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After reading Andrew Sullivan's Newsweek essay about President Obama, his critics, and his re-election bid, I implore him to ponder just one question. How would you have reacted in 2008 if any Republican ran promising to do the following?

The Republican establishment hopes the GOP base will calm down, sober up, and nominate Mitt Romney. But the party’s new primary system may stand in the way. -------------------------------------------------------- Every time I look at the economy I think President Obama can’t win. And every time I look at the Republican field I think he can’t lose. Let’s face it: this is a weak field. A seemingly endless string of polls and debates have produced a series of frontrunners who, as LBJ said of the Republicans of his day, couldn’t pour pee out of a boot if the instructions were on the...

The Coffee Party Heats Up Tired of all the Tea Party talk, Annabel Park decided to throw a Coffee Party—and 200,000 people showed up. By Steve Tuttle | NEWSWEEK Apr 22, 2010 When Annabel Park imagined what it would be like to head a new national political movement, here is what she had in mind: a coming together of engaged, intelligent citizens who had tired of the angry rhetoric and accusations of the Tea Partiers; Americans of all political persuasions joining in a spirit of equanimity to discuss the nation's problems, and maybe even share a laugh. It was this...

During an appearance on Morning Joe, Tuesday, Newsweek editor Tina Brown made an off-hand remark about Barack Obama, conceding that the politician "wasn't ready" to be President. Brown has previously attacked Rush Limbaugh and other conservatives for daring to oppose the Obama While discussing whether New Jersey Governor Chris Christie will change his mind and run for President, the former New Yorker editor blurted, "Actually, I just hope he doesn't, because in the end, you know, his tremendous misgivings, maybe he is right. I mean, We had this with Obama. He wasn't ready, it turns out, really."

To Protect Obama Donor, White House Pressures General to Alter Testimony Diane Ellis, Ed. In January, the Federal Communications Commission granted a license to a satellite broadband company in Virginia called LightSquared to build tens of thousands of ground stations for a wireless network. However, the Pentagon has since raised concerns that the proposed wireless service could interfere with the military's GPS capabilities, which have not only replaced maps for millions of drivers, but also serve a crucial role in missile targeting and other defense-related tasks. Gen. William Shelton, a four-star Air Force general who oversees U.S. Space Command was...

Progressive Jonathan Alter is outraged that everyone is ready to “fire” Obama. “I want to know,” wrote a snippy Alter on Bloomberg.com, “on a substantive basis, why you think he deserves to be in a dead heat with Mitt Romney and Rick Perry and only a few points ahead of Ron Paul and Michele Bachmann in a new Gallup Poll. Is it just that any president -- regardless of circumstances and party -- who presides over 9 percent unemployment deserves to lose?”I was tempted to treat Alter with the “What? You got to be kidding,” routine. Any Republican should be...

“Tell me again why Barack Obama has been such a bad president?� Jonathan Alter writes in his column.Alter tells us he’s not talking here about Obama as a tactician and communicator, and he’s not interested in hearing ad hominem attacks or about people’s generalized “disappointment.� (Neither am I.) He wants to know on a substantive basis why Obama should be judged to have failed so far.In Alter’s words, “Your mission, Jim [or anyone else for that matter], should you decide to accept it, is to be specific and rational, not vague and visceral.�Consider the mission accepted.In one sense, the answer...

“Tell me again why Barack Obama has been such a bad president?” Jonathan Alter writes in his column. Alter tells us he’s not talking here about Obama as a tactician and communicator, and he’s not interested in hearing ad hominem attacks or about people’s generalized “disappointment.” (Neither am I.) He wants to know on a substantive basis why Obama should be judged to have failed so far. In Alter’s words, “Your mission, Jim [or anyone else for that matter], should you decide to accept it, is to be specific and rational, not vague and visceral.” Consider the mission accepted. In...

Tell me again why Barack Obama has been such a bad president? I'm not talking here about him as a tactician and communicator. We can agree that he has played some bad poker with Congress. And let’s stipulate that at the moment he’s falling short in the intangibles of leadership. I’m thinking instead of that opening sequence in the show “Mission Impossible,” the one where Jim Phelps, played by Peter Graves, gets his instructions.

Three days after he decried the lack of civility in American politics, President Obama is quoted in a new book about his presidency referring to the Tea Party movement using a derogatory term with sexual connotations. In Jonathan Alter’s “The Promise: President Obama, Year One,” President Obama is quoted in an interview saying that the unanimous vote of House Republicans vote against the stimulus bills “set the tenor for the whole year ... That helped to create the tea-baggers and empowered that whole wing of the Republican Party to where it now controls the agenda for the Republicans.” Tea Party...

