By Matt Hadro | September 27, 2010 | 6:51 PM EDT
Are "Mama Grizzlies" who oppose state children's health insurance programs (S-CHIP) and teachers' unions unfaithful to their maternal name? CNN anchor Kiran Chetry joined Newsweek's Lisa Miller Monday in wondering if that is so. Miller appeared on CNN's "American Morning" to feature her most recent piece on "Mama Grizzlies," prominent female conservatives in the vein of Sarah Palin.

"All the candidates that we – whose records we looked at, are against the Obama health plan in general, and yes, the CHIP program in specific," reported Miller, a senior editor for Newsweek. "There are rising numbers of poor children in this country, a quarter of America's children are poor. It seems like a funny way to say that you're for kids, and be against all of these programs."

Miller ultimately concluded that the "Mama Grizzlies" movement will fall short of its political goals, because "the issues facing the country are complex, and bears are not."

"Do we really want bears to solve our problems?" Miller quipped at the end of the segment.
By Candance Moore | August 31, 2010 | 5:48 PM EDT

The editors of the mainstream media must think we all have very short memories.

Their latest schtick is to smear conservative talk show host Glenn Beck as a creepy Mormon who has no business influencing evangelicals.

Aside from the disgusting hypocrisy of Mormon-baiting one minute and then bashing Islamophobia the next, these news outlets are also hoping you've forgotten about their recent smearing of evangelicals like Sarah Palin, John Hagee, and James Dobson.

But hey, they shouldn't be held accountable for their own religious bigotry on display in 2008. That was a whole two years ago, and anyway they had a Democrat messiah to protect.

For a flashback at how low the media stooped then, let's review an editorial cartoon shamelessly bashing Pentecostalism that appeared on the Washington Post's website on September 18, 2008:

By Ken Shepherd | June 15, 2010 | 3:06 PM EDT

"You have been weighed in the balances and found wanting." That's how the biblical prophet Daniel interpreted the writing on the wall that heralded the imminent demise of the Babylonian Empire.

It could also sum up journalist Sarah Pulliam Bailey's take on Lisa Miller's "Saint Sarah" piece in Newsweek (emphases mine):

Journalists have long been puzzled over Sarah Palin’s popularity. In November, Newsweek took a stab at the trend with its provocative cover of Palin in running clothes: “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Sarah Palin: How Sarah Palin Hurts the GOP And the Country.”

[...]

Lisa Miller’s thesis is compelling if it is true, but journalists usually rely on hard facts, polls, maybe interviews with political scientists to prove their points. Unfortunately, Miller’s article contains none of these to support her theory that Palin is somehow the new leader of the Christian Right. Instead, she strings together a bunch of anecdotes and quotes to prove what she thinks is happening. 

Pulliam Bailey devoted most of her June 14 Get Religion blog post to fisking Miller's argument. Here's just a sample (emphases are the author's):

By Jeff Poor | June 12, 2010 | 2:13 AM EDT

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 to rationalize Palin's convictions about the issue of abortion and her Christian faith.

However, Palin didn't think too highly of Newsweek's gesture. She responded on Fox News' June 11 broadcast of "On the Record with Greta van Sustren."

"Haven't seen it, but if the title and what I hear about the content is any indication of where Newsweek is going, it is no wonder Newsweek is doing so poorly," Palin said. "People are not reading that stuff. It is not relevant. It's not interesting stuff that they are making up and writing and that's why they are going down."

Video Below Fold

By Matthew Balan | May 28, 2010 | 2:52 PM EDT
Lisa Miller, Newsweek Religion Editor | NewsBusters.orgNewsweek's Lisa Miller again lashed out against the Catholic Church in her column on Thursday, defending an excommunicated Catholic nun in Arizona for her "compassionate and impossible decision" in supporting a hospital patient's abortion. Miller also condemned a Vatican cardinal's investigation into American nuns as a whole as "authoritarian meddling."

