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(CNN)Jan Crouch, a co-founder of Trinity Broadcasting Network and popular televangelist, has died following a stroke, her son announced Tuesday via a posting on his and his wife's website. She was 78.

COSTA MESA, Calif. — Paul Crouch, the televangelist who built what's been called the world's largest Christian broadcasting network, has died. He was 79. Crouch died at his home in California on Saturday after a decade-long fight with degenerative heart disease, his grandson, Brandon Crouch, told The Associated Press. "He was an incredible businessman, entrepreneur, visionary; he built something that impacted the world," he said. Trinity Broadcast Network had reported that Crouch fell ill and was taken to a hospital in October while visiting the network's facility in Colleyville, Texas. He later returned to California for continued treatment of "heart...

In theory, liberal and conservative perspectives should better each other by making realistic demands the opposition can meet. They should use facts like ice water, dousing those who have grown too hot with their own ideology. Facts do not dissolve under microscopes of serious scrutiny the way factoids, or half-truths, do. For years, Americans could battle with facts. We had a democratic sense of government that faced human limitations and foibles but remained focused on progress from some kind of ignorance to some kind of enlightenment. Consequently, this spirit of compromise worked past the inevitable corruption coming from the left...

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. — For 39 years, the Trinity Broadcasting Network has urged viewers to give generously and reap the Lord’s bounty in return. The prosperity gospel preached by Paul and Janice Crouch, who built a single station into the world’s largest Christian television network, has worked out well for them. Mr. and Mrs. Crouch have his-and-her mansions one street apart in a gated community here, provided by the network using viewer donations and tax-free earnings. But Mrs. Crouch, 74, rarely sleeps in the $5.6 million house with tennis court and pool. She mostly lives in a large company house...

Family Feud Reveals Luxuries At Largest Christian TV Network Granddaughter attacks founders, who accuse her of embezzlement The Trinity Broadcasting Network, which also runs the Holy Land Experience theme park in Orlando, Fla., is at the center of a family battle. By Erik Eckholm NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. — For 39 years, the Trinity Broadcasting Network has urged viewers to give generously and reap the Lord’s bounty in return. The prosperity gospel preached by Paul and Janice Crouch, who built a single station into the world’s largest Christian television network, has worked out well for them. Mr. and Mrs. Crouch have...

After 23 years in the special top audience time slots with Trinity Broadcasting Network, Dr. Jack Van Impe has pulled the plug. Reasons cited are that, TBN’s top execs don’t want Van Impe naming names of ministers and ministries that Van Impe says are teaching corruptions of the gospel. Among the names Van Impe specifically referred to were Robert Schuller (Crystal Cathedral) and Rick Warren (Purpose Driven Life). TBN’s policy is that no one using air time with the TBN is allowed to rebuke or criticize other ministers. It is not known whether TBN includes ministers who are not part...

Ronald Reagan and the so-called Reagan Revolution have come under the critical hammer of scholars for some time now. But the black nationalist Malcolm X - now called a civil rights leader, though he never was one - is finally beginning to achieve such position under the scholarly microscope. The reason that this is only happening nearly 50 years after his assassination is simple: Those bullying and ruthlessly maudlin ideologues who for so long preferred posturing to thought began to die off and the people victimized by them and other kinds of hustlers for decades are now beginning to grow...

Gospel superstar Andrae Crouch and his twin sister, Sandra, confirm meeting with Michael Jackson and praying and singing with him weeks before his death. Jackson, raised as a member of the Jehovah's Witness sect and reportedly a convert to Islam last year, sought out the Crouches for inspiration for his upcoming tour, for which he was unprepared, according to a report in Assist News Service. But while some blogs have reported that meeting led to a spiritual conversion by Jackson, the Crouches say they are not certain. "Not sure where that came from," said Sandra Crouch on her Facebook page....

If John Travolta, an avid user of his private jet and a reported Republican, were to be stopped by law from purchasing an armed fighter plane, would the film actor suddenly be surrounded by the same people who sanctimoniously claim that the Constitution protects the private citizen's right to buy and own an assault rifle? That seems an absurd question, but we often find ourselves in absurd circumstances when we get to the gun issue. A hard fact leers before us: on the subject of guns, constitutional meaning and misinterpretation have been mixed together for so long that far too...

Ours is a country capable of almost constant surprise, especially when the chips are down. That is why the appearance of Sarah Palin is the most startling thing to happen in American politics since Barack Obama took Iowa last January. Give them a reason, and they will gather behind you. John McCain gave them Sarah Palin and they gathered. Whether through a combination of desperation, condescension and sheer lucky nerve, or something else altogether that no one can explain, John McCain and the Republicans have taken charge for the moment. They finally have succeeded in completely appropriating and redefining all...

