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COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Disgraced evangelical leader Ted Haggard says in a new documentary that he still struggles with his sexuality yet is committed to his marriage for the sake of his children. Haggard, 52, resigned as president of the National Association of Evangelicals and was fired as senior pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs in November 2006 after a former male prostitute went public with allegations that Haggard paid him for sex and used methamphetamine. A father of five, Haggard had said he bought the drugs but never used them. He confessed to undisclosed "sexual immorality" and...

McCain 'laughed' at BlackBerry comment MIAMI, Sept. 16 (UPI) -- John McCain's presidential campaign has quickly backed away from an adviser's statement that seemed to indicate the Republican helped "create" the BlackBerry. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, one of the Arizona lawmaker's top economic advisers, cited McCain's tenure as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee during a briefing with reporters on the GOP candidate's plans for the Wall Street crisis, The New York Times (NYSE:NYT) reported Tuesday. "He didn't have jurisdiction over financial markets, first and foremost,'' Holtz-Eakin said of McCain's experience on the committee. Excerpt. ______________________________________________________ See related stories: "some in the...

DHP Review: Religulous Posted by Dirty Harry on Thursday, August 21st, 2008 While more entertaining and better paced, director Larry Charles‘ Religulous can’t help but remind of Morgan Spurlock’s dreadful Where In The World Is Osama bin Laden?, especially at the end where both films are undone by their attempts to close on serious points the preceding 90 minutes of antics simply can’t sustain. It’s surprising Charles let this one get away from him. After all, he also directed Borat, and one of the few saving graces of that humiliation-fest was that it never lost sight of the fact that...

A Democrat campaigning for the White House must feel like a soldier advancing through a mine field. At any moment, he or she is one step away from being blown out of the contest. And the poor wretch is surrounded by a ravenous mob of media hounds, each of whom is eager to set off the fatal charge. Gotcha! Still worse, almost all the media volleys are fired toward the port side. If a Republican or (so-called) “conservative” makes a gaffe, as they do almost daily, their “misspeak” is usually politely ignored. Or if it is simply too awful to...

"The Sept. 11 attacks, the Iraq war and suicide bombings worldwide have changed not only the way we live but the way we look at those around us, especially Muslims. "Islamophobia" has entered the American vernacular, and the anti-Muslim attitudes and prejudice it describes remain common. Content Special Section: What Would You Do?But what if you witnessed "Islamophobia" in action and saw someone being victimized because of someone else's prejudices? What would you do? ABC's production crew outfitted The Czech Stop, a bustling roadside bakery north of Waco, Texas, with hidden cameras and two actors. One played a female customer...

<p>LOS ANGELES — Will Smith is angry over celebrity gossip Web site articles that he said misinterpreted a recent remark he made in a Scottish newspaper about Adolf Hitler. In a story published Saturday in the Daily Record, Smith was quoted saying: "Even Hitler didn't wake up going, 'let me do the most evil thing I can do today.' I think he woke up in the morning and using a twisted, backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was 'good."' The quote was preceded by the writer's observation: "Remarkably, Will believes everyone is basically good." Over the weekend, dozens of celebrity gossip Web sites posted articles about the comment, many saying that Smith believed that Hitler was a "good" person. "It is an awful and disgusting lie," Smith said in a statement Monday provided by his publicist. "It speaks to the dangerous power of an ignorant person with a pen. I am incensed and infuriated to have to respond to such ludicrous misinterpretation." "Adolf Hitler was a vile, heinous vicious killer responsible for one of the greatest acts of evil committed on this planet," read the statement.</p>

WBZ) BOSTON Giving the little people a chance to face off with "big people" is what makes the New Hampshire primary famous. Rudy Giuliani is the latest candidate to get caught off guard by a cut-to-the-chase question from a voter. I spoke with the Derry, New Hampshire woman who brought him up short, and she's feeling the heat for her question. Katherine Prudhomme-O'Brien says she was just curious about the apparent lack of support for their father's candidacy by Giuliani's son and daughter from a previous marriage, but that query and Giuliani's dismissive reply have been the buzz of the...

