Follow Breaking News updates on RSS and Twitter
This page features brief excerpts of news 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: NPR (9-6-12)
1) Bill Clinton. After all, it takes a cool guy to know a cool guy. "Obviously Bill Clinton," says Julian Zelizer, a presidential historian at Princeton University. During the 1992 election, Clinton explored new ways to reach voters, like appearing on MTV and playing the saxophone on a late night talk show. Clinton's popularity, Zelizer says, "even in the middle of impeachment, demonstrated a kind of admiration many had for his personal style."
2) John F. Kennedy. The smoothie from Massachusetts "was certainly cool in terms of charisma and demeanor," Zelizer says. The stark contrast between Kennedy and Richard Nixon in the 1960 debates "might have set the standard for what it meant to be cool."...
SOURCE: WSJ (9-6-12)
Being out in the world took on new meaning at the 39th Telluride Film Festival. All of the natural attractions were in place—the perfumed breeze, the azure sky, the scudding clouds, the Rocky Mountains as backdrop to a whirl of urban sophisticates done up as alpine rustics. Still, watching many of this year's films meant being out in the larger world of political strife, seething violence and history's tumult.
In some cases, the chosen mode was entertainment. "Argo," a terrific Hollywood thriller directed by and starring Ben Affleck, takes place during the Iran hostage crisis that began in the fall of 1979; it's just the kind of smart, accomplished film the studios should be making, and seldom do. In "No," Pablo Larraín's sensational fact-based political drama from Chile, Gael García Bernal plays an outwardly callow ad executive who's determined to drive the Pinochet dictatorship from office. (His genial insight, which the movie explores with a playful sense of paradox, is that democracy can be packaged like any other consumer product.) "Hyde Park on Hudson" has Bill Murray as a buoyant FDR on the eve of World War II, and Laura Linney as one of the women who loves him....
SOURCE: WaPo (9-6-12)
Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), the third-ranking Democrat in the House, greeted the delegation from his neighboring home state before likening President Obama invoked of one of the great icons in his party’s history, President John F. Kennedy.
Riffing throughout his speech on JFK’s famous paraphrase of a Chinese proverb, “we are not here to curse the darkness; we are here to light a candle,” Clyburn said that the “fundamental” difference between the two major-party tickets is that “President Obama has lit candle after candle, bringing our country out from the darkness of recession, only to see Republicans douse the flames and amuse themselves cursing the darkness.”...
SOURCE: WaPo (9-6-12)
When President Obama addresses the Democratic National Convention on Thursday night, he will try to make the case for a second term. How have other recent presidents approached this task? Below we take a look back at the past four acceptance speeches that incumbents delivered at their nominating conventions:
George W. Bush, 2004: Past vs. future
Different as they are politically, there is some resemblance between Bush’s 2004 speech and the message Democrats have been trying to underscore in Charlotte this week. Bush argued in his speech that a vote for Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) represented a step backward.
“His policies of tax and spend, of expanding government rather than expanding opportunity, are the politics of the past. We are on the path to the future, and we’re not turning back,” Bush said in a speech in which he was not shy about going after his opponent....
SOURCE: WaPo (9-6-12)
Bill Clinton’s face doesn’t appear on Mount Rushmore, and he doesn’t have a monument bearing his name in Washington, D.C. That much we know.
But judging by the reaction to the former president these days, it seems some are ready to mention him in the same breath as some of those bronze and stone statues.
Clinton served up the best-reviewed speech of the 2012 convention season on Wednesday, cementing his status as perhaps the preeminent force in American politics nearly 12 years after his presidency ended....
SOURCE: WaPo (9-6-12)
WASHINGTON — Lady Gaga’s famous meat dress has made its way to Washington, along with Loretta Lynn’s song about “The Pill” and other relics from music history.
Lady Gaga’s dress from the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards is now dried and painted to restore its raw meat color. Beyond its shock value, though, it’s being displayed at the National Museum of Women in the Arts with an explanation of her political message....
SOURCE: WaPo (9-5-12)
South Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Dick Harpootlian compared his state’s Republican governor, Nikki Haley, to Eva Braun, the longtime mistress of Adolf Hitler. The Coumbia State:
…Harpootlian, never a loss for a quick quip, tossed a few stinging one-liners at the Wednesday delegation breakfast.
On Gov. Nikki Haley participating in daily news briefings in a basement studio at the NASCAR Hall of Fame: “She was down in the bunker a la Eva Braun.”
SOURCE: WaPo (8-31-12)
Most political observers — or, any observer, really — found Clint Eastwood’s speech Thursday night really, really weird. Rachel Maddow was rendered speechless before describing it as “the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen at a political convention in my entire life, and it will be the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen if I live to be 100.”
