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On the evening of Good Friday, NPR All Things Considered anchor Audie Cornish announced one of those “landmark” (read: leftist) victories.

“There was a landmark ruling in India this week on sexual identity. The country's supreme court declared that India's transgender population shall be considered neither male nor female but a third gender,” Cornish announced. “The sweeping decision redefines the rights of and the state's obligations to one of India's most marginalized groups." NPR’s Julie McCarthy took over the celebration with a “journey of one young man who rejected his male identity” from New Delhi:

On the Sunday, April 20, Melissa Harris-Perry show on MSNBC, as host Harris-Perry chastised Democrats for not bragging about ObamaCare for the year's midterm elections, she at one point mocked Americans angry about having their health insurance plans cancelled, which she referred to as "crappy plans," as she lamented that Democrats are not boasting about ObamaCare or declaring, "Yeah, you can't keep your crappy plans. Just deal with that!"

Dan Gainor relayed to me that Sunday's New York Times hasn't a whiff of Easter on its front page -- not even in its blurbs at the bottom, saved for epic stories like "U.N. Cholera Struggle in Haiti." Above that is a depressing story about a 12-year-old Ecuadorean girl who committed suicide in Mexico after a second failed attempt at illegal immigration into America.

But it could be worse. Jim Romenesko reports from marijuana-addled Colorado that the Denver Post had nothing on Easter, but a huge writeup on "Welcome to Weed Country": 

The headlines over the lead story of  Sunday's New York Times reduced the fierce opposition to the Common Core education standards among both conservatives and liberals to cynical "wedge issue" anti-Obama politics by the angry right: "As G.O.P. Wedge, the Common Core Cuts Both Ways – Associated With Obama – Education Benchmarks Once Backed by Party Now Divide It."

The actual article by reporter Jonathan Martin was equally shallow, a partisan-driven analysis that failed to mention the bizarre, confusing math problems that have gotten parents up in arms. Martin left out the inconvenient fact that even the liberal governor of New York State is a critic, as reported a few days previous in the Times, and that the state teacher's union had withdrawn its support until fixes are made.

Conservative columnist and Fox News contributor George Will mocked President Obama’s claim last week that the debate over ObamaCare is over and that Republicans need to stop trying to repeal the law.

Appearing as a guest on Fox News Sunday on April 20, Will argued that “The debate is over is something of a mantra. The debate is over about climate change, everyone be quiet. The debate is over about early childhood education, everyone be quiet. Lots of things are supposedly over. And you hear that from people who are finding the evidence inconvenient."

Conservative commentator S.E. Cupp had some tough words for former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in the wake of him giving $50 million to push his gun control agenda.

Appearing as a guest on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, the CNN Crossfire co-host mocked Bloomberg’s efforts: “Well, he's the best, and by that, I mean the worst face for gun control. And believe me, my friends at NRA high-fived when they heard about this. [Video coming soon.]

Chelsea Clinton announced this week that she and her husband Marc Mezvinsky are expecting their first child, and the big three networks dutifully heaped enormous praise on the entire Clinton family. After the initial fawning coverage on April 17 and 18, ABC’s Good Morning America took the Clinton baby obsession to a new level on Sunday April 20.

ABC’s Susan Saulny began the 2 minute report by declaring “Prince George is doing wonders for the royal family's popularity. Look at those cheeks. This morning, speculation abounds. Could Chelsea Clinton's own baby announcement have a similar impact on an American dynasty? [Video coming soon.]

In his first epistle to the Corinthians, St. Paul made it perfectly clear that a belief in the bodily resurrection of Christ as the sine qua non of Christianity. If Christ was not raised from the dead, that the whole of the Christian faith is an utter sham, the apostolic witness fraudulent, the basis of Christian hope nonexistent, and the poor saps who go on attempting to live a life guided by the teachings of Christ are "of all people most to be pitied."

But the editors of the Washington Post's On Faith section apparently didn't get that memo, choosing to run for their Holy Saturday edition a Religion News Service article which hyped the beliefs of liberal religious scholars like the former Episcopal Bishop of Newark, John Shelby Spong, who not only denies that Jesus was physically raised from the dead but that the Bible really, truly teaches the same if you just interpret it the way he prefers to.

On the Saturday, April 19, Disrupt, as MSNBC's Karen Finney hosted a discussion of ObamaCare noting that President Obama has started encouraging Democrats to brag about the program, guest Dana Milbank of the Washington Post blamed Republican governors for hurting Democratic Senators in red states as he charged that in some states "ObamaCare isn't going very well because of those Republican governors."

A bit later, Zerlina Maxwell of The Grio asserted that 10,000 people a year will die because of Republican governors who have refused to expand Medicare.

