Free Republic

Is Christianity Dying in America? Only, perhaps, at the hands of political entanglement. Jon Meacham, following Newsweek's tabloid trash journalistic standards, has completely botched an article on Christianity in America. He slants his report on the latest American Religious Indentification Survey to make is seem as if Christianity is dead in America. He was obviously in over his head, so I won't spend too much time on his pathetic effort. I'll only point out the grossest stupidities. Atheism isn't Overtaking Christianity The survey report concludes that self-identification confusion among deists, atheists, and agnostics clouds the true numbers, but that perhaps...

Naturally all Bush's folks are the Evil Characters In a transparently unhinged and partisan hit job against several Bush administration officials, Newsweek thought it would be amusing to compare the Bush era and the Obama era by analogizing them with Star Wars and Star Trek respectively. Naturally Newsweek's Bush Derangement Syndrome was given full throated expression -- phasers set to kill not to stun -- as the Bush administration officials were noted as representing one or the other of the evil Star Wars characters while all the Obama officials were compared to the good guys in Star Trek. What we...

Anyone else catch Fareed Zakaria's Newsweek column about Obama's GREAT first 100 days? "What Obama has been able to accomplish in his first 100 days is enough to make any president envious."Is Zakaria living in a parallel universe? No mention of: -the Steve Croft interview in which Obama appeared high on something and laughed uncontrollably at the state of the economy -the offensive Special Olympics joke -the bow to the king of Saudi Arabia -the bro handshake and ear to ear smiles with Hugo Chavez, and what that did to the psyche of Chavez's opposition in Venezuela -unprecedented growth in...

Reporting from Washington and Los Angeles -- Just when you thought it was safe to deep-six that needlessly salacious Ken Starr report and offer your Clinton-era black beret to the Salvation Army, word comes that Hollywood is resurrecting the so-last-century Monica Lewinsky scandal in a movie. "The Special Relationship," an HBO special, is actually about the frustrated efforts of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to form a working relationship with President Clinton, who seemed increasingly distracted by the fallout from the scandal. For those who have blissfully forgotten what all that fuss was about, Clinton was accused of having...

Voters aren't in a self-congratulatory mood. They're worried about the economy, and the Obama that emerges in the data is a strong leader with convictions who has held up despite the battering he's gotten in the three months since taking office. Pressed to point to red flags for Obama in the numbers, Pew Research Center president Andy Kohut pleaded, "I'm trying, I'm trying.

ASHEVILLE, N.C., Feb. 21 (UPI) -- A U.S. climatologist said there was no consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headed for a new ice age. Thomas Peterson of the National Climatic Data Center said a survey of scientific journals of the era showed that only seven supported global cooling, 44 predicted warming and 20 others were neutral, USA Today reported Thursday. "An enduring popular myth suggests that in the 1970s the climate science community was predicting 'global cooling' and an 'imminent' ice age, an observation frequently used by those who would undermine what climate scientists say today about...

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"Newsweek greeted the coming of Easter with a black cover, and the headline 'The Decline and Fall of Christian America,' spelled out in red in the shape of a cross. Inside, it was more declarative: 'The End of Christian America.' Why? Because they found that the percentage of self-identified Christians had fallen 10 points since 1990. Okay, then let's compare. How much has Newsweek's circulation fallen since 1990? Just since 2007, their announced circulation has dropped by 52 percent. It would be more plausible to state 'The End of Newsweek.' At the end of 2007, Newsweek reduced its 'base rate'...

You could almost hear "How dare he!" being uttered by the left-wing establishment when Politico reported April 9 that a Republican congressman identified a specific number of "socialists" in the U.S. House of Representatives. In a speech he gave at his home district, Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., the ranking Republican, Rep. Barney Frank's (D-Mass.) counterpart, on the House Banking Committee, said there were 17 socialists among him and his colleagues in the House. Some in the media were also disturbed by Bachus' remarks and expressed dismay on MSNBC April 10. Emily Heil, a frequent guest on MSNBC and "Heard on...