It was weird, but it certainly was not unprecedented. Smithsonian Magazine does some digging and finds that there’s actually a decent amount of empty-chair debates in American political history. It stretches back to at least 1924, when progressive party vice-presidential nominee Burton K. Wheeler “took a stab at an invisible President Calvin Coolidge.”...
SOURCE: WaPo (9-3-12)
For years, John Giannetti, a former Marine captain, has lamented the lack of a memorial to the Americans who fell at the Battle of Bladensburg in 1814....
By next fall, a bronze relief statue that is being designed by local artist Joanna Blake at Giannetti’s Brentwood studio is expected to be unveiled at Bladensburg Balloon Park.
The $375,00 memorial, which shows a fallen Commodore Joshua Barney and two others, is one of many efforts by local residents to try to highlight the area’s links to the War of 1812, a conflict with the British that secured American independence in the post-Revolutionary War era. As celebrations are underway in the region marking the war’s bicentennial, Bladensburg and its neighboring Port Towns — communities that once profited from a thriving Anacostia River trade — are trying to capitalize on their ties to the war and attract history buffs and tourists....
SOURCE: WaPo (9-4-12)
AHMADABAD, India — The owner of the “Hitler” clothing shop in western India says he will remove the sign and rename his store after hearing people’s complaints.
Rajesh Shah said Tuesday he had chosen the name in memory of his grandfather, a strict disciplinarian whom the family referred to as “Hitler.”...
SOURCE: WaPo (9-4-12)
Some years, they speak of “the final eradication in America of the age-old evil of poverty,” and then other years, the Democratic Party shifts its focus to “those who work hard, pay their bills, play by the rules . . .”
In 1972, the party promises “a guaranteed job for all,” offering to “make the government the employer of last resort.” But 20 years later, the Democrats pivot and nearly apologize for themselves, appealing to “Americans who may have thought the Democratic Party had forgotten its way” by saying that it now “rejects the big government theory that says we can . . . tax and spend our way to prosperity.”
If Republicans from 1960 to today moved in fairly linear fashion to ever-more conservative stances on the economy, taxes and a slew of social issues, the Democratic evolution over the same period was a more jagged series of experiments with activist and statist approaches, interspersed with more traditional paeans to family, faith and individual initiative....
SOURCE: WaPo (9-4-12)
There’s Hillary Clinton, gracing the cover of this month’s Conde Nast Traveler, looking ever the glamorous jet-setter in a tweed pantsuit, arms crossed, standing in front of the exotic-looking Humayan’s Tomb in New Delhi.
The glossy cover bears the headline “19,000 MILES WITH THE MOST TRAVELED SECRETARY OF STATE IN HISTORY.”
But wait just a New York minute. ... [T]he title “most traveled” could very well go to former secretary of state Condoleeza Rice. As our truth-squadding colleague Glenn Kessler at the Fact Checker blog noted after a recent Loop mention of Clinton’s milestones, the State Department’s claims of Clinton’s travel supremacy might be a little premature (Kessler even gave the Loop a dreaded Pinocchio for buying the agency’s lines)....
SOURCE: WaPo (9-4-12)
Again?
Pat Lehman of the Kansas Delegation said to the Wichita Eagle about Republicans’ voter fraud claims: “It’s like Hitler said, if you’re going to tell a lie, tell a big lie, and if you tell it often enough and say it in a loud enough voice, some people are going to believe you.”
Her comment echoes that of California Democratic Chairman John Burton, who told a group of delegates Monday, “They lie and they don’t care if people think they lie… Joseph Goebbels – it’s the big lie, you keep repeating it.” He left Charlotte Monday for a “previously scheduled” root canal....
SOURCE: WaPo (9-4-12)
Some years, they speak of “the final eradication in America of the age-old evil of poverty,” and then other years, the Democratic Party shifts its focus to “those who work hard, pay their bills, play by the rules . . .”
In 1972, the party promises “a guaranteed job for all,” offering to “make the government the employer of last resort.” But 20 years later, the Democrats pivot and nearly apologize for themselves, appealing to “Americans who may have thought the Democratic Party had forgotten its way” by saying that it now “rejects the big government theory that says we can . . . tax and spend our way to prosperity.”
If Republicans from 1960 to today moved in fairly linear fashion to ever-more conservative stances on the economy, taxes and a slew of social issues, the Democratic evolution over the same period was a more jagged series of experiments with activist and statist approaches, interspersed with more traditional paeans to family, faith and individual initiative....
SOURCE: NYT (9-6-12)
Sept. 11 is approaching, and American television is maintaining a polite distance. Since last year, when more than two dozen new documentaries and memorials were presented for the 10th anniversary of the 2001 attacks, our attention has receded again. Apparently the most appropriate gift for an 11th anniversary is reruns.
