The Times has a good collection of documents regarding re-authorization.

I’ve long complained about the impossible situation librarians are put in within Philadelphia’s wonderful system of free libraries.  Here,a librarian from Salt Lake City lays it all out.

Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.

Mark Twain.
(digging for citation).

“Money can’t buy you class, character, or salvation.”

Realizing as I grade a series of midterms for a class where I did not assign a comprehensive textbook that a “bad” reading of a textbook produces much more than a “bad” reading of a monograph or a provocative article.

In other words, students still get something from the time they spend with a textbook — no matter how badly written or tediously designed — but it appears as though the rewards of genuine readings can only be realized if the “reading” is done well.
Scary, I think.  I hoped that giving provocative, well-written academic articles would create better discussions and lead to more interesting mid-term exams.

It appears that I erred.

“Whenever I’m about to do something, I think, “Would an idiot do that,” and if they would, I do not do that thing.”

E.H. Carr, What is History 1961.

Much of what has been written in English-speaking countries in the last ten years about the Soviet Union, and in the Soviet Union about the English-speaking countries, has been vitiated by this inability to achieve even the most elementary measure of imaginative understanding of what goes on in the mind of the other party, so that the words and actions of the other are always made to appear malign, senseless, or hypocritical. History cannot be written unless the historian can achieve some kind of contact with the mind of those about whom he is writing.

Re-write 2007 ?
Much of what has been written in English-speaking countries in the last ten years about the Middle East, and in the Middle East about the English-speaking countries, has been vitiated by this inability to achieve even the most elementary measure of imaginative understanding of what goes on in the mind of the other party, so that the words and actions of the other are always made to appear malign, senseless, or hypocritical. History cannot be written unless the historian can achieve some kind of contact with the mind of those about whom he is writing.