Three days after he decried the lack of civility in American politics, President Obama is quoted in a new book about his presidency referring to the Tea Party movement using a derogatory term with sexual connotations. In Jonathan Alter’s “The Promise: President Obama, Year One,” President Obama is quoted in an November 30, 2009, interview saying that the unanimous vote of House Republicans vote against the stimulus bills “set the tenor for the whole year ... That helped to create the tea-baggers and empowered that whole wing of the Republican Party to where it now controls the agenda for the...

Rep. Michele Bachmann has declined to get into the scrum with Newsweek over its cover story of the presidential candidate called "The Queen of Rage," accompanied by an unflattering photo of the Minnesota Republican, but others are calling the magazine out of bounds in its depiction. The National Organization for Women (NOW) President Terry O'Neill said that the cover of the magazine's latest edition is "sexist" and referred to a simple test by the group's founder Gloria Steinem to explain how they determined that conclusion -- would the magazine do the same to a man.

The president of the National Organization of Women actually rose to Rep. Michele Bachmann’s defense yesterday (didn’t see that coming!), while Newsweek editor Tina Brown tried to justify the “Crazy Eyes� cover that inspired so much conservative commentary yesterday. But one person seem disinclined to talk about the cover one way or another and that was Bachmann herself. As of yesterday afternoon, Bachmann still hadn’t seen the picture and she didn’t seem to care too much to talk about it when she could be talking about her campaign and her ideas for the country: Brown claims the cover is OK...

Rep. Michele Bachmann has declined to get into the scrum with Newsweek over its cover story of the presidential candidate called "The Queen of Rage," accompanied by an unflattering photo of the Minnesota Republican, but others are calling the magazine out-of-bounds in its depiction. The National Organization for Women President Terry O'Neill said that the cover of the magazine's latest edition is "sexist" and referred to a simple test by the group's founder Gloria Steinem to explain how they determined that conclusion -- would the magazine do the same to a man. "Who has ever called a man 'The King...

Just when you thought Sarah Palin was fading from view, boom, she’s back. On the cover of Newsweek. Looking distinctly unpresidential in a gray hoodie that says “Edge Fitness,” hands on hips, hair blown back. In a Newsweek interview, the former governor of Alaska says she believes: that she can win a national election, that the field of GOP hopefuls should be bigger, and that she still has months to decide if she wants to enter. So what will she do? “I’m still thinking about it,” she told Peter J. Boyer. “I’m not so egotistical as to believe that it...

Right now if you go to newsweek.com, you'll see a basic magazine website, updated with content from the print version of the mag and a top navigation bar that directs you to content on its sister site, dailybeast.com. But starting July 19, we hear, newsweek.com will no longer exist. Instead that URL will redirect users to a channel on the Daily Beast site, like its current "politics," "entertainment," and "fashion" verticals. The Newsweek channel will still have all the archived magazine content from before (unlike Time, Newsweek puts all of its print content online), and it will be edited and...

In this week's Newsweek, Sarah Palin tells Peter J. Boyer why she thinks she can win in 2012. See more images from her cover shoot with photographer Emily Shur.

'I believe that I can win a national election,' Sarah Palin declared one recent evening, sitting in the private dining room of a hotel in rural Iowa. The occasion for her visit to quintessential small-town America was a gathering of the faithful that would have instantaneously erupted into a fervent campaign rally had she but given the word. Instead, it had been another day on the non–campaign trail, this one capped by a sweet victory: she had just attended the premiere of a glowingly positive documentary about her titled The Undefeated. “The people of America are desperate for positive change,...

It was a rare confessional moment for Barack Obama. At a Miami fundraiser in mid-June, the president acknowledged that it’s “not as cool” as it was in 2008 to support him. It isn’t just a matter of fewer hip posters and viral videos. It’s a matter of votes. Rekindling the enthusiasm of African-Americans, educated white liberals, Latinos, young people, and union members—the Democratic Party’s most loyal and progressive members—will be a huge challenge. After all, you can only elect the first African-American president once, and the past two and a half years have deeply disappointed many liberals. “I know a...

