SOURCE: WaPo
7-6-10
comments powered by Disqus
7-6-10
As a historian in the House, Fred Beuttler puts current events in perspective
Historians in the News
Historians do not do breaking news. Historians do not do the latest scandal scoops, election-night projections, or instant updates of Washington's winners and losers. So it is no surprise that the media's demand for historians is scant. But every now and then, when the breaking political news from Capitol Hill is in dire need of historical context, journalists and politicians alike go looking for Fred Beuttler.
In May 2006, as news unfolded about the controversy over an FBI raid on the House offices of William Jefferson, a Louisiana congressman later to be convicted on corruption charges, several reporters and congressional observers sought guidance from Beuttler, the House's deputy historian. By then, both the House speaker, J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), and the minority leader, Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), had signed a rare joint letter criticizing the raid authorized by the Bush administration -- the executive branch's first break-in of a congressional office in the nation's history.
Why were congressional figures in both parties getting so hot and bothered about it? Beuttler was asked....
Read entire article at WaPo
In May 2006, as news unfolded about the controversy over an FBI raid on the House offices of William Jefferson, a Louisiana congressman later to be convicted on corruption charges, several reporters and congressional observers sought guidance from Beuttler, the House's deputy historian. By then, both the House speaker, J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), and the minority leader, Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), had signed a rare joint letter criticizing the raid authorized by the Bush administration -- the executive branch's first break-in of a congressional office in the nation's history.
Why were congressional figures in both parties getting so hot and bothered about it? Beuttler was asked....
comments powered by Disqus
News
- Timothy Thomas Fortune: A Great, Forgotten Black Radical
- Black History Trail Makes 200 Stops Across Massachusetts
- Emmett Till's Murder and How America Remembers Its Darkest Moments
- ‘Slavery is not a game’: Virginia school apologizes over Black History Month exercise
- How the Republican Response to the Mueller Investigation Breaks With History
- Every Sunday, These Historians Go to the Movies — All in the Name of Digital Community
- History has a massive gender bias. We’ll settle for fixing Wikipedia.
- Historians fight back as TV raids their research treasures for its shows
- "The North Star" Launches with Keisha N. Blain as Editor-in-Chief
- New Interactive Tool Maps the American War on Terror