Free Republic

Faith Beyond His Father’s Doug Paul grew up in the midst of the Reagan Revolution. Now he's on the other side of a yawning evangelical generation gap. V.Doug Paul was born in July 1981 in Richmond, Va.—demographics that make his birth, in a sense, historic. He was born, six months after Ronald Reagan's inauguration, to conservative Christian parents who knew for the first time the thrill of voting for a candidate who represented their values, Christian values. Graduates of Oral Roberts University, Gregg and Glenda Paul had thrown themselves into the Reagan campaign, canvassing and making calls. "I liked the...

Battered by a one-two punch of declining readership and ad pages, Newsweek magazine is getting an extreme makeover this year that will include a large circulation reduction, deep cuts in operating costs, and a new effort to attract advertisers by concentrating on an elite audience. According to The New York Times, executives at Newsweek say the retooled magazine will focus on being a "thought leader" that focuses on telling readers how to think about news, rather than telling people what happened in the last week. The plan, similar to the editorial outlook espoused by The Economist magazine, is aimed at...

Battered by a one-two punch of declining readership and ad pages, Newsweek magazine is getting an extreme makeover this year that will include a large circulation reduction, deep cuts in operating costs, and a new effort to attract advertisers by concentrating on an elite audience. According to The New York Times, executives at Newsweek say the retooled magazine will focus on being a "thought leader" that focuses on telling readers how to think about news, rather than telling people what happened in the last week. The plan, similar to the editorial outlook espoused by The Economist magazine, is aimed at...

And then there was one. Not long ago, three truly mass-market newsmagazines came out every week to tell Americans about world and national events, and it was a hugely lucrative business. Media empires were built on the idea. But with readers and ads melting away, and more media outlets available to get the same information faster, U.S. News & World Report took itself out of that competition in 2008, and Newsweek may be poised to step back from it this year, leaving Time as the one playing something closest to the traditional newsweekly game, and making money at it. snip...

Newsweek, also known as the Barack Obama weekly, finally got Barack and Michelle Obama off the front cover. But one of its latest issues demonstrates that bias is only one of Newsweek’s problems. The news magazine generously mixes strong bias with weak journalism laced with ignorance, incompetence, and substitution of fiction for fact. It should change its name to the “News-weakly.” I’ve spent many columns documenting biased journalism in the mainstream media. But I’ve noticed that the bias is just one sign of the rapidly deteriorating and melting down of journalism. Journalism, as we know it, died during the last...

What a year of huge stories: the Dow descended, Obama ascended and the world had the pleasure of getting to know a family of Palins, a country called Georgia, a pregnant man (remember that?) and the opportunity to say buh-bye to scores of commercial banks. But amid all the economic crises and political campaigns, much was happening beyond the front pages of America's newspapers: attacks in Africa and Afghanistan, important health legislation, even a few Pentagon snafus that largely escaped the public's attention. What follows is NEWSWEEK's list of 10 stories that deserved more ink and airtime in 2008. And...

Newsweek sprinkled throughout its year-end double issue, with Barack Obama on the cover as the #1 member of “The New Global Elite,” a bunch of potshots at Sarah Palin -- and even derided teen daughter Bristol too. In a list of those who committed “low behavior” during 2008 (which did at least also highlight John Edwards), the magazine accused Sarah Palin of a “smear” against Barack Obama, on another page Newsweek described her as an “ill-informed, inarticulate shopaholic” (while on the same page hailing MSNBC's Rachel Maddow as a “brilliant” woman who “gives libs a happy new voice”) and deep...

1: Barack Obama 2: Hu Jintao 3: Nicolas Sarkozy 4-5-6: Economic Triumvirate 7: Gordon Brown 8: Angela Merkel 9: Vladimir Putin 10: Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud 11: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei 12: Kim Jong Il 13-14: The Clintons 15: Timothy Geithner 16: Gen. David Petraeus 17: Sonia Gandhi 18: Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva 19: Warren Buffett 20: Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani 21: Nuri al-Maliki 22-23: The Philanthropists 24: Nancy Pelosi 25: Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan 26: Mike Duke 27: Rahm Emanuel 28: Eric Schmidt 29: Jamie Dimon 30-31: Friends of Barack 32: Dominique Strauss-Kahn 33: Rex Tillerson 34: Steve...

