CNN

After CNN's initial report on Pope Benedict's final papal audience, the first guest to appear on CNN Newsroom on Wednesday was a radical leftist nun who believes the upcoming papal election is "invalid" because no women are involved.

Sister Donna Quinn lashed out: "We women are calling this papal election invalid. It has to be declared fraudulent because it has no women included in the process. By that I mean there are no women on the ballot in the conclave, there are no women voters, there are no women in the whole process, so we're very distressed." No church representative appeared to challenge Quinn's views; only CNN's Vatican analyst John Allen was on the air with Quinn. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

On Sunday's Reliable Sources, guest David Zurawik mocked "out of town reporters" who met with the White House about sequestration and simply repeated the administration's talking points back to their local channels, "like an Obama commercial."

However, CNN displayed that same uncritical journalism over and over on the sequester. Obama administration officials freaked out about looming budget cuts to their respective agencies and CNN simply relayed the hype to its viewers, comparing the cuts to the asteroid and calling them a "man-made disaster." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CNN's chief political analyst freaked out about the sequester cuts on Tuesday afternoon's Newsroom, calling them a "man-made disaster."

"It is a man-made disaster. Not a natural one," Borger insisted. She compared them to the massive snow storm currently hitting the Midwestern states: "And just watching those pictures of Erin in the snowstorm, I was thinking, it's like we know this huge storm is coming to the country, but nobody is buying a shovel." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CNN's own legal analyst scoffed at CNN's notion that 75 Republicans supporting legal gay marriage is a "big turning point" for the party. Anchor Ashleigh Banfield did her best to drum up the matter on Tuesday, for the network that has repeatedly shown a bias favoring gay marriage.

"Next, a big turning point in the Republican party. 70 high profile Republicans just signed a brief supporting gay marriage," Banfield touted. "I really disagree with the premise that this is a lot of people," responded CNN's legal analyst Jeff Toobin. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

There's practically nothing as delicious as watching liberals eat their own, especially in the current post-election environment when the Obama-loving media are revelling in Republicans going after one another.

With this in mind, grab some popcorn and your favorite beverage as you watch MSNBC regular Donny Deutsch ask CNN's Piers Morgan Monday, "When did you become such a crazy liberal?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

CNN touted ex-president Jimmy Carter as a "new cult favorite" and asked if his image was "being rehabilitated" on Monday's The Situation Room. After friendly interviews of Carter and his grandson last week, it might be more accurate to ask if CNN is trying to "rehabilitate" Carter's image.

Liberal historian Douglas Brinkley made the laughably thin case for Carter. "But when you look at the Iran hostage crisis, I mean, Carter eventually negotiated the release of all of those hostages. It cost his political re-election. He could have bombed Tehran during it, and maybe gotten himself re-elected but he didn't," he argued. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Responding to Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (R) on Monday, CNN's chief business correspondent slammed GOP "weird math" and "balanced budget nonsense" on the sequestration and accused Jindal of being "misleading."

"And it's this weird math that the Republicans are using, that it's just three percent of the federal budget," Velshi ranted. "Except you can't touch entitlements. So it's three percent of a small part of the federal budget, which makes it a very big part of some major agencies," he insisted. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CNN's Piers Morgan got some love from Hollywood liberal Dustin Hoffman at Sunday's Oscars.

"God bless you for what you're saying about gun control," Hoffman lauded Morgan's incessant gun control advocacy. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Bill Plante, CBS News Senior White House Correspondent, made a rather shocking statement Sunday about the Obama administration's media strategy.

Appearing on CNN's Reliable Sources, Plante said that to the extent the White House is able to "put out their own material" without the Washington press corps, "they're undercutting the First Amendment...it's state-run media" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

When the Washington Post's Bob Woodward broke ranks with the Obama-loving media to correctly point out Friday that it was indeed the White House that originally proposed sequestration back in 2011, it was going to be interesting to see how many of his colleagues would follow suit.

On Sunday, CNN's Candy Crowley appeared to do so as she pressured Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood about whether or not the administration has "ginned up" the impact of the sequester in order to pressure Congress telling him at one point, "Your post-sequester total at FAA ops and facilities and equipment is going to be about $500 million more than 2008 and the planes were running just fine" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On the eve of Sunday's Academy Awards presentation, former George W. Bush CIA Director Michael Hayden has made a strong statement about the hunt for Osama bin Laden film "Zero Dark Thirty."

