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: The Dallas Morning News
October 6, 2009
Hovering in the shadows of President Barack Obama's decision last week to ramp up the nation's war effort in Afghanistan, even as he promises to bring it to a swift conclusion, are ghosts of another decision, made 44 years ago by a Texan in the White House.
In 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson took ownership of a war he, like Obama, had inherited. Gen. William Westmoreland wanted more troops in Vietnam, and after a protracted debate within the White House, Johnson sent them.
Over
Source: Google News
December 5, 2009
WASHINGTON — The folks who sneaked into the president's state dinner are part of a long tradition of people showing up as they please at the People's House. It's just that the tradition vanished ages ago.
Americans staked their claim to the White House in muddy boots on fine carpet, picnicked on the grounds, parked their carriages and then their cars outside and tromped inside to look for the man, often finding him. They did not need invitations, engraved or otherwise.
Source: AP
December 5, 2009
William Wilson, a member of President Reagan's "kitchen cabinet" of advisers, dies at the age of 95.
Wilson was among a group of about a dozen conservative, wealthy Los Angeles businessmen who became confidantes and advisers to Reagan, first as he sought to become governor of California, and later, president. They also helped bankroll his campaigns for office.
Reagan first appointed Wilson as presidential envoy to Rome in 1981, when the United States did not h
Source: AP
December 5, 2009
Six families nervously awaited the DNA tests on the young man who returned from Iran. They wondered: Could this be their son who was just an infant in 1988 and somehow lived through a deadly chemical attack by Saddam Hussein's regime?
There was absolute silence as the judge announced the lab results. The man, who called himself Ali, was deemed to be the sole surviving child of 58-year-old Fatima Mohammed Salih, who had lost her husband and all her other six children in the poison ga
Source: AP
December 5, 2009
Italian tax police said Saturday that they had seized works by Van Gogh, Picasso, Cezanne and other giants of art in a crackdown on assets hidden by the disgraced founder of the collapsed dairy company Parmalat.
Authorities estimated the 19 masterpieces stashed away in attics and basements were valued at some $150 million.
Parma Prosecutor Gerardo Laguardia said that, based on wiretapped phone conversations, officials believed at least one of the paintings was about to
Source: Time
December 5, 2009
The road to success for President Obama's Afghanistan strategy runs through India, goes an increasingly familiar refrain. That's because reversing the Taliban's momentum requires getting rid of the movement's sanctuary in Pakistan, where the insurgent leadership is known to be based in and around the city of Quetta. But while Pakistan is aggressively tackling its domestic Taliban, it has consistently declined to act against Afghan Taliban groups based on its soil — because it sees the Afghan Tal
Source: Fox
December 5, 2009
The fact that there is a hall of ages within the haphazard maze of tunnels and aqueducts beneath Jerusalem’s old city is not a great discovery. Archeologists knew this hall existed for more than 30 years. They Just could not enter the hall because ancient building techniques and materials left the place unstable. The walls were buckling in and part of the ceiling had collapsed. Since thousands of years with no particular strategy in city planning left rooms, hallways and chambers stacked on e
Source: NYT
December 4, 2009
ISTANBUL — More than eight decades ago, Ertugrul Osman, an heir to the Ottoman throne, was unceremoniously thrown out of Turkey with his family. He lived to be 97, spending most of his years in a modest Manhattan apartment above a bakery.
But in September, at his funeral in the garden of the majestic Sultanahmet Mosque here, thousands of mourners paid their respects, including government officials and celebrities. Some even kissed the hands of surviving dynasty members, who appeare
Source: NYT
December 4, 2009
NEW DELHI — The leader of a deadly insurgency fighting for an independent homeland in India’s northeastern state of Assam has been arrested, government officials said Friday.
Arabinda Rajkhowa, commander of the United Liberation Front of Assam, had been living in Bangladesh for the past decade, where he enjoyed a measure of protection from Bangladeshi authorities.
Mr. Rajkhowa, his deputy and several family members were handed over to Indian authorities by Bangladeshi o
Source: NYT
December 4, 2009
When calendrical milestones pass, however arbitrary they are, they induce reflection. We look back with a feeling of incredulity at all that happened in what feels like no time. We peer into the fearsome, onrushing future. We catalog and schematize and make lists.
