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No one could have known that when a Tunisian fruit vendor set himself on fire in a public square, it would incite protests that would topple dictators and start a global wave of dissent. In 2011, protesters didn’t just voice their complaints; they changed the world.

More bad news for Newt’s Gingrich’s foundering presidential campaign: His top two fundraisers have quit, bringing the count of deserters from his 2012 operation to a whopping 18, according to the AP. His fundraising is reportedly so anemic that the candidate has been reduced to giving up his corporate jets for commercial flights. (Hopefully they don’t seat him too far back.) Newt’s campaign so far looks like a pretty obvious fiasco. But only if you assume that victory was Newt’s exclusive goal. It’s also entirely possible that Gingrich–who has long demonstrated himself as a shrewd businessman and self-promoter–doesn’t mind lacking...

In another example of a sort-of cultural suicide where western media types assume that all Muslims are blameless – while all Americans are at fault in this clash of civilizations between Islamism and the West – we have a recent episode of MSNBC’s Hardball with one-time Democratic operative Chuck Todd standing-in for host Chris Matthews. Todd was discussing the riots in Afghanistan sparked by Islamist ire over the burning of a Koran by a Florida pastor. During the interview Todd and a guest stated that the Christian Bible was just a book written by men while the Koran was the...

Jones, of course, killed no one. Suicide bombers kill as many people as they can for Allah. But Joe Klein is by no means alone in assuming that Muslims cannot control themselves and respond to insult with anything but threats and murder, and thus cannot be held responsible for their own actions. He thus reveals again the multicultural Left's bigotry and ethnocentrism. "Joe Klein Reserves Spot in Hell for Koran-burning Pastor Who's As 'Murderous' As 'Suicide Bombers,'" by Ken Shepherd for NewsBusters, April 4 (thanks to James): Burning a copy of the Koran is morally equivalent to flying a plane...

Dead Man Walker?! Is that the kind of civility President Obama pretended to be in favor of? The call for a kinder, gentler political debate certainly did not last long as the democrat party’s Time magazine lashes out in this headline against Conservative American Governor Scott Walker. What do you think? Did this go too far?

President Obama named ex-journalist Jay Carney as the next White House press secretary on Thursday, rounding out a broad personnel restructuring within the West Wing after the midterm elections. With new Chief of Staff William M. Daley already on board, Obama has an almost entirely new senior lineup - even if many of the faces are familiar. He has shed some of his most longtime loyalists, including outgoing press secretary Robert Gibbs, and moved others into official campaign roles ahead of his 2012 reelection bid. What has emerged is a staff that is well-versed in the ways of the Obama...

Dear Mr. Stengel, I wanted to bring to your attention a recent article in Time entitled "Israel's Rightward Lurch Scares Some Conservatives." I hope that you will agree that the article's obvious bias and numerous distortions are not worthy of the standards of your prestigious magazine. Israel is depicted in the article as essentially sliding towards fascism. Your correspondent refers to Israel's Shin Bet (the equivalent of the FBI) as a "secret police," claims that the Israeli government "increasingly equates dissent with disloyalty," and accuses the Prime Minister of "taking a page from neighboring authoritarian states." The evidence offered for...

NewsBusters has exhaustively documented the way in which the liberal media and Dem politicians have sought to exploit the Arizona shootings, seeking to pin blame on a range of Republicans and conservative media figures. It was thus nothing short of surreal to listen to MSNBC analyst Mark Halperin this morning. Surveying the situation, Halperin praised the media and politicians for their reaction to the shooting . . . while condemning Fox News and conservative pundits for treating the tragedy like "war and fodder for content." When Joe Scarborough rightly suggested that Halperin had it backwards, the Time man wouldn't back...

During a discussion on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Tuesday, the panel conceded that conservatives and Tea Party activists were unfairly scapegoated in the wake of Jared Lee Loughner’s shooting spree in Tucson, Ariz., which killed six and left Rep. Gabrielle Giffords fighting for her life after a gunshot wound to the head. Mark Halperin of Time just thinks conservatives shouldn’t bother defending themselves, so as to avoid further political escalation. “Obviously, the initial reaction was so offensive to conservatives it has united everybody from Rush Limbaugh to David Brooks this morning, who wrote a very, very compelling piece that the scapegoating...

