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
11-24-12
Before 1917, senators could delay final votes on legislation by holding the floor and talking. There was no mechanism to stop them, but such filibusters were rare until the debates surrounding entry into World War I. In 1917, the Senate adopted its first “cloture” rule: two-thirds of the Senate could cut off debate on a bill and force a final vote. Between 1917 and 1971, no session of Congress had more than 10 such votes in its two years. Still, filibusters were common enough that in 1971, Mr. Byrd, a master of Senate procedure, shifted the rules to allow the Senate to take up other legislation during a filibuster. That change began an escalation of tactics, in which both delays and attempts at circumventing delays have become more common, with one often leading to more of another. Moves by the minority to obstruct bills elicited responses from the majority worsening the environment. In the 93rd Senate, which met in 1973 and 1974, the number of cloture motions filed — a rough measure of filibuster threats — jumped to 31, from an average of fewer than two per Congressional term between 1917 and 1970. Throughout much of the next two decades, cloture votes continued to rise, regardless of which party was in the minority, with many such motions filed in anticipation of filibusters.
Source: WaPo
11-25-12
WILLEMSTAD, Curacao — Headstones are pockmarked, their inscriptions faded. Stone slabs that have covered tombs for centuries are crumbling. White marble has turned grey, likely from the acrid smoke that spews from a nearby oil refinery.One of the oldest Jewish cemeteries in the Western Hemisphere, Beth Haim on the island of Curacao, is slowly fading in the Caribbean sun....
Source: WaPo
11-24-12
LONDON — Tyrant or hero? Rightful monarch or child-killer? Despotic hunchback or brave scoliosis sufferer? Now is the winter of our debate over one of England’s most notorious villains: Richard III.Underneath a drab parking lot 90 miles northwest of London, archaeologists have unearthed what may become one of this nation’s finds of the century — half-a-millennium-old bones thought to be the remains of the long-lost monarch. But if the discovery has touched off a feverish round of DNA tests against his closest living descendants, it has also lurched to the surface a series of burning questions in a country where even arcane points of history are disputed with the gusto of modern-day politics.What was the true nature of a king famously depicted by William Shakespeare as a twisted soul who locked his young nephews — and rivals to the throne — in the Tower of London, never to be heard from again? Did Shakespeare offer a fair accounting of historical record, or was the Bard the Karl Rove of his day, a spin doctor for the House of Tudor that assumed power after the monarch fell with fateful cries of “Treason!” at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485?...
Source: WaPo
11-24-12
BELLO, Colombia — They were committed evangelicals, devoted to Jesus Christ.But what some here called a spark, an inescapable pull of their ancestors, led them in a different direction, to Judaism. There were the grandparents who wouldn’t eat pork, the fragments of a Jewish tongue from medieval Spain that spiced up the language, and puzzling family rituals such as the lighting of candles on Friday nights.So, after a spiritual journey that began a decade ago, dozens of families that had once belonged to a fire-and-brimstone church became Jews, converting with the help of rabbis from Miami and Jerusalem. Though unusual in one of the most Catholic of nations, the small community in Bello joined a worldwide movement in which the descendants of Jews forced from Spain more than 500 years ago are discovering and embracing their Jewish heritage....
Source: WaPo
11-26-12
The 7,000 soldiers buried with Qin Shi Huang in 210 B.C. were made of clay. But the bronze weapons the terra cotta army carried into the enormous tomb complex near Xi’an in western China were the real things: tens of thousands of swords, axes, spears, lances and crossbows, all as capable of spilling blood as anything Qin’s real army wielded when they triumphed, ending centuries of war and uniting China under a single rule for the first time.What has been a puzzle for scientists is how so many weapons could have been made so skillfully, so uniformly and so quickly. (Qin reigned for only 11 years; construction of his mausoleum complex is thought to have started long before his death.) They now have a likely answer. A new study of 40,000 bronze arrowheads suggests they were produced in self-sufficient, autonomous workshops that produced finished items rather than parts that fed into an assembly line of sorts....
Source: WaPo
11-27-12
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is adding an asterisk to his name in the history books.His inauguration will be only the seventh time that the constitutionally mandated date for a president’s swearing-in — Jan. 20 — has fallen on a Sunday. So, following tradition, the inauguration will be on Monday, Jan. 21.The adjustment puts Obama in league with President Ronald Reagan, whose second inauguration in 1985 also was changed from Sunday to Monday....
