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: Politico
August 27, 2009
President Barack Obama’s health care reform plan is facing even more public skepticism than President Bill Clinton’s health care proposals did in 1994, according to a poll released this week.
The telephone survey, conducted by Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican polling firm, found that 37 percent of Americans are opposed to the Obama plan compared with 25 percent who favor it.
In June of 1994 — just a few months before a White House-led health care reform push effe
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 28, 2009
Lockerbie bomber release was wrong, Scots say in poll.
Only 32 per cent of the 1,005 people questioned by ICM Research said they agreed with the Scottish government's decision to free Megrahi on compassionate grounds on Aug 20, while 60 per cent of respondents said it was the wrong thing to do, according to the survey done for the BBC.
Almost 70 per cent of respondents said they believed that factors other than legal grounds influenced Scottish justice secretary Kenny M
Source: CNN
August 28, 2009
Sen. Ted Kennedy would have had a "very, very difficult" time politically surviving the drowning death of a young woman if it happened in the era of blogs, talk radio and 24-hour news cycles, experts said.
Today, Baughman said, Kennedy could still survive a Chappaquiddick -- largely because of the Kennedys' clout and because Massachusetts is so enamored with the family -- but it would be tougher with the Slate.coms and Drudge Reports of the world hounding him.
Source: CNN
August 28, 2009
On Friday, the Tea Party Express group sets off on a bus tour starting in Sacramento, California, and winding down in Washington on September 12.
At that point, the group notes, a three-day march on the nation's Capitol will take place to protest health care reform and what they see as big government.
The tea party movement gained momentum this year; several parties were held across the country this summer to protest President Obama and the Democrats' economic stimulus
Source: NYT
August 27, 2009
A central Moscow subway station reopened this week after a painstaking, yearlong restoration of its initial Stalin-era luster, complete with gilt-trimmed words of praise to the Soviet dictator spelled out around the vestibule’s rotunda that add new fuel to debate about his role in Russian history.
That debate has simmered this summer, among politicians, historians, human rights activists and religious leaders, at dinner tables and in blogs, after a resolution passed in July by the p
Source: Zenit
August 26, 2009
In a joint communiqué on the occasion of World War II's 70th anniversary, German and Polish bishops underlined the need for young people to justly analyze the conflict.
The message, signed by the presidents of the German and Polish bishops' conferences, respectively, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch and Archbishop Jozef Michalik, was published Tuesday.
It called on "the new generations to acquire and preserve a just evaluation" of the war.
"Despit
Source: AP
August 28, 2009
President Richard Nixon considered Ted Kennedy such a threat that he tried to catch Kennedy cheating on his wife, even ordering aides to recruit Secret Service agents to spill secrets on the senator's behavior.
''Do you have anybody in the Secret Service that you can get to?'' Nixon asked his aide John Ehrlichman in a stark series of Oval Office conversations about Kennedy before the 1972 election. ''Yeah, yeah,'' Ehrlichman replied.
''Plant one,'' Nixon said. ''Plant t
Source: NYT
August 27, 2009
In the spring of 2003, the United States Senate was heading for a meltdown. Democrats were blocking confirmation of federal judges. Republicans were set to retaliate with a “nuclear option”: a new rule stripping senators of their right to filibuster judicial nominations.
Senator Edward M. Kennedy, fearing for the future of the institution, turned to a historian for help. He invited Robert A. Caro, author of the epic Lyndon B. Johnson biography, “Master of the Senate,” to speak to la
Source: CNSNews.com
August 27, 2009
Federal Communications Commission Chief Diversity Officer Mark Lloyd called on fellow liberals to follow the model of former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and challenge conservative media moguls and station owners, particularly figures such as Rush Limbaugh, Rupert Murdoch, and “a pro-big business Supreme Court aligned” with them.
Lloyd made the call in a 2007 article for the liberal Center for American Progress while he was a senior fellow there.
Entitled “Media
Source: The National Security Archive
August 26, 2009
The Central Intelligence Agency participated in every aspect of the wars in Indochina, political and military, according to newly declassified CIA histories. The six volumes of formerly secret histories (the Agency's belated response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by National Security Archive senior fellow John Prados) document CIA activities in South and North Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in unprecedented detail. The histories contain a great deal of new material and shed light o
Source: Yahoo News
August 27, 2009
Sketched on yellowing parchment, the 29 blueprints presented to Israel's prime minister Thursday lay out the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz in chilling detail, with gas chambers, crematoria, delousing facilities and watch towers drawn to scale.
