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: Taegan Goddard's Political Wire
2-22-13
Source: AP
2-23-13
It has been just shy of 50 years since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a Washington state law barring members of the Communist Party from voting or holding public-sector jobs is unconstitutional.Evidently, that is not enough time to remove it from the books.Washington is one of a handful of states with similar laws still in existence despite their having been declared unconstitutional decades ago.With few exceptions - most notably Georgia, where an anti-communist oath was administered to incoming Dunwoody City Councilmembers as recently as last year - the laws are treated as part of a bygone era, not unlike state statutes prohibiting interracial marriage, the last of which was removed from Alabama's books in 2001 even though the Supreme Court ruled them unconstitutional in 1967.
Source: AP
2-22-13
The towering giant sequoias at Yosemite National Park would go unprotected from visitors who might trample their shallow roots. At Cape Cod National Seashore, large sections of the Great Beach would close to keep eggs from being destroyed if natural resource managers are cut.Gettysburg would decrease by one-fifth the numbers of school children who learn about the historic Pennsylvania battle that was a turning point in the Civil War.As America's financial clock ticks toward forced spending cuts to countless government agencies, The Associated Press has obtained a National Park Service memo that compiles a list of potential effects at the nation's most beautiful and historic places just as spring vacation season begins......Even Declaration House in Pennsylvania, the place where Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, wouldn't be spared. Nor would comfort stations on the Natchez Trace Parkway in Mississippi...
Source: AP
2-22-13
Seven artifacts dating as far back as 4,000 B.C. have been returned to Kosovo after German police stumbled on them in an unrelated raid, the country's culture minister said Friday.The artifacts date to the Neolithic period and are believed to belong to the Vinca, a prehistoric culture that traces back to 5,500 B.C. in southern Europe. Police in central Germany found them in 2005 during a separate undisclosed investigation, discovering the pieces in a sports bag belonging to two Serbs...
Source: AP
2-22-13
In recent years, Emory University made a point to acknowledge how the school was once led by slave owners, but an essay by the school president has renewed debate about racial sensitivity on campus.Emory President James Wagner recently wrote about the three-fifths compromise on slavery in 1787 to talk about the value of finding common ground in politics. In the compromise, northern and southern states agreed that three-fifths of the slave population would count toward representation in Congress, giving southerners more power in the House of Representatives.A faculty group voted to censure Wagner and students planned a protest next week...
Source: StoPage
2-22-13
A rare discovery dating back 4,000 years has been described as the most significant find on Dartmoor (Devon, England), and has given archaeologists a glimpse into the lives of the people who once lived there.
The undisturbed bronze age granite cist uncovered in 2011 in a peat bog on White Horse Hill revealed the first organic remains ever found on the moor, and a hoard of about 150 beads, including two amber beads. Previously only eight beads in total had been found on the moor....
Source: Chicago Tribune
2-21-13
Responding to pressure from a student alliance, Northwestern University has established a committee to investigate the history of John Evans, a university founder connected to one of the worst massacres of Native Americans in the country's history. The committee will consist of four Northwestern faculty members and three additional professors hailing from Yale University, the University of Illinois and the University of Arkansas. John Evans — the namesake of the city of Evanston — was territorial governor of Colorado in 1864 when a militia of about 700 men attacked a temporary village of Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho people at Sand Creek. According to the National Park Service, the soldiers killed 165 to 200 Native Americans, about two-thirds of them women, children and elderly....
Source: NYT
2-22-13
Paolo Bulletti has a dream. The Italian architect wants to transport a house built by the distinguished U.S. architect Frank Lloyd Wright from its current site in New Jersey to the hills of Fiesole, near Florence....Everyone acknowledges that the timing is poor. The economic situation in Italy means public and private funds are in short supply and, with the general election campaign under way, no mayor would lend his name to such an extravagant project.Nonetheless, Fulvio Irace, a professor of history at Milan Polytechnic, thinks that public institutions in Florence or Fiesole or even Venice should consider buying the house....
Source: NYT
2-13-13
Thousands of anti-fascist protesters blocked a neo-Nazi march in Dresden, Germany, on Wednesday night, on the 68th anniversary of the British and American air campaign that killed an estimated 25,000 people in 37 hours of bombing.In recent years, the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle reports, anti-fascist activists “have outnumbered neo-Nazis who previously had used Dresden’s bombing anniversary to stage large ‘funeral’ marches to recall the demise of Hitler’s Third Reich.” On Wednesday, about 800 neo-Nazis were prevented from marching by thousands of police officers and counter-demonstrators, as more than 10,000 anti-fascist protesters formed a human chain in the city....
Source: NYT
2-17-13
VATICAN CITY — What will he be called? Will he keep his white robes and trademark red loafers? And in the last absolute monarchy in the West, how does the dramatic resignation of Benedict XVI, the first pope to step down willingly in six centuries, change a role long considered by the Roman Catholic Church to be that of God’s representative on Earth?In transforming an office with an aura of divinity into something far more human, Benedict’s decision has sent shock waves through the Vatican hierarchy, who next month will elect his successor. But it has also puzzled the faithful and scholars, who wonder how a pope can be infallible one day and fallible again the next — and whether that might undermine the authority of church teaching....