Time Mag Headline 'Holiday Blizzard: More Signs of Global Warming' By Noel Sheppard Created 12/29/2010 - 9:10am By Noel Sheppard | December 29, 2010 | 09:10 Noel Sheppard's picture In today's "Everything Is Caused By Climate Change" segment, the folks at Time magazine offer a howler destined to start your morning off right with a chuckle: "Holiday Blizzard: More Signs of Global Warming." The contents were even more hysterical: One theory is that a warmer Arctic may actually lead to colder and snowier winters in the northern mid-latitudes. Even as countries like Britain — suffering through the coldest December on...

Former Time White House correspondent (and Carter administration appointee) Margaret Carlson really wants RNC chairman Michael Steele fired. In her Bloomberg News column on Wednesday, she badly exaggerated: "In the world of fundraising scandals, this one makes former Vice President Al Gore’s visit to a Buddhist temple look as quaint as tea at Buckingham Palace."

In an article about Thursday's apparent suicide by a pilot in Austin, Texas, the folks at Time.com made two seemingly intentional links to the Tea Party movement. First, the piece began: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The long, rambling rant posted on a website eerily reflected the angry populist sentiments that have swept the country in the past year. In it, a Joe Stack inveighed against intrusive Big Brother government, corrupt corporate giants, irrational taxes, as well as the "puppet" George Bush. (See the making of the Tea Party movement.) Then, after the third paragraph which concluded, "Toward the end of what appears to...

Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement “both have far less support in the country at large than a gullible Old Media seems to understand or suggest,” Time magazine senior political analyst Mark Halperin asserted on “The Page” while colleague Joe Klein, on Time’s “Swampland” blog, showed fear of the supposedly impotent coalition as he denigrated her Saturday night convention speech as “anti-intellectual drivel,” scolding as “anti-American” those dumb enough to like her: Those who celebrate Sarah Palin's lack of knowledge as a form of “authenticity” superior to Barack Obama's gloriously American mongrel ethnicity and self-made intellectuality are representatives of...

Time magazine picked Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, as its Person of the Year. He gets the accolade for presiding over a "weak economy" that could have been "much, much weaker." Pretty feeble. I can't imagine someone being named Athlete of the Year because while he "lost a few games" he could have lost "many, many more." It's a puzzling choice, even for a magazine that has previously hailed "you" as its Person of the Year. (No offence - I think "you" are pretty good, just not prince of the planet.) Some of the runners-up were...

Two weeks ago, Time magazine once again proved to have little appreciation for the US Constitution when it announced that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was its “person of the year 2009.” He deserved this honor, the magazine’s editors said, because he “has dramatically expanded” the Fed “and reinvented it.” In other words, because he used the economic crisis as an excuse to radically increase the size of government. Today, the British editors of the Times of London proved to have a much better understanding of what truly matters: Neda Soltan was not political. She did not vote in the...

Journalists make a hash of the decade that was.Journalists, long on confidence but chronically short of knowledge, have been lately offering end-of-decade summations. The fact that the first decade of the 21st century doesn't actually end until this time next year hasn't slowed them down; and there's universal agreement that this was, as Andy Serwer wrote in Time, "the decade from hell." No doubt, deep in the bowels of the Time-Life Building in Manhattan, where neither Life nor Time exists in the form they did when the building was constructed--and where neither may survive once the decade really does end--the...

She may not be the Person of the Year, but Time considered her influence significant enough to put her on the list of PEOPLE WHO MATTERED in 2009. Here's their explanation : ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you thought Sarah Palin was just going to fade back into the Alaskan wilderness after she and John McCain lost the 2008 presidential election, then you don't know Sarah. America's favorite Rorschach political figure is still going rogue, whether quitting her job as governor — who needs a bully pulpit when there's Facebook? — or spending her hour on Oprah dissing the 19-year-old father of her...

One of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's biggest critics said that he deserves Time magazine's "Person of the Year" award bestowed to him on Wednesday. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), one of Bernanke's greatest critic, said that the award is fitting because Bernanke is the "most powerful man in the world." MSNBC's Joe Scarborough said that Paul had admitted off camera that Bernanke deserved the award because of his economic power. Paul replied "He is. He is the most powerful man in the world. I believe a case can be made for that... He controls the supply of money, which is...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made runner-up as Time Magazine's person of the year, losing out to Fed chairman Ben Bernanke. In a glowing profile, Time says Pelosi has "consolidated more power than any other Speaker in modern history." In an interview with reporters in the Capitol today, Pelosi outlined what is in fact an astonishingly long list of accomplishments this year, from a hair-raising bank rescue to the largest fiscal stimulus in U.S. history, to a climate change bill to health care legislation and millions of acres of wilderness, food safety, labor legislation and other major bills that have gotten...