Atlanta, GA (PRWEB) April 8, 2009 - An estimated 92,000 inactive Catholics in the Phoenix Diocese have come home to the church in the last year. Take that Newsweek! CatholicsComeHome.org, an international apostolate welcoming fallen away, inactive and non-Catholics home to the church, has the real facts about the state of Christian America. While Newsweek magazine prints yet another doom and gloom article on Christianity and its future in the April 13 article proclaiming "The End of Christian America," CatholicsComeHome.org is witnessing the greatest return to the Catholic faith in recent times. How did it happen? Simply by airing TV...

Most regular church-goers have heard their less scrupulously observant fellows called “Christmas and Easter Christians.” Well, they also have their counterparts in the mainstream media: “Christmas and Easter Anti-Christians.” How else to explain the spate of skeptical, negative stories that inevitably accompany the two most important Christian holy days? This Holy Week has been typical. Newsweek proclaimed “The Decline and Fall of Chrisitan America” on its cover. The Washington Post/Newsweek “On Faith” blog featured a post that belittled the significance of Jesus’ death and resurrection. The Discovery Channel aired a documentary that painted Jesus as little more than an opportunistic...

Remember when the alarmist were taking the premise that anthropogenic global warming was more of a threat to the planet than just polar bears and penguins, but also sea levels and catastrophic weather patterns? Jacob Weisberg, the editor in chief of the Slate Group and author of "The Bush Tragedy," presents seven things taken for granted that might not be completely correct in a column for the April 13 issue of Newsweek. "A lot of premises have turned out to be wrong lately," Weisberg wrote. "I'm not talking about evanescent bits of conventional wisdom, but about overarching assumptions that were...

NEW YORK, March 29, 2009 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ ----As the debate over the rescue of the financial system - which is crucial in stabilizing the economy and returning the country to prosperity - unfolds, Paul Krugman has emerged as President Barack Obama's toughest liberal critic, writes Newsweek Editor-at-Large Evan Thomas in his profile of Krugman in the current issue. Krugman, a columnist for The New York Times, a professor at Princeton and a Nobel Prize winner in economics, was a scourge of the Bush administration, but has been critical, if not hostile, to the Obama White House, skeptical of the...

Paul Krugman has emerged as Obama's toughest liberal critic. He's deeply skeptical of the bank bailout and pessimistic about the economy. Why the establishment worries he may be right.

excerpt: Air America is going into the syndication business. And its first outside client is a Newsweek Magazine radio production called “Newsweek On the Air.” In keeping with Air America’s corporate mission statement, the program has been on the air for 27-years, but no one is known to have ever actually listened to it.

Couldn't they have at least waited a week to make this announcement? Liberal radio uber-failure Air America is branching out, expanding their tremendously successful business model to include syndication of outside programming. And with whom are they beginning this new venture? Why, Newsweek magazine, and their program Newsweek On Air. Newsweek has been thusly broadcasting for twenty-seven years, has won "various awards and a place on so many station schedules" -- and I would venture that most of you have never heard of it. A state of anonymity that will likely continue with their Air America partnership.

Frum's embrace of various liberal positions doesn't make him a dummy, or an unskilled writer, or someone who should be excluded from a necessary conversation among self-identified conservatives about the direction of their wayward movement. It just makes him rather hubristic to envision himself as a general giving marching orders, or as a pope issuing excommunications, to a movement he no longer has much use for.

We are all socialists now! crows Newsweek.

Barack Obama is a great pretender. He constantly says he's doing things that he isn't, and he relies on his powerful rhetoric to obscure the difference. He has made "responsibility" a personal theme, and the budget's cover line is "A New Era of Responsibility." He claims that the budget begins "making the tough choices necessary to restore fiscal discipline." It doesn't. If Obama were "responsible," he would be leading a candid conversation about government's size and role. Who deserves support and why? How big can government grow before higher taxes and deficits harm long-term economic growth? Although Obama claims to...

I don't know if Newsweek is as eager to be rid of Israel as "The State of Islam" is these days or not, but on its interactive online map of the mid east, the news mag is featuring a map of Israel labeled as "Palestinian Territory." Once you click over to the Newsweek map, holding the mouse over the tiny red shape north of Egypt will bring up a popup map showing Israel clearly labeled as "PalestinianTerritory." Here is a screen shot of the current map on Newsweek's site: Of course, we all know that to be the shape of...

