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
Mar 25, 2012
...In a certain sense, wealthy people could live with a justifiable guiltlessness in “Mad Men” New York. Not because they were blind to the city’s mounting racial crisis or to the perils of smoking or sexism, but rather because, fiscally speaking, they were paying their due. In 1966, which is where the new season finds us, the federal income tax topped out at 70 percent on income over $100,000 (approximately $700,000 in present-day dollars), a figure reduced from 90 percent in a tax cut enacted two years earlier.Absent were any obvious incentives for amassing perverse amounts of money (and thus there was more time for the languorous lunch). In April 1968, Fortune magazine published a list of those Americans whose net worth exceeded $100 million; the list ended at 153. Today, those in the highest federal income tax bracket will pay 35 percent.Long-term capital gains taxes were higher than they are today, and so were New York State income taxes: the richest paid 14 percent in 1966; today they pay 8.82 percent, and current law has that figure reverting to 6.85 percent in three years. Moreover, beginning his mayoral tenure in 1966, John Lindsay delivered the city’s first personal income tax....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 24, 2012
For centuries the Turin Shroud, regarded by some as the burial cloth of Jesus, by others as the most elaborate hoax in history, has inspired extraordinary and conflicting passions. Popes, princes and paupers have for 700 years been making pilgrimages the length of Europe to stand in its presence while scientists have dedicated their whole working lives to trying to explain rationally how the ghostly image on the cloth, even more striking when seen as a photographic negative, and matching in every last detail the crucifixion narrative, could have been created. And still a final, commonly agreed answer remains elusive, despite carbon-dating in 1988 having pronounced it a forgery.“That’s what first attracted me,” says Thomas de Wesselow, an engagingly serious 40-year-old Cambridge academic. “I’ve always loved a mystery ever since I was a boy.” And so he became the latest in a long line to abandon everything to try to solve the riddle of the Shroud.
Source: NYT
Mar 24, 2012
BOSTON — When Gov. Mitt Romney signed legislation in April 2006 requiring most Massachusetts residents to have health coverage, Senator Edward M. Kennedy stood by his side, beaming like a proud father. They were onstage at historic Faneuil Hall in Boston, a setting that had a special resonance for the two.Twelve years earlier, they shared that stage as opponents in a bitter Senate race. Back then, Mr. Romney accused Mr. Kennedy of waging “untrue, unfair and sleazy” personal attacks. Now, the Republican governor was introducing the liberal Democratic senator as “my collaborator and friend.”
Source: NYT
Mar 24, 2012
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — On the campaign trail, Roy Moore wears a metal pin of a cross on his suit jackets, praises “almighty God” and refers to the United States as a “Christian nation.”But there is one demonstration of his faith that Mr. Moore, the Republican nominee for chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, promises not to make.“No, I won’t bring back the Ten Commandments,” he said. “Not again.”It has been nearly a decade since Mr. Moore, then chief justice, became a focus in the national debate over religious liberty by defying a federal order to remove a 5,000-pound granite statue of the holy tablets from his Montgomery courthouse. He lost the fight and was removed from the bench by a state ethics panel in 2003.But Mr. Moore, 65, is on the verge of a political comeback. In an upset two weeks ago, he won the Republican nomination without a runoff, against two far better financed opponents, including the current chief justice....
Source: NYT
Mar 24, 2012
With barely a peep from preservationists, another piece of Texas history was razed in mid-January as bulldozers unceremoniously demolished the prison rodeo arena in Huntsville.The brick-and-concrete building, which had not held a prison rodeo since 1986, had structural problems, and prison officials determined that repairs to the unsafe stands would be too costly. Representatives from the city offered to help pay for the repairs, but as with all similar entreaties involving the arena over the years, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which oversees the state prison system, turned down the offer.“They just weren’t interested,” said Jim Willett, director of the Texas Prison Museum and a former warden. The criminal justice department “just doesn’t want to be in the rodeo business.”...
Source: AP
Mar 23, 2012
WASHINGTON (AP) — The three days of arguments beginning before the Supreme Court on Monday may mark a turning point in a century of debate over what role the government should play in helping all Americans afford medical care. A look at the issue through the years:1912:Former President Theodore Roosevelt champions national health insurance as he tries to ride his progressive Bull Moose party back to the White House. It's an idea ahead of its time; health insurance is a rarity and medical fees are relatively low because doctors cannot do much for most patients. But medical breakthroughs are beginning to revolutionize hospitals and drive up costs. Roosevelt loses the race.1929:Baylor Hospital in Texas originates group health insurance. Dallas teachers pay 50 cents a month to cover up to 21 days of hospital care per year. The plan grows into Blue Cross....
