News Nuggets 958

DAYLEE PICTURE:  Sunset over Mount Everest (right) and Mount Nuptse.  From National Geographic.

The Aggressive Tactics of the Greek Right Wing from Der Spiegel [of Germany in English]
"Greek far-right parties could end up with as much as 20 percent of the vote in Sunday's elections. The neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party has intensified the xenophobic atmosphere in the country. Those who confront them are threatened with violence, journalist Xenia Kounalaki recounts."
Faint hints of the political atmosphere of Europe in the 1930s.

America’s Remote-Controlled War on Terror (Michael Gerson) from the Washington Post
"In these circumstances, there is one option denied to a president: doing nothing. He is forced to make a decision among flawed options — a fair description of a president’s main job."

Osama bin Laden Documents Released Online from the Huffington Post 
"On Wednesday, West Point's Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) released a "treasure trove" of documents recovered from Osama bin Laden's compound in the raid that killed that former al Qaeda leader last year."
You have to be impressed with the Obama team: how do you keep the Killing Osama anniversary in the news -- without tooting that horn yourself.  Well, this is one way.  People will be churning out stories based on these documents for weeks to come.

Debacle in Beijing (Ian Johnson) from the New York Review of Books 
"The story of a blind Chinese lawyer's flight to the US Embassy in Beijing is likely to ignite accusations and recriminations until the US presidential election in November. But what few will acknowledge is a harsher truth: that for all our desire to effect change, outsiders have little leverage to shape China's future. ... US diplomats gamely took Chen in last week and began negotiating. But they had an incredibly weak hand."

Krugman Wishes He Were Wrong Amid EU Austerity Backlash from Bloomberg News Service
"Europe’s shifting emphasis from enforcing austerity to seeking economic growth marks a hollow victory for Nobel laureate Paul Krugman. “I wish I’d been wrong for the sake of the world,” Krugman said in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s Carol Massar. “You can see that there has been a definite shift in opinion.”"

Romney Camp Stirred Storm Over Gay Aide from the New York Times
"For Mr. Grenell, the message was clear: he had become radioactive. It was the climax of an unexpectedly messy and public dispute over the role and reputation of Mr. Grenell, a foreign policy expert who is gay and known for his support of same-sex marriage, his testy relationship with the news media and his acerbic Twitter postings on everything from Rachel Maddow’s femininity to how Callista Gingrich “snaps on” her hair."

Mitt Romney Wimps Out on Grenell (Ruth Marcus) from the Washington Post 
"As my late colleague David Broder observed at the time, “The gamble Clinton is taking is that more white Americans will be impressed by his ‘standing up’ to Jackson than black Americans are repelled by his ‘disrespect’ to the Rainbow Coalition leader.” Romney’s calculus has been consistently the opposite: that the risk of alienating powerful party figures or constituencies exceeds the benefit of repositioning himself, if not in the reasonable center, then closer to it."

The Elusive Enthusiastic Romney Fan: A Case Study (Elspeth Reeves) from the Atlantic
"That's the New Hampshire man, pictured above in a Romney face shirt at an April 24, immediately jumped out at us. The Atlantic Wire called Galamaga, the Genuine Enthusiastic Mitt Romney Fan, and here's what we learned:..."

Harvard and M.I.T. Team Up to Offer Free Online Courses from the New York Times
"In what is shaping up as an academic Battle of the Titans — one that offers vast new learning opportunities for students around the world — Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Wednesday announced a new nonprofit partnership, known as edX, to offer free online courses from both universities. Harvard’s involvement follows M.I.T.’s announcement in December that it was starting an open online learning project, MITx. Its first course, Circuits and Electronics, began in March, enrolling about 120,000 students, some 10,000 of whom made it through the recent midterm exam. Those who complete the course will get a certificate of mastery and a grade, but no official credit. Similarly, edX courses will offer a certificate but not credit."

The Campus Tsunami (David Brooks) from the New York Times
"What happened to the newspaper and magazine business is about to happen to higher education: a rescrambling around the Web and online learning."

Do Nothings and Know Nothings (Timothy Egan) from the New York Times 
"Condemnation of the current Congress may be bipartisan, but a new book lays most of the blame at the feet of one party."

IL-Sen: Sen. Kirk Leaving Rehab Facility Three Months After Suffering Stroke from The Hill
"Doctors had said that Kirk's overall prognosis was good and that he would likely recover in a matter of weeks or months. Kirk's physicians, however, did caution that Kirk, 52, was likely to lose some motor function on the left side of his body but would be unaffected, mentally, from the stroke. "

In an Age of Walled-off Candidates, Longing for LBJ (Walter Shapiro) from the Columbia Journalism Review
"Caro’s latest opus offers a strong case for the enduring value of journalistic access."

ANTIQUITIES NUGGET!!
Stumbling Across a Rarity, Even for the Rare Book Room from the New York Times
"A few weeks ago, Ms. Malchodi opened yet another leather-bound book, one of more than 300,000 rare volumes in the hold of the John Hay Library. With surgical precision, she turned the pages of a medical text once owned by Solomon Drowne, Class of ’73 (1773, that is). And there, in the back, she found a piece of paper depicting the baptism of Jesus. It was signed: “P. Revere Sculp”"