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
February 12, 2009
Americans have grown accustomed to finding just about anything they want online fast, and free. But for those searching for federal court decisions, briefs and other legal papers, there is no Google.
Instead, there is Pacer, the government-run Public Access to Court Electronic Records system designed in the bygone days of screechy telephone modems. Cumbersome, arcane and not free, it is everything that Google is not.
Recently, however, a small group of dedicated open-go
Source: NYT
February 12, 2009
Some of the nation’s large banks, according to economists and other finance experts, are like dead men walking.
A sober assessment of the growing mountain of losses from bad bets, measured in today’s marketplace, would overwhelm the value of the banks’ assets, they say. The banks, in their view, are insolvent....
The Treasury program leans heavily on a sketchy public-private investment fund to buy up the troubled mortgage-backed securities held by the banks. Instead, th
Source: American Scientist (date unknown)
February 13, 2009
Conventional wisdom long held that the human immune system was no match for cancer. Born of native cells, the logic went, cancer fooled the immune system into concluding it was harmless. Thus protected from attack, cancer easily thrived until its host died.
A deeper understanding of our biological defenses has changed that. The human immune system does battle cancer. But we could better optimize our defenses to fend off malignant disease. That’s clear from cancer treatments attempte
Source: Time Magazine
February 12, 2009
The recent salmonella outbreak at the Peanut Corporation of America has led to the recall of more than 1,800 peanut-containing products, from off-brand dog biscuits to Trader Joe's vegan pad Thai, and sent sales of peanut butter plunging 25%, despite assurances that jars on supermarket shelves are not tainted. But the panic illustrates just how thoroughly the legume (Arachis hypogaea is, technically, not a nut), fashioned into a paste, has permeated the American diet. Spread on crackers, slather
Source: WaPo
February 11, 2009
Open government groups scored a small but potentially decisive victory this week in a long-running battle to win publication of thousands of secret reports that Congress uses to fashion new laws.
Each year, with the help of more than $100 million in funding from Congress, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) produces thousands of reports on legislative policy issues ranging from farm subsidies to weapons sales. While the reports are neither copyrighted nor classified, their release ha
Source: NYT
February 11, 2009
Nearly four years after New York State passed a law creating a commission to promote the teaching of black history in public schools, the commission has never met, and 5 of its 19 seats have yet to be filled. For many educators and parents, the Amistad Commission, named after a slave ship seized by its captives, has become a modern-day symbol of bureaucratic inertia.
“New York, a pivotal state in African-American history, has not taken the lead here and we’re languishing,” said Mann
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 13, 2009
A leading college at Cambridge University has renamed its controversial colonial-themed Empire Ball after accusations that it was "distasteful".
Students were urged to "Party like it's 1899" and organisers promised a trip through the Indian Raj, Australia, the West Indies and 19th century Hong Kong.
But anti-fascist groups said the theme as "distasteful and insensitive" because of the British Empire's historical association with slavery, re
Source: AP
February 12, 2009
Folksy, melancholy Abraham Lincoln would have been dumbfounded by the fuss over his birthday Thursday.
Bells tolled, wreaths were laid, speeches intoned and banjos picked to mark the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth in a Kentucky log cabin. At the Lincoln presidential museum in Springfield, hundreds of excited schoolchildren joined in reciting the 16th president's Gettysburg Address — an attempt to break the record for the biggest worldwide crowd reading it aloud together."I got up a
Source: AP
February 9, 2009
If the past is a window to the present, then a new book about polygamy among early Mormons could be a portal to understanding where some contemporary Utah polygamists have found inspiration for their way of life.
From child brides and secret ceremonies to their defiance of marriage laws, the narrative in "Nauvoo Polygamy," by George D. Smith illustrates the development and breadth of polygamy as it was first practiced in the 1840s by the members of The Church of Jesus Chri
Source: AP
February 7, 2009
Two hundred years after the birth of Abraham Lincoln, we still seek him in words and in action, in lessons from his life, in reminders of his legend — and in pilgrimages to the temple built in his honor.
We are drawn to the Lincoln Memorial in so many ways.