After Finney played a clip of President Obama boasting about ObamaCare, Milbank responded:

Movement conservatives are on an anti-Obamacare bender and feeling pretty good, but eventually they may pay for it with a painful political hangover.
 
That, essentially, is what Talking Points Memo editor and publisher Josh Marshall wrote on Friday in an article titled "How the GOP Bet on Failure And Lost." Marshall acknowledged that the Affordable Care Act probably will help Republicans in this year's midterms, but that in the long run, they'll suffer at the polls unless they face the supposed fact that the law is a success.

On the Friday, April 18, All In show, during a discussion of the firing of former Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich for simply donating to a political campaign opposing same-sex marriage, guest Richard Kim of the far left The Nation magazine intoned that he found it "disturbing" that gay activist friends of his have expressed interest in "targeting" more people who have made similar donations, and who have declared they should "find out where they live." Kim:

The sci-fi “dramatic conspiracy thriller,” Orphan Black, in which actress Tatiana Maslany (IMDB page) plays the parts of five clones (so far), has its second season debut tonight on BBC America in the United States and on Space in Canada (both at 9 PM EDT Saturday night).

In an episode during its first season, “Sarah Manning” visits the mother in Toronto who adopted her to learn of her childhood in Brixton, England, during the 1980s. The mother tells her: “England was burning. Maggie Thatcher firing on all barrels – at Ireland, the Falklands. She sacked social security, went after the immigrants, the poor, unions.”

Midway through the Indiegogo campaign, the Gosnell movie raised $1 million– almost half of the $2.1 million needed to direct and produce the story of America’s “most prolific serial killer.” The project recently made headlines for becoming the most-funded movie ever on “crowdfunding” site Indigogo, with more than 10, 600 contributors.

Filmmaker Phelim McAleer with wife Ann McElhinney gave themselves a 45 day limit to raise $2.1 million – and reached $500,000 on April 9 with more than 6,500 funders. They aim to create a scripted drama based on abortionist Kermit Gosnell’s trial and grand jury report. The team turned to Indiegogo when similar crowdfunded site Kickstarter complained that, among other things, the project described babies “stabbed to death.”

“Why we root for Chelsea Clinton” was the latest from the Washington Post’s new culture blogger Alyssa Rosenberg. “For those of us who were once curly-haired, awkward daughters, Chelsea Clinton’s arrival on the national stage at age 12 meant years of sympathetic wincing. The barbs directed her way landed on us by proxy,” including Rush Limbaugh’s old “family dog” joke.

Youngsters might not realize that almost everyone in politics treated Chelsea with deference to her parents throughout the Clinton presidency, which ended when she was 20. The weirdest part is how Rosenberg can complain about Clinton opponents mocking Chelsea instead of the “adult Clintons” while she talks about 2008 and 2010, when ahem, Chelsea headed into her thirties:

Comedy Central really hates conservatives, especially the social ones. Have you seen Daniel Tosh making vicious fun of pro-lifers in a fake ad for Dr. Dre headphones?

Tosh and his girlfriend drive up to a modest-looking Planned Parenthood location and face a barrage of cartoonishly angry protesting haters that make the girlfriend tear up, while Tosh is happily tuning them out with his awesome headphones (video below):

CNN has been roundly mocked this week for extreme abuse of the "breaking news alert." On Monday night, Bill Weir combined yet another of the network's stories on the missing Malaysian flight with the anniversary of the Titanic's sinking. A graphic appeared on-screen that blared, "BREAKING NEWS: Titanic sunk 102 years ago tonight."

The segment was so ridiculous that even the liberal Washington Post derided CNN. Humor writer Alexandra Petri scolded her cable colleagues, sarcastically noting, "Thank heavens they’re here to tell us these things!" She wondered, "What happened to the Hinderberg? Is the Lusitania okay? I haven’t heard from that Donner Party in a while."  [See video of the CNN segment below.]

For its second season, the creators of the FX series “The Americans” have chosen an new source for insight into the Cold War during the Reagan years – one Lt. Col. Oliver North.

It's a dramatic reversal from the first season and it has infuriated some hard-leftists. The show began with the shocking promise from creator Joel Weisberg that the show’s heroes would be KGB agents: “We’re making them the sympathetic characters. I’d go so far as to say they’re the heroes.” It quickly became apparent that these characters could be unsentimental killers of innocent Americans, so perhaps that triggered a change of heart. 

In an online chat on PBS on Thursday, NewsHour and Washington Week anchor Gwen Ifill did the usual song and dance avoiding any admission of liberal tilt.