....The most radical part of the article is a graphic denial that the nation of Israel exists. In the map above Newsweek points out all of the Muslim areas in the Middle East, for the Palestinian Territories it shows the entire state of Israel. If you didn't get the point with the small map, Newsweek makes it easier, they also provide a blow up image...

"We Are All Socialists Now." That is not some RNC talking point. Rather, it was the title of Newsweek magazine's cover story last week. If there is anyone who knows socialism when they see it, it's Newsweek and other such old media outlets run by second-generation Red Diaper babies. And so what was ridiculed by old media high priests jealously guarding the Oracle at Hyde Park is now embraced. Free market conservatives were laughed at when they argued that then-candidate Obama was little more than an old school socialist in a fancy new wrapper. Such accusations were treated as little...

Americans increasingly see the danger in Barack Obama's scheme to spend our way out of economic difficulty. So for the mainstream media, it's all hands on deck to bolster confidence in Obama and his decisions. The dependable Jonathan Alter reports for duty in the March 2 Newsweek, also posted on the magazine's Web site. Titled "America’s New Shrink: Chin up, everyone. This president is well poised to bring us back from the brink," the article is loaded with happy talk about Obama and his incredible attributes. A few examples: . . . Because my take on Obama, based on conversations...

We Are All Socialists Now In many ways our economy already resembles a European one. As boomers age and spending grows, we will become even more French.

The latest cover of Newsweek says “We Are All Socialists Now.” The story is actually a short editorial that begins by attacking talk show host Sean Hannity and Congressman Michael Pence for refusing to surrender to the new, socialist paradise that is America. “It is…the European Socialist Act of 2009,” Hannity said while talking to Pence about the “stimulus” bill. “We’re counting on you to stop it.” “There it was,” Newsweek editorialized, “just before the commercial: the S word, a favorite among conservatives since John McCain began using it during the presidential campaign…But it seems strangely beside the point. The...

How could anyone take a principled stand against the $789 billion economic stimulus bill? Any opposition to this massive expansion of the federal government must be sheer political posturing. Or so said Newsweek magazine's Jonathan Alter. Alter said on MSNBC's Feb. 11 "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" that congressional Republicans oppose the stimulus bill based on an ill-conceived, low-percentage bet that the proposal would fail. "Well, they're betting on the 30 percent chance, as Joe Biden put it, that it's not going to work," Alter said. "Then they can say, ‘I told you so, it didn't do any good.'" ..more (w/video)..

Newsweek's Jon Meacham and Evan Thomas are tired of all this talk of socialism. We need to stop talking about yesterday's news, they say, and embrace the great new fact that America is already a socialist country. They chortle that America is just like France. Meacham and Thomas chide Sean Hannity for using socialism as a dirty word because it "seems strangely beside the point." The pair is enthusiastic about our new American socialist society! We are a European country and we like it, claim the Newsweek duo. Unfortunately, they seem to misunderstand so very much about what they speak....

When US Airways Flight 1549 glided safely onto the Hudson River last month, Newsweek did what news organizations have done for more than a century — it sent reporters and photographers to the scene. Considerable effort yielded a modest article on Newsweek’s Web site, and nothing in the printed magazine. If a similar episode happens six months from now, editors say, Newsweek probably will not even bother. Newsweek is about to begin a major change in its identity, with a new design, a much smaller and, it hopes, more affluent readership, and some shifts in content. The venerable newsweekly’s ingrained...

Newsweek: Celebrating America as a New, Socialist France by Warner Todd Huston Sunday, February 8th 2009 Newsweek’s Jon Meacham and Evan Thomas are tired of all this talk of socialism. We need to stop talking about yesterday’s news, they say, and embrace the great new fact that America is already a socialist country. They chortle that America is just like France. Meacham and Thomas chide Sean Hannity for using socialism as a dirty word because it “seems strangely beside the point.” The pair is enthusiastic about our new American socialist society! We are a European country and we like it,...

