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: Time Magazine
Nov 13, 2005
Even after Franco's death in 1975, parties across the political spectrum maintained a "pact of silence" about the Civil War and decades of dictatorship to ensure, they said, a peaceful transition to representative government. But after watching their democracy survive tests ranging from the legalization of divorce to the Madrid bombings, Spaniards are ready to break that silence. Unlike his allies Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, Francisco Franco survived World W
Source: NYT
Nov 13, 2005
Another election has come and gone, and with it yet another demonstration of American voters' fascinating indifference to the sexual behavior of their public officials.
This year's prime exhibit was New Jersey, where Senator Jon Corzine scored a decisive win against his Republican opponent in the governor's race, Douglas Forrester, despite a last-minute barrage of attack ads in which Mr. Corzine's ex-wife was quoted as declaring that unlike Mr. Forrester, "Jon did let his famil
Source: NYT
Nov 13, 2005
When the mayor and members of the chamber of commerce of White Settlement, Texas decided that the very name of the city might be limiting its allure to outside investors, they decided to ask voters to approve a change to something a little less provocative like, say, Liberator Village or West Settlement, or, simply, Settlement.
The residents of White Settlement responded last Tuesday by defeating the measure by about a 9-to-1 margin among about 2,500 who voted.
Source: Press Release
Nov 13, 2005
Colonial Williamsburg is rolling out the red carpet for Hollywood's newest rendition of the old story of Capt. John Smith and Pocahontas. "The New World," a big-budget movie about the settling of Jamestown in 1607, will make its East Coast debut Dec. 21 at Kimball Theatre. It will have two red-carpet, invitation-only screenings, Colonial Williamsburg and the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation announced Friday. The film dramatizes encounters between white colonists an
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Nov 12, 2005
Joseph Smith's name isn't in the Bible, but he is considered by 12 million people to be one of Christianity's foremost prophets, founding the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and creating the Mormon faith --- and sparking controversy within the Christian community that still simmers today.This year marks Smith's 200th birthday, and to celebrate the occasion, Mormons throughout the nation are holding open dialogues about their enigmatic leader. Says Chris White, an assistant professor at Georgia State University:"Foreign observers, like [Leo] Tolstoy, have called Latter-day Saints a 'quintessentially American religion.' Their story is really an American story --- living on the American frontier in the 19th century; they embraced American values of industry and commerce and capitalism and attracted white Americans."But they have always run against the grain of Protestants --- their doctrinal distinctiveness, their plural marriage and their own impulse to be a separate people and marry among themselves. And then they had these new angels that scandalized Americans. And so they have also been persecuted from upstate New York to Missouri to Salt Lake, where no one else wanted to go."(Salt Lake City remains the church headquarters today.)
Source: NYT
Nov 12, 2005
The head of the American Revolution Center has complained in a letter to the NYT that the paper left the misimpression that the plans for a museum have ended. All that's ended is the relationship with the National Park Service.Here's the letter, published by the NYT:
To the Editor:
While the American Revolution Center has ended its partnership agreement with the National Park Service at Valley Forge, this in no way translates into an end to the und
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
Nov 12, 2005
Words such as "McCarthyism" and "chill" buzzed through a group of Temple University professors and students who gathered on campus yesterday to discuss a state legislative committee's investigation of political diversity at state-run colleges.
The "teach-in," sponsored by the Temple Association of University Professionals, drew an audience overwhelmingly convinced that the committee's very existence is a threat to academic freedom.
Source: Boston Globe
Nov 12, 2005
A local history buff who was arrested after he protested the unveiling of a statue of sitcom witch in this historic city was cleared of the charges. The statue, donated by the TV Land cable channel, portrays Montgomery straddling a broom. Sorell was indignant that the statue was erected just a few yards away from where innocent people were condemned to death during the Salem witch trials of 1692. To protest, Sorell carried a sign that read: "Elizabeth Who? Is She from Salem?" Sorell t
Source: NYT
Nov 12, 2005
Hundreds of political scientists and former members of the Clinton administration met at Hofstra University yesterday to debate the legacy of President Bill Clinton, part of a three-day gathering that was part college reunion, part policy powwow and part dogfight.