A bald man with a gray beard and tired eyes is sitting in his oversize Washington office, talking about the economy. He doesn't have a commanding presence. He isn't a mesmerizing speaker. He has none of the look-at-me swagger or listen-to-me charisma so common among men with oversize Washington offices. His arguments aren't partisan or ideological; they're methodical, grounded in data and the latest academic literature. When he doesn't know something, he doesn't bluster or bluff. He's professorial, which makes sense, because he spent most of his career as a professor. He is not, in other words, a typical Beltway...

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Speaker Pelosi named finalist for Time magazine 'Person of the Year' By Jordan Fabian - 12/14/09 05:21 PM ET House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is among the seven finalists chosen for Time magazine's annual "Person of the Year," according to media reports on Monday. Other finalists in the realm of politics include last year's winner President Barack Obama, Afghanistan commanding Gen. Stanley McChrystal and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. "Look, she's the first woman Speaker of the House. She's the strongest Speaker of the House in decades," Time managing editor Richard Stengel said of Pelosi on NBC's "Today" show. "She...

Beginning Monday, the "Today" will begin three days of "Person of the Year" coverage with Time magazine's announcement set for Wednesday's show. Time managing editor Richard Stengel will discuss this year's top candidates and the selection process. On Wednesday, Stengel will reveal the 2009 Person of the Year.

Time's cover story denouncing the Bush era (plus a year of Clinton and a year of Obama) as "The Decade from Hell" is overwrought. But Time's guru Andy Serwer tries to claim it's not: Calling the 2000s "the worst" may seem an overwrought label in a decade in which we fought no major wars, in historical terms. It is a sadly appropriate term for the families of the thousands of 9/11 victims and soldiers and others killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the lack of a large-scale armed conflict makes these past 10 years stand out that much more. This...

For President Obama, the era of big Government is not over. "It is true, we cannot depend on government alone to create jobs or generate long-term growth," he proclaimed in his first budget to Congress. But "at this particular moment, government must lead the way." A partial Obama to-do list, only some of it done, includes a remake of the health care and energy sectors; a $787 billion stimulus bill aimed, so far, mostly at public employment; takeovers of General Motors and Chrysler; a "pay czar" to cut salaries at bailed-out banks and a proposed new consumer-protection agency to police...

"Government Distrust and a Dead Census Taker."“...[W]as it part of the recent rage at what right-wing commentators decry as the big-spending, socialistic government of the first African-American President? Al Cross, a former reporter for the Louisville Courier-Journal who covered the area for 30 years, believes that the conditions underlying the murder go back much farther and are much deeper — and more local — than the recent spate of ire. (Read TIME's cover story on Glenn Beck.)” Well, now it turns out that Kentucky investigators have concluded that poor Sparkman committed suicide, faking his own death in order to let...

In one tidy cover story—The Decade From Hell And Why The Next One Will Be Better—Time sums up the last decade and the one to come. Things were "hell" under George W. Bush, but will be better under Barack Obama. Class dismissed: that's really all you need to know. But just to drive home the Manichean message, Time editor Rick Stengel and Andy Serwer [of Time stable-mate Fortune], who wrote the cover story, appeared on Morning Joe today. Of course there's the inconvenient detail about Barack Obama having been elected in this decade. But not to worry. Serwer explains "you...

The guillotine has begun its descent at Time Inc. Sources at the publishing company (which is part of the same conglomerate as DailyFinance parent AOL) say executives have asked for an emergency meeting with representatives of the Newspaper Guild to discuss job eliminations. A Time Inc. spokeswoman declined to comment, but John Shostrom, chairman of the company's Guild unit, said the meeting will take place "soon." He said it was Time Inc. that called the meeting. "They act, and we react," said Shostrom. "The Guild doesn't lay people off. We just fight back when they make proposals to lay people...

Signaling that worse times are ahead for magazines, Time Inc. is expected to announce next week that it will cut $100 million from costs, including another big round of layoffs. The timing is coordinated with parent company Time Warner’s third-quarter earnings announcement, sources said, scheduled for Wednesday morning. Time Inc., the publisher of titles like Time, Fortune, and People, has already cut costs dramatically: a year ago, it announced it was dismissing 6 percent of its work force, or about 600 people. That was apparently not enough to make up for revenue declines. The $100 million in costs is expected...