List-making for the end of the first decade of the 2000s is in full swing. At least in the United States, which loves to order priorities, we are being told who were the most important celebrities, the crucial leaders, the
Source: CNN
April 12, 2009
(CNN) -- In a nondescript conference room tucked inside the library at the University of Delaware, a graduate student found a historian's equivalent to a needle in a haystack.
Amanda Daddona said she discovered a personal letter from Thomas Jefferson amid one of 200 boxes of legal documents, minutes from meetings and day-to-day correspondence of a prominent Delaware family.
"The first thing I recognized was his signature," said Daddona, 22, who is getting her
Source: BBC News
May 12, 2009
A letter written by the first US President, George Washington, has sold at auction for $3.2m (£1.9m).
The sale, at Christie's in New York, was a record for a letter written by Washington.
The four-page letter was written in 1787 to the president's nephew, Bushrod Washington, and urges adoption of the country's new constitution.
A partially written poem by Edgar Allan Poe sold for $830,500 - a record for a 19th Century literary manuscript.
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
December 4, 2009
Americans are turning their backs on the rest of the world, showing a tendency towards isolationism that has risen to the highest level in four decades, according to a poll published yesterday.
Almost half (49 per cent) said the U.S. should 'mind its own business' internationally and let other countries get along as best they can, the Pew Research Center found.
The results appear to conflict with President Obama's activist foreign policy, including a newly announced bu
Source: WSJ
December 4, 2009
A former Army major was sentenced to a 17 and a half year prison term on corruption charges in Wednesday in San Antonio, signaling the beginning of the end of a far-reaching Iraq War corruption probe.
As part of the probe, a growing cadre of career soldiers has confessed to siphoning millions of dollars from defense contracts in Iraq and Kuwait. The investigation into their spree already has led to the indictments of five U.S. military officers, with another dozen expected to follow
Source: The Evening Telegraph
December 2, 2009
Dr Barrie James, who lives in Great Stukeley, Huntingdon, had his book Hitler's Gulf War: The Fight For Iraq published two weeks ago.
It is his first historical account and focuses on the World War Two battle for Baghdad in spring 1941.
During the 30-day conflict, 1,500 British soldiers managed to fight their way across 500 miles of desert to defeat 30,000 armed Iraqi forces aided by the Germans and Italians.
He said: "It was a fascinating period that
Source: NYT
December 3, 2009
Until recently, Carl E. Clark, 93, was still driving his car around Menlo Park. Then came a fall, a new hip and recovery in a rehabilitation hospital. But it was another wound he wanted to talk about — one that happened 64 years ago.
“The Navy and the civilian media held back things that lots of us did,” Mr. Clark said. “For obvious reasons: the prejudice and bigotry that was going on at that time.”
He is part of “the greatest generation” whose valor remains largely inv
Source: The Washington Times
December 4, 2009
Frustrated by the lack of action to overturn the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, Democrats in Congress are calling for at least temporary immunity so gay service members can testify at the Capitol about their experiences.
Rep. Alcee L. Hastings, Florida Democrat, introduced a bill this week to grant immunity to troops who otherwise would run afoul of the policy, which bans gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military. He and other advocates see it as at least a fi
Source: WSJ
December 4, 2009
WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration, faced with mounting Congressional criticism, is trying to build support for its new Afghan strategy by explicitly linking the planned escalation to the Bush administration's 2007 Iraq surge.
The argument has been pressed most vocally by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who told skeptical lawmakers Thursday that the surge troops were able to leave Iraq just over a year after they had deployed there, a timeline roughly akin to the one the White H
Source: ABC News
December 3, 2009
John Brown, the 19th-century abolitionist who advocated armed violence, is drawing a diverse crowd this week to study how his fight against slavery continues to play in America.
A former Vietnam-era radical, a victim of human trafficking and an award-winning author are joining academics, activists and a descendant of the anti-slavery leader for a two-day symposium. The event commemorates the sesquicentennial of Brown's 1859 burial at his former Adirondack homestead just outside this
Source: Inside Higher Ed
December 4, 2009
Duke University Press on Thursday released Surviving Against the Odds: Village Industry in Indonesia, a book by anthropologist S. Ann Dunham, the late mother of President Obama. The 300-page book, a condensed version of Dunham’s dissertation of the economics of the blacksmith trade on the island of Java in the 1970s and 80s, was unveiled at a press conference at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association. Ken Wissoker, editorial director of the Duke University Press, called t