They parried and thrust on panels that considered everything from the Middle East peace process to the White House office of correspondence, trade agreements to global warming, old Democrats and new, offering a rough draft
Source: Fox4news
Nov 11, 2005
Kansas City, MO - President Jimmy Carter says President Bush's policies conflict with American values. More than a thousand people packed into Unity Temple on the Plaza for the former president to sign a copy of his new book "Our Endangered Values." Reviews call the book biting political commentary, despite the fact that there's an unwritten rule in American politics that former presidents do not criticize current ones.Carter says he wrote this book reluctantly, bu
Source: Canada.com
Nov 11, 2005
Canadian students are finishing high school without a basic understanding of their country's history, and schools are ignoring the subject in favour of a new fixation with math and science, the Dominion Institute says.
The private, Toronto-based advocacy group says provincial governments could help solve the problem by making Canadian history a mandatory requirement of high school graduation.The institute's annual Remembrance Day poll -- a national s
Source: NYT
Nov 11, 2005
Historic discoveries don't happen every day at the auction houses, but Swann Galleries has a true find in its Nov. 22 autographs auction: a signed letter, dated Feb. 14, 1776, by Phillis Wheatley, a Boston slave and the author of the first book of poetry published by an African-American. Wheatley was held in high esteem during the abolitionist movement in the 19th century and is still revered, as shown by her inclusion in a new exhibition on slavery at the New-York Historical Society.
Source: NYT
Nov 11, 2005
Semou Diouf, holding a pipe in one hand and a cigarette in the other, stood amid the noisy games of checkers and cards in the dingy ground-floor common room of a crowded tenement building and pondered the question of why he feels French. "I was born in Senegal when it was part of France," he said before putting the pipe in his mouth. "I speak French, my wife is French and I was educated in France." The problem, he added after pulling the pipe out of his mouth again, "is
Source: CNN
Nov 11, 2005
LOUISVILLE, Kentucky (AP) -- The relationship between this city and native son Muhammad Ali always comes back to the story of the brash Olympic boxing champ -- then known as Cassius Clay -- tossing his 1960 gold medal into the Ohio River in disgust over entrenched racism.
But the story may be apocryphal -- Ali later told friends he simply misplaced the medal -- and as the years passed, Louisville and Ali eventually came to appreciate each other.Now,
Source: NYT
Nov 11, 2005
YESTERYEAR'S clichés can be correct. At least for an unpopular president, it really is the economy, stupid. Approval ratings under 40 percent usually reflect a lack of confidence that the administration knows how to manage economic problems.That is not to say that economic issues are the only ones that matter. Iraq and Hurricane Katrina hurt.
But a look at presidential approval ratings over the last three decades shows that very low ratings tend to c
Source: Live Science
Nov 11, 2005
In 1837, Charles Darwin sketched a stick-figure tree in a page of Notebook B, one of many private notebooks in which he worked out the details of a new theory he was developing. The tree had spindly branches and a single root labeled with the number "1." Scrawled at the top of the page, in Darwin's cursive handwriting, are the words "I think."
Notebook B will be one of many items on display in "Darwin," a new exhibit opening on Nov. 19 at the American M
Source: Reuters
Nov 11, 2005
President George W. Bush ripped into Democratic critics of the Iraq war on Friday, charging them with trying to rewrite history by accusing the White House of manipulating intelligence before the war.
Bush, facing waning public support for the war that has helped push his approval ratings to new lows, hit back at critics who have said his administration misused intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to justify the war.Democrats responded to Bush's Vet
Source: AP
Nov 11, 2005
More help is needed from Iraq's neighbors, particularly Iran and Turkey, to recover thousands of antiquities looted from Baghdad's National Museum during the battle for the city in 2003, says the U.S. investigator leading the search.
While Jordan has recovered 2,000 objects, no Iraqi antiquities have been reported in Iran or Turkey, which have long, porous borders with Iraq."I find that incomprehensible," said Col. Matthew Bogdanos, a Marine Rese
Source: Boston Globe
Nov 11, 2005
A 200-year-old house believed to have been a way station on the Underground Railroad has been almost entirely knocked down, angering preservationists.
City officials said the owner, real estate agent Eric Stevens, had permits to renovate the home, not to demolish it. The city has stopped
work on the house, but critics say it is too little, too late.\"We fear it\'s pretty much lost to us,\" said James Igoe, president of Preservation MASS.
Source: Pittsburgh-Tibune Review
Nov 11, 2005
An ancient stone found by a team led by a Pittsburgh professor contains the earliest alphabet ever discovered, but it may not be enough to settle a hot debate among biblical scholars. Ron Tappy, a professor at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in Highland Park, announced Wednesday that an excavation that he led in Israel this summer unearthed a complete alphabet inscribed on a stone set inside a building. The building, which dates to the 10th century B.C., is in an
