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
March 14, 2006
The Electoral College is an antidemocratic relic. Everyone who remembers 2000 knows that it can lead to the election of the candidate who loses the popular vote as president. But the Electoral College's other serious flaws are perhaps even more debilitating for a democracy. It focuses presidential elections on just a handful of battleground states, and pushes the rest of the nation's voters to the sidelines.
The answer to all of these problems is direct election of the president. P
Source: AP
March 11, 2006
The Eastern Panhandle's explosive growth is threatening a Civil War battlefield and a group dedicated to preserving the site is seeking $1 million to help fend off development. The Shepherdstown Battlefield Preservation Association asked the Jefferson County Commission for the money, saying the battlefield is among the nation's 10 most at-risk Civil War battle sites.
About 300 acres, or half of the site, remains in relatively pristine condition and can be
Source: scotsman.com
March 14, 2006
AN IRANIAN newspaper's contest for cartoons about the Holocaust has received 200 entries, including submissions that criticise Israeli treatment of Palestinians and United States foreign policy. While the contest entrants are mostly Iranian, at least six Americans have submitted cartoons, as have other artists from Indonesia and Brazil, Hamshahri newspaper said.
Hamshahri, one of Iran's top five newspapers, began the contest last month as a test of the Western
Source: scotsman.com
March 14, 2006
HE GAVE Japan its national anthem and its first brass band, playing a key part in the country's modernisation.
But for more than a century, John William Fenton's role in westernising the country has gone unrecognised in Scotland, where many believe he died. Now, after years of searching, the Japanese are soliciting the help of Scots in trying to track down the brass band leader's final resting place.
In Japan, Fenton is seen as one of
Source: breitbart.com
March 13, 2006
Underground chambers and tunnels used during a Jewish revolt against the Romans nearly 2,000 years ago have been uncovered in northern Israel, archaeologists said Monday.
The Jews laid in supplies and were preparing to hide from the Romans during their revolt in A.D. 66-70, the experts said. The pits, which are linked by short tunnels, would have served as a concealed subterranean home. Yardenna Alexandre of the Israel Antiquities Authority said the
Source: CBS News
March 13, 2006
Dan Brown took the stand Monday to rebut accusations that he copied from other writers' work to produce his huge best seller "The Da Vinci Code." Authors Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh are suing "Da Vinci Code" publisher Random House for copyright infringement, claiming Brown "appropriated the architecture" of their 1982 nonfiction book "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail."
Answering a question by the accusers' la
Source: Scripps Howard
March 13, 2006
For at least seven years, it's been publicly known that 12 days before Red Chinese troops poured over the Korean borders, the CIA issued an intelligence estimate flatly predicting that wouldn't happen. But the original 56-year-old document has been reclassified and taken out of public view sometime in the last seven years _ one of more than 55,000 pages of previously declassified documents that have been swept from the shelves of the National Archives and removed from public scrutiny.
Source: St. Petersburg Times
March 13, 2006
U.S. government secrecy will not be an issue, I told myself optimistically, as I began to research a history of the Cuban missile crisis. After all, the classic showdown of the Cold War occurred more than four decades ago, well outside the 25-year period established by the administrations of both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush for the automatic release of everything but the most sensitive government documents. The Soviet Union has been consigned to the ash heap of history, and ‘60s-era defense
Source: Chicago Tribune
March 10, 2006
With photographers snapping away, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declared last summer that decades of American foreign policy toward the oil-rich Middle East had been a failure.For 60 years, she told a Cairo audience, the U.S. "pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region," achieving neither. It was a candid confession, one that remains emblematic of a Bush administration foreign policy that supporters contend is now placing the long-term benef
Source: NYT
March 13, 2006
President Bush has been back from the Asian subcontinent for more than a week now, but one big question from his trip remains: How did it happen that the president spent a night in Pakistan, the assumed haven of Osama bin Laden and one of the one most dangerous countries in the world?The short answer is that Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, insisted. The long answer is a tale about the nightmares of the Secret Service and the calculated risks of presidential tra
Source: National Security Archive
March 13, 2006
The Central Intelligence Agency has won the second annual Rosemary Award, recognizing the worst performance by a federal agency in complying with the Freedom of Information Act. The Award is named after President Nixon's secretary Rosemary Woods and the backwards-leaning stretch which she testified resulted in her erasing eighteen-and-a-half minutes from a key Watergate conversation on the White House tapes.National Security Archive director Thomas Blanton announced to
Source: Boston Globe
March 12, 2006
President Lyndon Johnson didn't mention Vietnam as he discussed the major issues facing the nation during the long night after John F. Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963. But by 1968, amid mounting US casualties and Pentagon requests for more troops, the unpopularity of the war forced Johnson to drop out of the race for reelection, leaving him a broken man, a former adviser recalled yesterday.''No president can win a war when public support for that war begins to decl
Source: Boston Globe
March 13, 2006
BAGNEUX, France -- In the bleak housing project where a young Jew named Ilan Halimi was held captive and tortured before being dumped in a vacant lot to die, there's scant sympathy for the victim.
