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
Nov 16, 2005
White House advisers convene secret sessions on the political dangers of revelations that American troops committed atrocities in the war zone, and whether the president can delicately intervene in the investigation. In the face of an increasingly unpopular war, they wonder at the impact on support at home. The best way out of the war, they agree, is propping up a new government that can attract feuding elements across a fractured foreign land.
With an obvious resonance to current e
Source: NYT
Nov 16, 2005
A U.S. official disbelieved Israel's assurances during the Cold War that it would avoid acquiring nuclear weapons and feared the United States' main ally in the region would spark a Middle East nuclear arms race, documents from that time show.
A 1969 memo reported intelligence findings that ''Israel is rapidly developing a capability to produce and deploy nuclear weapons,'' despite promises it would not introduce nuclear arms to the region.
The memo by Joseph J. Sisco,
Source: AP
Nov 16, 2005
A man who published a study that he said proved the Nazis did not gas Jews at Auschwitz was deported from the United States to his native Germany to serve a prison term for Holocaust denial.
Germar Rudolf, also known as Germar Scheerer, had his emergency petition to block the deportation rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday. He was put on a flight in Chicago on Monday night and arrived in Germany on Tuesday. Rudolf, a chemistry graduate of Bonn Univer
Source: Myrna Blyth in National Review
Nov 15, 2005
Our test is about American history and American symbols and how our government works. Questions range from "What are the colors of the flag?" to asking for a quick definition of the Constitution.
The British test is very different. It is based on a government-issued 125-page booklet called "Life in the U.K," and it costs the applicant $60 to take the test. There are 24 multiple-choice questions and the applicant must get three quarters of them correct. If he fail
Source: USA Today
Nov 15, 2005
There are enormous differences between the war in Iraq and the one in Vietnam that defined a generation. The current conflict hasn't lasted as long, taken nearly as many American lives or sparked the sort of massive protests that became common in the '60s and '70s.
But when it comes to public opinion, Americans' attitudes toward Iraq and the proper course ahead are remarkably similar to public attitudes toward Vietnam in the summer of 1970, a pivotal year in that conflict and a time
Source: Albuquerque Tribune
Nov 15, 2005
While the nation debates whether President Bush and his administration deliberately misled the nation into war in Iraq, local parents, Albuquerque Public Schools and its high school educators are facing off over the accuracy of a history textbook used in advanced placement (college preparatory) history classes.The APS debate, which finds itself now before a district committee of parents and educators reviewing the complaints, is timely and worthy of broader public attention.
Source: Baltimore Sun
Nov 15, 2005
Atlanta's Auburn Avenue commercial district, once the heart of the nation's black business community, is lined with historic treasures such as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birth house -- and also with crumbling, boarded-up buildings.
That makes it the most recognizable and jarring of the places listed statewide as "in peril" in a report released Monday by the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation, the nation's largest nonprofit state preservation group.
Source: The History Carnival
Nov 15, 2005
The twice-monthly roundup of historical blogging -- blogging by historians and blogging about historical issues -- is up at TigerLily Lounge.
Source: BBC News
Nov 14, 2005
Three preserved Maori heads will be returned to New Zealand after decades in a Glasgow museum.
The tattooed heads, and a thigh bone, are believed to belong to Maori chiefs killed in battle in the 19th century. They were donated to the Kelvingrove Museum, although they have never been shown in public.
A delegation from New Zealand's national museum Te Papa arrives in Glasgow on Monday to return the heads and offer them for tribal burial.
Source: Guardian (UK)
Nov 14, 2005
A revisionist history book praising the former Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco, whose regime liquidated tens of thousands of opponents over nearly 40 years, has shot to the top of the bestseller list in Spain as the country marks the 30th anniversary of his death.
"Franco should . . . receive the gratitude and recognition of the majority of Spaniards," writes Pio Moa in Franco: an historical review. The success of the book, which repeats old claims that Franco br
Source: NY Daily News
Nov 14, 2005
Douglas Morris, a veteran public defender in Brooklyn, has spent most of his legal career helping people in trouble and fighting for the principle of fairness.