I was absolutely amazed about how no pretense for objectivity is attempted at all anymore with the msm. This jackass Newsweek editor Jon Meacham was grinning ear to ear about the huge bloodying of the republicans. It was absolutely disgusting. He said the economic meltdown came at a perfect time for Obama (which we all know and the media did not hold the democrats responsible--they who, in effect caused it). I would love to see this SOB taken down about 10 notches. What an arrogant bastard. Of course this is al in context of a "bright, Christmassy" show that reaches...

But, don't worry, Obamabots. It's all good, bra. It's not bad if Obama brings lobbyists to Washington like a plague of locusts. Lobbyists have a bad rap, which is why politicians routinely vilify them. Denouncing them is an uncontested rhetorical lay-up. People want to blame their discontents on a conspiracy of sleazy influence merchants. Periodic scandals confirm the stereotypes: the Jack Abramoffs who wine and dine legislators, or the congressmen like Duke Cunningham who took bribes from government contractors and steered federal funds to them. But mainly the anti-lobbying bias is popular mythology. From here Samuelson goes into just why...

Before Newsweek created a controversy with its laughably absurd cover story that the Bible supports homosexual marriage, lame duck President George W. Bush declared in an interview with Cynthia McFadden of ABC News that he doesn’t believe the Bible to be the literal word of God. So Adam and Eve could just as easily be Adam and Steve? We needed a follow-up from McFadden. Bush spoke with conviction during the interview about how Jesus Christ has changed his life while McFadden played “gotcha” journalism on the subject of evolution, which has nothing to do with his record as president. What...

The current Newsweek has an article by Lisa Miller pretending to take seriously the idea that the Bible looks favorably upon homosexual love and is properly used in support rather than rejection of same-sex marriage.  Here's the final paragraph. My friend the priest James Martin says his favorite Scripture relating to the question of homosexuality is Psalm 139, a song that praises the beauty and imperfection in all of us and that glorifies God’s knowledge of our most secret selves: “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.� And then he adds that in his heart he believes that...

Facing increased costs of postage and maintaining its circulation, Newsweek has been quietly considering a drop its circulation guarantee by a million copies or more, FOLIO: has learned. Executives at Newsweek began discussing a rate base rollback as early as this summer, according to a pair of sources familiar with these discussions. Both sources say that the magazine is considering slashing up to 1.6 million copies from Newsweek’s current rate base of 2.6 million, which would put the magazine’s rate base at 1 million. Newsweek declined to comment. “A million [rate base] was the extreme,” said the source. But, as...

Leading social conservatives blasted Newsweek for its current cover story, "The Religious Case for Gay Marriage," which they said misinterprets both biblical scripture and their own political movement. “It doesn’t surprise me. Newsweek has been so far in the tank on the homosexual issue, for so long, they need scuba gear and breathing apparatus,” said Richard Land, who heads the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. “I don’t think it’s going to change the minds of anyone who takes biblical teachings seriously.” Tony Perkins, president of the socially conservative Family Research Council, agreed, calling Newsweek’s cover story “yet...

Donald E. Wildmon Founder and Chairman American Family Association December 8, 2008 Newsweek magazine has published a lengthy article (http://www.newsweek.com/id/172653) stating that the Bible supports homosexual marriage. The article was written by Lisa Miller, Newsweek religion editor. Miller's article is one of the most biased and distorted pieces concerning homosexual marriage ever published by any major news organization. The article is much too long for this e-mail. Dr. Albert Mohler has offered a response to the Newsweek article. I suggest you read Mohler’s article (http://www.albertmohler.com/blog_read.php?id=2881) and then read Miller's Newsweek article. Mohler made a significant point in his response: "The...