Time Inc. is gathering U.S. magazine publishers to start a jointly run digital newsstand next year that would deliver their titles to mobile devices like increasingly popular electronic book readers. ---------------- snippity snip ------------------------

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Time Warner Inc will eventually sell the Time Inc magazine unit and could buy holdings in its core entertainment category, Gordon Crawford, managing director of its largest shareholder, said during a presentation this week. "Time Warner just spun off their cable division, they are going to sell their print division, they are going to spin off AOL and they're just going to be Warner Brothers, HBO and the Turner Networks," said Crawford, managing director of The Capital Group.

Time Warner Inc (NYSE:TWX - News) will eventually sell the Time Inc magazine unit and could buy holdings in its core entertainment category, Gordon Crawford, managing director of its largest shareholder, said during a presentation this week. "Time Warner just spun off their cable division, they are going to sell their print division, they are going to spin off AOL and they're just going to be Warner Brothers, HBO and the Turner Networks," said Crawford, managing director of The Capital Group. "Now, they will make acquisitions ... but they're probably going to buy just stuff in their wheel house of...

His question about God's death startled and shocked the world, and set off a firestorm of controversy. But when John T. Elson died, few people noticed. The New York Times didn't run this remembrance until 10 days after his passing. But I think it may be worth noting -- as one person says -- that Elson was "catholic with a capital C and a small c." His story: All journalists want to write a story that makes a big splash. John T. Elson, the religion editor at Time magazine, was no exception. But in 1966 he got more than he...

Glenn Beck is named Man of the Year! Oh no wait.... they just called him a Mad Man? Look whether, you like Glenn Beck there's no denying they incredible impact he has made. Van Jones anyone? How bout Acorn? See the recent rallies in Washington? 9-12 groups?

As we noted yesterday when news broke about Time Magazine’s cover story on Glenn Beck, the image used is from a photo shoot last year by Jill Greenberg. It’s an interesting choice. Greenberg is known for her liberal views – and she’s being very upfront about her use of this opportunity to take revenge on those who attacked her. Greenberg brought up the cover on Twitter (she goes by the ironic handle @JillManipulator). Here’s her comment: exactly a year after my right wing attack, i am retouching one of my attackers for a magazine cover. leaving blemishes of course. Time...

All journalists want to write a story that makes a big splash. John T. Elson, the religion editor at Time magazine, was no exception. But in 1966 he got more than he bargained for. For more than a year, Mr. Elson had labored over an article examining radical new approaches to thinking about God that were gaining currency in seminaries and universities and spilling over to the public at large. When finally completed, it became the cover story for the issue of April 8, as Easter and Passover approached. The cover itself was eye-catching, the first one in Time’s 43-year...

Time’s Amy Sullivan seems to have a special assignment to try and play up the religiosity of liberal Democrats despite their libertine policy stands, from Barack Obama to Ted Kennedy. On Thursday, Sullivan underlined "Ted Kennedy’s Quiet Catholic Faith." How does that match with his ultraliberal political record on abortion and homosexuality, his perfect 100-percent scores with NARAL or the Human Rights Campaign? Sullivan simply ignores that obvious problem. (HRC’s YouTube channel proudly shows Kennedy suggesting Jesse Helms might be in Hell at a March 2008 dinner. So much for Christian charity.) Kennedy "fully embraced" the Catholic Church, Sullivan claimed:...

Just for Fun

In a one-line blog post, "Health Reform: Euthanasia and Other Rumors," Time magazine's Karen Tumulty pointed readers to a blog post at The New Republic's Web site set on "Exposing the Euthanasia Scare" that has cropped up in the debate over health care reform: Harold Pollack dispenses with them (and their sources) here. Albeit in kinder, gentler language, Pollack posited that opposition to socialized medicine among American senior citizens was due to racism, xenophobia, and homophobia

Time magazine's August 10 edition with President Barack Obama on the cover (“Paging Dr. Obama”) trying to heal the nation in a photo illustration as a physician, wearing a white smock with a stethoscope around his neck, brings to seven the number of issues the magazine's cover has featured Obama just since November's election -- make that eight for the First Family if you add in June 1's genuflecting “The Meaning of Michelle.” Amongst the seven of President Obama: “Person of the Year” and Obama as FDR.

Photographs of Bush, with commentary by the photographers who followed him for 8 or 9 years. Quite the contrast with Barry.