Source: MSNBC
Mar 23, 2012
A Virginia man convicted of taking more than 9,000 artifacts from a Civil War battlefield was engaged in "heartbreaking" destruction of American history, experts say.John Jeffrey Santo, 52, has been sentenced to 366 days in prison and must also pay $7,346 restitution to the Petersburg National Battlefield for damage caused by his excavations, according to the decision handed down Wednesday by U.S. District Court Judge James Spencer....According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, investigators recovered more than 9,000 relics, including bullets, buckles, cannonballs, breastplates and buttons when they caught up with Santo last year. Authorities also found a handwritten journal the man kept of his illegal excavation trips, which happened regularly between 2006 and 2010....
Source: NYT
Mar 23, 2012
Two flags tell much of the story. One is the familiar stars and stripes, spangled with only 34 stars. It’s smudged with dirt and dotted with the bullet holes it acquired in 1863, when it flew over a Union ironclad trying to pierce the defenses of Charleston harbor. The second flag is in even worse shape: a shredded, grimy Confederate banner with holes a cannonball could pass through and several of its 11 stars missing one or more of their points. It was captured 150 years ago this month, when Union soldiers defeated a contingent of Confederates at New Bern, N.C.
Source: NYT
Mar 23, 2012
HAVANA — Just in the past few days, with a visit here by Pope Benedict XVI looming, the Rev. Roberto Betancourt has witnessed firsthand the difficult position Cuba’s Roman Catholic Church finds itself in as it wields its newfound influence but still struggles to fill its pews....Benedict faces an odd paradox in what is the first visit by a pope since John Paul II’s in 1998. The church’s profile as an institution has risen sharply in recent years amid a burst of religious tolerance not seen since the 1959 revolution, with church leaders advocating for political and economic freedoms, negotiating the release of dozens of political prisoners in 2010 and counseling the government on plans for re-engineering the economy.
Source: NYT
Mar 23, 2012
Modern campaigns are often scientifically plotted operations that leave little to chance. Nowhere is this more obvious than with advertising, which is carefully fashioned from polling, focus groups and demographic research.But sometimes even the best-laid plans go awry. Consider the story of Ben Stein, George W. Bush and the commercial that never aired.Late in the summer of 2000, Mr. Bush’s campaign strategists saw their position in the polls improving and got a little cocky. They arranged for Mr. Stein, a comedian and former speechwriter for Richard M. Nixon, to reprise his breakout role as the economics teacher in the film “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” for a commercial mocking Al Gore....
Source: NYT
Mar 23, 2012
On an April night 100 years ago, a ship of the Cunard lines called the R.M.S. Carpathia moved up the Hudson River in a ferocious rain, sailing past the line’s home berth at Pier 54, instead going north to Pier 59, near 18th Street.Today, the pier is home to a golf driving range, a digital studio and a microbrewery. In 1912, it was the pier for ships of the White Star line.The Carpathia stopped at Pier 59 to drop off White Star property: lifeboats from the R.M.S. Titanic, which it had collected from the North Atlantic three days earlier, when the Carpathia rescued 705 passengers and crew members. The lifeboats were all that was left of the unsinkable Titanic.Then the Carpathia turned back to its own pier, 54, just south of 14th Street. Thousands of people had gathered to watch it come in and find relatives, or in the case of newspaper reporters, to find stories....
Source: Salon
Mar 22, 2012
The Cuban intelligence service, under the leadership of Fidel Castro, connived in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, according to a new book by a retired CIA analyst. Coming from Brian Latell, the Agency’s former national intelligence officer for Latin America, the charge is both sensational and uncorroborated, yet still important.Latell says flatly that Castro played a role in Kennedy’s murder in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.“Castro and a small number of Cuban intelligence officers were complicit in Kennedy’s death but … their involvement fell short of an organized assassination plot,” he writes in “Castro’s Secrets: The CIA and Cuba’s Intelligence Machine,” a well-footnoted polemic about Cuba’s General Directorate of Intelligence to be published next month. Latell says accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald told Cuban diplomats in Mexico City in September 1963 that he might kill JFK. Latell also speculates, without any direct evidence, that Oswald kept the Cubans apprised of his plans as he made his way to Dallas.
Source: Southern California Public Radio
Mar 22, 2012
DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — The Woody Guthrie Centennial celebrates the life and music of the iconic folk singer, who was probably best known for his simple, vocal-heavy songs -- most notably, "This land is your land."Guthrie was born in 1912 and died in 1967, and next month, the Grammy Museum and the Guthrie archives are hosting a series of events to celebrate his widespread cultural impact on the 100th anniversary of his birthday.From April 9th to the 14th, the Centennial will include an educational conference at USC titled, "This Great And Crowded City: Woody Guthrie’s Los Angeles," a plaque dedication and a finale tribute performance by a variety of musical heavyweights....