The religion editor for the dwindling magazine began her column, "Female Troubles," by sympathizing with Sister Margaret McBride, an administrator at St. Joseph's Hospital in Phoenix, who ruled with her hospital's ethics committee that a first-trimester abortion which took place in late 2009 was medically necessary:
Earlier this month, in something of a surprise, a nun at a Catholic hospital in Phoenix was excommunicated for approving a first-trimester abortion last year at that hospital to save the life of a critically ill patient....The irony here is thick: it has taken years, sometimes decades, to bring sex-abusing priests to justice, but this observant sister, Margaret McBride, was excommunicated in a matter of months for making a compassionate and impossible decision for one of her parishioners.
By Matthew Balan | April 26, 2010 | 5:59 PM EDT
Christopher Hitchens, from HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher show | NewsBusters.orgNewsweek continued its campaign against the Catholic Church on Friday by letting one of the leading atheist (not to leave out anti-Catholic) voices internationally, Christopher Hitchens, spout half-truths and smears about Pope Benedict XVI and the Church. Most egregiously, Hitchens inaccurately stated that Vatican City "was created by Benito Mussolini," thus trying to tie Catholicism to fascism.

Almost a week before bringing in Hitchens, an infrequent contributor to their publication, Newsweek, through its "On Faith" blog, hosted a screed from author Donna Freitas, a "Stubborn Catholic" according to her own label, where she gushed his and Richard Dawkins's quest to arrest the Pope when he visits the UK later this year. As MRC's Tim Graham pointed out, the blog regularly "shows not respect for the Catholic faith, but maligns its leaders as murderous thugs and cult leaders." More prominently, Newsweek's religion editor, Lisa Miller, has raged against the U.S. Catholic bishops for daring to object to ObamaCare's abortion-friendly architecture, defended same-sex "marriage," and called for the ordination of women in recent weeks.

This paved the way for Hitchens, who began by poking fun of those objecting to his "arrest the Pope" publicity stunt with Dawkins:
By Matthew Balan | April 16, 2010 | 10:47 PM EDT
Lisa Miller, Newsweek Religion Editor; Jessica Yellin, CNN Correspondent; & Father Jim Martin, SJ; America Magazine; NewsBusters.orgJessica Yellin continued CNN's biased coverage towards Pope Benedict XVI, the Catholic Church, and the sex abuse scandal on Friday's Campbell Brown program. After replaying a report from Tuesday on one dissenting priest's call for the Pope's resignation, Yellin misleadingly asked, "Why is he [the Pope] having such a hard time saying he's sorry?" She also brought on two liberals to discuss the scandal.

Before the replay of correspondent Mary Snow's report on Father James Scahill's public call for Benedict XVI's resignation at 26 minutes into the 8 pm Eastern hour, Yellin, who was filling-in for anchor Campbell Brown, noted that "just yesterday, in a rare reference to the scandal, the Pope called for penitence for the Church's sins. But for some, penitence is not enough." After Snow's report, the substitute anchor read a promo for the upcoming segment, which included the "why is he having such a hard time saying he's sorry" claim.

That is an irresponsible question on the part of Yellin. Just under a month ago, the Pope did make such an apology in his pastoral letter to the Catholics of Ireland, directly addressing the victims of the abuse: "You have suffered grievously and I am truly sorry. I know that nothing can undo the wrong you have endured....It is understandable that you find it hard to forgive or be reconciled with the Church. In her name, I openly express the shame and remorse that we all feel." Two years ago, in April 2008, he met with some of the victims of abuse during his visit to the U.S., and addressed the scandal during a homily in New York City. Later that year, he apologized again, this time for the sex abuse in Australia while he visited that country.
By Brent Bozell | April 6, 2010 | 11:10 PM EDT
Our secular liberal media elites are never more poisonously insincere than when they recommend that conservatives should move closer to liberals, for their own good. Witnessing the relentless media attacks on the Catholic Church, no member of the flock should assume that the agitators at Newsweek or the New York Times know best how to steer the faithful – or even believe they want to help the faithful. Much like Ted Turner, who called Catholics “losers,” his media colleagues see Catholics – and particularly Pope Benedict XVI – as loathsome political obstacles.

One can conclude from all the coverage of sexual-abuse charges that those charges aren’t really the primary point for the “truth” seekers. These leftist media elites have hijacked those heinous actions for a much broader goal. Theirs is a very political crusade, with the goal of sacking Pope Benedict and “reforming” the ancient church in their hipster image, one that celebrates gay bishop Eugene Robinson’s Episcopalian gospel of “tolerance” and “inclusion” and “pluralism.” That kind of church would pose zero threat to the global goals of the left. In that kind of church, there is no stained-glass ceiling to untrammeled abortion and unlimited “marriage” of everyone to everyone.

