| June 28, 2008 | - Robert Mugabe, ruler of Zimbabwe since 1980, was sworn in as president after he ran unopposed and won more than 85 percent of the popular vote, a percentage roughly equal to the national unemployment rate. He called for “unity” and invited former candidate and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai to attend his inauguration. “This,” said a spokesman for Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), “is an unbelievable joke.” Mugabe supporters entered the house of an MDC councillor and shouted “Let's kill the baby” as they shattered the legs of his 11-month-old son, Blessing; a plan was discovered that called for 2 million MDC members to be “internally displaced”; and 3 million Zimbabweans were living in South Africa, where 62 people were killed in recent anti-immigration rioting.
| Source 1:
Times Online
Source 2:
AFP
Source 3:
CBS News
|
| April 28, 2008 | - All three candidates taped messages for World Wrestling Entertainment's “W.W.E. Raw”: Clinton declared herself “ready to rumble” for the American people; Obama, echoing former wrestler Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson, asked, “Do you smell what Barack is cooking?”; McCain, speaking with a surly tone, equated the Iraq war with a wrestling match and said that Americans “do not watch wrestling because we're 'bitter,'” but rather because “wrestling is about celebrating our freedom.”
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 18, 2008 | - In response to fury over a handful of remarks made by Reverend Jeremiah Wright over the course of his 36 years as a pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ, Senator Barack Obama delivered a nuanced and serious speech about race in America. “I think it's an obligation of any opponent to use this issue,” said Congressman Peter King (R.-NY), “to make Reverend Wright a centerpiece of the campaign.”
| Source 1:
Washington Post
Source 2:
Newsday
|
| June 12, 2007 | - Judge Robert Bork, an advocate for tort reform, was suing the Yale Club of New York City for $1 million after he slipped and fell while mounting a dais, injuring his leg and head.
| Source:
ACSBlog
|
| January 8, 2007 | -
President Bush
pardoned 29 criminals, including carjackers, drug dealers, an election-laws violator, and a moonshiner. I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby was not one of the 29 people pardoned, nor, despite being a runner-up, did he win the American Bar Association's newsmaker of the year award; the title went to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
| Source 1:
Washington Post
Source 2:
ABA Journal
|
| August 23, 2006 | -
President Bush
cautioned against placing too much importance on the upcoming one-year anniversary of the Hurricane Katrina disaster.
| Source:
San Jose Mercury News
|
| August 1, 2006 | -
English Prime Minister Tony Blair said there was an “arc of extremism” stretching across the Middle East that could be defeated, he proposed, by “an alliance of moderation.”
| Source:
BBC
|
| July 15, 2006 | - Peter Coors, chief executive of Molson Coors Brewing Co., had his license revoked for drunk driving.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| July 6, 2006 | -
Israel continued its push into Gaza in search of an abducted soldier. “We want to use an iron fist,” said Isaac Herzog, a Labor Party minister, “but cautiously, with a lot of consideration.” Palestinians, who did not cease to fire missiles into Israel, were busy counting their dead.
| Source:
International Herald Tribune
|
| January 8, 2006 | - It was reported that author James Frey's best-selling memoir was heavily fictionalized, and that author J.T. Leroy was being played in public by a woman named Savannah Knoop.
| Source 1:
The Smoking Gun
Source 2:
NY Times
|
| December 25, 2005 | - Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said that there was "absolutely nothing wrong" with President Bush authorizing the NSA to eavesdrop on Americans.
| Source:
AP
|
| December 16, 2005 | - Columnist Doug Bandow resigned from his position as a Cato Institute Fellow after it was revealed that he had accepted money from lobbyist Jack Abramoff for writing between 12 and 24 newspaper columns favorable to Abramoff's clients. Peter Ferrara, a senior policy advisor at the Institute for Policy Innovation, said that he had also taken money from Abramoff to write op-ed pieces, but felt no remorse. “I do that all the time,” he explained.
| Source:
Business Week
|
| November 30, 2005 | - The White House put up nearly 600 feet of garland and erected an 18-and-a-half-foot fir tree decorated with tulips and azaleas in honor of this year's Christmas theme, “All Things Bright and Beautiful.”
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| November 7, 2005 | -
Judith Miller was expected to return to her job at the New York Times.
| Source:
The New York Observer
|
| October 16, 2005 | -
The New York Times
finally published an account of reporter Judith Miller's involvement in the Valerie Plame Wilson case. At issue in the case is a notebook in which Miller had written the name “Valerie Flame”; Miller said she could not recall the source of the name, even though she had used the same notebook to interview I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Dick Cheney's chief of staff. “We have everything to be proud of,” said Miller. It was reported that both Libby and Karl Rove would probably resign if indicted.
| Source 1:
The New York Times
Source 2:
Time
|
| October 6, 2005 | -
Dick Cheney's chief of staff I. “Scooter” Libby wrote a letter to New York Times journalist Judith Miller, giving Miller permission to testify about their confidential conversations. “Out West,” wrote Libby, “where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them. Come back to work--and life.” Many felt that Libby was writing in some kind of code.
| Source:
Editor & Publisher
|
| September 29, 2005 | - Novelist Michael Crichton was called before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works so that he could criticize the theory of global warming.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| September 26, 2005 | - In the wake of Hurricane Rita, which damaged a number of oil refineries, President George W. Bush called on Americans to conserve gas. "I mean," he said, "people just need to recognize that the storms have caused disruption and that if they're able to maybe not drive when they--on a trip that's not essential, that would helpful."
| Source:
The White House
|
| September 22, 2005 | - In Wichita Falls, Texas, a man named Roderick Johnson was suing prison officials for allowing him to be made into a sexual slave. Johnson testified that he had once been the "property" of a prison gang called the Gangster Disciples, who rented him out at rates ranging from $3 to $7 per rape. A defendant in the case said that Johnson’s testimony was not credible because he never showed the "bruises," "possible broken bones," or "a little worse" that would prove that the sex was nonconsensual.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| September 9, 2005 | - The Pentagon held a "Freedom Walk." Walkers were forced to register online ahead of time, to march along a fenced-in route, and to listen to Clint Black perform his song "Iraq and Roll."
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| August 16, 2005 | -
Victoria Beckham, also known as Posh Spice, said that she had never read a book in her life, although she had written a 528-page autobiography.
| Source:
The Guardian
|
| July 27, 2005 | - A study found that 43 percent of the House and Senate members who have left public office since 1998 are registered lobbyists.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| November 17, 2003 | - American Roman Catholic bishops embarked on a new campaign against contraception. "The Church teaches us a lot of things we don't practice," said Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver. "But it's the constant of the Roman Catholic Church that contraception is wrong, sinful, and contrary to the meaning of married life."
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