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
1-16-13
MIAMI BEACH — When South Beach was little more than a forlorn chunk of beachfront property, preservationists clung to the idea that the faded, often derelict pastel buildings lining the streets were too precious to knock down.Their campaign to preserve the area’s fanciful Art Deco buildings ushered in one of the country’s most successful urban revivals. Years later, South Beach is still a juggernaut.Preservationists are now pushing hard to bolster historic preservation laws, a move that has ruffled wealthy property owners (and potential buyers) and stepped up pressure on local commissioners who are reluctant to wade into the politically precarious battle....
Source: Politico
1-15-13
President Obama had fewer press conferences during his first term than any other president since Ronald Reagan, Politico reports.With Monday's event, Obama has done a total of 79 over four years. That's 10 fewer than George W. Bush, 54 fewer than Bill Clinton and 63 fewer than George H.W. Bush.Reagan had only 27 press conferences during his first term.
Source: PressZoom
1-14-13
University of Virginia history professor Philip Zelikow stands by the statue of the “Bird Man,” as many on Grounds call it, and tells who the statue represents and how the sculptor interpreted the man’s story. Zelikow describes the statue as a symbol of how the world entered the modern age after World War I.His lesson is part of the video that introduces his massive open online course, or MOOC. “The Modern World: Global History Since 1760” debuts today on Coursera, an online education company started last year by two Stanford University professors.Zelikow, the White Burkett Miller Professor of History, is one of five U.Va. professors teaching the first group of MOOCs this semester, who have been working hard to make interesting videos and adapt educational materials to virtual classrooms full of unprecedented numbers of students.U.Va. is among 33 universities whose faculty are offering courses through Coursera. More than 2 million people around the world have signed up for the classes....
Source: WaPo
1-14-13
WASHINGTON — The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History working with farmers to build a new collection showing the evolution of modern agriculture.The museum announced Monday that it’s working with the American Farm Bureau Federation to collect items that reflect innovation in farming and ranching over the past 70 years. Curators are seeking stories, photographs and objects for a future exhibition.The first donation was announced by a Tennessee farmer at the farm bureau’s annual meeting in Nashville. A multigenerational dairy will donate a computer cow tag system and photographs to show how the dairy became a modernized operation.The museum will open a web portal in March to collect stories and photographs online....
Source: NYT
1-11-13
After two years of research, the J. Paul Getty Museum has decided to voluntarily return a terracotta head believed to depict the god Hades to Sicily, where recent excavations have uncovered fragments indicating that the head was illicitly removed in the 1970s from a site of a sanctuary of Demeter.“In keeping with the principle of repatriating works when compelling evidence warrants it, the decision to transfer this head is based on the discovery of four terracotta fragments found near Morgantina in Sicily, similar in style and medium to the Getty head,” the museum said Thursday in a statement....
Source: NYT
1-12-13
NEW ORLEANS— The project has already taken almost as long as the war it chronicles, and the most difficult part is yet to come. But on Sunday, when the National World War II Museum opens its third building here, it will be just midway through a strategic expansion, creating a $325 million campus of six buildings, extending along three square blocks near the Pontchartrain Expressway. What is promised by 2016 is an epic survey of the American experience during the war.
Source: NYT
1-11-13
One way to think of it is this: It is a page from the script for the script for “Lincoln.”The script for the script? Historical documents and reference materials served as the basis for the movie’s script, and this is an original document, a 106-word draft of a telegram signed by Abraham Lincoln himself. So it was not polished by the writers in Hollywood.Lincoln wrote it in May 1862, when, as the movie made clear, Lincoln was focusing on the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln sent the telegram — to be displayed at the Winter Antiques Show, which opens to the public on Jan. 25 at the Park Avenue Armory — in reply to a 10-page message from Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, who has been described by one historian as Lincoln’s “never-ready” general....
Source: WaPo
1-10-13
Bayard Rustin, an African American scholar from eastern Pennsylvania, was on the front lines of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. He was a key organizer of bus segregation demonstrations in the South, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the March on Washington, where he scheduled the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech and drilled police officers on techniques of nonviolent crowd control.Rustin was also gay. And his story is among those that have inspired an effort to build a national museum in Washington to the history of gay, lesbian and transgender people.Organizers, led by former Smithsonian researcher Tim Gold and his husband, North Carolina furniture magnate Mitchell Gold, are raising money and collecting artifacts to open a national history museum to tell the stories of LGBT Americans at a time when gay rights were frequently a matter of political and cultural debate....
Source: WaPo
1-12-13
It was in Union-occupied Alexandria in 1863 that Pvt. Henry Vanderwater, a member of the 1st District of Columbia Volunteers stationed there to defend Washington, got himself in trouble. He gave a military roster to a local newspaper, which promptly printed it. For the offense of aiding the enemy — the roster would indicate how well or poorly the town was protected — he faced a court-martial, was found guilty and received a sentence of three months hard labor and a dishonorable discharge.Vanderwater’s court-martial would have remained a minor and forgotten piece of history if prosecutors in the court-martial of Pfc. Bradley Manning hadn’t cited the case during pre-trial hearings this past week. Manning is charged with indirectly aiding the enemy. While on active duty in Baghdad, he allegedly sent thousands of military records to the whistle-blowing Web site WikiLeaks, which then published them, giving the world, including al-Qaeda, access to the material....