Let's try for a minute to take the religious conservatives at their word and define marriage as the Bible does. Shall we look to Abraham, the great patriarch, who slept with his servant when he discovered his beloved wife Sarah was infertile? Or to Jacob, who fathered children with four different women (two sisters and their servants)? Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon and the kings of Judah and Israel—all these fathers and heroes were polygamists. The New Testament model of marriage is hardly better. Jesus himself was single and preached an indifference to earthly attachments—especially family. The apostle Paul (also single)...

Turning the Bible on its Head -- Newsweek Goes for Gay Marriage Posted: Monday, December 08, 2008 at 6:50 am ET Printer Version E-mail Permalink Bookmark and Share Newsweek magazine, one of the most influential news magazines in America, has decided to come out for same-sex marriage in a big way, and to do so by means of a biblical and theological argument. In its cover story for this week, "The Religious Case for Gay Marriage," Newsweek religion editor Lisa Miller offers a revisionist argument for the acceptance of same-sex marriage. It is fair to say that Newsweek has gone...

Enough with the Lincoln analogies; Reagan is the president that Barack Obama is most closely modeling himself after. Ronald Reagan inherited stagflation, a defeat abroad and a nation at its nadir in morale. Through the sheer force of his personality as much as his policies, four years later, it was "Morning in America," the theme of his 1984 re-election campaign when he won 49 states. Obama isn't president yet, but his determined calm and orderly transition pace appear to be soothing the financial markets, producing the first sustained gain in stocks since the mid-September meltdown. On Jan. 20, Obama will...

On Nov. 5, Todd Strandberg was at his desk, fielding E-mails from around the world. As the editor and founder of RaptureReady.com, his job is to track current events and link them to biblical prophecy in hopes of maintaining his status as "the eBay of prophecy," the best source online for predictions and calculations concerning the end of the world. Already Barack Obama had drawn the attention of apocalypse watchers after an anonymous e-mail circulated among conservative Christians in October implying that he was the Antichrist. Former "Saturday Night Live" ingénue Victoria Jackson fueled the fire when, according to news...

The conventional wisdom, which I share, is that Barack Obama will win this election, perhaps by a healthy margin. But Democrats are nervous wrecks; they're having nightmares that defeat will be snatched from the jaws of victory. To add to their misery (and guard against complacency), here's how that horror film could play out: In the end, the problem was the LIVs. That's short for "low-information voters," the three fifths of the electorate that shows up once every four years to vote for president but mostly hates politics. These are the 75 million folks who didn't vote in the primaries....

All day Fox news Radio has been using a poll from Newsweek of REGISTERED VOTERS showing O'Bammer with a 13 point lead, any Ideas?

Newsweek poll: 053, M41 (Newsweak's sample: 36% Dems, 36% Independents, 27% Republicans)

You’re not going to believe this one. Newsweek reporter Michael Hastings, while covering the presidential campaign, entertained fantasies about “taking out” Rudy Giuliani. And now he’s talking openly about it, and about his underhanded dealings with the John McCain campaign, as he pretended to be friendly and sympathetic while looking for every negative angle possible. He doesn’t even seem to be self-conscious about revealing what a dishonest, biased scumbag he is. HACK: CONFESSIONS OF A PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN REPORTER. The reality is: I quickly realized Rudy was a maniac. I had a recurring fantasy in which I took him out during...

A reporter hired by Newsweek to cover the presidential primary has written an article admitting that he was biased.Writing in the latest issue of GQ magazine, Michael Hastings describes his personal feelings about various candidates, including Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Hillary Clinton, and admits that he could not be objective about the people he covered: If that sounds like I had some trouble being “objective,” I did. Objectivity is a fallacy. In campaign reporting more than any other kind of press coverage, reporters aren’t just covering a story, they’re a part of it—influencing outcomes, setting expectations, framing candidates—and despite...