Tonight in California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is going to have a closed meeting with those trying to get Stanley (Tookie) Williams clemency and those in law enforcement who want Williams to meet his end on Tuesday. Williams, who was sentenced to death after being found guilty of murdering four people in 1979, has the dubious honor of being one of the founders of the vicious street gang, the Crips. Still, Williams is being held up as an example of redemption because he has supposedly turned his life around. He has written children's books that speak out against gang violence. But...

When we look at the ongoing crisis in the depths of black America, it is sometimes hard to understand why there was such an explosion of outrage at Bill Cosby. One would have thought that he did the very worst thing possible when he called on the carpet the self-destructive behavior that separates prosperity from poverty. What Cosby showed was how dangerous defensiveness in face of the facts can be to any serious discussion of poverty. Poverty and ignorance have always been well-acquainted. Part of the problem at the bottom is ignorance. Part of the problem of those who suffer...

Cage the monsters Thursday, April 14th, 2005 Once again, with the same savage thrust that it always has, youth gang violence has erupted in murder and assault. On a Bronx subway platform, a 17-year-old student from DeWitt Clinton High School was murdered by a group of knuckleheads. That much is clear: the boy is dead; the murderers were knuckleheads. At this point, however, we cannot so easily assume that these young men, who used machetes to express their barbaric limitations, are the victims of poverty, single-parent households, drink and drugs. All of those things might be in there somewhere, but...

The old adage that says you should never argue in public with a fool because passersby cannot tell the difference seems to have no weight in our time. The success of pumped-up volume and personal attack has contaminated everything. That is why there is a great lesson to be learned from the mess at CBS News. In his marvelously funny and unapologetic book, "Attack Poodles," James Wolcott opens up on right-wing pundits. He defines them as vicious pets that charge not with bites - that would be too dangerous - but with barks that translate into mud. Each bark is...

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com Forget fluff, focus on jihad Thursday, July 15th, 2004 The constant discussion of John Kerry and John Edwards in superficial, gossip-column terms may result in their soon being called John & John or J & J, but it will not change something that we have to keep our eyes on, here and abroad. The Islamic extremists bent on waging holy war will not disappear. They are intent on destroying secular governments and turning the clock back to a time when the worshipers of Allah ran what was then considered the world. One can...

POLITICS-U.S.:Pentagon Hawk Released -- Straws in the Wind? Analysis - By Jim Lobe WASHINGTON, Oct 30 (IPS) - A major Pentagon hawk has abruptly resigned his post in a move that, in the context of other recent developments, is likely to fuel speculation that the White House might be trying to soften the harder edges of its controversial policies. The Pentagon announced Wednesday evening that Assistant Secretary of Defence for International Security Policy, J.D. Crouch II, was resigning effective Friday, in order to return to ''academia'' at Southwest Missouri State University (SMSU). Significantly, the announcement did not give a reason...

'Karaoke killer' lived it up on lam Fugitive vacation By Lawrence Buser buser@gomemphis.com June 29, 2003 Joseph Leroy Crouch Jr.'s 21-month Florida vacation filled with gambling, golf and karaoke came to a dramatic and abrupt end this year after a series of armed robberies. Just before midnight on March 16, the FBI and several SWAT teams burst into his third-floor condo in Daytona Beach Shores and arrested him in the killing of his wife in Memphis two years ago. The 61-year-old former mortgage broker knew his secret life under the alias Jay Nelson was over and that he likely had...

We are now hearing of how bad things are in East Africa for those who are fleeing war-torn areas and waiting in refugee camps to immigrate to the U.S. Some are eating only once a day; a woman was raped and shot to death; many who were cleared for immigration before Sept. 11 are stuck in terrible conditions, all because of the way our intensified security has backed things up. I feel empathy for those mostly Muslim people, but I also am opposed to anyone from any Islamic country coming into America for at least another decade. Everything I have...

LeRoi Jones, aka Amiri Baraka, has been asked to resign as poet laureate of New Jersey. He refuses. Hmm. The governor wants him gone because of what have been interpreted as anti-Semitic statements in his poem - if one wants to call it that - "Somebody Blew Up America," written after Sept. 11, 2001. The governor has it all wrong. Jones should not be asked to resign. Those who appointed him should resign - if they have read his work over the last 35 years. It is an incoherent mix of racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, black nationalism, anarchy and ad hominem...

Chilling shadows from a dark future are falling upon us. The FBI assures us we can expect suicide bombers to go into action. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld assures us that terrorists eventually will get nuclear weapons and make use of them. Yesterday, the Brooklyn Bridge was closed by terrorist threats. We are in a mess. We are, in fact, in a war. However new it might be to us, it is a war. Our former mayor, Rudy Giuliani, discussed the fact of that war with the press the other day. He was answering questions after a screening of HBO's "In...