Sarah Posner

From Ryan Grim at HuffPo comes the news that Yosi Sargant, the communications director for the National Endowment for the Arts, was asked to resign after Glenn Beck accused him of promoting Nazi ideas. Who’s next? This week WorldNetDaily‘s smear-monger-in-chief, Aaron Klein, set his sights higher than low-level employees like Sargant. He ran an attack […]

That’s the question raised by neoconservative Norman Podhoretz in his new book and in his and in his Commentary magazine, which solicited, according to the Times, “six notable American Jewish thinkers” to answer it. What popped out at me in The Opinionator’s roundup of these ruminations was Michael Medved’s response — and one reaction to […]

After last night’s presidential speech, the Rev. Jim Wallis of Sojourners issued a statement that claimed to speak for “the faith community.” He declares, “In his speech this evening, President Barack Obama made the commitments that a broad coalition in the faith community had asked for — reform as a moral issue, affordable coverage for […]

For the religious right, what is the opposition to President Obama‘s speech to public school children next week really all about? Theologically, the end of days. Politically, the separation of church and state. At its core, the conservative hyperventilating about “indoctrination” of students with “socialist” ideology is a dog whistle to evangelicals who believe — […]

Jon Henke, a blogger at the Next Right, is attempting to organize a boycott of Wingnut WorldNetDaily, the scandal-mongering, tinfoil-hat tabloid of the right. No doubt he was provoked for a while, but most recently by a piece which claimed Congress is considering legislation that “appears designed to create the type of detention center that […]

At the Windy, Dave Weigel traces the cause and effect of a Glenn Beck “investigative” story and outbursts at town hall meetings. After Beck ran a hit piece on Van Jones, Special Advisor for Green Jobs at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, referring to him as Obama’s “green czar” and accusing him of […]

Earlier this week, Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards rebutted a post by U.S. News and World Report’s God and Country blogger, Dan Gilgoff, who unquestioningly suggested that the Obama administration needed to respond to the “demand” of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops that abortion services be excluded from health care reform. (Gilgoff, who frequently […]

A new cause celebre is brewing for the religious right: the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has issued a determination letter to Belmont Abbey, a Catholic college in North Carolina, saying that it discriminated against female faculty by excluding coverage for prescription contraceptives in its health insurance plan. The EEOC also found that the college illegally […]

Yesterday, Faith in Public Life — a leading a coalition of 22 religious groups — hosted a conference call for “people of faith” and the White House on health-care reform. The message? “People of faith” think we have a moral obligation to provide quality, affordable health care to all our citizens and want Congress to […]

On an afternoon conference call organized by a coalition of religious organizations pushing for health-care reform, White House Domestic Policy Adviser Melody Barnes said that President Obama “is still committed to” the public option and he thinks it is “the best one.” More on this tomorrow. —Sarah Posner