Somehow, over the past nine years, while defending scores of defendants in federal court, Morris found the time to research and write a biography of anti-Nazi lawyer Max Hirschberg, whose case files included tangling with none other than Adolf Hitler in a libel suit."What I found so movin
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Nov 14, 2005
Two of the five members of a committee investigating research misconduct allegations against Ward Churchill have quit the panel, the University of Colorado at Boulder has announced. The university did not indicate why they quit, but both professors were recently criticized on an anti-Churchill Web site for comments they had made defending the controversial professor. The university did not announce whether or how the two professors would be replaced.
Source: Boston Globe
Nov 14, 2005
A song about people picking cotton was pulled from a middle school concert in suburban Detroit after a black parent complained that it glorifies slavery.
Superintendent Tresa Zumsteg decided Monday to remove the song "Pick a Bale of Cotton" from the program, said Gwen Ahearn, spokeswoman for the Berkley School District.
Ahearn said that when the song was picked for Wednesday's folk songs concert at Anderson Middle School, there was no intent to offend anyone.
Source: NYT
Nov 14, 2005
As a young lawyer seeking to move up in the Reagan administration in 1985, Samuel A. Alito Jr. declared that the Constitution does not protect a right to abortion.
In language certain to stoke heated debate at his January confirmation hearings, Mr. Alito, now President Bush's nominee for the Supreme Court, also expressed disapproval of Supreme Court decisions while Earl Warren was chief justice, including those that dealt with criminal procedures.Mr.
Source: Washington Times
Nov 14, 2005
As one would expect, the newspaper library has an unmistakably musty aroma. But it's the pungent aroma of vinegar that has historical preservationists scrambling to keep from losing valuable portions of what is billed as the nation's largest state newspaper collection on microfilm. Condensation has seeped into the oversized metal canisters that hold some of the library's vast collection of archival newspapers, says Ara Kaye, a senior reference specialist. The det
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
Nov 14, 2005
The first time he visited the University of Pennsylvania, in the 1980s, British-born Brendan O'Leary was unimpressed. The ride from the airport was depressing and the Philadelphia winter harsh.
"It wasn't the best introduction," O'Leary recalled.
After becoming a star political scientist at the London School of Economics, O'Leary accepted an invitation from Penn to be a visiting professor for 2001-02.
Penn, like other major American research universities, has
Source: Newday.com
Nov 14, 2005
During the Revolutionary War, Gen. George Washington took a keen interest in the tiniest details of how his spies operated, right down to the formula for invisible ink. His focus on the minutia of the Culper Spy Ring, which had key Long Island links, is visible in a rare and historically important letter being auctioned in Manhattan tomorrow by Christie's.The letter was written in 1779 by Washington to his chief of intelligence, Gen. Benjamin Tallmadge, and focus
Source: SFC
Nov 14, 2005
Japan's lost tribe of Japanese Americans is calling home. At a gathering called a honeymoon by one delegate, 40 prominent Japanese Americans and Japanese leaders gave birth to a plan to end their long separation.
A long-standing bridge between Japan and Japanese Americans was blown up by World War II. Under a cloud of suspicion after Pearl Harbor, most Americans of Japanese ancestry were forced into relocation camps.To demonstrate loyalty to America, many forso
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
Nov 13, 2005
A symbol of the epic struggle to found our nation is suffering from years of neglect by our national government. Valley Forge National Park is in trouble. It may be time for Pennsylvania to take back control of it, before a penny-pinching Congress and a paralyzed National Park Service do more damage.Valley Forge, established as Pennsylvania's first state park in 1893, became a national park in 1976. Its purpose, Congress said then, was to commemorate the "hardship
Source: The Observer
Nov 13, 2005
It took more than half a century from the end of the Second World War before Peter Phillips, Evi Labi and the 2,000 other Britons who had family property, insurance policies and bank accounts looted by the Nazis in Austria were promised any redress.
A $210 million compensation fund, created in 2001, seemed to offer some compensation for their losses. But five years on, the money remains elusive. Holocaust survivors who should be benefiting are ageing and, increasingly, dying. So far