Source: CNN.com
Mar 22, 2012
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- It's unlikely that a Revolutionary War rifle will save Harrisburg, Pa., but it could help.The financially troubled capital of Pennsylvania is hosting an auction of artifacts this summer in hopes of raising enough money to close the gap between the city's revenue and operating costs.The loot is the end result of a failed plan to open several new museums in the city after it made substantial acquisitions of art and artifacts.Former Mayor Stephen Reed, who served from 1981 to 2009, hoped new museums would spur tourism and economic growth in this town of just under 50,000 residents. But while one Civil War museum was built, institutes devoted to sports history, African-American history and the Wild West that were planned never got off the ground....
Source: CS Monitor
Mar 21, 2012
Belfast was a byword for gloom during the Troubles that spanned from the late 1960s to late 1990s, but it is experiencing a new vitality.Ironically this coincides with the anniversary of the tragedy of the RMS Titanic, which sank 100 years ago on April 15 with a loss of more than 1,500 lives. Belfast is set to commemorate this sad milestone with church services and other events....
Source: WaPo
Mar 21, 2012
They are joining the Trayvon Martin crusade by the hour now.It feels like an echo from another era — when there was racial injustice in the headlines, when federal troops were dispatched to comb Southern swamps to look for blacks who had vanished....“It reminds you of Emmett Till,” said Bernadette Pruitt, an associate professor of history at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Tex., who has written about Southern racial history and can’t stop thinking of Trayvon Martin and his family. “This so-called post-racialism is a figment of our imagination. Race, unfortunately, is still the barometer by which everyone is measured.”Investigating the killing of the 17-year-old Martin, who was black, by neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman, who is Hispanic, is now a top priority for the FBI, senior law enforcement officials said Wednesday....
Source: NYT
Mar 21, 2012
In Gettysburg, Pa., on Tuesday night, Rick Santorum stood on the grounds where more lives were lost than in any other Civil War battle, and where Abraham Lincoln issued his stirring call for unity and democracy. Mr. Santorum, who had just lost the Republican primary in Illinois, called the presidential race the “most important election since the election of 1860.”Numbers like 1776 and 1860 increasingly pepper his speeches as he stresses the historical urgency of his candidacy. He speaks of his campaign as bearing a torch of freedom and honor first lighted by the signers of the Declaration of Independence. While his supporters need not risk life and fortune as John Hancock and his compatriots did, Mr. Santorum tells his audiences, they can fulfill their own duty by posting pictures with the candidate on Facebook.As he traveled around Illinois, Mr. Santorum cast himself as the defender of America’s history....
Source: Spiegel Online
Mar 21, 2012
What did a medieval stonemason do when heavy rainfall interrupted his work? Umbrellas are impractical at construction sites. Gore-Tex jackets weren't yet invented, nor were plastic rain jackets. "He donned a jacket made of felted loden cloth," says Bert Geurten, the man who plans to build an authentic monastery town the old-fashioned way.Felted loden jackets will also be present on rainy days at Geurten's building site, which is located near Messkirch, in the southwestern German state of Baden-Württemberg, between the Danube River and Lake Constance. Beginning in 2013, a Carolingian monastery town will be built here using only the materials and techniques of the 9th century. From the mortar to the walls, the rain jackets to the menu, every aspect of the operation will be carried out as just as it was in the days of Charlemagne. "We want to work as authentically as possible," says Geurten.The building contractor from the Rhineland region has long dreamt of carrying out his plan. When he was a teenager, the now 62-year-old was inspired by a model of the St. Gallen monastery plan in an exhibition in his home city of Aachen. The plan, dating from the beginning of the 9th century, shows the ideal monastery, as envisioned by Abbot Haito of Reichenau....
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mar 21, 2012
WASHINGTON — Famed architect Frank Gehry said he is open to changes to a planned Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial in Washington to address objections from the 34th president's family that the design doesn't put enough emphasis on his achievements as president and World War II military leader.Eisenhower family members shared their concerns at a House subcommittee hearing Tuesday, where a letter from Gehry was also introduced as testimony.Gehry's design calls for a memorial park framed by large metal tapestries depicting Eisenhower's boyhood home in Kansas. Two large carved stones would depict Ike as president and as military hero, and a statue of a young Eisenhower would appear to marvel at what his life would become. The memorial would be built just off the National Mall, near the National Air and Space Museum....
Source: Discovery News
Mar 20, 2012
Madagascar was first settled and founded by approximately 30 women, mostly of Indonesian descent, who may have sailed off course in a wayward vessel 1200 years ago.The discovery negates a prior theory that a large, planned settlement process took place on the island of Madagascar, located off the east coast of Africa. Traditionally it was thought to have been settled by Indonesian traders moving along the coasts of the Indian Ocean.Most native Madagascar people today, called Malagasy, can trace their ancestry back to the founding 30 mothers, according to an extensive new DNA study published in the latest Proceedings of the Royal Society B,. Researchers focused on mitochondrial DNA, passed down from mothers to their offspring. Scientists assume some men were with the women....
