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: Jamie Glazov at frontpagemag.com
8-1-07
Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Ami Gluska, a lecturer of history and political science at the Hebrew University and the Ashkelon Academic College, Israel. He reached the rank of colonel in the Israel Defense Forces and was aide-de-camp, private secretary, speechwriter, and spokesman to Israel's fifth and sixth presidents. He has also served in diplomatic capacities and was speechwriter to three prime ministers. He has held senior positions in the ministries of defense and public security a
Source: Interview broadcast on NBC Nightly News
7-31-07
Brian Williams: Prime Minister, what do you make of President Bush?
Gordon Brown: I enjoyed my discussions with him. I think what what I particularly enjoyed about my discussions is his sense of history.
Source: David Greenberg in the WaPo
7-29-07
Perhaps because of the pungently Nixonian odor of the Bush White House -- the patriotism politics, the"l'état, c'est moi" declarations, the war -- this season has delivered a bounty of books about the men of Watergate. The current climate has vitalized anxieties about the imperial presidency, drawing fresh scrutiny to the Nixon years from such eminent writers as Robert Dallek, Elizabeth Drew, Margaret MacMillan, James Reston Jr., and Jules Witcover -- not to mention a Nixon biography from the sc
Source: Andrew Leonard at Salon.com
7-31-07
The historian Niall Ferguson wishes he could have a free lunch every time he hears "someone declare: 'Malthus was wrong.'" But the converse assertion is equally popular. Throw in some free cocktails every time someone declares that "Malthus was right" and you could be living large for the rest of your natural-born life. (Thanks to Mark Thoma for the link.)
How the World Works' own opinion is that our sample size for determining Malthusian veracity is simply too s
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed.
7-31-07
Taner Akçam, scholar at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies, has filed a case with the European Court of Human Rights that he says is the first attempt to overturn through that legal channel a controversial provision of Turkey’s penal code that criminalizes “denigrating Turkishness.”He was charged under Article 301 of Turkey’s penal code, which has been used frequently against journalists, academics, and writers, and which Amnesty Intern
Source: Letter to the editor of the WSJ by Robert Higgs
7-30-07
[Robert Higgs is Senior Fellow in Political Economy for The Independent Institute and Editor of the Institute’s quarterly journal The Independent Review. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Johns Hopkins University, and he has taught at the University of Washington, Lafayette College, Seattle University, and the University of Economics, Prague.]
Dear Editor:
Randy E. Barnett's explication of why some libertarians support the war in Iraq (July 17) cries out for criticism on ma
Source: IFEX
7-30-07
The Ankara 13th Civil Court of First Instance has accepted part of the court case filed by retired ambassador Sükrü Elekdag against the "Agos" weekly newspaper and historian Taner Akcam.
Akcam wrote an article entitled "Gündüz Aktan and the Saik Problem in the Genocide". It was published by "Agos" on 6, 20 and 27 January and 3, 10 and 17 February 2007. Elekdag filed a suit for 20,000 YTL (approx. US$15,315) claiming that the article "violated"
Source: Concord Monitor
7-29-07
For a historian who has spent much of his career exploring the depths of human violence, Richard Rhodes has reached a surprisingly optimistic conclusion. He believes murder and mayhem have declined across the globe since World War II.
"You don't get rid of violence," Rhodes said. "What you do is bring violence under social control."
Rhodes, 70, won a 1988 Pulitzer Prize for The Making of the Atomic Bomb and has also written books on the hydrogen bomb
Source: Radio Public of Armenia
7-29-07
If the Armenian Genocide Resolution is put on vote today, it will be certainly adopted, Director of the Genocide Museum-Institute, historian Hayk Demoyan said in an interview with Armenpress. According to the historian, the initial provisions of the international relations are important for the passage of the resolution. “The adoption of the resolution cannot be an urgent issue for the US Congress after the parliamentary elections in Turkey, since both Turkey and Washington need time,” Hayk Demo
Source: NYT
7-30-07
Re “Stacking the Courts,” by Jean Edward Smith (Op-Ed, July 26):
While Mr. Smith begins by warning against the court’s entering into “the vortex of American politics,” insisting that “the court’s authority extends only to legal issues,” he ends by criticizing the current court majority for “thumbing its nose at popular values.”