A close but not exhaustive survey of prime-time schedules through Tuesday turned up five new specials on the attacks, all on cable. New to America, that is — two are leftover inventory, having been shown in Britain last year. Why in Britain? Because all these TV documentaries about the most significant event in our recent history were made there, four by the same company, Testimony Films....
SOURCE: NYT (9-5-12)
A painting created collaboratively by all four Beatles in 1966 is being offered as part of a music memorabilia sale by Philip Weiss Auctions, in Oceanside, N.Y., on Sept. 14. The auction house estimates that the painting, now called “Images of a Woman,” will sell for between $80,000 and $120,000.
The group produced the work during a visit to Tokyo in 1966, as a way to relieve the tedium of being all but locked into their hotel rooms by their security-conscious Japanese hosts. They were concerned about death threats the group had received from devotees of sumo wrestling, who regarded their engagement at the Budokan arena to be a matter of sacrilege....
SOURCE: NYT (9-5-12)
The Vietnamese government is treating some people exposed to Agent Orange, the defoliant sprayed by American troops during the Vietnam War, using a detoxification method developed by the founder of the Church of Scientology, according to doctors involved in the program.
Nguyen Ba Vuong, a doctor at the Vietnam Military Medical University in Hanoi, said his facility had received “training and methods” from the Association for Better Living and Education, an organization that is financed by Scientologists and the Church of Scientology, according to the association’s Web site.
About 300 people from the northern province of Thai Binh have passed through the program, which involves taking vitamins and minerals, performing strenuous exercise and sweating in a sauna, among other activities, according to Vietnamese news reports.
The aim of the Vietnamese program is to purge the body of dioxin, a toxic contaminant of Agent Orange that has been linked by some researchers to cancers, birth defects and other diseases. A spokeswoman for the Association for Better Living and Education confirmed the program....
SOURCE: NYT (9-4-12)
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — When Ronald Reagan asked voters a week before the 1980 election whether they were better off than four years earlier, he turned a race that had been nip-and-tuck for months into a landslide victory — and showed how a pointed question can be a lethal political weapon.
Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee, speaks often of that election in meetings with donors and other supporters, citing it to reassure those who are alarmed that he has not been able to build a lead against a president burdened with a listless economy, ballooning federal debt and a jobless rate deep in the red zone for an incumbent.
But if Mr. Romney believes the “Are you better off?” question will be political kryptonite for President Obama, he will have to reckon with an economic scorecard that is more mixed than he and other Republicans are claiming on the campaign trail. American voters, too, have more complicated feelings about their fortunes, and those of their children, than they did when Mr. Reagan first posed the question....
SOURCE: NYT (9-4-12)
KIBBUTZ LOHAMEI HAGETAOT, Israel — It isn’t only the history of the Holocaust that you see on display in Israel’s Holocaust museums. It’s also the history of the history of the Holocaust. There is an archaeology of trauma to be found if you look closely, and in its layers and transmutations you see how a nation has wrestled with the burden of one of history’s immense horrors.
Through examining how Israeli museums treat the Holocaust — including the Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum here, in a kibbutz in the far north of the country, whose founders included survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising — we can see how visions of that past are changing, sometimes in unsettling ways.
One museum on another, smaller kibbutz, for example, was described in the newspaper Haaretz as “Warsaw-Ghetto Disneyland” for its new emphasis on sound and lighting effects, including a simulation of a cattle car heading to a death camp. The director of the museum at the Ghetto Fighters’ House said that it would increasingly emphasize the broadest lessons of the Holocaust: an “ethical imperative” of “tolerance” that could “influence Israeli society.” And when Yad Vashem in Jerusalem reworked its main exhibition in 2005 — creating the most powerful exposition of this history I have seen — it too modified its approach, with a new focus on feelings and individual stories....
SOURCE: NYT (9-4-12)
Vandals burned the door of a Trappist monastery at Latrun, near Jerusalem, early Tuesday and scrawled anti-Christian slogans on the walls. The Israeli authorities said they suspected it was the work of Jewish extremists....
SOURCE: NYT (9-4-12)
PHILADELPHIA — The three-story brick building stands like a ghost of what it once was, the letters “Joe Frazier’s Gym” stenciled across the facade in washed-out letters. A former destination for aspiring fighters and children seeking refuge from the gang violence of North Philadelphia, the gym is now a discount furniture store.
A sign on the window reads “Knockout Prices.”
Now, nearly a year after Mr. Frazier’s death, momentum is building to designate his former gym a historic site. The city is also working with his estate to erect a statue honoring him.
The efforts are a rethinking of Mr. Frazier’s legacy in his adopted city, which never so much as named a street after him during his lifetime. The question for many who knew and admired Mr. Frazier: What took so long?...
