Free Republic

Saturday morning’s Washington Post headline and first sub-headline, page one and above-the-fold, nicely captured the confusions that prevailed as of 6 p.m. Friday, in the matter of tweaks to the “contraceptive mandate” issued by the Obama administration’s Department of Health and Human Services: “Obama shifts on birth control / Catholic leaders open to plan.” Well, no, and no. The administration “shifted” on nothing. It simply decreed that insurers, not employers, must provide “preventive services” (including sterilization and abortifacient drugs), a shell game that has been variously and accurately described as a “fraud” (Andrew McCarthy, in the Corner) and an “absurdity”...

No, the pope is not supporting Occupy Wall Street. It’s been a bad three and a half decades for self-styled “progressive” Catholics.First, there was John Paul II, whom many in that camp habitually labeled a charismatic reactionary. Yet the Polish pope was a hero all over the world during an epic pontificate that bent history’s arc in a more humane direction, and did so without the aid of liberation theology. John Paul’s funeral Mass on April 8, 2005, became, in the apt phrase of NBC anchor Brian Williams, “the human event of a generation,” a moniker unlikely to be attached...

A reminder about the totalitarian temptationThe Washington Post’s culture critic, Philip Kennicott, recently took to the pages of his paper to note the “cognitive dissonance” between ingrained “habits of homophobia” in American culture, on the one hand, and a recognition that “overt bigotry is no longer acceptable in the public square,” on the other. As an example of those who resolve this dissonance by holding fast to their homophobic prejudices, Kennicott cited Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, who had remarked on the similarities between the Empire State’s recent re-definition of marriage and the kind of human engineering attempted by...

Anxiety was pretty high in the heat of battle with the race for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate. However, a lot of that tension exists beyond the state of Delaware and there have been self-proclaimed conventional wisdom wizards critical of how the electoral process in Delaware has worked itself out. One of those has been former embattled Washington Post blogger Dave Weigel, who in a Slate.com post dated Sept. 14, took a few shots at conservative talker Mark Levin, calling him a "creep" for his criticisms of The Weekly Standard John McCormack, author of an unfavorable story about Delaware...

Dave Weigel might have changed jobs, but that's about all. Weigel, the one-time Washington Post blogger assigned to cover conservatives, but who actually bashed them on a regular basis, left the Post only to be hired by another Post-owned publication - Slate. Now that he's at Slate, he's also up to his old tricks, comparing opponents of the Ground Zero Mosque to the czars who used to murder Jews by the thousands. Oh sure, he doesn't say that, but he does. First, the pretend conservative complains about the "Greak[sic] Mosque Freak-Out of 2010" and how some Americans

The case of Mr. David Weigel, a reporter who was hired by The Washington Post to blog about conservatives and who resigned from his job on June 25, exposed the inner workings of journalism in America. But what has been most telling about the case since then hasn't just been Weigel's actions or the revelations of other journalists on "Journolist," -- which is described by The Post as "an off-the-record listserv for several hundred independent to left-leaning commentators and journalists that was founded in 2007" -- but how other journalists have reacted to the news. Although it has long been...

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh famously said he hoped President Obama would “fail” in January, 2009. Almost a year later, when Limbaugh was rushed to the hospital with chest pains, Washington Post reporter David Weigel had a wish of his own. “I hope he fails,” Weigel cracked to fellow liberal reporters on the “Journolist” email list-serv. “Too soon?” he wondered. Weigel was hired this spring by the Post to cover the conservative movement. Almost from the beginning there have been complaints that his coverage betrays a personal animus toward conservatives. E-mails obtained by the Daily Caller suggest those complaints have...

FIRST ON FBDC: FishbowlDC has confirmed that WaPo conservative-beat blogger Dave Weigel has resigned after a slew of his anti-conservative comments and emails surfaced on FishbowlDC and Daily Caller over the past two days. A spokesperson for the Post said the paper will not offer additional comments but confirmed that the writer's resignation was accepted.

David Weigel’s tough week continues. A day after Fishbowl DC published emails he wrote to the off-the-record list serve JournoList disparaging various conservatives, the Daily Caller digs up even more emails from the same source, suggesting a similar pattern of disdain for the people he covers. In them, he wishes for the death of Rush Limbaugh, accuses pundits and Republicans of “racism” and calls Matt Drudge an “amoral shut-in.”

Washington Post blogger Dave Weigel resigned today after a host of offensive e-mails surfaced revealing his disdain for much of the right - the beat he was charged with covering. Fishbowl DC, which published a number of those emails yesterday, confirmed the resignation with the Post just after noon. Yesterday I reported on leaked emails from Weigel to a listserve of liberal journalists bashing conservatives and conservatism - you know, the people Weigel is supposed to be covering. As bad as those email were, a plethora of messages from Weigel published in the Daily Caller take the conservative-bashing to a...