A Mark Halperin misstep this is not, but Newsweek magazine columnist Evan Thomas had some pretty strong words for President Barack Obama Friday. On “Inside Washington,” host Gordon Peterson asked his panel to suggest a way to overcome the current impasse and get Congress and the White House moving on a budget deal. Thomas offered up a solution, but also expressed his frustration with Obama. “Yeah, because it’s happened before – Obama has got to be President of the United States,” Thomas said. “He has to be two things. He has to make a public case of how bad is...

Jared Loughner, the suspect arrested in Saturday's shooting death of a federal judge and critical wounding of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Arizona), is no right-winger and certainly not a military veteran. All the same, Newsweek published an article today suggesting that Loughner's deadly rampage on Saturday was the consequence of conservative politicians dismissing the warnings of a Homeland Security report from 2009 warning about "lone wolf" attacks by right-wingers, particularly those who are armed forces veterans. In "The Missed Warning Signs," Aaron Mehta, a reporter for the Center for Public Integrity, sought to lay the blame for the shooting at the...

Newsweek and The Daily Beast will announce tomorrow morning that the two publications will merge, a source close to the deal tells The Observer. It will be a 50-50 merger of the two companies. The editorial staffs will combine under the editorship of Tina Brown, who will again run a high-profile glossy.

It sounds like the start of a bad joke: Barry Diller, Tina Brown and Sidney Harman walk into a (coffee) bar… …And walk out with a Frankenstein merger of their unprofitable media ventures. News-and-culture website Daily Beast and Newsweek magazine, which the 92-year-old Harman took off the Washington Post Co.’s hands this summer, are merging into a joint venture called Newsweek Daily Beast Company. Brown writes in a Daily Beast post that the three of them — the media-and-Internet mogul, the diva editor and the nonagenarian stereo magnate, respectively – agreed over a mug of coffee to mash together their...

There apparently isn’t room for two sites at the Newsweek Daily Beast Company. The new joint venture will kill off Newsweek.com, even though its audience is larger than the Beast’s. Newsweek.com, the offshoot of a 77-year-old brand, has 3.8 million monthly unique visitors to the two-year-old Beast’s 1.5 million, according to Compete.com. The Beast is the survivor, said Stephen Colvin, the company’s new CEO, “Because the Daily Beast is a very credible and successful news and opinion Web site. And with great vitality and distinct voice.”

Tina Brown is expected to address her staff at The Daily Beast this morning about its merger with Newsweek, which was confirmed late Thursday.... ...The merger follows a protracted search by Harman for a new editor-in-chief of Newsweek, which he officially purchased in early October for $1, while agreeing to take on the magazine's mountain of debt.... ...Under the terms of the deal, Newsweek and The Daily Beast will become a 50-50 joint venture called The Newsweek Daily Beast Company, owned equally by Harman and IAC. The nuances of how the editorial operation will function are still unclear, but Brown...

The depressed Democratic base needs to ask itself some questions: Do women want more representatives who oppose abortion? Do Hispanics want to see immigration reform postponed? Do young voters want college loans slashed? If they don’t, they’ll set aside whatever valid grievances they may have with Obama and mobilize. If Democrats lose control anyway, maybe nothing too bad will happen. Obama will veto GOP bills, and politics will be paralyzed for two years as the parties jostle for 2012. But a right-wing Republican takeover of Congress and state capitals isn’t something to accept with indifference. Midterms matter, and voters tempted...

Don't read Newsweek magazine while drinking a beverage. A spit take is the obvious first reaction to a column by Julia Baird headlined "The Shame of Family Films." On the Internet, this article is coded as "Why Family Films Are So Sexist." Baird's denunciation of Hollywood's fraction of decent entertainment began: "They have all been smash hits: 'Finding Nemo,' 'Madagascar,' 'Ice Age,' 'Toy Story.' Fish, penguins, rats, stuffed animals, talking toys. All good innocent family fun, right? Sure, except there are few female characters in those films. There are certainly few doing anything meaningful or heroic -- and no, Bo...

For the last several weeks there has been a debate raging over whether the grounds surrounding where the 9/11 attacks in Lower Manhattan are sacred and if it would be an appropriate place for an Islamic place of worship to be built. But if it isn’t appropriate, would it be an appropriate place for a Tea Party rally to be held? Possibly not. But whether that’s the case or not, Newsweek’s David A. Graham would have you believe there will be a so-called “Election Day Tea Party rally” held at Ground Zero, led by former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton,...