The test for the next president is whether he can use the powers of government to act on behalf of Americans. That's a liberal idea. John McCain's "Joe the Plumber" would no doubt like to have a beer with Sarah Palin's "Joe Six-Pack." In truth, Joe Wurzelbacher isn't a licensed plumber and Joe Six-Pack is a horrible cliché, but no matter. They're cultural kin to the iconic "Average Joe" who was part of Richard Nixon's "Silent Majority" in the early 1970s and Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority in the 1980s. But conservative majorities come and go. If the polls are to...

In his cover story for the October 13, 2008 issue of Newsweek, managing editor Jon Meacham continues the media’s relentless personal attacks on Governor Palin, characterizing her as the equivalent of the fourth century Roman political hero Cincinnatus without brains, further describing her as “…an odd combination of Chauncey Gardiner from ‘Being There’ and Marge from ‘Fargo.’” In Meacham’s elitist worldview, Governor Palin is mindless because she is a conservative woman. What, you ask, warrants such viciousness from the normally mild-mannered Episcopalian editor of Newsweek? With a mocking tone, Meacham quotes an “unnamed McCain adviser”: “Palin is on the ticket...

The reality is that Sarah is the brightest light for conservatives since Ronald Reagan. Newsweek, however, has portrayed her as the title indicates.What follows is a great article refuting the Newsweek spin in light of what the Founding Fathers really wanted. Newsweek’s Jon Meacham thinks that Governor Sarah Palin is too much a commoner and too stupid to be allowed to become vice president of the United States of America and apparently his employer agrees with him. The October 13 cover of Newsweek features a close up photo of the Governor with the headline “She’s One of the Folks (And...

One of my favorite parts of hitting the campaign trail is chatting with cabdrivers, who always seem especially eager to discuss politics. (Listening to talk radio all day will do that to you.) Take my cabbie this evening out on Long Island. A black man in his mid-40's who arrived in the U.S. from Jamaica in 1990, Steve was something of an enigma. As we motored from the Garden City station to the local Marriott, Steve immediately asked whether I was attending the debate. I told him I was a reporter for Newsweek. "Is that in the city?" he said,...

Published on NewsBusters.org (http://newsbusters.org) Evan Thomas: 'A Disgrace' If McCain Beats Obama with Ayers By Brent Baker Created 2008-10-11 15:08 Newsweek's Evan Thomas and NPR's Nina Totenberg, likely reflecting the attitude of many of their Washington press corps colleagues, declared Barack Obama's connection to unrepentant terrorist William Ayers as an out of bounds subject for the campaign. On Inside Washington [1], a weekly show produced and aired over the weekend by Washington, DC's ABC affiliate, but first broadcast Friday night on the local PBS station, Thomas, Editor at Large with Newsweek, charged: “If he loses the election because of...

Dear friends at Newsweek... Just to clarify... You have McCain winning Republicans, 89 to 7. You have Obama winning Democrats, 91 to 5. (I'm a bit skeptical, but for now, for the sake of argument, I'll accept your assertion that PUMAs are extinct.) You have McCain winning independents by 2 percent, 45 to 43. And this adds up to an 11-percent Obama lead in your latest poll. We are to believe that McCain is losing among women by 9 percent, but losing among men by 14 percent. We are to believe that the Hillary voters are lining up behind Obama,...