SOURCE: NYT (9-3-12)
LONDON — To stroll out of Carlton Gardens into the elegant confines of the Royal Society is to find a trove of centuries-old wonders, from Sir Isaac Newton’s reflecting telescope to the first electric machine to fantastical illustrated catalogs of fish and birds.
Then you enter the sunlight-suffused office of the society’s president, Sir Paul Nurse. With his spiky mass of white hair, broad nose, ready smile and thick work boots, he looks the part of old-fashioned knight of science ready to tramp through the fens. But this Nobel Prize winner in medicine offers a very 21st-century lament.
“Policy debate these days involves trying to rubbish the science, and that is dangerous,” Dr. Nurse says. “Global warming denialists, those who oppose genetically modified crops and vaccinations, or the teaching of evolution: their trick is treat scientific argument as if it’s a political argument, and cherry-pick data.”...
SOURCE: NYT (9-3-12)
A fractured skull and a thighbone hacked in half were found at the lake.
Although that may sound like the opening scene of a crime drama, the human remains, along with axes, spears, clubs and shields, were unearthed at an archaeological site in the wetlands of Denmark, and date to the birth of Jesus.
The recent findings most certainly indicate that the 2,000-year-old site was the scene of a major battle, said Mads Kahler Holst, an archaeologist at Aarhus University in Denmark and one of the leaders of the excavation. They also point to the involvement of religious sacrifices....
SOURCE: Yahoo News (9-6-12)
One hundred and 30 years after her death, Mary Todd Lincoln will be retried for insanity.
The former first lady was declared insane 10 years after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865, when her son Robert Todd Lincoln had her committed.
"Even today, historians disagree whether the evidence against the First Lady was 'trumped up,' whether the procedures used constituted due process, and what would occur if today's modernized health laws were applied to the same facts," reads a statement from the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum....
SOURCE: WHPTV.com (9-5-12)
Organizers with Gettysburg’s Seminary Ridge Museum say the facility is on track to open July 1, 2013, as part of the Civil War town’s 150th Anniversary Commemoration.
Known by many as the home to the famous cupola where Union Gen. John Buford scouted the countryside as the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg unfolded, the Seminary Ridge Museum is undergoing a $15 million renovation on the campus of the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg.
Additionally, the building – known at the time as “Old Dorm” – was used as both a Union and Confederate hospital after the fighting on July 1, 1863. It’s been called the most important Civil War structure not owned by a public entity....
SOURCE: AP (8-27-12)
NEW YORK — The Sept. 11 museum at ground zero is offering a hand on planning commemorations elsewhere as the anniversary of the terror attacks approaches.
The National September 11 Memorial & Museum released a remembrance guide online Monday. The guide includes a list of the nearly 3,000 victims of the attacks, interactive timelines, lesson plans about memorialization and ideas for sharing reflections through social media....
SOURCE: AP (9-4-12)
A Philadelphia archaeology museum will indefinitely loan ancient jewelry known as "Troy gold" to Turkey in an arrangement that will allow the museum to host a future exhibit of artifacts related to King Midas, officials announced Tuesday.
The deal is part of what Penn Museum officials called a landmark agreement with the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism to work more collaboratively on field work and exhibitions over the next several years.
"It will lead to great opportunities - for Penn, for Philadelphia and for the wider archaeological community - to experience more of Turkey's rich cultural history and heritage in the future," museum director Julian Siggers said....
SOURCE: AP (9-5-12)
Neil Armstrong's space suit gloves and visor worn during his historic first walk on the moon are going on temporary display at the Smithsonian Institution following the pioneering astronaut's death.
Both are usually kept in storage. They were designed to address the hazards of working on the lunar surface. Armstrong's helmet had two visors for moon walks, one with a gold reflective coating for UV protection and one with thermal protection.
The Apollo 11 artifacts were placed on public view Tuesday at the National Air and Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center in northern Virginia. They will be exhibited for two weeks in a special display case....
SOURCE: AP (8-31-12)
BERLIN — 1946— Gruenenthal, a German pharmaceutical, is founded in Stolberg.
1954 — Gruenenthal discovers and patents thalidomide.
1957 — Thalidomide is first sold as Contergan in Germany. It is mainly prescribed to treat anxiety and morning sickness in pregnant women....
SOURCE: AP (9-4-12)
PHILADELPHIA — A Philadelphia archaeology museum will indefinitely loan ancient jewelry known as “Troy gold” to Turkey in an arrangement that will allow the museum to host a future exhibit of artifacts related to King Midas, officials announced Tuesday.
The deal is part of what Penn Museum officials called a landmark agreement with the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism to work more collaboratively on field work and exhibitions over the next several years.
