Miller Center Offers Nixon/Deep Throat Tapes, Transcripts
Miller Center Offers Nixon/Deep Throat Tapes, Transcripts, Expert, NewsWise, University of Virginia, Press Release: Fri 19-Dec-2008.
The Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia has a repository of presidential tapes and transcripts featuring Nixon and Haldeman discussing Mark Felt. The Presidential Recordings Program (http://millercenter.org/academic/presidentialrecordings) at the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs (http://www.millercenter.org) has a spectacular Watergate collection of Nixon tapes and transcripts online: • http://tapes.millercenter.virginia.edu/transcript/nixon/watergate In particular, there's this Oct. 19, 1972 conversation between Nixon and Robert Haldeman, in which Haldeman reports that he's heard from a confidential source that Mark Felt is leaking information to the news media about the FBI's investigation into the Watergate break-in: • http://tapes.millercenter.virginia.edu/clips/1972_1019_felt/ Nixon also mentions Felt in the June 23, 1972 "Smoking Gun" conversation with Haldeman: • http://tapes.millercenter.virginia.edu/transcript/nixon/smoking-gun PRP scholar Ken Hughes puts the Nixon tapes in perspective in an online essay, Why Didn't Nixon Burn the Tapes? -- which also includes tapes and transcripts of Nixon-Haldeman conversations. • http://tapes.millercenter.virginia.edu/exhibit/why-didnt-nixon-burn-tapes Also feel free to use these tapes and transcripts in your stories and online exhibits, and to link to the transcripts....Continue reading
Bush E-Mails May Be Secret a Bit Longer, Cheney asserts sole right of review of his records
Bush E-Mails May Be Secret a Bit Longer, by R. Jeffrey Smith, Washington Post, December 21, 2008; A01.
Legal Battles, Technical Difficulties Delay Required Transfer to Archives... The required transfer in four weeks of all of the Bush White House's electronic mail messages and documents to the National Archives has been imperiled by a combination of technical glitches, lawsuits and lagging computer forensic work, according to government officials, historians and lawyers. ...The risks that the transfer may be incomplete are also pointed up by a continuing legal battle between a coalition of historians and nonprofit groups over access to Vice President Cheney's records. The coalition is contesting the administration's assertion in federal court this month that he "alone may determine what constitutes vice presidential records or personal records" and "how his records will be created, maintained, managed, and disposed," without outside challenge or judicial review. ...The National Archives and Records Administration is supposed to help monitor the completeness of the historical record but has no enforcement powers over White House records management practices.Continue reading
History of U.S. Gov’t Bailouts
Here is a nice visualization and explanation of U.S. government bailouts of U.S. corporations (and one city) from 1970 to now. History of U.S. Gov't Bailouts, ProPublica, December 22, 2008. ProPublica also has a page of What Happens After a U.S. Gov't Bailout? that covers 1970 through 2001. Continue reading
LCSH.info RIP
LCSH.info, RIP, December 22, 2008, Tim, LibraryThing.
I am not as up on or enthusiastic about Ed's Semantic-Web intentions, but the open-data implications are clear: the Library of Congress just took down public data. I didn't think things could get much worse after the recent OCLC moves, but this is worse. The time has come to get serious. The library world is headed in the wrong direction. It's wrong for patrons—and taxpayers. And it's wrong for libraries.See also (if it is still there): uncool uris, Posted on December 19, 2008, 10:32 pm, by Ed Summers.
On December 18th I was asked to shut off lcsh.info by the Library of Congress. As an LC employee I really did not have much choice other than to comply. The lcsh.info domain was registered by me in order to demonstrate how the Library of Congress Subject Headings could be represented as a Semantic Web application using SKOS.... LC is still considering running a service like lcsh.info at loc.gov, but it’s not there for me to link to yet.Continue reading
SEC mandates open standard for financial records
SEC mandates open standard for financial records, By Gautham Nagesh, NextGov.com, (12/19/2008).
The Securities and Exchange Commission passed a rule on Thursday requiring public companies and mutual funds to use a standard electronic format to publish financial information, bringing more transparency, and presumably oversight, to corporate balance sheets and earnings. SEC commissioners voted 4-1 to require companies to use extensible business reporting language, or XBRL, when filing financial disclosures. The commission also required them to publish information on the SEC's Web site as well as their own. XBRL is based on software programming called extensible mark-up language, or XML, which uses tags attached to documents so users can easily find and share electronic data....Continue reading