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: Frederick Kagan and Thomas Donnelly at the website of the American Enterprise Institute
May 26, 2008
... The active duty portion of the U.S. Army needs to grow to about 800,000 soldiers. That's the size maintained during the 1980s and into the early 1990s, and it is a bare minimum for success in the many and varied missions that will be required in the future--missions that have ranged from "building partnership capacity" in West Africa to tracking down terrorists in Southeast Asia, as well as large-scale invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Those who believe that the need
Source: Newsday
May 26, 2008
The federal investigation into thefts of Theodore Roosevelt Association artifacts that led to a guilty plea this week by former director Edward Renehan Jr. turned up three more missing items.
Besides four letters previously publicized, the National Park Service Investigative Services Branch recovered two books and a letter by Roosevelt that had been consigned to auction houses by Renehan and sold.
Renehan's attorney concedes the letter belonged to the association but i
Source: Gary Nash email to HNN
May 26, 2008
[Gary B. Nash, Director, National Center for History in the Schools.]
It is puzzling that in her description of the National History Standards controversy in 1994-96, Susan Jacoby relies on the deliberate disinformation campaign mounted at the time by right-wing cultural warriors (Historians and the Dumbing Down of Public Discourse, HNN, 12 May 2008). Having appreciated Jacoby’s book-length contribution to our understanding of American se
Source: U. of Mich. Press website
May 26, 2008
The issue of reparations in America provokes a lot of interest, but the public debate usually occurs at the level of historical accounting: "Who owes what for slavery?" This book attempts to get past that question to address racial restitution within the framework of larger societal interests. For example, the answer to the "why reparations?" question is more than the moral of payment for an injustice done in the past. Ronald Walters suggests that, insofar as the impact of sl
Source: Meet the Press transcript
May 25, 2008
MR. RUSSERT: Doris, in Boca Raton on Thursday, Barack Obama was asked about vice president, specifically about Hillary Clinton, and here's his answer, which talks about you.
(Videotape)
Unidentified Man: When the time comes, will you be willing to consider everybody who is a possible help to you as a running mate, even if his or her spouse is an occasional pain in the butt?
SEN. OBAMA: I, I--well, look. Well, look, look, look. The--we've got a little m
Source: Family obituary
May 24, 2008
Utah Phillips, a seminal figure in American folk music who performed extensively and tirelessly for audiences on two continents for 38 years, died Friday of congestive heart failure in Nevada City, California a small town in the Sierra Nevada mountains where he lived for the last 21 years with his wife, Joanna Robinson, a freelance editor.
Born Bruce Duncan Phillips on May 15, 1935 in Cleveland, Ohio, he was the son of labor organizers. Whether through this early influence or an ear
Source: Deseret News
May 24, 2008
There is insufficient evidence to say former LDS Church President Brigham Young ordered the Mountain Meadows Massacre, and ample evidence that says he did not, according to the church's assistant historian.
Richard Turley is one of three authors employed by the LDS Church who has spent the past six years writing a book about the 1857 massacre of 120 Arkansas wagon train emigrants in southern Utah. He told participants at the annual conference of the Mormon History Association on Saturday
Source: Andrew Preston in the Globe and Mail (Canada)
May 24, 2008
If you're not supposed to judge a book by its cover, can you judge it by its author? It would seem to be a safe bet in most cases, but Robert Kagan delights in defying conventional wisdom. Though his views are always contentious and often questionable, Kagan is one of the most interesting, intelligent and perceptive foreign-policy intellectuals of the past quarter century. He has written several bestselling books on international politics and the U.S. role in the world. He is also one of John Mc
Source: http://www.chieftain.com
May 24, 2008
A dangerous man visited Pueblo a couple of weeks ago. Fortunately, he came in contact with only a few local citizens - a handful of teachers, students and curious observers.
To say the man is a radical bent on espousing his unpopular ideas, would be an understatement. Some would call him a historical heretic or revisionist who questions and challenges many of this nation's most revered truisms.
For example, he doesn't believe Columbus discovered America. According to hi
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
May 23, 2008
On May 22, Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein announced the establishment of the “Controlled Unclassified Information Office” (CUIO) within the National Archives and Records Administration. Weinstein also announced that William J. Bosanko, director of the Information Security Oversight Office, will head up this newly formed office. The Office is being created in response to the Memorandum for the Heads of Departments and Agencies on the Designation and Sharing of Controlled Unclassif
Source: http://www.monstersandcritics.com
May 23, 2008
The US political author and critic of Israel Norman Finkelstein was denied entry to the Jewish state on Friday, his lawyer said.
