Politics

Marco Rubio and the media's curiously inconsistent approach to science

I wonder if any of our readers have read Thomas Nagel’s new book Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False. I’ve been reading the reviews and they’re fascinating. The New Republic review says Nagel, a devout atheist, has “performed an important service with his withering critical examination of some of the most common and oppressive dogmas of our age.”


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Pod people: Red America and Bible Belt atheists

On the latest Issues, Etc. podcast, host Todd Wilken and I discuss my recent post on a Washington Post story that featured a red-state American in her natural habitat.


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Preachers and politics: Be careful out there folks ...

Today’s digest from the Religion News Service (sign up for this very helpful service, if you have not already done so) points readers toward a very important story in the wake of this year’s White House race. Come to think of it, this story has been highly relevant in every single national election year since, oh, 1973. Here is the short RNS blurb for this story:


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On media malpractice and Savita Halappanavar's tragic death

Back in March I wrote in “How To Cover A Hate Crime” about my obsession about the horrific beating death of Shaima Al Awadhi, a 32-year-old mother of five:


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Got news? Obama as Antichrist prequel draws silence

Let me state, right up front, that I would be the first news-media critic to argue that mainstream press folks are too quick to take a single statement by a single, often obscure, conservative preacher and then turn it into a national story about how all Fundamentalist or even evangelical Christians think about a given topic. In fact, I once went so far as to argue, at Poynter.org, that it was time for journalists to pay less attention to the Rev. Pat Robertson for precisely this reason.


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Shock: Bishops decide to defend Catholic tradition!

OK, let’s deal with some basic questions about Catholic bishops and politics.


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Peter Beinart and the powerful, but voiceless, Jews of Atlanta

The New York Times published an interesting story about the Atlanta Jewish Book Festival (“Jewish Book Event in Atlanta Cancels Author’s Talk on Zionism, and Uproar Follows“). It’s a great piece with the weirdest missing element. Here’s the top:


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Red-state American in her natural habitat

I gotta admit: Just a few sentences into this Washington Post feature on post-election Red America and I was already worried.


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