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: Rasmussen Reports
September 11, 2009
"Progressive” is becoming more of a dirty word, but all political labels – except “being like Ronald Reagan” - are falling into disfavor with many U.S. voters, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.
“Liberal” is still the worst and remains the only political description that is viewed more negatively than positively. Being like Reagan is still the most positive thing you can say about a candidate.
Source: USA Today
September 10, 2009
NEW YORK — E-book fans will have to wait for a download of Sen. Ted Kennedy's memoir.
True Compass, one of the year's most anticipated books, is scheduled to come out next week. But publisher Twelve has decided to hold off "indefinitely" on a digital edition. The head of Twelve, Jonathan Karp, said Thursday that the delay was a "business decision."
Publishers have been debating whether to release e-books at the same time as hardcovers because of conc
Source: NPR
September 11, 2009
Many of the troops at this sprawling U.S. air base were in their mid-teens when they watched the planes hit the World Trade Center's twin towers on television and vowed to join the military.
Eight years later, many of those who enlisted in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks are now part of a massive military effort in Afghanistan that some are saying has no clear exit.
Remembrances of the attacks started at dawn Friday, with more than 1,000 service members donning
Source: The Guardian
September 10, 2009
A reclining man with a bushy beard and big nose is the latest to join a haul of stone figurines unearthed at the ancient site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey. The sculpture, which measures around six inches high, was uncovered at the neolithic site last week.
Çatalhöyük was the final resting place of some of the world's first farmers. Other figurines representing farmyard animals and people in sitting and standing positions have already been excavated at the site, which dates back to the da
Source: MSNBC
September 10, 2009
A U.S. Navy patrol boat sunk during WWII has been found and photographed 20 miles off Cape Hatteras, N.C.
The wreck of the YP-389, a converted fishing trawler, rests in about 300 feet of water in a region known as the "Graveyard of the Atlantic," where several U.S. and British naval vessels, merchant ships, and German U-boats sunk during the Battle of the Atlantic.
Six sailors died when the YP-389 was attacked by a German submarine June 19, 1942. There were 18
Source: BBC
September 11, 2009
Taiwan's former President Chen Shui-bian has been sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty of corruption by a court in Taipei.
Mr Chen was charged with embezzlement, taking bribes and money laundering, involving a total of $15m (£9m) while in office from 2000-2008.
Mr Chen had denied the charges, saying they were politically motivated.
His wife, Wu Shu-chen, already jailed for perjury in the case, was also sentenced to life for corruption.
Source: Trail Blazers
September 10, 2009
The so-called curriculum experts appointed by the State Board of Education have submitted their latest suggestions to proposed social studies standards that will be used in Texas schools. In preparation for what is expected to be a heated public hearing before the state board next week, the six experts offered their opinions on standards that were drafted by writing teams of teachers and academics for history, government and other subjects.
Most of the debate will be over U.S. histo
Source: Max Blumenthal at The Daily Beast
September 11, 2009
Since Republican Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina bellowed at President Barack Obama, “You lie!” during the president’s nationally televised speech on health care, the fourth-term backbencher has emerged as a hero for the conservative grassroots. One of the most enthusiastic endorsements of Wilson’s histrionics came from the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), a group that Wilson has belonged to according to his own biographical materials.
“Mr. Wilson, never apologize for allowing
Source: BBC
September 11, 2009
An Edinburgh engineer worshipped as a hero in Japan is finally being honoured in his home city of Edinburgh.
William K Burton is feted in Japan for his work designing the country's first skyscraper and clean water systems for its cities in the 1800s.
His work helped Japan beat disease and become an industrialised nation.
A bench is to be unveiled on Saturday at Edinburgh Napier University's Craig House garden, which used to be his family home.
Source: The Washington Times
September 11, 2009
Kennedy, Roosevelt, Lincoln -- President Obama matched them all.
At least that was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's take on the president's health care speech to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night.
"Last night, President Obama delivered what I believe to be one of the greatest speeches ever delivered in the Congress of the United States," Mrs. Pelosi told reporters Thursday at the opening of her weekly Capitol Hill news conference.
