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: http://www.fwf.ac
June 23, 2008
The discovery of an ancient city buried beneath the sands of modern-day
Syria has provided evidence for a Hellenistic settlement that existed for
more than six centuries extending into the time of the Roman Empire. The
site provides a unique insight into the structures of a pre-Roman
Hellenistic settlement. The project, funded by the Austrian Science Fund
FWF, sheds new light on city life in the Hellenistic period.
The Syrian deserts have long kept an important secret hidden deep b
Source: Sam Tanenhaus in the NYT
June 22, 2008
Odd though it may seem, ideological conservatives used to be fierce critics of “executive supremacy.” For instance, in 1940, when Franklin D. Roosevelt sought a precedent-breaking third term, the archconservative Herbert Hoover warned that Roosevelt was a virtual dictator whose growing “personal power over the last seven years” came at the expense of a “disastrous weakening of the legislative and judicial branches ” with Congress “reduced to a rubber stamp for the executive.”
As the
Source: NYT
June 22, 2008
Few things are certain in presidential politics, but here are three: it will be expensive; it will get negative; and, at some point, former Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia will be mentioned as a possible Democratic running mate.
The latter has been true in every presidential election since 1984 with the exception of 1996 (when the running mate was the incumbent vice president, Al Gore). It might have even been true going back to 1976 except that year’s Democratic nominee — Jimmy Carter
Source: NYT
June 22, 2008
For most people, "Swift boat" has become a political verb, a synonym for the kind of attack that helped destroy the presidential campaign of Senator John Kerry in 2004.
But for a group of Vietnam veterans at the center of the attacks, it is still a fresh fight.
On Friday, the group, who served with Mr. Kerry in Vietnam, sent a letter to T. Boone Pickens, the billionaire Texas oilman who helped finance the 2004 attack advertisements, taking him up on a challeng
Source: Annenberg Political Fact Check
June 21, 2008
Obama has released his first post-primary ad, a 60-second spot that's airing in 18 battleground states. In effect, "Country I Love" is Obama's first ad of the general election campaign, and as such it invites scrutiny. (FactCheck will address McCain's first general election ads in a separate article.) We don't find this ad egregiously misleading, but it paints a picture of Obama's accomplishments that could leave viewers with a misimpression or two.
His description of his
Source: Times (UK)
June 20, 2008
This week's polls showing Barack Obama with small, but significant, single-digit leads among likely voters are certainly welcomed by Democrats, but recent history hasn't been kind to early frontrunners.
In fact, only one of the last five June election-year polling averages has correctly predicted the popular vote winner in November - Bill Clinton in 1996. Even then, the polls missed his win-margin by more than 9 percent.
As hard as it may be to believe, Michael Dukakis
Source: AP
June 20, 2008
A former White House spokesman told Congress on Friday that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney wanted him to say that Cheney's chief of staff wasn't involved in the leak of a CIA operative's identity, an assertion that turned out to be false.
Scott McClellan, Bush's spokesman from 2003-2006, said he had reservations about publicly clearing the name of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff at the time. Later, Libby was convicted of obstructing the inv
Source: http://www.app.com
June 19, 2008
The Monmouth Junction route of the proposed Monmouth-Ocean-Middlesex rail line may have met its Waterloo in the Monmouth Battlefield State Park.
A May letter from the state Department of Environmental Protection's Division of Parks and Forestry gave a thumbs down to the Monmouth Junction route's proposed crossing of the famed Revolutionary War battle site.
The letter cites adverse effects from commuter trains on the park — which is crossed by rails where a freight trai
Source: http://www.tfponline.com
June 2, 2008
Gen. William T. Sherman’s Atlanta campaign was bad news for the Confederacy in 1864. But almost 150 years later, it’s good news for Georgia’s economy.
With Gov. Sonny Perdue’s final approval of $3 million in bonds last month, local and state officials believe the development of a Resaca Battlefield park near the Gordon-Whitfield county line is secured.
The facility will become a clearinghouse of Civil War information, and be complete before an influx in heritage tourist
Source: http://www.examiner.com
June 19, 2008
Preservationists say it is not enough to protect the grounds at Manassas National Battlefield Park without protecting its views as new development spreads in fast-growing Prince William County.
Researchers extensively photographed and mapped the home of the first major land battle of the Civil War for months, selecting 25 lookouts, including the 10 most pivotal ones to visitors, that they will attempt to preserve from new construction of roads, office parks and apartment buildings.