Source: Joel Achenbach in the WaPo
1-13-13
Your reporter worked hard this week on a story describing the evolution of the NRA. I can’t imagine there’s anything controversial here. Here’s the top:By Joel Achenbach, Scott Higham and Sari Horwitz (with contributions from Alice Crites, Julie Tate, Magda Jean-Louis and Tom Hamburger)In gun lore it’s known as the Revolt at Cincinnati. On May 21, 1977, and into the morning of May 22, a rump caucus of gun rights radicals took over the annual meeting of the National Rifle Association.The rebels wore orange-blaze hunting caps. They spoke on walkie-talkies as they worked the floor of the sweltering convention hall. They suspected that the NRA leaders had turned off the air-conditioning in hopes that the rabble-rousers would lose enthusiasm....
Source: WaPo
1-12-13
A new year was just beginning — an extraordinary year, in which so much would change.Half a century ago, on Jan. 14, 1963, George Wallace took the podium to give his inaugural address as governor of Alabama. His words framed a fiery rejoinder to a civil rights movement gathering strength.“I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny,” he thundered, “and I say, segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!”Fifty years later, the words still have the power to shock. In college classes like “The Sixties in History and Memory,” today’s students recoil....
Source: WaPo
1-14-13
Now that the Treasury Department has nixed the odd idea of issuing a platinum coin to get around the federal debt limit, Congress once again will be forced to decide whether to raise the debt limit.When this issue last loomed in 2011, we looked deeply at the question of whether the United States had ever defaulted before. (Answer: It is not entirely unprecedented. There are three instances when the United States could be seen to have defaulted on its obligations — in 1790, in 1933 and in 1971.)The debt limit covers both publicly-held debt and debts the United States owes to itself (bonds to Social Security and Medicare for future obligations) so no matter what happens, the debt limit will have to be raised, one way or the other....
Source: AP
1-12-13
New York City police say an 18th century cannon was found loaded with gun powder and a cannon ball during a routine cleaning at the Central Park Conservancy....
Source: Fox News
1-12-13
The U.S. military is preparing its first search in eight years for remains of American soldiers lost in Myanmar during World War II, an official said Friday.The resumption of the search is a product of the revived U.S. ties with the country also known as Burma after its government initiated democratic reforms....About 730 Americans are missing, mostly U.S. air crews that went down in the rugged northern mountains and dense jungles while flying supplies from India to China....
Source: Fox News
1-12-13
The sweepstakes to become the site of the future Barack Obama presidential library is underway with universities in Chicago and Hawaii the apparent frontrunners.The University of Hawaii, where Obama’s parents attended college, has made the most public effort – purportedly talking to officials at existing presidential libraries and at the National Archives, which plays an A-to-Z role from supplying artifacts to running the facilities.However, the University of Chicago, where Obama was a law professor for 12 years, is widely expected to be chosen, despite making no public comments about its reported interest....
Source: Fox News
1-2-13
A Washington-based group that has long questioned the official version of John F. Kennedy's assassination says the city of Dallas is trampling its rights by barring it from Dealey Plaza for this year's 50th anniversary of the murder of the nation's 35th president.The Coalition on Political Assassinations has gathered every year since 1994 at the site where Kennedy was killed by a sniper on Nov. 22, 1963. The group typically observes a moment of silence and members often give speeches. But this year it was denied a permit, the group's director told FoxNews.com. "It's ironic that the city wants to celebrate JFK's life -- and not his death -- at the very place where he was assassinated," John Judge, the executive director of the group, said. "They are afraid of the thousands of people that will come to the site to commemorate his death and call for the truth."...
Source: AP
1-11-12
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is convinced that a lone gunman wasn't solely responsible for the assassination of his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, and said his father believed the Warren Commission report was a "shoddy piece of craftsmanship."Kennedy and his sister, Rory, spoke about their family Friday night while being interviewed in front of an audience by Charlie Rose at the Winspear Opera House in Dallas. The event comes as a year of observances begins for the 50th anniversary of the president's death.
Source: WSJ
1-11-13
NEW YORK — Philanthropist and former Wall Street money manager Michael Steinhardt began collecting objects of Jewish history and culture three decades ago, eventually amassing a collection of manuscripts, textiles and art worth millions of dollars.Now, the 72-year-old wants to sell his more than 500-piece collection so others can enjoy it.Sotheby's will auction the collection in New York on April 29 after also exhibiting it in Moscow and Jerusalem and offering special presentations in Hong Kong, Singapore, Brazil and several European and U.S. cities....
Source: NYT
1-9-13
Between them, Senator John Kerry and Chuck Hagel have five Purple Hearts for wounds suffered in Vietnam, shared a harrowing combat experience in the Mekong Delta and responded in different ways to the conflict that tore their generation apart. But in nominating one as secretary of state and the other as defense secretary, President Obama hopes to bring to his administration two veterans with the same sensibility about the futilities of war.Mr. Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat who is the president’s choice for the State Department, came home from commanding a Swift boat in Vietnam to throw away his military decorations in a protest at the Capitol, accuse American troops of systematic atrocities and tell the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”
Source: NYT
1-9-13
DRESDEN, Germany — Seventy years ago this winter, Soviet forces surrounded and crushed Hitler’s Sixth Army at Stalingrad. The Germans’ defeat shattered the myth of an unstoppable Nazi war machine and marked a reversal of fortunes in World War II.Now a special exhibition in Dresden returns to that wintry hell on the Volga. It’s being shown in the Military History Museum, once a museum for the Nazi and East German armies. Now run by the German armed forces, the site reopened in October 2011 after a redesign by the Polish-American architect Daniel Libeskind.Prepared in cooperation with the Stalingrad Battle Museum in present-day Volgograd, the exhibit reveals Germany’s new self-confidence and acceptance of its historical responsibility. The show displays neither the ritual self-flagellation of the German left nor the twisted relativizations of the right....