FishbowlDC has obtained e-mails written by WaPo's conservative-beat blogger Dave Weigel, that the scribe sent to JournoList, a listserv for liberal journalists. (Read up on JournoList with Yahoo! News's Michael Calderone's 2009 story that he wrote for Politico). Seems Weigel doesn't like (and that would be putting it mildly) at least some of the conservatives he covers. Poor Drudge - Weigel wants him to light himself on fire. Weigel's Words: •"This would be a vastly better world to live in if Matt Drudge decided to handle his emotional problems more responsibly, and set himself on fire."

I'm a member of an off-the-record list-serv called "Journolist," founded by my colleague Ezra Klein. Last Monday, I was deluged with angry e-mail after posting a story about Rep. Bob Etheridge (D-N.C.) that was linked by the Drudge Report with a headline intimating that I defended his roughing-up of a young man with a camera; after this, the Washington Examiner posted a gossip item about my dancing at a friend's wedding. Unwisely, I lashed out to Journolist, which I've come to view as a place to talk bluntly to friends. Below the fold are quotes from me e-mailing the list...

Jonah Goldberg had a great description of a style of liberal journalism where Liberals go into the jungles, like Dian Fossey to describe Conservatives: ...whenever I read liberals reporting about the goings-on of conservatives I always get the nature-documentary vibe. A liberal reporter puts on his or her Dian Fossey hat in order to attempt to write another installment of Conservatives in the Mist. I've followed this particular brand of reporting for years, it's almost a fetish of mine. Most attempts fail. Of these lesser varieties, there's fear ("Troglodytes!"), mockery ("Irrelevant troglodytes!"), condescension ("I had to explain to them they're...

Prior to the opening of formal conversations between officials of the Holy See and leaders of the Lefebvrist Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), which began on Oct. 26, the mainstream media frequently misrepresented these discussions as a negotiation aimed at achieving a compromise that both sides can live with. That was to be expected from reporters and commentators for whom everything is politics and everything is thus negotiable. Alas, similar misrepresentations came from “Vatican insiders” who suggested that the teaching of the Second Vatican Council was under joint review by the Holy See and the SSPX, which only made...

July 24, 2009, 0:00 p.m. Leszek Kolakowski, 1927–2009Remembering the great philosophical pathologist of Marxism. By George Weigel Cracow, Poland — Leszek Kolakowski, who died at 82 on July 17, will be remembered by the world of letters as one of the leading philosophers of the late 20th century, a man whose magisterial Main Currents of Marxism will be read centuries from now by anyone interested in getting at the intellectual roots of one of modernity’s most consequential — and lethal — bodies of thought. His native Poland will remember Kolakowski as one of a small group of intellectuals who,...

The revenge of Justice and Peace (or so they may think). By George Weigel In the often unpredictable world of the Vatican, it was as certain as anything could be in mid-1990 that there would be a 1991 papal encyclical to commemorate the centenary of Rerum Novarum — the 1891 letter of Leo XIII that is rightly regarded as the Magna Carta of modern Catholic social doctrine. The Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, which imagines itself the curial keeper of the flame of authentic Catholic social teaching, prepared a draft, which was duly sent to Pope John Paul II...

A Bad Year for the Neocons Who is more Catholic than the Pope? Brian Mershon REMNANT COLUMNIST, North Carolina By all accounts, 2009 has been a challenging year for Neocon Catholics. Lamenting the spread of the Traditional Latin Mass to their own diocesan parishes since the Pope issued Summorum Pontificum July 7, 2007, the recent revelations concerning the founder of the Legion of Christ, Father Marcial Maciel, the death of Father Richard John Neuhaus, and now the dissolving of the excommunications of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), the Neocon Catholic worldview is clearly being undermined George Weigel’s recent...

George Weigel Washington DC, Oct 16, 2008 / 05:49 am (CNA).- Catholic political commentator George Weigel has criticized pro-life Catholics who support the pro-abortion rights Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama. Writing for Newsweek magazine, he criticizes pro-life Obama supporters such as Pepperdine University law professor Doug Kmiec and suggests their emergence may portend a “hardening of the battle lines” within the Catholic Church regardless of who wins the presidency this November.According to Weigel, Kmiec argues that Obama sounds more Catholic on issues such as the family wage, health-care costs and the war in Iraq and “comes reasonably close”...

June 20George Weigel  Theologian & Senior Fellow, Ethics & Public Policy Center in Washington, DC. Recent USCCB Spring Meeting; the growing schism in the Anglican Communion George Weigel, Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, is a Catholic theologian and one of America's leading public intellectuals. Professional ExperienceA native of Baltimore, he was educated at St. Mary's Seminary College in his native city, and at the University of St. Michael's College in Toronto. In 1975, Weigel moved to Seattle where he was Assistant Professor of Theology and Assistant (later Acting) Dean of Studies at the St....

This must be conservative month on C-Span2's Book TV. Author and Catholic theologian George Weigel was today's guest on In Depth, the three hour interview program during which he discussed his books and took questions from viewers. He has written on the life of Pope Paul II as well as the gay-priest acandal and the morality of the Iraq War. Among other topics he discussed the war at length, saying that it was and still is morally defensible and that there is simply no justification for us to back away from it now. He also took a swipe at those...