By Tim Graham | March 30, 2010 | 8:13 AM EDT

Newsweek religion editor Lisa Miller has two big articles in this week's issue. "The Bad Shepherd" is another piece trashing Pope Benedict over the sex-abuse charges emerging in Europe. But Miller even trashed Jesus Christ as a "typically cranky" religious figure. This came in an excerpt from Miller's new book on Heaven, as she explained how implausible the religious concept of resurrection is:

Resurrection presented credibility problems from the outset. Who, the Sadducees taunted Jesus, does the man who married seven wives in succession reside with in heaven? The subtext of their teasing is obvious: if the resurrection is true, as Jesus promised, then in heaven you must have your wife, and all the things that go along with wives: sex, arguments, dinner. Jesus responds in a typically cranky way: "You just don't get it," he says (my paraphrase). "You are wrong," he said in Matthew's Gospel, "because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God."

It's easier to pitch Jesus as "typically cranky" when one paraphrases the Bible in contemporary lingo. Miller concluded that she doesn't buy this tall Easter tale:

By Tim Graham | March 24, 2010 | 3:50 PM EDT

Newsweek knows who they hate. Its section "The Take" in the March 29 edition begins with a full-page picture of Pope Benedict with this nasty sentence imposed above his head: "I would argue that the pope is already sufficiently tainted to trade his Prada shoes for a hair shirt for the rest of his life." Turn to page 24, and Newsweek religion editor Lisa Miller’s hate-filled column is titled "Save the Children: Benedict & Co. need to do penance." The "hair shirt" quote is not in the article.

This is the same activist/journalist Lisa Miller who wrote the incendiary (and ridiculous) cover story on how the Bible supports gay marriage. This is not the first time Miller has bashed the Catholic Church in a column in 2010. Just two weeks ago, she was raging against the American Catholic bishops standing in the way of ObamaCare. There, she also declared the Catholic leadership was incapable of standing as a moral example:

By Ken Shepherd | January 6, 2010 | 11:23 AM EST

<p>Newsweek religion reporter Lisa Miller, no Bible-thumping <a href="/blogs/ken-shepherd/2008/12/08/newsweeks-miller-plays-armchair-theologian-defend-same-sex-marriage" target="_blank">fundamentalist</a> she, doesn't understand why <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm%202:1-3&amp;version=KJV" target="_blank">the heathen rage</a> against Brit Hume. From <a href="http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thegaggle/archive/2010/01/05/don-t-be-sur... target="_blank">her January 5 post </a>at the magazine's The Gaggle blog:</p><blockquote><p>I'm not at all sure why the liberal left is always so shocked that evangelical Christians want other people to become Christians. The outrage that followed Fox News anchor Brit Hume's  plea to Tiger Woods to find Jesus has been totally disproportionate to the statement itself. The usual suspects—MSNBC and The Huffington Post—and indeed the whole liberal left blogosphere leapt all over Hume for his arrogance and conservatism. </p><p>[...]</p><p>The word &quot;evangelical&quot; comes from the Greek word for gospel, or &quot;good news.&quot; Evangelical Christians are those who want to spread the good news. They aren't pretending to believe in salvation through Jesus Christ. They actually do believe that it—and yours, and mine—comes through him.  </p></blockquote>

By Ken Shepherd | November 18, 2009 | 6:31 PM EST

<p>&quot;This week's abortion conversation is about politics. Let's not pretend it's about anything else,&quot; Newsweek's Lisa Miller huffed in <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/id/223360" target="_blank">a November 18 Newsweek.com post</a>, complaining about how the moral issues surrounding abortion are taking on a life of their own in the health care debate.</p><blockquote><p>We suffer, this week, from a moral myopia. Thanks to the passage in Congress of a health-reform bill, abortion is in the news again, but with the same old warriors brandishing their same old spears. </p></blockquote><p>But while Miller went on to list both pro-life and pro-choice &quot;old warriors,&quot; it's hard to believe her beef is with both sides of that fight equally. Miller laments that:</p><blockquote><p>Our entire health-care system (and the proposed reform) is rife with &quot;complex moral issues.&quot; To activate our consciences only in the realm of abortion relieves those consciences of too much responsibility.  <i></i></p></blockquote>