In many ways our economy already resembles a European one. As boomers age and spending grows, we will become even more French. [snip] We remain a center-right nation in many ways—particularly culturally, and our instinct, once the crisis passes, will be to try to revert to a more free-market style of capitalism—but it was, again, under a conservative GOP administration that we enacted the largest expansion of the welfare state in 30 years: prescription drugs for the elderly. People on the right and the left want government to invest in alternative energies in order to break our addiction to foreign...

It's time to wave the white flag and surrender to "post-partisan" unity. Yes, it's time for conservatives to abandon core principles and just allow the Pelosi/Reid/Obama pork-a-palooza, also known as the stimulus or the American Recovery and Reinvestment Bill of 2009, to pass into law. At least that's what one Newsweek columnist would have conservatives do. Now is not the time for political bickering in this "post-partisan" era, said Newsweek columnist Michael Hirsh in a Web exclusive piece for Newsweek dated Feb. 4. Hirsh reflected on how Obama has lost grip on the "agenda in Washington," and complained how the...

Obama's desire to begin a "post-partisan" era may have backfired. In his eagerness to accommodate Republicans and listen to their ideas over the past week, he has allowed the GOP to turn the haggling over the stimulus package into a decidedly stale, Republican-style debate over pork, waste and overspending. This makes very little economic sense when you are in a major recession that only gets worse day by day. Yes, there are still some very legitimate issues with a bill that's supposed to be "temporary" and "targeted"—among them, large increases in permanent entitlement spending, and a paucity of tax cuts...

Newsweek’s Sarah Kliff, in a January 27, 2009 web-exclusive article entitled “Pro-Lifers In Obamaland,” failed to mention how several organizations and individuals she labeled as “pro-life” have friendly relations with pro-abortion Democrats. She also tried to portray the pro-life movement as being “split” between “those who are preparing for the fight of their lives and those who see an opportunity to redefine what it means to be pro-life,” with the latter being the organizations sympathetic to the Democrats. Kliff wrote sympathetically of these groups, which are actually trying to muddy the waters of pro-life activism Kliff began by introducing Sister...

NEW YORK -- When Rick Stengel joined Time in 1981, every story in progress filled a thick binder -- the reporter's version, the editor's rewritten version, the top editors' version, the fact-checked version -- that would be unimaginable in today's cut-to-the-bone corporate culture. Many of the recently laid-off staffers, Stengel says, "were people whose jobs really didn't exist anymore." ... Morale in both shops has been devastated as staffers complain about a blurred identity, lack of direction, management snafus and outsourcing to big-name writers that has left them wondering if reporters still have much of a role. ... Time has...

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...

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...

On Thursday night's "Hardball," Chris Matthews played several clips from documentarian John Zeigler's interview with Sarah Palin, in which the former GOP VP candidate criticized Katie Couric and the press as a whole for bias against her but his guest, Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter, dismissed Palin's charges as "So lame," and called her "a Nixonian Nanook of the North." The following exchanges were aired on the January 8, edition of "Hardball": First up, after Matthews aired a clip of Palin criticizing the McCain campaign for forcing her to conduct continuing interviews with Couric, Alter called the Alaskan governor: "So lame."...

Call this a lowering of expectations by a figurehead of the mainstream media. Newsweek editor Jon Meacham spoke candidly about his expectations for President-elect Barack Obama at an appearance promoting his latest book about former President Andrew Jackson, "American Lion," at the Politics & Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 7. Meacham was asked to draw a comparison between Jackson and Obama on foreign policy, but told the audience he had doubts has to whether or not Obama was going to live up to the expectations many on the left had, especially when it came to the so-called past...

The mainstream media has actually accelerated its slobbering over its Messiah, “The One,” Barack Obama. I thought it couldn’t get worse (I always think that and I’m always surprised when it always gets worse), but take a look at Newsweek, the weekly newsmagazine for Jan. 5, 2009. As you know, Newsweek is beginning to look like Oprah’s magazine. She runs a picture of Oprah on every cover. It seems Newsweek is running a picture of Mr. Obama on every cover. Can it get worse than that? On the Jan. 5 issue titled “The Global Elite” the cover has a picture...