"To survive in a hostile world, guys need to embrace girly jobs and dirty diapers," argued the Newsweek writers Andrew Romano and Tony Dokoupil in the subheadline of their September 20 article "Men's Lib." The writers set out to explain "[w]hy it’s time to reimagine masculinity at work and at home." If American men want to be competitive in a global economy, they argued, they need to suck it up and get comfortable with the idea of working traditionally "girly jobs" and/or being stay at home dads: It’s possible to imagine protectionist trade and immigration policies boosting blue-collar employment at...

All the clues suggest Sarah Palin is right in the mix for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination. Consider the niche she’s carved since resigning as Alaska governor last year. A best-selling memoir, with another book in the pipeline. Keynote speaker at the National Tea Party Convention. Frenzied supporters attaching near biblical significance to every Facebook post or Tweet. And a litany of successful primary endorsements – including just this week, with obscure Alaska Senate contender Joe Miller appearing, in what would be a stunning upset, to have tipped out sitting senator (and Palin arch-nemesis) Lisa Murkowski.Just one problem: the family....

Chances are that by now you've heard about the Aug. 19, 2010, Pew poll that found that nearly one fifth of Americans (mistakenly) believe that President Obama is a Muslim. Perhaps you think that a terrifying outlier; or perhaps you're a believer, and then you are in good company. Either way, you're wrong: in fact, remarkably high numbers of Americans believe the most unusual things. Although the portion of poll respondents who believe Obama is a Muslim has risen recently, some of these oddball opinions contain more consistent numbers of believers. Here's a sampling of the nuttiest.

As soon as President Obama endorsed the Muslim community's right to build an Islamic Cultural Center two blocks from Ground Zero, the political speculation mill started churning. Republican operatives crowed about how Obama was taking a position that only a minority of Americans hold. Others shook their heads in disbelief at how Obama apparently just doesn't understand the real Americans in the Heartland who know better than New Yorkers what should be built in New York. Democrats murmured to each other that this would cost them congressional seats A week later, as the political fallout from the "Ground Zero Mosque"...

Two conflicting pieces of evidence on the state of race relations in America. Exhibit A: an African-American elected to the White House amid tears of joy and a 53 percent vote share. Exhibit B: Sarah Palin’s cheeky, defiant—and increasingly incendiary—tweets. On Wednesday, Palin leaped to defend radio host Dr. Laura Schlessinger, who used the N word 11 times when a black woman called her advice hotline last week. After the furor broke, Dr. Laura apologized for a “horrible mistake.” She also announced she would end her radio show so she could “get her First Amendment rights back” away from the...

  The transformation of Reverend Al Sharpton from street provocateur to civil rights eminence ranks as one of the more remarkable image makeovers in American public life. And mainstream journalism has played a central role. Anyone doubting as much should read the recent (August 2) cover story of Newsweek magazine, "The Reinvention of the Reverend." [1] Written by Allison Samuels and Jerry Adler, the article is a fawning and misleading portrait of the Harlem-based preacher/politician. The piece doesn't quite beatify Sharpton. But it does make a highly selective use of information, some of it factually wrong, in stating the...

While Newsweek's David Graham is hard at work defending President Obama's summertime leisure -- "A Short History of Presidential Vacation Outrage" -- by insisting that the press corps always complains about any president's vacation habits, it's instructive that he failed to indict his own magazine. "War on terrorism stalled, economy on precipice, time for a month on the Crawford ranch." Accompanied by a disapproving down arrow, that's how the August 5, 2002 Newsweek feature "Conventional Wisdom" derided President Bush's working vacation a mere three months before midterm elections in his first term.

The Washington Post Co. has agreed to sell its money-losing Newsweek magazine to California billionaire Sidney Harman, the firm said Monday. "In seeking a buyer for Newsweek, we wanted someone who feels as strongly as we do about the importance of quality journalism. We found that person in Sidney Harman," said Donald Graham, chief executive of The Washington Post Company. Harman vowed to retain the majority of Newsweek's 325 employees, although that number is not expected to include editor Jon Meacham, who was reported to be stepping down.

Although it's not clear if Sidney Harman made the best offer of the suitors vying to purchase Newsweek magazine, there is one reason that was made clear by Donald E. Graham, chairman of The Washington Post Co. (NYSE:WPO). According to Mike Allen at Politico, Harman's bid was accepted by Graham partly because he felt comfortable with Harman's politics. "Graham felt comfortable with Harman's centrist politics, and was comforted by the idea of selling to a stalwart of the Washington establishment," Allen wrote. "Harman is expected to preserve the serious-minded, essentially New-Democratic tone [outgoing Newsweek editor Jon] Meacham set for the...