Someone named “Darius” pressed Ifill: “Why does PBS overdo the PC mentality so much? Especially in the face of reporting hard, substantiated news?” She couldn’t possibly agree. He must not be watching regularly:

The current edition of People magazine has ABC Good Morning America co-anchor Robin Roberts on "How Love Saved Me: The Family, Friends & Relationship That Gave Her Strength." It also promised a look "Inside her coming-out journey." People's Sharon Cotliar didn't report on how Barack Obama gave Roberts strength (and "chills") by coming out for gay marriage in an interview with her in 2012.

But her lesbian lover Amber Laign is barely mentioned because she's a "very private person." In addition to her inspiring story of how she survived a bone marrow disease, late in the story, Roberts finds peace in a pro-gay God:

It either doesn't take much to surprise Josh Lederman and Dana Capiello at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, or they have very short memories.

The AP pair described the Obama State Department's Friday afternoon statement (roughly 3:30 p.m., based on the "9 hours ago" result returned in a Google search on the document's title at 12:30 a.m. ET) that it would "provide more time" for eight federal agencies involved to submit "their views on the proposed Keystone Pipeline Project" as a "a surprise announcement Friday as Washington was winding down for Easter." It's as if something like this has never happened before during the Obama administration. Well, yes it has.

Whoopi Goldberg is adding another media gig on top of hosting "The View" on ABC: marijuana columnist for the Denver Post pot section.

"As I write my debut column for The Cannabist, talking about this newly legal weed and admiring the states that have had the foresight to legalize medical marijuana, I’m most tempted to extol the virtues of the vape pen." She calls her vapor device "Sippy."

On the Friday, April 18, PoliticsNation, Al Sharpton hyped President Obama's dubious claims about the Affordable Care Act's alleged success as the MSNBC host asserted that the program has "exceeded expectations," and that Republicans are suffering from a "hangover" in denying its success.

Sharpton claimed to see "lies, fearmongering and paranoia" from the GOP, and brought up questionable claims dating back to 2010 that Tea Party members spat on Democratic members of Congress during a protest. Sharpton began:

This past Monday, Daily Kos founder and publisher Markos Moulitsas proclaimed that the left had "won the battle of ideas." On Wednesday, Kos followed up by claiming that even though many on the right publicly took issue with his thesis, privately conservatives understand that America as a whole has turned against them, and that they prove it by "trying to disenfranchise" Democratic-leaning groups.
 
From Kos's Wednesday post:

Editor’s Note: Some of the content in this story might be offensive.

It might be best to keep the TV off this Easter.

WGN America’s new witch drama “Salem” premieres Easter and travels into 17th century Massachusetts. The show delves into what sparked the town’s notorious witch trials while deciphering who the real witches are – sex, nudity and devil worshipping included. “What if the witches were not the common folk,” John Alden (Shane West) asks in the trailer. “What if the witches were those we’ve entrusted to lead?” Besides West, the show rated for Mature Audiences stars Janet Montgomery and Seth Gabel.

David Nather at the Politico apparently wanted to make sure that those who don't follow the news closely see a triumphant headline ("Obama Spikes the Football") and a congratulatory opening paragraph at their computers, tablets, and smartphones.

Sure, the Politico reporter gradually threw in all kinds of qualifications after that, but his mission is largely accomplished: Cause those who don't click through to believe that Obamacare is functioning as intended, and — especially in the headline — communicate the message that the debate about the statist health regime's existence is really over. He can say that he did his job while at the same time keeping most people away from the more complicated reality. In that sense, Nather is right there with reporters at ABC and CBS who claim without verifiable evidence, as Rich Noyes at NewsBusters noted earlier this afternoon, that the program has achieved "a major milestone." Excerpts follow the jump (bolds are mine):

Ten years ago, Mel Gibson unveiled his massively successful movie The Passion of The Christ. It came out on Ash Wednesday (February 25, 2004), but is often re-viewed on Good Friday. It had a worldwide box-office gross of over $611 million.

In our Special Report on religion coverage that year, we explored how the TV networks attacked Gibson's movie as extreme, divisive, and potentially harmful  -- one CBS reporter even called it an "ecumenical suicide bomb" -- and how that differed from their fascination with theories in The DaVinci Code:

Both ABC and CBS carved out a few seconds on their Thursday evening and Friday morning newscasts to boost President Obama’s claims of success for his ObamaCare program. Filling in for Diane Sawyer, ABC World News anchor David Muir cheered the “major milestone” of an alleged eight million enrollees, while CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley said the enrollment figures were a “recent success” for the health care law.
 
Gone was the skepticism that some reporters, like ABC’s Jon Karl, showed at the end of March when ObamaCare was nearing seven million sign-ups, as he threw cold water on the official White House stat: “How many of those have signed up were previously uninsured....We don’t know how many people signed up here were simply – had their previous plans cancelled. Also, we don’t know how many have actually paid their premiums.”