Protesters stand among hundreds of thousands as civil rights are invoked, or peace demanded; the great, godlike head looks on from above as if nodding in approval. Barack Obama makes a surprise appearance just days b
Source: NYT
February 12, 2009
Pope Benedict XVI, meeting with Jews in an effort to mend fences after lifting the excommunication of a schismatic bishop who has publicly denied the scale of the Holocaust, said Thursday that the Roman Catholic Church was “profoundly and irrevocably committed” to rejecting anti-Semitism.
He also condemned Holocaust denial as “intolerable and altogether unacceptable,” and said it should “be clear to everyone,” especially to clergy members, that the Holocaust was “a crime against Go
Source: AP
February 11, 2009
The bookends of the NAACP's century testify to the change it has wrought.
In 1908, a race riot in Springfield, Ill., left at least seven people dead and led to the birth of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In 2008, Barack Obama, who had launched his campaign just blocks from where Springfield's blood once spilled, became the first African-American president.
In between, wielding legal arguments and moral suasion in equal measure, the NAACP
Source: CNN
February 11, 2009
Sarah Palin once accused Barack Obama of “palling around with terrorists,” a catchphrase intended to highlight Obama’s connection to former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers.
Now that the campaign rhetoric has subsided, Ayers has an idea for a new show starring his Alaskan nemesis.
“I did send her a note after the election,” he says of Palin in the upcoming issue of the New York Times magazine. “I suggested that we have a talk show together called ‘Pallin’ Around Wi
Source: WaPo
February 12, 2009
Underlying the partisan division over President Obama's stimulus bill is a dispute over history -- a decades-old debate between liberals and conservatives over the impact the New Deal had in bringing the country out of the Great Depression.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said flatly last week that "the big-spending programs of the New Deal did not work." Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) said, "If we look back, even to the New Deal, it's not going to help e
Source: Reuters
February 11, 2009
For a site whose historical importance ranks with Egypt's Pyramids, the
ancient Mesopotamian city of Babylon has suffered some rough treatment.
In recent times, U.S. troops and allied armies have parked tanks and weapons on the site in southern
Iraq and used earth containing ancient fragments to fill their sandbags.
Looters ransacked its treasures, and before that Saddam Hussein"restored" parts of it using new
bricks bearing his name and built a kitsch palace overlooking it.
Source: MSNBC
February 6, 2009
Nuns and priests sacrificed their own lives to provide medical care for the poor in Renaissance France, according to a new study that implicates exposure to contagious plague victims in the deaths of several religious order members.
The study is among the first to find that plague, a deadly bacterial disease also known as "the Black Death," can be quickly and accurately identified in ancient human remains.
Several recently identified women who died after carin
Source: Yahoo (Click here to watch slideshow)
February 12, 2009
The humble US one-cent coin got a facelift Thursday as the Mint unveiled the first redesign of the Abraham Lincoln penny in 50 years....
The themes for the reverse designs represent the four major aspects of Abraham Lincoln's life include his birth and early childhood in Kentucky; his formative years in Indiana, shown; his professional life in Illinois; and his presidency in Washington, D.C. The obverse (heads side) will continue to bear the likeness of President Lincoln currently on the
Source: MSNBC
February 1, 2009
Click on the SOURCE link to view an interactive Black History Month display.
Source: AP
February 12, 2009
A handwritten manuscript of an 1864 Abraham Lincoln speech sold for $3.44 million on the bicentennial of his birthday Thursday, setting a new auction record for any American historical document.
The manuscript was sold to an anonymous phone bidder after spirited bidding in a crowded Christie's auction house room. Proceeds from the sale will go toward a new wing for a library in New York's Finger Lake region, where the document has been since 1926.
Thursday's price wa
Source: Independent (UK)
February 12, 2009
Cigars, fine rum and communist revolution are not the only things that make Fidel Castro tick. In an eccentric newspaper article, the Cuban leader has admitted to a curious fascination with Barack Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel.
Mr Castro, who has not been seen in public since he handed the presidency to his brother, Raul, in 2006, propped himself up on his sick-bed this week to write a lengthy editorial about the origins of the US politico's surname.
"What a