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...

Rev. Jeremiah Wright was a voice crying in the wilderness that the mainstream media and middle class America weren't quite ready for and megachurch pastor Rick Warren is an ignorant evangelical rube who isn't totally without hope, given his awareness of AIDS and other favored liberal causes. That's essentially what Eleanor Clift preached to her choir in her December 19 "Capitol Letter" column, "Choosing a Church: Obama's next big decision -- and its implications." Wrote Sister Eleanor (emphasis mine): Black religious leaders did not stand up for Wright even as they understood and sympathized with the prophetic theology he was...

During the recently completed presidential campaign, Newsweek's Michael Isikoff was all excited over his "web exclusive" piece on staffers with the McCain campaign that had connections with past lobbying efforts. Back in those days Newsweek was all about the evils of those darn lobbyists. For their part, Obama supporters at the time ballyhooed the pledges that Barack Obama had made stating that his was going to be a kinder, gentler campaign, one that chased those evil lobbyists away. Phooey on those lobbyists, became the popular mantra. But, now that The One has made a successful and historic run for the...

The current Newsweek cover story by Michael Isikoff identifies one of the major sources for the New York Times article blowing the government's terrorist surveillance program. He is one Thomas Tamm. Newsweek asks: "Is he a hero or a criminal?" As I wrote over the weekend, the perspective of the photograph accompanying the article -- looking up at Tamm's craggy face -- leaves no doubt about where Newsweek stands. It's a little like Monica's accustomed perspective on Bill Clinton. In "Newsweek's hero," I argued that Tamm was quite obviously a criminal. Other bloggers have done a good job rounding out...

The high level Justice Department official who leaked FISA information to the New York Times, Thomas Tamm, is currently featured on the cover of Newsweek along with the story about his motivations for leaking the details of the top secret program to monitor communications between terrorist suspects. Newsweek attempts to portray Tamm as some sort of noble hero who was torn by his decision to violate the secrecy of the FISA program:

(Reuters) - Newsweek magazine is planning staff cuts as part of a major editorial makeover likely to result in a slimmer publication, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people close to the magazine. The cuts are expected to be outlined in two companywide meetings on Thursday, and will come from an extension of voluntary redundancies offered in the spring, when Newsweek shed 111 jobs, the paper said.

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...

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)...

Newsweek reports that "the day of the third debate, Palin refused to go onstage with New Hampshire GOP Sen. John Sununu and Jeb Bradley, a New Hampshire congressman running for the Senate, because they were pro-choice and because Bradley opposed drilling in Alaska. The McCain campaign ordered her onstage at the next campaign stop, but she refused to acknowledge the two Republican candidates standing behind her." Oh, really? First, John Sununu has a %100 pro-life rating from the National Right to Life Committee. Second, Jeb Bradley was not running for the U.S. Senate, he was running to represent NH's First...

For several years, I've been writing about Bushenfreude, the phenomenon of angry yuppies—who've hugely benefited from President Bush's tax cuts—funding angry, populist Democratic campaigns. I've theorized that people who work in financial services and related fields have become so outraged and alienated by the incompetence, crass social conservatism, and repeated insults to the nation's intelligence, of the Bush-era Republican Party, that they're voting with their hearts and heads instead of their wallets. Last week's election was perhaps Bushenfreude's grandest day. As the campaign entered its final weeks, Barack Obama, who pledged to unite the country, singled out one group of...

For several years, I've been writing about Bushenfreude, the phenomenon of angry yuppies—who've hugely benefited from President Bush's tax cuts—funding angry, populist Democratic campaigns. I've theorized that people who work in financial services and related fields have become so outraged and alienated by the incompetence, crass social conservatism, and repeated insults to the nation's intelligence, of the Bush-era Republican Party, that they're voting with their hearts and heads instead of their wallets. Last week's election was perhaps Bushenfreude's grandest day. As the campaign entered its final weeks, Barack Obama, who pledged to unite the country, singled out one group of...