“It will lead to great opportunities — for Penn, for Philadelphia and for the wider archaeological community — to experience more of Turkey’s rich cultural history and heritage in the future,” museum director Julian Siggers said....
SOURCE: The Atlantic (9-5-12)
A Scottish fisherman has found the world's oldest message in a bottle, the Guinness Book of World Records confirmed last week. It is 98 years old, and was cast into the ocean by Captain C. Hunter Brown*, a scientist at the Glasgow School of Navigation, who was studying the currents in the North Sea.
The bottle was one of 1,890 bottles released on June 10, 1914, and the 315th to be entered into Captain Brown's log, which is still kept and updated by Marine Scotland Science in Aberdeen....
SOURCE: Alabama.com (9-5-12)
FORT MORGAN, Alabama -- When Isaac lashed the Gulf Coast last week the storm gave people a glimpse into a slice of nautical history when the hurricane unveiled more of a 150-foot wooden shipwreck here than has been revealed by past storms.
The ghostly remains known to locals as the "mystery shipwreck" was uncovered at a private beach off Beach Boulevard near mile marker six just south of Fort Morgan. It has been uncovered by past storms, including Hurricane Ike four years ago and Tropical Storm Ida in 2009.
Historians in the past have been at odds as to the identity of the ship, with speculation that it was either a Civil War blockade ship or a Prohibition Era rum runner....
SOURCE: University of Leicester (9-5-12)
The search for Richard III’s final resting place has advanced considerably with confirmation that the dig has uncovered the long-lost Church of the Grey Friars where Richard was buried.
The first two trenches dug by Leicester’s archaeologists revealed tiled passageway floors at right angles to each other which are probably the remains of a cloister. A cloister is a rectangular open space, surrounded by covered walkways, often built alongside a church that has a monastic community. Friars would walk around the cloister, deep in thought or prayer, whilst remaining dry.
If the floors revealed by the first two trenches represented two sides of the cloister, then our theory, revealed at a press conference on Friday, was that the large wall on the third side of the potential cloister could be the church itself. Over the weekend our archaeologists dug a third trench to the east of the first two trenches to see if the wall extended....
SOURCE: BBC (9-5-12)
A gathering is to take place at a church in rural Perthshire to mark the restoration of the gravestone of a child who would have inherited the Sikh empire.
In 1865, Maharajah Duleep Singh buried his son at Kenmore Parish Church. The Maharajah was the Sikh empire's last ruler and was exiled to the UK when his kingdom was annexed by the East India Company in 1849. The event has been organised by the Anglo Sikh Heritage Trail (ASHT).
At its height the Sikh Empire was over twice the size of the United Kingdom and was based around the Punjab region of India.
However, a bloody war with the East India Company saw it eventually annexed and Maharajah Singh was exiled to Britain at the age of 10. His friendship with Queen Victoria however, led to the former Indian royal moving to Scotland in 1855 under the guidance of his guardian Sir John Login....
SOURCE: Talking Points Memo (9-5-12)
CHARLOTTE — Republicans are fuming after the chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party, Dick Harpootlian, made a joke about Gov. Nikki Haley (R) here Wednesday that compared her with Eva Braun.
On the floor of the Democratic National Convention, members of the South Carolina delegation gathered just before the start of Wednesday night’s session kept their distance from the quip, but stood by their party chair who is known in the Palmetto State for a sharp tongue....
SOURCE: Kansas City Star (9-4-12)
WASHINGTON -- Barack Obama might want to think twice before accepting his party's nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C. Should he win re-election, the thrill of victory could give way the "Second-Term Jinx."
For more than a century, presidents have run into unforeseen woes in their second terms.
Some have been tragic. Abraham Lincoln and William McKinley were assassinated; Woodrow Wilson suffered a debilitating stroke. More have been political, scandals and controversies that set back their agendas or worse, tarnished their very place in history....
SOURCE: Lee White for the National Coalition for History (8-30-12)
U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake has sentenced Barry H. Landau to seven years in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, for conspiracy and theft of historical documents from cultural institutions in four states, including the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library in Hyde Park, New York.
Landau had pleaded guilty to the charges earlier this year.
The items stolen from the Roosevelt Library, which is part of the National Archives and Records Administration, were seven “reading copies” of speeches that Roosevelt delivered. They contained his edits and handwritten additions, along with his signature. They have all been recovered.
Landau’s co-conspirator, Jason Savedoff, will be sentenced at a later date.
Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero said he was pleased that Judge Blake “recognized the seriousness of this crime and meted out an appropriate punishment that will serve as a warning to others who may contemplate stealing our nation’s history.”
