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✴︎ Newsweek
The Battle Over Abortion Language
The way you talk about your desire for common ground, it turns out, signals whose side you’re actually on. Advice to would-be culture warriors in the 21st century: walk softly and carry a big thesaurus. According to the conventional wisdom, the culture wars are over in Washington—or, at the very least, reduced to sideline skirmishes.
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Abortion Reduction and Obama
A Ceasefire in the Culture War By making ‘abortion reduction’ a priority, Obama courts his frenemies. How does a democratic, pro-choice president avoid engaging in a culture war? This is the question that faces Barack Obama as he begins to shape his domestic policy. His presidency is not yet 100 days old, and already Obama
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Is Your Rabbi Hot or Not?
Once is lucky. Twice is nice. Three times—well, anyone can tell you that’s a tradition. It is a great pleasure, then, to unveil the third annual installment of what we at NEWSWEEK fondly call the “hot rabbis list.” Created, maintained and revised by three Jewish media tycoons—Sony Pictures Entertainment chairman Michael Lynton, News Corp. executive
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Dambisa Moyo: Africa doesn’t need Bono
Thanks, Bono, but No Thanks Photos of celebrities with poor African children don’t ‘help me raise a child who believes she can be a doctor or an engineer.’ Dambisa Moyo is having her moment. The beautiful Zambian economist, formerly of Goldman Sachs and educated at Harvard and Oxford, arrives in New York this week to…
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Jesus on Facebook
A Christian by Any Other Name On Facebook, more than 900 groups use a variation of ‘follower of Jesus.’ It doesn’t carry baggage. Ward Brehm doesn’t call himself a Christian. “I just call myself a follower of Jesus,” says Brehm, a Minneapolis businessman and former chairman of the U.S.-Africa Development Foundation. “It’s a huge difference.”
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Buying Gold as a Hedge
Cash In A Mattress? No, Gold In The Closet. With prices setting new records, the worried wealthy are piling up ingots in home safes. NEWSWEEK goes shopping for precious metal. A hundred-ounce gold bar, when you hold it in your hand, is surprisingly small and even more surprisingly heavy. It’s somewhat longer and fatter than
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Is there a right way to read the Bible?
The Good, the Bad, the Bible Is there a right way to read the Bible? This question came to me as I was reading “The Good Book,” by David Plotz. The author, who is the editor of Slate, was thumbing through the Hebrew Bible at his niece’s bat mitzvah in 2006 when he came across
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Applying to Seminary and Divinity School
Everyone, it seems, has a “Plan B.” You’ve had the conversation yourself with your spouse and probably with friends over dinner. In the event you can no longer be a journalist—or an investment banker, lawyer or literary agent—what will you be? A livery-cab driver? A yoga instructor? A bartender? Where would you like to take
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God’s Miraculous Makeover
You likely believe that when you die, you’re going to heaven. More than 80 percent of Americans do. But in what form? Are you “you”? If so, are you old or young, fat or thin? If not, what are you? An angel? A spirit? A spark? On the question of resurrection, the consensus breaks down.
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What Rick Warren Said
After a month of controversy, Rick Warren’s performance Tuesday at the inauguration of President Barack Obama was like a good short story: in the end, it was both inevitable and surprising. The first surprise was Warren’s evident awkwardness as he stepped up to the podium, as though his fast public rise over the past four