Source: NYT
2-21-13
In the year’s most haunting image of black Civil War soldiers, the opening battlefield sequence in Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln,” Confederate forces massacre many fallen former slaves.In reality, African-American prisoners of war were killed en masse. Black troops in action endured lower wages and poorer medical care and living conditions than their white counterparts. But soldiers of both races did have surprisingly easy access to the luxury of photography.Photographers ran government-sanctioned booths near encampments, selling souvenir portraits. The images of black personnel, from officers to gravediggers, are now on view widely in 150th-anniversary commemorations of the Emancipation Proclamation. They provide a nuanced view of African-American life at the front, even though some of the subjects can no longer be identified....
Source: Huffington Post
2-18-13
Mississippi lawmakers have officially ratified the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which banned slavery in 1865.One hundred forty-eight years after three-fourths of the states voted to approve the amendment, Mississippi's legislature finally took steps to fix the glaring oversight last month. According to the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, the decision was inspired by the Oscar-nominated film "Lincoln," which depicts the 16th president's efforts to enact the amendment.
Source: NBC
2-31-13
Three of this year’s best picture contenders were based on real events – but just how accurate were their portrayals and what responsibility does a filmmaker have to tell the truth? NBC’s Mike Taibbi reports. [Discusses Argo, Lincoln, and Zero Dark Thirty.]
Source: AP
12-21-13
A U.S.-based Jewish group Thursday rejected Russian President Vladimir Putin's suggestion to house disputed historical collections of books and documents at a Jewish museum in Moscow.Nathan Lewin, a lawyer for the Jewish group Chabad, said in a statement provided to The Associated Press that Chabad is the rightful owner and Putin's proposal is not acceptable.
Source: FoxNews
2-21-13
A plea for help penned in 1836 by the commander of the besieged rebel Texas forces at the Alamo, in which he vowed "Victory or Death," returns to old Spanish mission for the first time Friday.
William Barret Travis' famous letter to "the People of Texas and All Americans in the World," will get a police escort from the state archive in Austin to the Alamo, which is now in the heart of downtown San Antonio. The weathered, single-page letter will go on display for two weeks, starting this weekend, and will be kept in a special display cabinet and given round-the-clock guards....
Source: Washington Examiner
2-19-13
DUBLIN (AP) — Ireland ignored the mistreatment of thousands of women who were incarcerated within Catholic nun-operated laundries and must pay the survivors compensation, Prime Minister Enda Kenny said Tuesday in an emotional state apology for the decades of abuses in the so-called Magdalene Laundries."By any standards it was a cruel, pitiless Ireland, distinctly lacking in a quality of mercy," Kenny said, as dozens of former Magdalenes watched tearfully from parliament's public gallery overhead.Kenny told lawmakers his government has appointed a senior judge to recommend an aid program for the approximately 1,000 women still living from the residential workhouses, the last of which closed in 1996. He also pledged government funding for the erection of a national memorial "to remind us all of this dark part of our history."...
Source: Telegraph (UK)
2-19-13
Some 18 crates of gold and platinum may lie buried under the bed of the Stolpsee, a 988-acre stretch of water to the north of the German capital.Yaron Svoray, who has the backing of German authorities, will use the latest sonar and radar equipment to try and locate the gold, which, the story goes, was dropped into the lake under the orders of Hermann Goering as the Red Army made its final push for Berlin in March, 1945.One eyewitness, Eckhard Litz, told a post-war commission that he saw around 30 concentration camp prisoners unloading heavy crates from lorries parked by the Stolpsee. The boxes were then ferried into the middle of the lake, and thrown into its waters ....
Source: Illinois Times
2-15-13
Mark McGwire's 70th home run ball. A guitar once owned by Eric Clapton. A model of the Starship Enterprise.These are among the items that an appraiser used in 2007 to establish the value of a collection of Lincoln documents and artifacts held by the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.Appraiser Seth Kaller accepted the asking price of $23 million as the fair-market value of the collection sold by Louise Taper, a California collector, to the museum's private fundraising foundation, which is now raising money to retire the debt.Kaller, who owns a business that acquires historic artifacts in New York state, wrote in his appraisal that he accepted the museum's claim that the items are authentic and that his assignment did not include authentication....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
2-20-13
David Cameron has been criticised for failing to meet the families of Indians killed by British troops as he tried to make amends for a "deeply shameful" Imperial massacre.The Prime Minister invoked Sir Winston Churchill as he lamented the "monstrous" killings in Amritsar in 1919.Mr Cameron flew to Amritsar at the end of a trade visit to Delhi and made a public show of British contrition over the massacre, which left at least 379 Sikh civilians dead.The Prime Minister visited a memorial in the Jallianwala Bagh gardens, laying a wreath and writing in a book of remembrance....
Source: KTAR (AZ)
2-19-13
PHOENIX -- The buildings stretch from 11th Avenue to 52nd Street and include five homes and one church all designed by famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and all are part of a new plan by the Phoenix Historic Preservation Commission.The proposed plan, which would cost $1.2 million, was created after a home Wright designed for his son in the Arcadia area narrowly escaped demolition. A developer bought the land and planned to tear down the 2,500 square foot concrete house and build two new houses in its place....