Ferriero said that because of incidents such as those involving Landau, the National Archives and other research institutions around the world have become more vigilant over the last few decades. They have instituted a number of measures aimed at preventing theft, such as closed-circuit cameras, clean research room rules, exit searches, and increased staff surveillance.
Lynn Bassanese, Acting Director of the Roosevelt Library, recalled that when Roosevelt dedicated his library on June 30, 1941, he declared it an “act of faith” in the American people.
“Barry Landau and Jason Savedoff violated that faith by taking advantage of the trust and confidence that the Roosevelt Library’s staff has for its researchers,” she said. “With the successful return of the stolen documents, the Roosevelt Library renews its commitment to protect and preserve the records of the Roosevelt Presidency and to make them accessible to the American people for generations to come.”
According to Landau’s plea agreement, the “reading copies” of Roosevelt’s speeches were stolen when he and Savedoff visited the Roosevelt Library on December 2, 2010. “Reading copies” are the actual copies of the speeches from which the President read. They contain edits and handwritten additions made by him and bear his signature.
Four of these “reading copies” of speeches were sold by Landau on December 20, 2010, to a collector for $35,000. Three other “reading copies” of inaugural addresses delivered by Roosevelt, valued at more than $100,000 each, were recovered from Landau’s apartment in New York City during court-authorized searches, including the water-stained reading copy of the inaugural address FDR delivered in a steady rain in 1937.
Judge Blake also ordered Landau to pay restitution totaling $46,525 to three dealers who purchased the stolen documents from Landau, not knowing they were stolen. She also ordered Landau to forfeit all the documents recovered during searches of his New York apartment.
SOURCE: Lee White for the National Coalition for History (8-30-12)
On August 24, a major overhaul in the way federal departments and agencies manage and preserve their records was ordered by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
In a directive to reform records management for the 21st century, NARA and OMB said that all agencies must begin to manage their records, including emails, in electronic format by the end of the decade.
The directive also requires each agency to designate a high-ranking agency official to oversee its records management programs and to ensure that all appropriate staff receive records management training.
Deadlines for complying with various parts of the directive are spread over the coming years.
Among the highlights of the directive issued are:
Overall, the directive lists a dozen actions to be taken by NARA and other agencies to assist all Federal departments and agencies in meeting the requirements set forth in the new directive.
Among the most important will be the Archives’ work with the Office of Personnel Management to establish a formal records management occupational series to elevate records management roles, responsibilities, and skill sets for agency records officers and other records professionals.
The directive is available at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/memoranda/2012/m-12-18.pdf
The Presidential memorandum on managing government records, that was issued last November, is available at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/11/28/presidential-memorandum-managing-governm
ent-records
SOURCE: Lee White for the National Coalition for History (8-31-12)
On August 30, the National Archives Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO) released the first Executive branch-wide Fundamental Classification Guidance Review covering 25 Federal agencies with significant classification programs. Agency summaries are available online [www.archives.gov/isoo/fcgr].
The review serves as a guide and benchmark for Federal agencies to ensure proper classification of information vital to national security, while expediting declassification by avoiding over-classification and unnecessary withholding of records. Accurate and current classification guides also ensure standardized classification within and across Federal agencies. Of the 3,103 classification guides reviewed, 869 were either cancelled or consolidated; numerous projects, programs, or categories were eliminated, revised, consolidated, or condensed.
Overall, the review shows that Federal agencies are streamlining classification guidance and more clearly identifying categories of what can be released and what needs to remain classified.
Review highlights include:
The Fundamental Classification Guidance Review program was created by President Obama on December 29, 2009, under Executive Order 13526. All Federal agencies with significant classification programs had until July 2012 to review their classification guidance, and then provide their reports to the Director of the Information Security Oversight Office. The next review is scheduled for 2017.
The Information Security Oversight Office is responsible to the President for policy and oversight of the government-wide security classification system under Executive Order 13526 and the National Industrial Security Program under Executive Order 12829, as amended. ISOO serves as Executive Agent for the Controlled Unclassified Information program under Executive Order 13556. ISOO has been part of the National Archives and Records Administration since 1995. See more information about the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO) at [www.archives.gov/isoo/].
SOURCE: Lee White for the National Coalition for History (8-30-12)
The National Archives National Declassification Center (NDC) has issued its fifth biannual Report on Operations of the National Declassification Center, covering the period of January 1 through June 30, 2012. The report is available is online at www.archives.gov/declassification.
Report highlights include:
On August 3, 2012, the Washington Post published an article entitled, “Obama administration struggles to live up to its own transparency promises.” The Post concluded, “Some of these high-profile transparency measures have stalled, and by some measures the government is keeping more secrets than before.”