For the third time, Newsweek religion reporter Lisa Miller has informed the world that Kirbyjon Caldwell, an African-America pastor from Texas, who formerly supported President George W. Bush, has “given himself heart and soul” to Democratic nominee Barack Obama.  Miller, whose latest Caldwell feature is a three-page spread in the current issue of Newsweek, writes “last summer he aligned himself with a man who he believes better represents the Christian ethics and American values he preaches.” Miller wrote effectively the same story about Caldwell in June and July of this year, following closely on the heels of Obama’s break with his...

http://www.newsweek.com/id/163337 Registered voters; Republican 27%; Democrats 40 %

BASED ON REGISTERED VOTERS Total Obama/Biden Total McCain/Palin Other candidate Undecided CURRENT TOTAL 52 41 1 6 =100

Newsweek's Jon Meacham thinks that Governor Sarah Palin is too much a commoner and too stupid to be allowed to become vice president of the United States of America and apparently his employer agrees with him. The October 13 cover of Newsweek features a close up photo of the Governor with the headline "She's One of the Folks (And that's the problem)," and Meacham writes the accompanying cover story. Be clear about what this means: This is a direct attack on Mr. and Mrs. America. We are all too stupid to be president in the elite opinion of Jon...

This week's Newsweek features an extreme close-up of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin -- a picture so detailed it shows every blemish and wrinkle and even a few wisps of facial hair. Republican media consultant Andrea Tantaros told Fox News the photo is "a clear slap in the face" at Palin. An official with the magazine told the TV show "Access Hollywood" that the picture was cropped to accentuate Palin's smile. The story behind the cover isn't very flattering either. The headline reads: "She's One of The Folks (And that's the problem)."

In the October 13 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, October 6): 'She's One of the Folks (And that's the problem).' Editor Jon Meacham writes an essay about how Sarah Palin's populist view of high office is risky for the country.

Remember what I wrote last week about the McCain campaign pulling back the curtain and finally allowing the press and the public to interact, however fleetingly, with its long-sequestered vice-presidential nominee? Um, nevermind. Knowing that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is currently visiting Manhattan, Father of Stumper a . . . .

Katie Paul at Newsweek alerted me that Newsweek printed a correction to their story claiming that Palin cut funding for teen mothers and the state WIC program. I blogged about it here and had extensive conversations with Alaska officials about the claims. Ms. Paul was also diligent to work with Alaska officials to correct the story once I made her aware of the facts. Here is the correction (at the end of page 2): Clarification (updated Sept. 11, 2008) : A number of readers have challenged the assertion in this story that Gov. Palin “cut by 20 percent the funding...

Around 12:30 this afternoon, I posted an item here on Stumper called "Palin's Favorability Ratings Begin to Falter." It was a relatively straightforward bit of analysis. Taking my numbers from the only poll to track daily favorability ratings for each presidential and vice-presidential candidate--Diageo/Hotline--I pointed out that Palin's approval stats had undergone a net swing of -10 points since peaking last week. "It's the start of an inevitable process," I wrote. "Between now and Nov. 4, voters will stop seeing Palin as a fascinating story and starting taking her measure as an actual candidate for office. Some will approve; some...

To know her is not necessarily to love her. When John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate late last month, the Alaska governor quickly became a media phenomenon. Largely unknown, she existed at first in something of an information vacuum, and due to the shock of her selection--everyone loves a surprise--the press rushed to fill the void with whatever data was easily available. Mostly this consisted of human interest material; Palin had plenty to go around. Mooseburgers. Float planes. Ice Fishing. Beauty pageants. Teen pregnancy. Et cetera. By the end of her first 15 minutes in the spotlight--which...

Final Topline Results (9/12/08) N = 1,038 registered voters, screened from 1,204 adults. 18+ Margin of error: plus or minus 3.8 Interviewing dates: 9/10-11/08 Notes: Data are weighted so that sample demographics match Census Current Population Survey parameters for gender, age, education, race, region, and population density. Results based on smaller subgroups are subject to larger margins of sampling error. Sample size and margins of error for these subgroups are included in a separate methodology statement. An asterisk (*) indicates a value less than 1%.

Happy birthday, Johnny Mac! You're 72 now, a cancer survivor, and a presidential candidate who has said on many occasions that the most important criteria for picking a vice president is whether he or she could immediately step in if something happened to the president. Your campaign against Barack Obama is based on the simple idea that he is unready to be president. So you've picked a running mate who a year and a half ago was the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, a town of 8,500 people. You've selected a potential leader of the free world who knows little or...