''It's too bad this happened, because we immigrants are always blamed," said Ibrahim Ag Ahmalou, a lanky man of West African heritage who shares his girlfriend's apartment in the project. ''But Jews have all the money and power. Everyone knows this and resents them. That's why they ha
Source: National Security Archive
March 13, 2006
The U.S. Intelligence Community failed to penetrate the veil of secrecy surrounding the nuclear activities of South Africa's apartheid regime, particularly its nuclear weapons program, according to documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and archival research and posted on the Web today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.Included in the Archive posting are over thirty documents -- many originally classified Top Secret/Cod
Source: US News & World Report
March 20, 2006
March 12 to 18 is the second annual Sunshine Week, a nationwide initiative backed by the news media and watchdog groups to spark dialogue on the importance of open government. At a time of increasingly frequent battles over access to government records, U.S. News sat down with Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, to discuss his relentless push for greater freedom of information. For 15 years, Aftergood has
Source: LAT
March 13, 2006
Early one morning last month, with little fanfare a padded truck pulled out from the warehouse of a South Korean museum with a precious cargo on the last leg of a 100-year journey home. Inside was a simple 1,000-pound slab of granite whose rite of passage tells a lot about what's happened in recent years to relations among the three countries involved -- South Korea, North Korea and Japan.The monument, which celebrates the victory of a 16th century Korean warrior over Japane
Source: The Courier Mail
March 13, 2006
A DOCUMENT which portrays Judas Iscariot as a hero and Christ's favourite disciple is set to cause a storm when it is published next month. The ancient text says that Judas -- one of history's greatest villains -- was fulfilling a divine mission when he betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver.The distinguished National Geographic magazine is about to publish what it believes is an extract of the previously unknown Gospel of Judas.
But Christian scholars, pa
Source: Providence Journal
March 12, 2006
For more than 75 years, the Triangular Trade flourished in Newport. Rhode Island rum was traded in Africa for slaves, many of whom were sold in the West Indies. Molasses was brought back to Newport so distillers could make more rum. Now the Providence Journal is runni9ng a multi-part series about the slave trade in Rhode Island. Day 1, Sunday, Mar. 12
Buying and Selling the Human Species: Newport and the Slave TradeFor more than 75 years, the Triangular Trade flou
Source: Defence News
March 13, 2006
Over a thousand years of recorded military history came to an end on Friday 10 March 2006, when the army staged a final march through the streets of Dover.The 1st Battalion The Parachute Regiment bade the people of the Kent port farewell as they begin leaving the town's Connaught Barracks for St Athan in South Wales. The military unit will be the last to have served in Dover - known for centuries as the ‘lock and key to England’.
Over the years it was the
Source: BBC News
March 11, 2006
A 2000-year-old carving of a so-called "northern god", adopted by the Romans for protection and good luck, has been uncovered in Northumberland. The image is thought to be that of Cocidius. The 40cm high figure, holding a shield in one hand and spear or sword in the other, was discovered near Chesters Fort on Hadrian's Wall.
Experts say the find is exciting as it helps shed light on how people used local idols for protection.