Finkelstein landed at Ben Gurion international airport near Tel Aviv in the early morning and was told by a representative of the ministry of interior that he would not be allowed into the country on 'security' grounds, attorney Michael Sfard told dpa.
'This usually means a 10-year ban on entry,' Sfard added.
Finkelstein, who is J
Source: Press Release--Emory University
May 23, 2008
U.S. Reps. Steve Cohen (D-TN) and Darrell Issa (R-CA) are expected to introduce today a bill to end "libel tourism," a phenomenon whereby plaintiffs seek judgments from foreign courts against American authors and publishers for making allegedly defamatory statements.
Two Emory University professors, Michael Broyde and Deborah Lipstadt, brought the problem of libel tourism to the attention of federal lawmakers in a co-written New York Times opinion piece (Oct. 11, 2007). Br
Source: National Review Online
May 23, 2008
Rick Perlstein’s first book on Barry Goldwater, Before the Storm, made him one of the most celebrated young historians in the country. Surprisingly, Perlstein’s unabashed progressive political activism did not prevent his scholarship from generating praise from the right. Indeed, Before the Storm received glowing reviews for its scholarship on conservatism from perspectives as various as that of William F. Buckley Jr. and Markos Moulitsas. Picking up largely where Before the Storm left off, Perl
Source: NYT
May 23, 2008
J. C. Hurewitz, a Columbia University professor whose voluminous research, belief in the importance of local histories and evenhanded scholarship contributed depth and complexity to the emerging field of Middle Eastern studies starting in 1950, died on May 16 in Manhattan. He was 93.
The cause was pneumonia, said Lisa Anderson, a Columbia political science professor, a former student of Dr. Hurewitz’s and one of his successors as director of Columbia’s Middle East Institute.
Source: Stefan Collini in The Nation
May 22, 2008
"The past has nothing of interest to teach us." That, fears Tony Judt, is the presiding assumption of the early twenty-first century. The speed of social and economic change, the exhaustion of the twentieth century's dominant ideologies and a desire to put the horrors of that century's carnage behind us all conspire, he believes, to encourage a culture of forgetting. And this belief frames and justifies his sense of his own role; he appoints himself the Reminder-General in contemporary
Source: Press Release
May 22, 2008
UW Tacoma Professor Michael Honey has received the Robert F.
Kennedy Book award for his book documenting the 1968 Memphis sanitation
strike and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination in Memphis, Tenn.
Honey and his book, Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin
Luther King's Last Campaign, will be recognized at a ceremony May 27 at 6:30
p.m. at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. Given by the Robert F. Kennedy
Memorial, the award honors books which faithfully and forcefully re
Source: Larry Elders at PatriotPost.us
May 22, 2008
One hundred nine historians already nearly unanimously agree. They call the presidency of George W. Bush a “failure." The History News Network (HNN), who polled the historians, failed to name them or where they work. Wonder why?
American Enterprise magazine, in 2002, examined voter registrations to determine the political affiliations of humanities professors at an assortment of colleges and universities, public and private, big and small, located in the North, South, East and
Source: Victor Davis Hanson in National Review
May 22, 2008
Who becomes a general — and why — tells us a lot about whether our military is on the right or wrong track. The annual spring list of Army colonels promoted to brigadier generals will be shortly released. Already, rumors suggest that this year, unlike in the recent past, a number of maverick officers who have distinguished themselves fighting — and usually defeating — insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq will be chosen.
For example, scholar-soldier Col. H. R. McMaster, Special Forces
Source: NY Post
May 21, 2008
A sticky-fingered historian has 'fessed up to lifting two prized letters by George Washington and another by Abraham Lincoln and selling them for nearly $100,000.
Edward Renehan, former director of the Theodore Roosevelt Association in Oyster Bay, LI, is facing 24 to 30 months in federal prison after pleading guilty yesterday to transporting stolen goods across state lines.
The letters by Washington, dated 1778 and 1791, and Honest Abe, written in 1840, sold for $97,000 at a
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
May 21, 2008
A memorial service will be held June 12 for H. Brett Melendy, a prominent historian who taught for many years at San Jose State University and the University of Hawaii. He also wrote seven books on Asian immigration to the United States and the history of Hawaii.
Professor Melendy died April 19 at his home in Cupertino at the age of 83. He had been suffering from cancer.
He was born in Eureka and educated in Humboldt County schools. He received his bachelor's, master's and do