Much of America's political conversation is couched in code. And so it was that recently the McCain campaign accused Barack Obama of playing the "race card," two four-letter words that, taken together, trail a wealth of innuendo like a comet's tail. Using the term "race card" as a pejorative is almost always meant to promulgate the big lie that takes hold everywhere from the workplace to the classroom: that black men and women commonly use race as a bludgeon and an excuse, and that they will always blame failures or disagreements on racism. This is belied by objective reality. To...

Elizabeth Edwards has "bad energy," claimed the woman who had an affair with two-time presidential candidate John Edwards, according to Monday's online edition of Newsweek magazine. Rielle Hunter, the mistress at the center of the political storm around Edwards, held the former North Carolina senator in high regard. However, the party girl-turned-healer-turned-videographer was apparently less generous with her former paramour's wife. "I've only met her once," Hunter told Newsweek reporter Jonathan Darman in late 2006 during a lunch in which she mistakenly cast him as a friend. "She does not give off good energy. She didn't make eye contact with...

Newsweek Paris Bureau Chief Christopher Dickey recently returned to the U.S. South, where his family has roots, and found that George W. Bush and Barack Hussein Obama have unsettled the region deeply: "the first with a reckless war and a weakened economy, the second with the color of his skin, the foreignness of his name, the lofty liberalism of his language." In the August 11 Newsweek cover, "The End of the South" (on newsstands Monday, August 4), Newsweek looks at the race issue head-on in the region that has fought the longest and the hardest, and suffered the most, trying...

...For months, the Democratic nominee has advocated a rough 16-month timetable for withdrawal, and for months, his Republican rival has said such a schedule would amount to "surrender." That was a fertile ground for debate. But last week ...Bush and Maliki agreed on the idea of a "time horizon" for withdrawing American troops, and Maliki said that U.S. troops should leave "as soon as possible, as far as we're concerned." "U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about sixteen months," he said. "That, we think, would be the right time frame for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes." All...

Gee, how can that be? Just last month, the Newsweek poll showed Barack Obama with a large 15 point lead over John McCain which Newsweek announced as "Barack's Bounce." However, there is now trouble in River City as you can tell by the headline of the latest Newsweek poll story, "Glow Fading?" Yes, poor Obama has taken a big tumble in the latest Newsweek poll: A month after emerging victorious from the bruising Democratic nominating contest, some of Barack Obama's glow may be fading. In the latest NEWSWEEK Poll, the Illinois senator leads Republican nominee John McCain by just 3 percentage...

Newsweek turned heads with a poll two weeks ago touting a massive 15-point lead for Obama. Their newest survey has heads turning in the other direction, showing Obama's lead dwindling to just 3 points over McCain: Obama 44 (-7) McCain 41 (+5) Undecided 15 (+2) In the Newsweek poll, Obama's support among Republicans and Democrats was basically unchanged, but his support among Independents dropped 14 points, to 34% from 48% two weeks ago. McCain increased his support among Republicans by five points (to 83% from 78%) and among Independents by five points (to 41% from 36%).

A month after emerging victorious from the bruising Democratic nominating contest, some of Barack Obama's glow may be fading. In the latest NEWSWEEK Poll, the Illinois senator leads Republican nominee John McCain by just 3 percentage points, 44 percent to 41 percent. The statistical dead heat is a marked change from last month's NEWSWEEK Poll, where Obama led McCain by 15 points, 51 percent to 36 percent.

Barack Obama needs to give a speech about Iraq. Otherwise he will find himself in the unusual position of having being prescient about the war in 2002 and yet being overtaken by events in 2008. The most important reason to do this is not political. Iraq is fading in importance for the public and, to the extent that it matters as an electoral issue, most people agree with Obama's judgment that the war was not worth fighting. The reason to lay out his approach to Iraq is that, were he elected, the war would be his biggest and most immediate...