"There are those who deny that the Holocaust happened," Benjamin Netanyahu said as he accepted the documents as a gift to Israel's Holocaust memorial, where they will go on display next year.
"Let them come to Jerusa
Source: Global Post
August 26, 2009
Nowhere outside the United States is the passing of Senator Edward Kennedy being mourned as much as in Ireland, the country from where his ancestors emigrated during the potato famine of the 19th century and to which he helped bring peace in recent years.
President Mary McAleese said he would be remembered as a “hugely important friend to the country during very difficult times,” and Prime Minister Brian Cowen commented that Ireland had lost a true friend who “worked valiantly for t
Source: Digital Daily
August 27, 2009
The Open Book Alliance–or “Sour Grapes Alliance,” as Google likes to call it–formally launched Wednesday afternoon, debuting a new Web site, as well as the manifesto with which it is challenging Google’s settlement with authors and publishers.
“The mass digitization of books promises to bring tremendous value to consumers, libraries, scholars, and students,” the Alliance says in its mission statement. “The Open Book Alliance will work to advance and protect this promise. And, by pro
Source: Yahoo News
August 27, 2009
It's not green cheese, but it might as well be.
The Dutch national museum said Thursday that one of its prized possessions, a rock supposedly brought back from the moon by U.S. astronauts, is just a piece of petrified wood.
Rijksmuseum spokeswoman Xandra van Gelder, who oversaw the investigation that proved the piece was a fake, said the museum will keep it anyway as a curiosity.
"It's a good story, with some questions that are still unanswered,"
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 26, 2009
The USSR plotted to invade Manchester during the height of the Cold War, it has emerged.
A map drawn up by Soviet generals shows that the military had charted an armoured invasion of the city, for distribution to frontline commanders. The plans would be put into action if relations between the UK and the USSR deteriorated further.
The maps ignored one-way streets and rush hour jams, marking the lines of an assault in bold orange, the Guardian reports. According to the
Source: BBCHistoryMagazine.com
August 27, 2009
David Musgrove, editor of BBC History Magazine, welcomes you to the new BBC History Magazine website:
"Hope you like what you see. It's been substantially updated and improved, I hope, from our last site, which frankly deserved to be consigned to history some time ago. What are the plans for this site? Well, there are a few. We'll be putting up some content from the magazine itself, including certain features, book reviews, and our historic visits. You'll find much more of this
Source: BBC
August 26, 2009
It was built in Belfast, yet no-one bothered to make an application for a museum to commemorate it.
Now a fresh appeal is being made for the establishment of a maritime museum in Belfast linked to the Titanic.
The Heritage Lottery Fund was criticised in Northern Ireland earlier this year, when it allocated £500,000 towards a new museum in Southampton which will include an element dedicated to the liner.
But the body revealed on Wednesday that it had never
Source: BBC
August 27, 2009
The largest Viking hoard found in Britain since the 19th century has been bought by two British museums.
The find, valued at £1,082,000, was discovered in a field in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, by a father and son metal-detector team in January 2007.
After two years of fundraising, the collection has been purchased by the York Museums Trust and the British Museum in London.
It is expected to go on display at the Yorkshire Museum in York next month.
Source: BBC
August 27, 2009
It is a window on the birth of England and a reminder of the often overlooked first King of all of Britain, Athelstan.
It was buried as Viking nobility fled from Yorkshire at a key moment in British history and more than a thousand years later it was discovered by two men with metal detectors in a field near Harrogate in North Yorkshire.
It is the greatest Viking hoard of treasure to be discovered in Britain for more than 150 years.
And now it's been clea
Source: BBC
August 27, 2009
A long-lost letter revealing details of the first Englishman to lead an expedition to North America is to be published in a historical journal.
Written by King Henry VII, it suggests that Bristol merchant William Weston sailed to the New World in 1499.
Bristol University's Dr Evan Jones said it was "an exciting find" that gave a glimpse of a previously unknown, but epic achievement.
The document gives little detail, but makes a tantalising refer