Source: Fox News
June 20, 2008
Tours chronicling the rise of notorious dictator Adolf Hitler have been met with a flurry of interest by foreign tourists in the southern German city of Munich, where Hitler nurtured the Nazi Party and mounted the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch.
The guided walking tours showcase historical city sites where significant events in Hitler's life took place, many of which most Munich natives today are no longer aware of, including the world-famous Hofbraeuhaus beer hall, where Hitler gave his fir
Source: National Geographic News
June 18, 2008
Two wine presses found in Egypt were likely part of the area's earliest winery, producing holy wine for export to Christians abroad, archaeologists say.
Egyptian archaeologists discovered the two presses with large crosses carved across them near St. Catherine's Monastery, a sixth-century A.D. complex near Mount Sinai on the Sinai Peninsula.
Source: NYT
June 20, 2008
The French Education Ministry has effectively scuttled a plan, proposed by President Nicolas Sarkozy in February, to require that every fifth grader study the life of one of the 11,000 French children killed in the Holocaust, the newspaper Le Monde reported. The plan had already been changed to suggest that each fifth-grade class study one dead French child; now classes will simply study the young Holocaust victims as a whole, including survivors. In fact, study of the Holocaust in general has b
Source: AP
June 19, 2008
Surrounded by royal guards and the occasional tourist, Her Majesty Mahealani Kahau and her government ministers hold court every day under a tent outside the palace of Hawaii's last monarch, passing laws and discussing how to secure reparations for the Native Hawaiian people.
Kahau and her followers are members of the self-proclaimed Hawaiian Kingdom Government, which is devoted to restoring the Hawaiian monarchy overthrown in 1893. Nearly two months ago, they stormed the gates of t
Source: WaPo
June 20, 2008
When the nation's first major 9/11 memorial is dedicated on the grounds of the Pentagon's western side this September, it will change the iconic building into something it was not intended to be: a tourist destination.
Since the day the symbol of the country's military might was attacked nearly seven years ago, a great deal of effort has gone into further limiting public access to the site. It has been wrapped in barricades, elaborate security systems and signs prohibiting photograp
Source: Guardian
June 16, 2008
Last week a Spanish pressure group claimed its government was infringing civil rights by putting more security cameras in public areas, especially motorways. The Association for the Defence of Fundamental Rights demanded they should be suspended while the Orwellian horror of the surveillance society is debated.
Quite what George Orwell himself would have made of it we will never know. But the writer of Nineteen Eighty-Four, the satire featuring the all-seeing eye of Big Brother, mig
Source: WaPo
June 19, 2008
When Janet Wiggins was a student at Loudoun's all-black Banneker Elementary School in the 1950s, she used hand-me-down textbooks from white students. Her school didn't have a library, so she checked out books every couple of weeks from a bookmobile.
Banneker, founded in 1948 in the community of St. Louis near Middleburg and named after African American mathematician and astronomer Benjamin Banneker, was racially integrated in 1968. Today it is the only one of Loudoun's historically
Source: http://lohud.com
June 19, 2008
Putnam County prides itself on its 196-year history and promotes tourism by touting its Revolutionary War roots.
But some Putnam officials now say the paid post of county historian is expendable. Eliminating it would require a charter change but would save the financially strapped county about $31,000 a year in part-time salary and benefits.
Under a proposal informally presented to the Legislature by the administration, the nine town and village historians would elect o
Source: Politico.com
June 19, 2008
Joe KLEIN in the new Time magazine – “Obama says he wants to hire a Team of Rivals for his Cabinet. He should start by keeping Robert Gates”: “Barack Obama has never been shy about comparing himself to Abraham Lincoln. … Obama has said he admires Doris Kearns Goodwin's wonderful Lincoln biography, ‘Team of Rivals.’ ‘He talks about it all the time,’ says a top aide. He is particularly intrigued by the notion
Source: AP
June 19, 2008
After decades of denials, the Chinese have acknowledged burying an American prisoner of war in China, telling the U.S. that a teenage soldier captured in the Korean War died a week after he "became mentally ill," according to documents provided to The Associated Press.
China had long insisted that all POW questions were answered at the conclusion of the war in 1953 and that no Americans were moved to Chinese territory from North Korea. The little-known case of Army Sgt. R