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- It's official: Sidney Harman, the businessman who made his fortune selling stereo equipment, has secured a deal to buy Newsweek from the Washington Post Co. and will announce the deal later Monday afternoon. The New York Times and others have previously reported that Mr. Harman was the front-runner to come away with the news weekly, but have cautioned that no deal was certain. Politico's Playbook e-mail newsletter this morning said a deal with Mr. Harman was imminent, but also cautioned that "no deal like this is done until it's done." The deal is now done, according...

A deal to sell Newsweek to a 91-year-old stereo equipment magnate could be announced as early as today, a move that would signal the end of a half-century of ownership by The Washington Post Company.

When I first began reading about the controversy surrounding a proposed Mosque being built near Ground Zero in New York City, I was completely mystified: We live in America! In 2010! Are we seriously debating whether a mainstream religion should have the right to build a house of worship? I was even more bewildered when I read that 52 percent of New Yorkers were opposed to the construction of the Mosque, with 31 percent in favor and 17 percent undecided. Filled with moral outrage, I posted an angry Facebook status with a link to an article about conservative politicians capitalizing...

In today’s economy, looking good is no longer something we can dismiss as frivolous or vain. How beauty can affect your job, your career, your life. Most of us have heard the story of Debrahlee Lorenzana, the 33-year-old Queens, N.Y., woman who sued Citibank last month, claiming that, in pencil skirts, turtlenecks, and peep-toe stilettos, she was fired from her desk job for being “too hot.” We’ve also watched Lorenzana’s credibility come into question, as vintage clips of her appearance on a reality-TV show about plastic surgery portray a rambling, attention-obsessed twit, stuffed to the brim with implants and collagen....

The Great Recession, which rolled over our financial lives like one of P.J. Keating's giant pavers, is most likely over. Home sales, while still far below the levels of a year ago, have risen for three straight months—a first since 2004. The stock market has rallied 44 percent since March, thanks to renewed optimism and improving earnings from big companies like Goldman Sachs and Apple. In June, seven of the 10 indicators in the Conference Board Leading Economic Index pointed upward, including manufacturing hours worked and unemployment claims. Macroeconomic Advisers, the St. Louis–based consulting firm, says the economy is expanding...

When President Obama issued a statement last week marking the 47th anniversary of the Equal Pay Act, the federal legislation that sought to end gender-related wage discrimination, he noted ongoing wage inequities and the fact that women continue to earn only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men. ...

100 Places to Remember Before they Disappear features 100 photographs from one hundred different places around the world in risk of disappearing or seriously threatened by climate change. The pictures are taken by some of the world´s best photographers and all the places are based on reports from UN´s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). (snip)

Not this again. There is obviously not enough going on in the world for Newsweek magazine this week because once again Sarah Palin is on the cover. Palin, the former governor of Alaska and the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee was also on the cover of Newsweek back in November 2009, in running shorts. This time she is featured as "Saint Sarah: What's Palin's appeal to conservative Christian women says about feminism and the future of the religious right" in Newsweek's June 21 issue. Palin is depicted with halo on the cover for the story written by Lisa Miller, which attempts...

Saint Sarah To white evangelical women, Sarah Palin is a modern-day prophet, preaching God, flag, and family—while remaking the religious right in her own image. Another memoirist might prefer to keep such matters private, but Sarah Palin is not another memoirist. In Going Rogue: An American Life, Palin describes, perhaps for the first time in the history of political autobiography, a furtive trip to an out-of-state drugstore to obtain a do-it-yourself pregnancy test. This was in the fall of 2007, when the 43-year-old mother of four was governor of Alaska and began to notice “some peculiar yet familiar physical symptoms,...

Appearing on Monday’s The Colbert Report on Comedy Central to promote his book, "The Promise," MSNBC political analyst Jonathan Alter – also of Newsweek – asserted that President Barack Obama had "prevented another Great Depression," and declared that Obama had it more difficult than Franklin Delano Roosevelt because he had to "sweep up" like a "shovel brigade" after President Bush, as he used a word that had to be bleeped out for airing. Alter: "He proceeded to make history almost right away, not only because he was the first African-American elected President ... we were all living history. This man...

<p>The Washington Post Co. announced today that it has retained Allen & Company to explore the possible sale of NEWSWEEK magazine.</p>