The Palins were staying with Sarah's in-laws Bob and Blanche Kallstrom when the soon-to-be-ex-governor of Alaska sat down for an interview. The Kallstroms are two of the 2,500 full-time residents of Dillingham, Alaska, and owners of the Bristol Bay Inn and a hardware store. [...]What do you think is wrong right now with what President Obama is doing in particular? President Obama is growing government outrageously, and it's immoral and it's uneconomic, his plan that he tries to sell America. His plan to "put America on the right track" economically, incurring the debt that our nation is incurring, trillions of...

SNIPWhat do you think is wrong right now with what President Obama is doing in particular? President Obama is growing government outrageously, and it's immoral and it's uneconomic, his plan that he tries to sell America. His plan to "put America on the right track" economically, incurring the debt that our nation is incurring, trillions of dollars that we're passing on to our kids, expecting them to pay off for us, is immoral and doesn't even make economic sense. So, his growth of government agenda needs to be ratcheted back, and it's going to take good people who have the...

British shoe bomber Richard Reid is suing US prison authorities over his harsh prison conditions. The Londoner is being helid in a maximum security jail in Colorado for attempting to blow up an American Airlines flight in December 2001. But he has appealed to a judge to be allowed the "same rights and privileges as other inmates" at the prison. Reid is trying to end his isolation and lack of access to Arabic-language religious books. In May, prison authorities told the inmate he had been placed on special administrative measures. These restricted his access to letters, the media, telephone...

Shoe Bomber Sues Over Harsh U.S. Prison ConditionsThu Aug 19, 2004 08:39 PM ET DENVER (Reuters) - "Shoe bomber" Richard Reid has sued U.S. prison authorities for imposing harsh conditions including isolation and a lack of access to Arabic language religious books. Reid is serving a life sentence for attempting to use explosives in his shoes to blow up an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami three months after the Sept. 11 attacks. Reid, a British citizen, wants a judge to order prison authorities to give him "the same rights and privileges as other inmates held in this prison."...

DENVER — Al Qaeda member and Florence prison inmate Richard Reid has moved his court challenge of federal prison rules to Denver. Reid is serving a life sentence for trying to blow up an airplane with explosives hidden in his shoes in 2001. The Justice Department has imposed restrictions on Reid and other terrorism-related prisoners they consider a threat to national security. In a handwritten lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Denver last week, Reid wrote he has been kept in isolation in a cell with a window that does not let him see outside, and that his mail...

TIME takes advantage of of MJ's death to make money and keep the company afloat for a while. Time magazine will publish a $5.99 special commemorative issue on Michael Jackson to hit newsstands on Monday, June 29. Time last published a special edition in the days following 9/11 (it sold 3.25+ million copies stateside). For the special commemorative issue, Time spoke with Stevie Wonder, Whitney Houston, Tina Turner, Nancy Reagan, Lenny Kravitz, Jesse Jackson, Tommy Mottola, Berry Gordy, Spike Lee, Sheryl Crow, Anjelica Huston, Clive Davis, Al Sharpton, Deepak Chopra, Kobe Bryant, Lance Bass, Oscar De La Hoya, Savion Glover,...

If beating dead horses were an Olympic event, Joe Klein would have more medals gracing his neck than Michael Phelps. On his magazine's Swampland blog, the Time columnist returned to his latest overwrought left-wing pandering point: labeling hardliner President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the Iranian version of George W. Bush: The protesters admire our freedom, but they are appalled--and insulted--by our neocolonialist condescension over the past 50 years. The reformers, and even some conservatives, consider Ahmadinejad the George W. Bush of Iran--a crude, unsophisticated demagogue, who puts a strong Potemkin face to the world without very much knowledge of what the...

In the midst of his June 16 Swampland blog screed leveled against the "unhinged" Sen. John McCain for his criticism of President Obama's low-key response to the Iranian election, Time magazine's Joe Klein also worked in a comparison of hardliner Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's support base with former U.S. President George W. Bush's core supporters: It is not even clear that Ahmadinejad--who has significant backing from the sort of people who support Republicans here (the elderly, the religious extremists) plus a real following among working-class Iranians--would have lost this election, if the votes had been counted fairly. (I tend to...

Time's Joe Klein on Sunday accused conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh of "delivering misinformation, lies to a large audience in America." Such was said during quite a debate between himself and the Washington Times' Amanda Carpenter on CNN's "Reliable Sources." After Klein angrily made this comment, even host Howard Kurtz seemed a bit taken aback by it saying, "Well, lies is a strong word, but we'll come back to that another time." What follows is the video and partial transcript of this exchange that began when Kurtz brought up some of the potentially over the line jokes made at...