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Two "alert" emails hit my inbox this morning concerning the Department of Labor's just-released unemployment claims report. The one I expected came from CNNMoney.com, which read: "Initial unemployment claims fall below 400,000 for the first time in more than 3 months, dropping 24,000 to 398,000 in latest week." The other one came from USAToday.com, which does not ordinarily issue alerts when…

Once again, Tea Party-critic John Avlon took aim at "hyper-partisanship" in Congress but focused the blame squarely on House Republicans while saving a tiny bit of blame for Democrats. In a July 25 op-ed for CNN.com, he hit Republicans for walking away from a generous deal by President Obama to settle the debt ceiling debate. "We are learning that activists and ideologues pushing anti-tax…

For the second day in a row, CNN is doing its level best to avoid noting some interesting data from its latest poll that shows some 66 percent of voters favor the Republican-sponsored "Cut, Cap and Balance" plan. The only mention of that fact on air is when guests bring it up and today the CNN.com website is casting the poll's results as evidence that while Obama is losing enthusiasm among…

As soon as the Senate rejected the "Cut, Cap and Balance" plan, CNN.com shot out a biased Breaking News alert to e-mail subscribers that labeled the measure as one "favored by hard-line conservative [sic]" (screen capture attached below page break):  

The CNN Belief Blog's latest hit-job on Republicans involved Boston University religion scholar Stephen Prothero pronouncing that Republican politicians taking conservative pledges is "unbiblical" and "unchristian." Republicans have made news recently for taking pledges that are anti-tax, pro-life, and opposing same-sex marriage. According to Prothero, the Bible argues that the "recent orgy…

Dan Savage hates bullying. Make that some bullying. Admirably, Savage hates it when gay teens get bullied. Less admirably, Savage doesn't hesitate to bully, smear and malign those who disagree with him. Savage, a gay sex columnist, has never been shy about expressing his hatred for social conservatives. In his latest attack, appearing on HBO's "Real Time" with Bill Maher July 15, Savage…

In a USA Today email I received 20 minutes after Tuesday's closing bell, I was informed that the exceptionally good day occurred because the stock markets were "buoyed by strong earnings reports by IBM, Coke and others." A visit to the email's linked article also partially attributed the rise to "renewed hopes that U.S. lawmakers would be able to break their stalemate and strike a deficit-…

David Frum is bashing conservative Republicans again – this time for playing hardball with President Obama and using the debt ceiling deadline as blackmail to get what they want. Frum writes in a CNN.com op-ed that the GOP demand for "total surrender" by the president on the debt ceiling debate gives him "horrible flashbacks" to the party's staunch opposition to the health care bill – which…

Stephen Prothero, a regular contributor to CNN.com's Belief Blog, bizarrely read the hearts of American Catholics, based on a recent poll which found that the majority of them believe abortion should stay legal. Prothero, writing in a Thursday item about 20th century leftist Catholic activist Dorothy Day and her self-admitted abortion, concluded that U.S. Catholics "will forgive Day's sin...…

CNN foreign affairs analyst Fareed Zakaria – who has recently had off-the-record conversations with President Obama on foreign issues – noted the president's "restraint" in his dealing with the "Arab Spring" and the conflict in Libya Wednesday. Zakaria previously gave a thumbs-up for Obama's Mideast speech in May and later defended the president's plan for removing American troops from…

CNN's Belief Blog might seem more like the Unbelief Blog at times. CNN's Katie Glaeser not only publicized, but seemed to take sides with American Atheists and their campaign to fly their Godless message on airplane banners on the Fourth of July. "It's a battle of belief -- and the right not to believe -- in a country founded on freedom," she began. That's a bit of a straw man -- even President…

CNN asked Wednesday if a person can follow "both Ayn Rand and Jesus," pulling quotes from both a Democrat and a fellow at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights to answer that Christianity and Rand's philosophy oppose each other. Buried deep within the post on CNN's Belief Blog was the contrary view that Christians can adopt certain tenants of Rand's philosophy while rejecting others…

CNN's Belief Blog contributor Jonathan Dudley offered the same tired liberal arguments against a Biblical defense of traditional marriage in a June 21 piece. The same writer who satirically argued that heterosexuals should not be allowed to raise children grilled the Biblical argument as being "riddled with self-serving double-standards." "I also don't doubt that those who advocate gay…

Weighed in the balance and found lacking. That biblical admonition could well describe CNN.com's shoddy "breaking news" take on today's Supreme Court ruling in Wal-Mart Stores v. Dukes. Simply put, CNN.com gave readers a woefully inaccurate and incomplete story on the case, chalking up the Court's ruling as holding that a "sweeping class-action status that could potentially involve hundreds…