Source: WaPo's Fact Checker
11-26-12
This assertion by creator of the anti-tax pledge caught our attention. Did the 41st president fail to be reelected mainly because he reversed his famous pledge of “Read my lips: No new taxes”? Bush, of course, had famously promised not to raise taxes in his acceptance speech at the 1988 Republican convention, no matter how much pressure he faced from Congress. But then a soaring budget deficit — and a refusal by the Democratic-led Congress to accept only spending cuts — led him accept a tax hike in late 1990. The 1992 race was not just between Bill Clinton and Bush, but also businessman Ross Perot, who took 19 percent of the popular vote (but won no electoral votes.) The three-person race was a key reason why Bush won only 38 percent of the vote — and Clinton 43 percent. Let’s take a stroll down memory lane....
Source: AP
11-26-12
MRAUK-U, Myanmar — It was dusk in a corner of Myanmar recently shaken by some of the bloodiest sectarian violence in a generation, and a dozen Canadian tourists climbed to the top of a grassy hill, cameras ready to capture the sweeping view.Moss-covered pagodas rose from foggy hilltops all along the horizon, their bell-shaped silhouettes dark against the blue sky. Birds flitted through lush treetops. A small throng of children played on a dirt road nearby.From here, it was hard to tell anything was wrong....
Source: WaPo
11-26-12
Albert Einstein is widely regarded as a genius, but how did he get that way? Many researchers have assumed that it took a very special brain to come up with the theory of relativity and other insights that form the foundation of modern physics.A study of 14 newly discovered photographs of Einstein’s brain, which was preserved for study after his death, concludes that the brain was indeed highly unusual in many ways. But researchers still don’t know exactly how the brain’s extra folds and convolutions translated into Einstein’s amazing abilities....
Source: Noisecreep
11-27-12
Steven Roby is arguably the world's most knowledgeable Hendrix historian. Throughout his career, Roby has been credited for his research in six Hendrix biographies and two Hendrix album reissue packages, plus he also worked for Experience Hendrix, LLC, a Hendrix family-owned company founded by James "Al" Hendrix, the legendary guitarist's father. Roby recently released Hendrix on Hendrix: Interviews and Encounters with Jimi Hendrix, a collection of some of the best Hendrix interviews, including his final interview given the week before he died. Noisecreep spoke with Roby to get more insight on the influential guitarist. First off, how did you gain access to all of these interviews? You must have the world's most extensive Hendrix archive.
Source: AP
11-26-12
President John F. Kennedy was supposed to just stop by and wave hello.Instead a group of eager Latinos persuaded him to come inside and speak to a packed room of Mexican-American civil rights activists. And then he persuaded his wife, first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, to address the crowd in Spanish.It was Nov. 21, 1963. Hours later, the president was dead, his assassination overshadowing the significance of a speech that can be seen as the birth of the Latino vote, so instrumental in 2012 in helping re-elect the first black president, Barack Obama.To historians, Kennedy's appearance at the Rice Ballroom in Houston was likely the first time that a president officially acknowledged Latinos as an important voting bloc....
Source: Huffington Post
11-19-12
MADISON, Wis. — Newly declassified documents show the FBI kept close tabs on Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's only daughter after her high profile defection to the United States in 1967, gathering details from informants about how her arrival was affecting international relations.The documents were released Monday to The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act following Lana Peters' death last year at age 85 in a Wisconsin nursing home. Her defection to the West during the Cold War embarrassed the ruling communists and made her a best-selling author. And her move was a public relations coup for the U.S.One April 28, 1967, memo details a conversation with a confidential source who said the defection would have a "profound effect" for anyone else thinking of trying to leave the Soviet Union. The source claimed to have discussed the defection with a Czechoslovak journalist covering the United Nations and a member of the Czechoslovakia "Mission staff."...
Source: New Yorker
12-3-12
For one party to win a majority of House seats with a minority of votes is a relatively rare occurrence. It has now happened five times in the past hundred years. In 1914 and 1942, the Democrats were the beneficiaries. In 1952, 1996, and this year, it was the Republicans’ turn to get lucky, and their luck is likely to hold for many election cycles to come. Gerrymandering routinely gets blamed for such mismatches, but that’s only part of the story. Far more important than redistricting is just plain districting: because so many Democrats are city folk, large numbers of Democratic votes pile up redundantly in overwhelmingly one-sided districts. Even having district lines drawn by neutral commissions instead of by self-serving politicians wouldn’t do much to alter this built-in structural bias. Of course, the perversities of our peculiar electoral machinery can cut both ways. Before November 6th, there was much speculation that Obama, like Bush in 2000, might lose the popular vote while winning in the electoral college. It didn’t happen, but the speculation was far from idle. If Romney had run more strongly throughout the country, he might have beaten Obama by as many as two million votes and still have lost the Presidency.