The Post article cited the National Declassification Center’s performance in this regard. The NDC was tasked by the Administration with reviewing and declassifying a 371 million-page backlog of records by December 2013. However, the status report shows the NDC will be hard pressed to come close to meeting that deadline. As of June 30, 2012, only 51.1 million pages have completed all processing and of that number 41.8 million pages have been released to the public.
SOURCE: Lee White for the National Coalition for History (8-30-12)
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) recently announced $39 million in grants for 244 humanities projects.
This funding will support a wide variety of projects, including collaborative research, archival conservation programs, the creation of new digital research tools, professional development opportunities for teachers and college faculty, traveling exhibitions, efforts to build long-term support for humanities initiatives at community colleges, and the production and development of films, television, and radio programs.
This award cycle, institutions and independent scholars in 46 states and the District of Columbia will receive NEH support. Complete state-by-state listings of grants are available here (46-page PDF).
In this cycle, grants were awarded in the following categories:
SOURCE: Lee White for the National Coalition for History (8-30-12)
More than $1.3 million in National Park Service grants have recently been awarded to help preserve, protect, document, and interpret America’s significant battlefield lands. The funding from the National Park Service’s American Battlefield Protection Program (ABPP) will support 27 projects at more than 75 battlefields nationwide.
For a list of the grantees, click here. This year’s grants provide funding for projects at endangered battlefields from the Pequot War, King William’s War, the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Civil War, World War II and various Indian Wars. Awards were given to projects in 17 states or territories entailing archeology, mapping, cultural resource survey work, documentation, planning, education and interpretation.
The Park Service also announced the award of an additional $1.3 million in grants to help with land acquisition at four Civil War battlefields. Grant projects include fee simple purchases at Averasborough, North Carolina ($103,380); Bentonville, North Carolina ($60, 380); Cool Springs, Virginia ($800,000) and Ware Bottom Church, Virginia ($367,263). The grant funds were made available under the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2012 (Public Law 112-74), which appropriated $8,985,600 for the Civil War battlefield land acquisition grants program.
Federal, state, local and Tribal governments, nonprofit organizations, and educational institutions are eligible for the battlefield grants, which are awarded annually. Since 1996, the ABPP has awarded more than $13 million to help preserve significant historic battlefields associated with wars on American soil. More information is available online at www.nps.gov/hps/abpp.
SOURCE: Lee White for the National Coalition for History (8-30-12)
The Department of State’s Office of the Historian recently released its latest volume of the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), “Foundations of Foreign Policy, 1973-1976.”
This volume documents the intellectual foundations of the foreign policy of the second Richard Nixon administration and the Gerald Ford administration. Unlike other volumes in the Nixon/Ford subseries, the documentation seeks to illustrate the collective mindset of Nixon and Ford administration officials on foreign policy issues in the broadest sense. Rather than the formulation of individual foreign policy decisions or diplomatic exchanges, the compilation takes as its canvas the entire record of the second Nixon administration and the Ford administration’s efforts to develop a grand strategy in foreign policymaking.
The 151 year-old FRUS series presents the official documentary historical record of major foreign policy decisions and significant diplomatic activity of the U.S. Government.
This volume was compiled and edited by Kristin L. Ahlberg and Alexander R. Wieland.
The volume and this press release are available on the Office of the Historian website at http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v38p1. For further information, contact history@state.gov.
SOURCE: Lee White for the National Coalition for History (8-30-12)
In recognition of the historic and architectural/engineering significance of Boston’s Fenway Park, the National Park Service has listed the venerable, beloved ballpark in its National Register of Historic Places. 2012 marks the 100th anniversary of the Boston Red Sox initial season at Fenway Park.
“Recognizing the incredible history of this ballpark through the National Register designation is a great way to bring the national parks and the national pastime together,” said National Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis. “Fenway is a treasured American icon for baseball fans across the country. It, along with the Boston area’s 11 national parks, helps attract visitors from around the world to one of our nation’s most vibrant cities, expanding opportunities for business and tourism that generate economic returns for Boston and the nearby communities.”
Fenway Park is the oldest venue used by any professional sports team in the United States and one of the few remaining fields from the early 20th-century’s “Golden Age of Ballparks.” In addition to Red Sox baseball and myriad other professional sporting events, Fenway Park has witnessed a microcosm of American history over the last century, hosting events as varied as World War II bond rallies; political rallies, including the final campaign speech of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s career; and concerts that reflect the diversity of American music, from Frank Sinatra to Bruce Springsteen. With its listing this year, Fenway Park is the only sports venue currently used by a professional sports team (MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL) to be so designated.
The National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Listing in the National Register makes Fenway eligible for federal historic rehabilitation tax credits administered by the National Park Service.