But popular values are not the stuff of constitutional doctrine. Indeed, the very purpose of a written Constitution is to insulate certain bedro
Source: Jamie Glazov at frontpagemag.com
7-30-07
Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Kevin R. C. Gutzman, J.D., Ph.D. a professor of American history at Western Connecticut State University. An expert in the American Revolution, the Early Republic, and constitutional history, he has published numerous peer-reviewed articles in academic journals and various other articles and reviews there and elsewhere. He is the author of the new book The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution. He is also the author of the forthcoming Virginia's Am
Source: http://www.wvgazette.com
7-29-07
Virgil A. Lewis used his life to capture the past.
Born in 1848, Lewis wrote the first textbook of West Virginian history ever used in public schools. In the early 1900s, he served as the first state historian and archivist. He founded the West Virginia Historical Society and the Southern Historical Magazine.
But now, 95 years after Lewis’ death, some in Mason County fear that the remnants of his own personal history are fading away.
In 1979, his 141-year-o
Source: Jamie Glazov at frontpagemag.com
7-26-07
Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Amity Shlaes, a visiting senior fellow in economic history at the Council on Foreign Relations and a syndicated columnist at Bloomberg. She has written for The Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal, where she was an editorial board member, as well as for The New Yorker, Fortune, National Review, The New Republic, and Foreign Affairs. She is the author of the new book The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression. The book is a national bestse
Source: Daily Show
7-26-07
Click on the SOURCE link to watch the video.
Source: NYT
7-28-07
As an undergraduate at Harvard, Richard Lyman Bushman was offered some friendly advice by a favorite professor: he was a fine student, but his Mormonism was seen by the Harvard establishment as a “bunch of garbage.”
Mr. Bushman would do himself a favor, the professor told him, to leave the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints behind as a relic of his upbringing.
“I reacted just the opposite,” Professor Bushman said in a phone interview. “I said, ‘You’re not going
Source: Canberra Times
7-28-07
Stan Maizey remembers the day in 1967 when Australian forces in Vietnam decided to build a controversial minefield around their base in Phuoc Tuy.
His troops stretched thin on the ground, First Australian Taskforce commander Brigadier Stuart Graham deemed the minefield necessary to protect his soldiers.
Now Colonel Maizey and his fellow Vietnam veterans are fighting a rearguard action to protect their former commander's reputation after an explosive new history branded
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
7-27-07
Last April, the Senate Judiciary Committee cleared a Freedom of Information reform bill (S. 849) (S. Rept. 110-59) by voice vote. The bill is similar to legislation (H.R. 1309) overwhelmingly passed by the House earlier this year by a vote of 308-117, with the bi-partisan support of 80 Republicans.
Unfortunately, since the bill passed the Judiciary Committee floor consideration has been stymied by a “hold” placed on the bill by Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) at the behest of the Bush admini
Source: Jean Edward Smith in a NYT op ed
7-26-07
[Jean Edward Smith is the author, most recently, of F.D.R.]
... When the court overreaches, the Constitution provides checks and balances. In 1805, after persistent political activity by Justice Samuel Chase, Congress responded with its power of impeachment. Chase was acquitted, but never again did he step across the line to mingle law and politics. After the Civil War, when a Republican Congress feared the court might tamper with Reconstruction in the South, it removed those questi
Source: Press Release--Library of Congress
6-20-07
Crawford Young, a distinguished scholar on Africa and professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, will discuss "The African Colonial State and the Encounter with Decolonization" at the Library of Congress on July 25.
The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will start at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, July 25, in Room 119 of the Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First Street S.E., Washington, D.C.
The event is sponsored by the Library of Congress John W. Kl
Source: NY Sun
7-26-07
James Maher, a writer and historian who exerted a vast influence on the field of music and cultural criticism, died July 18 at a Manhattan nursing home. He was 90.
Maher was best known for his contributions to Alec Wilder's "American Popular Song," a classic of musical scholarship, and for his prominence in the 2001 Ken Burns documentary "Jazz."
Maher began his career as a journalist in his native Cleveland, covering sports for the Plain Dealer in 19