Source: NYT
11-25-12
Obelisks that stood upright for generations at Green-Wood Cemetery, perpetuating the memories of the Strong and Hallett and Wallace families, hit the ground at crazy angles. The angel guarding the Lloyd family plot lost its head, an arm and the tip of its wing. The headstone of an 18-year-old boy, overturned by a falling pin oak, rests upside down beside its pedestal. “Thy will be done,” it says.Hurricane Sandy ran roughly through cemeteries around New York City, but it devastated Green-Wood in Brooklyn, a designated National Historic Landmark. High winds destroyed or badly damaged at least 292 of the mature trees that lend so much beauty to the picturesque grounds — oak, maple, beech, linden, pine, tulip, cherry and Bradford pear.Because many trees and branches remain where they fell on Oct. 29, cemetery officials have not had the chance to assess how many monuments, headstones and ornamental fences were crushed, shattered or overturned. Certainly, dozens were damaged...
Source: Huffington Post
11-19-12
BISHOP, Calif. — Rock carvings that graced a sacred American Indian site in California's Sierra Nevada for thousands of years have fallen prey to modern thieves armed with power saws.At least four petroglyphs – some 2 feet wide and located 15 feet above the ground – were hacked from lava cliffs in the Eastern Sierra, the Los Angeles Times ( ) reported Sunday. http://lat.ms/Q3YdXQVisitors to the area, known as Volcanic Tableland, discovered the theft and reported it to the federal Bureau of Land Management on Oct. 31."This was the worst act of vandalism ever seen" on the 750,000 acres of public land administered by the BLM field office in Bishop, BLM archaeologist Greg Haverstock told the newspaper....
Source: Discovery News
11-22-12
Italian researchers have exhumed the tomb of Giovanni de' Medici, one of the most celebrated condottieri (mercenary soldiers) of the Renaissance, in a bid to understand the life and death of the charismatic 16th century army commander.Also known as "Giovanni dalle Bande Nere" for the black bands of mourning he wore after the death of Pope Leo X, this member of one of the lesser branches of the wealthy Florentine Medici family is buried in the Medici Chapels in Flo rence with his wife, Maria Salviati.The couple married in 1516, when she was 17 and he was 18. The marriage produced only one child: Cosimo I, who reigned as the first Grand Duke of Tuscany, creating the Uffizi and the magnificent Boboli Gardens as well as finishing the Pitti Palace....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
11-25-12
If you’re feeling washed out, fed up or downright lousy, World War One is to blame.New research has shown how the conflict meant that hundreds of words and phrases came into common parlance thanks to the trenches.Among the list of everyday terms found to have originated or spread from the conflict are cushy, snapshot, bloke, wash out, conk out, blind spot, binge drink and pushing up daisies.The research has been conducted by Peter Doyle, a military historian, and Julian Walker, an etymologist, who have analysed thousands of documents from the period — including letters from the front, trench newspapers, diaries, books and official military records - to trace how language changed during the four years of the war....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
11-20-12
The men on board the 1901-04 Discovery expedition were forced to endure freezing temperatures, 24-hour stretches of darkness and risked cabin fever after becoming stuck in the ice.They were hailed for their “heroic” dedication to exploration, with the scientific research into the harsh and largely untouched continent launching Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton to prominence.It now appears the inhospitable conditions were made a little easier by the ship’s library, which included two books by children’s author Lewis Carroll.The 1889 story Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and 1901’s Through the Looking Glass are now known to have nestled among the more serious scientific and navigational tomes on the mess deck....
Source: Huffington Post
11-13-12
Murgan Salem al-Gohary, an Egyptian jihadist who claims he has links to the Taliban, has called for the “destruction of the Sphinx and the Giza Pyramids in Egypt."Al-Gohary, an Islamist leader and jihadist sentenced twice under President Hosni Mubarak for advocating violence, urged Muslims to "destroy the idols" in Egypt -- specifically the Giza Pyramids and the Great Sphinx -- during a television interview on Saturday on Egypt's Dream TV, according to Al Arabiya News.“God ordered Prophet Mohammed to destroy idols,” he said, according to Al Arabiya News. “When I was with the Taliban we destroyed the statue of Buddha, something the government failed to do.”...
Source: NYT
11-21-12
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Four decades after American warplanes carpet-bombed this impoverished country, an American president came to visit for the first time. He came not to defend the past, nor to apologize for it. In fact, he made no public mention of it whatsoever.President Obama’s visit to a country deeply scarred by its involvement with the United States did nothing to purge the ghosts or even address them. Mr. Obama made clear he came only because Cambodia happened to be the site for a summit meeting of Asian leaders, but given the current government’s human rights record, he was intent on avoiding much interaction with the host.“How are you?” Mr. Obama asked Prime Minister Hun Sen when he showed up, unsmiling, for a meeting made necessary by protocol. “Good to see you.”