Clay Aiken and ClayNation Undergo New Round of Attacks by James Shepherd (2006/01/28) -------------------------------------------------------- There is nothing like a National Enquirer article to start a new tempest within the ClayNation. This is not the first time that the Enquirer has "picked on" Clay Aiken, but then, the Enquirer and other tabloids like to center on true celebrities because this is what gains them higher readership. Since Clay Aiken is, without a doubt, one of the most interesting and successful recording artists to have come out of American Idol, you really can not blame the Enquirer for doing its job well....

For the major media, Watergate was the "good war," in which purely heroic reporters brought down the thoroughly villainous Richard Nixon. So the belated revelation that W. Mark Felt was Deep Throat is being cheered by the press establishment - even if those cheers sound a bit like last gasps. Not surprisingly, The Washington Post ran seven self-back-patting articles yesterday, including two on the front page. But others in the Old Media joined in, too: Felt-is-"Throat" led all three nightly broadcast news shows and filled up countless other news holes. For the mostly liberal MSM - mainstream media - the...

'This was a f---ing mess, man." Kevin Sites peers at the monitor in the bright Californian sunlight, trying to make out the images on the screen. But Sites doesn't really have to look. This is his film, his moment; the images on the screen ones that have come to define his life. [Barf Alert] Kevin Sites is the journalist who captured the moment when a young US army marine shot an equally young insurgent inside a mosque in Falluja in November last year. Sites' video, broadcast around the world, caused a storm. [snip] "I knew what I had right away,"...

It was classic "media gotcha," using the "Vietnam and Watergate" storyline of "United States bad, Third World good" -- but the phony story led to riots, deaths and an embarrassing retraction. I refer, of course, to Newsweek's "Koran flushing" story in the May 1 issue. The sin of greed creeps into every scandal, and it lurks behind this tragic incident. Newsweek wants "market share," and hot stories grab readers. But profit generated by a frantic "me first" quest isn't the only motive. The "Vietnam-Watergate" press template is also involved. "Vietnam-Watergate" is a tired and phony game. For three decades it's...

Backlash fear over Saddam picturesDaily Mail Sensational pictures of Saddam Hussein in his underwear were printed last night - reigniting the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal. The toppled dictator is seen in his jail cell wearing nothing but white underpants as he folds a pair of trousers. Saddam is being held by U.S. guards and it is believed the photographs, printed in later editions of today's Sun, were taken by American sources. The newspaper would not say how it came by the pictures or give any details about how they were taken. But the humiliating image of such a high-profile prisoner...

NEW YORK In a front-page note to readers this morning, Tom Griscom, editor and publisher of the Chattanooga (Tenn.) Times Free Press, quoted a local military spokesman and a top ethicist in defending his reporter Edward Lee Pitts, who prompted a U.S. soldier to put a challenging question to Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld on Wednesday. He also quoted from an email from Pitts: “It is amazing these guys are defending freedom but don't want free speech in their own country." Griscom admitted that, in hindsight, “information on how the question was framed should have been included” in the reporter's story...

GUEST OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR Los Angeles Say that an I.R.S. agent leaks a politician's income tax return to a newspaper reporter, an act that is a federal felony. The newspaper may have a First Amendment right to publish the information, especially since it bears on a matter of public interest. The government, meanwhile, is entitled to punish the agent, to protect citizens' privacy and ensure a fair and efficient tax system. To punish the agent, prosecutors may need to get the leaker's name from the reporter; but if the reporter refuses to testify because of a "journalist's privilege" to protect confidential...

By now, you know the broadcast media stories involving Dan Rather and broadcast peers at CBS, but nowhere is media bias more pronounced at the newspaper of record, "The New York Times." Notice how, unlike most of those claiming the existence of media bias, I do not put the Times' description in quotation marks. That's because the Times is America's paper of record, and what they write impacts the world. Maybe that's why news observers like myself are concerned when liberal bias escapes the Times' editorial page and makes it to the front page in the form of a headline...

Between the end of the Republican National Convention and Election Day, the Houston Chronicle spent roughly 50,000 words on President George W. Bush and his campaign for re-election. Perhaps most impressive, one of its own columnists had major news to break on the race. He just didn't, umm, break it to the Chronicle. Russ Baker, a New York-based freelance journalist and contributing editor at Columbia Journalism Review, had been circling the reporting waters around President Bush for several months, dialing up hundreds of possible sources for material on the commander in chief. "I just didn't think we really knew enough...