States confronted a dangerous ideological foe. Truman had answered with the Truman Doctrine, a vow to protect free peoples wherever they were threatened with communist domination. Truman's policies had been unpopul
Source: Newsweek
Feb 12, 2007
When Harriet Washington, a med-school graduate and former fellow in ethics at Harvard Medical School, decided to research medical crimes against African-Americans, she feared she'd turn up much more than the Tuskegee experiment. She was right.
Washington's new book, "Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans From Colonial Times to the Present," reveals that the 40-year Tuskegee study—which allowed black men with syphilis to die untre
Source: Newsweek
Feb 12, 2007
A hundred and ninety-eight years after Abraham Lincoln's birth, the White House's Lincoln Bedroom finally looks like a room the great man would recognize.
Until recently, Lincoln furniture and a copy of the Gettysburg Address were displayed against the pale walls, curtains and carpet of a 1950s city hotel—not the vivid golds and purples, heavy fabrics and large patterns of Lincoln's era.
One reason for this mild historical fib was to focus attention on the chamber's his
Source: USA Today
Feb 11, 2007
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, goes the old saw. But when you are an archeologist and life gives you looters, often all you can do is make lamentations. Looting afflicts archaeological sites worldwide, from the wide-spread plundering of ancient Sumerian sites in Iraq, to pot-hunters in the American Southwest, to the looting of Inca and other sites in the Peruvian Andes.
However, a few archaeologists have figured out a way to put the looters to work for them, as archaeolo
Source: Opinion column by Shubhajit Roy in Indianexpress.com
Feb 11, 2007
Are you an American scholar? You aren’t welcome in India.
That’s the signal from the UPA to Fulbright scholars in the US: delaying their visas for weeks, months; rejecting their research proposals without any reason. Even asking them to change their subject. This when Indo-US equation couldn’t have been better.... Records show that for US scholars, the last two years — since the UPA came to power — have been the worst in the 57-year history of the programme. Not
Source: http://www.cyprus-mail.com
Feb 11, 2007
A NEW history textbook for children in the last year of primary school has incurred the wrath of Cypriot politicians, who are demanding its immediate withdrawal because it allegedly distorts and over-simplifies the island’s history. The textbook, covering four centuries of Greek history in 150 pages, devotes three pages to Cyprus, which refer to the anti-colonial struggle, the coup, Turkish invasion and the continuing division. Cypriot politicians found plenty to complain about in these three pa
Source: Washington Post
Feb 11, 2007
JERUSALEM -- From the roof of his home just inside the Old City walls, Palestinian landlord Nasser Karain has a view of the valleys and plateaus where scriptures say Solomon built the first Temple, Jesus was betrayed and Muhammad rose to heaven.
A new landmark may soon rise next to his family compound.
The Israeli government is funding the first construction of a Jewish settlement in the Old City's Muslim Quarter since taking control of it nearly four decades ago. The
Source: Los Angeles Times
Feb 11, 2007
PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii -— The 1.6 million visitors a year to the USS Arizona Memorial are told by their guides about the legends surrounding the oil that still bubbles up from the sunken battleship.
One legend holds that the oil represents the tears of the 900-plus sailors and Marines entombed below decks since the Japanese attack of Dec. 7, 1941. Another says the oil will continue to surface until the last Arizona survivor dies.
But the fact is that 500,000 or more gallo
Source: DPA (German Press Agency)
Feb 11, 2007
TAIPEI -- The 'Rape of Nanking,' an important part of modern Chinese history, has disappeared from Taiwan's revised history textbook, a newspaper said on Sunday.
The United Evening News said the textbook from one publishing house has ommitted mention of the World War II atrocities committed by the Japanese in China, while the textbooks from four publishing houses only make a brief reference to it...
The 'Rape of Nanking' refers to the massacre which began after Nanking,
Source: Peoria (Ill.) Journal Star
Feb 11, 2007
BLOOMINGTON, Ill. -- Visitors to the David Davis Mansion and State Historic Site will soon have the chance to view two rare portraits of a great American president.
Paintings of Abraham Lincoln by Edward Dalton Marchant and Alban Conant were loaned to the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency for temporary exhibits...
"We're very excited because the (Marchant) portrait hasn't been out on exhibit that much," said site manager Marcia Young, explaining the portra
Source: Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger
Feb 11, 2007
MONEY, Miss. -— The place where the civil rights movement began now lies in ruin.
Bryant Grocery and Meat Market has been broken by years of neglect and battered by high winds from Hurricane Katrina, but few have forgotten the events during the summer of 1955 that started here with a wolf-whistle and ended with the slaying of a black teenager named Emmett Till.
"Like the Liberty Bell, it's the symbol of the movement," said state Sen. David Jordan, D-Greenwood.
Source: NYT
Feb 11, 2007
RETURNING to the White House after the Memorial Day weekend in 1975, the young aide Dick Cheney found himself handling a First Amendment showdown. The New York Times had published an article by Seymour M. Hersh about an espionage program, and the White House chief of staff, Donald H. Rumsfeld, was demanding action.
Out came the yellow legal pad, and in his distinctively neat, deliberate hand, Mr. Cheney laid out the “problem,” “goals” while addressing it, and “options.” These last i
Source: NYT
Feb 11, 2007
Thomas Paine may have helped inspire the American Revolution, but inspiring Arkansas lawmakers to commemorate a day in his honor is another matter.
The proposal by Rep. Lindsley Smith, D-Fayetteville, to commemorate Jan. 29 as ''Thomas Paine Day'' failed in the state House of Representatives after a legislator questioned Paine's writings criticizing the Bible and Christianity.
The vote Thursday was 46-20 in favor of the measure, but 51 votes were needed to pass.
Source: Independent
Feb 11, 2007
The leafy country mansion Undershaw, where Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created his most famous work, The Hound of the Baskervilles, is at the centre of a literary controversy.
The home is revered by millions of Sherlock Holmes devotees around the world. Campaigners are furious that their efforts to upgrade the listed status of the 36-room property in Surrey, designed partly by Conan Doyle himself, to preserve it for future generations, have been blocked by the Department for Culture, Med
Source: AP
Feb 10, 2007
TAHLEQUAH, Okla. -— When Lucy Allen sets out to tell her family's story, she first finds an empty room with plenty of open table space.
Others, she knows, illustrate their ancestral legends by passing around a single prized photograph or diagram of the family tree. But Allen arrives wheeling two big black suitcases, each stuffed with enough supporting evidence to do Perry Mason proud...
And years later, a long-forgotten document proved her suspicions right.
Source: Guardian
Feb 10, 2007
He was responsible for bringing to the world a high-quality compact camera that changed the face of 35mm photography. But after dogged research by a British rabbi it has emerged that Ernest Leitz II had a secret but possibly greater claim to fame -- saving Jews from Nazi persecution in prewar Germany.
Days after Hitler's rise to power, Leitz, who manufactured the Leica camera, began taking on a string of young Jewish apprentices from the town of Wetzlar where his optics factory bega