SOURCE: Lee White for the National Coalition for History (8-30-12)
The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) recently announced 152 awards totaling $18,113,376 matched with $34,666,759 of non-federal funds for Museums for America Program Grants. The IMLS also announced 14 awards totaling $1,442,312, matched with $1,903,034 of non-federal funds for Museum Grants for African American History and Culture.
Click here to view the list of projects funded by the Museum for America Program Grants.
Click here to view the list of projects funded under the Museum Grants for African American History and Culture.
Use the IMLS grants search tool to view our archive of grants awarded by the Institute. Search grants by grant name, institution, or project type.
SOURCE: Lee White for the National Coalition for History (8-30-12)
The National Archives’ George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum has launched its newly designed website: www.georgewbushlibrary.smu.edu. The website is hosted by Southern Methodist University (SMU), the site of the Library’s future facility.
While the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum is still under construction on the campus of SMU, visitors will be able to visit virtually through the new interactive website, which features highlighted documents and artifacts from the Library and Museum’s vast collections. Through a variety of online media and exhibit galleries, researchers and visitors will be able to explore the lives and careers of President George W. Bush and Mrs. Laura Bush, and the American Presidency in general. Educators and students will also be able to find resources and tools to use regarding the events of the Bush Administration.
The new website will give the public an early glimpse of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum, one of thirteen Presidential Libraries administered by the National Archives and Records Administration, and will help visitors plan their visits and inform them of upcoming news and events in anticipation of the dedication in the spring of 2013. The website will also provide information regarding the Library’s partners, the George W. Bush Foundation and the George W. Bush Institute.
SOURCE: Lee White for the National Coalition for History (8-30-12)
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) recently announced a $1 million award to support the incorporation and launch of the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), a groundbreaking project that seeks to digitize and bring together the contents of our nation’s libraries and archives, and make them freely available to all online.
To be created through a coalition of libraries, archives, museums, and other nonprofit and academic entities in coordination with the Open Knowledge Commons, the Digital Public Library of America will ultimately serve as a single portal for diverse, interdisciplinary digital archives from a range of institutions. It would allow scholars, students, and lifelong learners to simultaneously access multiple collections. For example, a scholar researching the roles African Americans played during the Civil War would be able to search a wide range of collections with relevant materials, potentially ranging from military records and photographs to newspapers and early 20th century recollections.
The NEH award will specifically support the creation of the infrastructure for a national open-access digital library. The DPLA will partner with statewide digital library projects to establish a pilot group of “service hubs” responsible for coordinating the creation and dissemination of content within designated geographic areas. The project will also entail the designation of a number of large existing digital collections as “content hubs” that will make their data available through DPLA. It is expected that project participants will work together to develop agreements to protect of the rights of the many parties involved. One outcome will be the development of the common technological platform necessary for integration of collections from disparate sources.
The project is designed to demonstrate how local and national collections can be linked to one sky-way with global access ramps. It will, for example, work with the European Union to promote interoperability with its Europeana collection, a comparable digital library effort currently underway.
SOURCE: Jakarta Post (8-31-12)
Nearly five decades after the 1965 abortive coup, which was blamed on the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), historians, observers and direct witnesses are still unable to agree about the masterminds behind the historical events.
Speaking at the launch of Jusuf Wanandi’s memoirs Shades of Grey in Jakarta on Thursday, panelists recounted the confusing state of events during those fateful days.
Jusuf maintains that then president Sukarno could not have been solely responsible for the actions of the PKI due to his ailing health and the rapidity of events....
SOURCE: Scotsman (UK) (9-4-12)
Support has flooded in for a campaign to stop the Capital’s historic trenches from being lost forever.
A network of trenches at Dreghorn Woods in Colinton, which it is estimated would cost around £10,000 to save, could soon disappear as they become overgrown by trees.
The drive to save them, which is being backed by the Evening News, is being led by writer and historian Lynne Gladstone Millar, whose father William Ewart Gladstone Millar was trained in the trenches before he was sent to the Battle of the Somme.
Jack Alexander, author and a member of the McCrae’s Battalion Trust – which commemorates the men of the 16th Battalion The Royal Scots who lost their lives at the Battle of the Somme – said: “It is so important to preserve anything that is connected to the First World War – we can’t afford to lose the little we have left....
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (9-3-12)
The Diary of Anne Frank, written by one of the most revered victims of the Holocaust, is being released next month as an interactive app.
The app has been authorised by the Anne Frank Foundation, which was founded by Otto Frank following the death of his daughter Anne in Bergen-Belsen in March 1945, aged 15, from typhus and malnutrition after hiding for two years from the Nazis in an Amsterdam attic. The diary, which was given to Anne on her 13th birthday, chronicles her life from 12 June 1942 until 1 August 1944. It was first published in 1947 and then translated from its original Dutch and published in English in 1952 as The Diary of a Young Girl....