Hist
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 11, 2009
Charlie Sheen has prompted outrage in America by claiming that the government was behind the September 11 terror attacks.
He appealed to President Barack Obama to reopen an investigation into the attacks.
Sheen, who is the highest-paid actor on American televison, claimed that "the official 9/11 story is a fraud" and said the commission set up to investigate the attacks was a whitewash.
He said the attacks served "as the pretext for the sy
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 11, 2009
Galloping purple horses and a giant cosmonaut go on show in Versailles as contemporary art once again storms the royal palace despite complaints that Louis XIV would be turning in his grave.
Works by the French artist Xavier Veilhan will be on show from Sunday inside the Sun King's palace but also in its royal gardens and courtyards until mid-December.
In the first courtyard, visitors come face-to-face with the 50-foot long futuristic coach and horses, said to be a ref
Source: BBC
September 10, 2009
US President Barack Obama has voiced his disappointment directly to UK PM Gordon Brown over the release of the Lockerbie bomber, the White House says.
It says Mr Obama made his remarks in a telephone call to Mr Brown.
Mr Brown had made it clear the decision had been a matter for the Scottish government, the spokesman added.
Source: CNN
September 11, 2009
President Obama spoke at the Pentagon on Friday to those who lost loved ones on September 11, 2001, telling them no words would heal their pain yet calling for a renewed resolve against the ones who attacked the country eight years ago.
Obama laid a wreath of white flowers at the Pentagon, where 184 people lost their lives when a hijacked jet smashed into the military icon outside the nation's capital.
Earlier in the day, the president and first lady Michelle Obama hel
Source: National Post
September 10, 2009
BAGHDAD -- Iraq appealed to other nations on Thursday to help save its archaeological treasures from ruin, saying ancient Babylonian and Assyrian artifacts and priceless medieval Islamic monuments were at risk without more funds.
Iraq, which the ancient Greeks called Mesopotamia or ‘land between two rivers' because of its Tigris and Euphrates, is regarded by archaeologists as the cradle of civilisation....
... High on the list is the national museum in Baghdad, once a t
Source: NYT
September 9, 2009
MOSCOW (AP) — The book that made the word gulag a synonym for the horrors of Soviet oppression will be taught in Russian high schools, education officials said Wednesday, a generation after the Soviet Union banned it as destructive to the Communist cause and exiled its author.
Excerpts from the book, Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn’s “The Gulag Archipelago,” which was published in 1973, will now be required reading for students, the Russian Education Ministry said.
Prime Mini
Source: The American Task Force on Palestine
September 10, 2009
RAMALLAH, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Foreign Minister of Spain Miguel Angel Moratinos said Wednesday that his country supports the establishment of an independent Palestinian statehood on the borders of 1967.
Moratinos made the statement in a joint news conference held in Ramallah with chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, adding that Spain and the European Union "will keep exerting every possible effort to achieve the Palestinian goals."
"We can not wait fo
Source: The Times Online (UK)
September 10, 2009
President Mitterrand of France warned Margaret Thatcher privately that a reunited Germany might “make even more ground than Hitler had” only a few weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall, newly declassified documents reveal.
In papers due to be published by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office tomorrow, after a year of deliberation by Whitehall officials, the scale of Anglo-French fears on German reunification is laid bare.
At a lunch at the Élysée Palace on January 20,
Source: ABC News
September 10, 2009
On the eve of the eight year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, an FBI informant who infiltrated alleged terrorist cells in the U.S. tells ABC News the FBI missed a chance to stop the al Qaeda plot because they focused more on undercover stings than on the man who would later become known as 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta.
In an exclusive interview ... on ABC World News with Charles Gibson and Nightline, former undercover operative Elie Assaad says he spotted and became suspicious of A
Source: NYT
September 9, 2009
President Obama’s health care speech tonight is officially an address to a joint session of Congress. Such addresses are somewhat out of the ordinary but not all that rare.
Certain events take place routinely during a joint session — counting electoral votes, for example, or delivering a State of the Union message. (When a president is first inaugurated, he usually gives just an address at a joint session.)...
... Most people today have been reminded that President Bill