In an interview to be aired on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS Sunday, Hayden said, "If you look at the movie, it was artistically true, not factually true. Artistically, it portrayed the CIA interrogation program, but factually it was overwrought and inaccurate" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

While some in the mainstream media harp on the purportedly horrendous effects of possible across-the-board spending cuts on March 1, there is also an effort to distance President Barack Obama from responsibility.  An example of this is on CNN, which has shown more than once today a report on the sequester by chief business correspondent Ali Velshi.  An excerpt:

VELSHI: The forced budget cuts were created during the 2011 debt ceiling debacle. They were passed by Congress and signed by the White House.

So “the White House” signs bills into law?  That’s funny.   On August 2, 2011, the day the Budget Control Act became law, Situation Room host Wolf Blitzer told his audience:

Happening now, President Obama signs a bill to raise the debt limit, avoiding an economic debt crisis for now.

Chicago hasn’t had a Republican mayor in over 80 years.  Democrats have controlled the Illinois governor’s mansion and both houses of the legislature for more than a decade, with Democrats ruling the Illinois House for 28 of the last 30 years.  No matter, Chicago violence is the fault of Republicans.  We learned that this morning on CNN Newsroom when anchor Carol Costello asked her “Talk Back” guests about Retired Lt. General Russel Honore’s suggestion to use National Guard troops to curb murders in Chicago.  Democratic strategist Robert Zimmerman astutely pinpointed the reason for Chicago’s carnage:

And let's be very clear about what's happening in Washington today and why it's undermining the city of Chicago, because there's a mindset now in our government, in Washington, from the Republican members of Congress, that sequestration is an acceptable way of doing business, that we can in fact engage in these massive irresponsible cuts that no one thinks is a logical approach to budgeting. 

Former President Jimmy Carter claimed he didn't raise a dime of money in the 1976 general election and CNN's Piers Morgan wouldn't challenge him on Thursday's Piers Morgan Tonight.

"As a matter of fact, when I ran against incumbent President Gerald Ford, you know how much money we raised? None," Carter bragged to Morgan. According to election law, general election campaigns couldn't take private money if they accepted public financing but Morgan still let Carter off the hook by refusing to question his claim of zero infractions. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CNN only had soft questions and praise on Thursday for Jimmy Carter's grandson who had unearthed the tape of Mitt Romney's "47 percent" remarks. Host Wolf Blitzer gave a warm interview to James Carter IV on The Situation Room and Piers Morgan later teed up former President Carter to brag about his grandson on Piers Morgan Tonight.

"How does it make you feel that your grandfather is so proud of what you did? What has he said to you?" Blitzer asked his Democratic guest. "He certainly was proud of you in the interview with Piers Morgan," he gushed. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Update (15:50 EST, Feb. 22): Twitchy reports Amanpour deleted the tweet and subsequently insisted her birthday wish was ironic.

"[W]hat do you get for the serial human rights abuser who has everything?" the folks at Twitchy snarked today reacting to this tweet by CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour: "Happy Birthday, President Mugabe: http://on.cnn.com/VQ4kTK #Zimbabwe"

But wait, it gets better. The link in the tweet takes viewers to a short video [embedded below the page break] narrated by the CNN anchor, which opens with a strange comparison to Pope Benedict XVI:

After the Newtown shooting, CNN anchor Don Lemon cried that "We need to get guns and bullets and automatic weapons off the streets," but he still insisted it "wasn't advocacy" and that he's "about accuracy and the truth," in an interview with the LGBT publication Dallas Voice.  

"It wasn't advocacy. It was being a human. I've always said we are human beings before we are reporters," was Lemon's excuse. Of course, basically calling for an assault weapons ban is advocacy, not to mention comparing opponents of same-sex marriage to segregationists.

After hyping the "draconian" sequester cuts set to take place March 1, CNN kept up its frenzy on Tuesday afternoon by spreading government hysteria over the $85 billion spending reduction. Headlines sounded alarms like "Medicine, Food at Risk," "Travel Nightmare In the Making," and "U.S. justice system in jeopardy."

"President Obama is warning of dire consequences for all of us if lawmakers don't act quickly," The Situation Room host Wolf Blitzer channeled White House angst. "The President clearly wants all of us to be very, very worried about the budget axe that's about to fall," he hyped during the 6 p.m. ET hour. "The President has said it's an issue of national security," reported correspondent Joe Johns on cuts to the justice system. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Even though the upcoming sequester cuts amount to only $85 billion, compared to $16 trillion of U.S. debt, CNN hyped the deleterious effects of the cuts to the economy by comparing them to the recent asteroid that just missed earth.

"Watch out. Like the asteroid headed to earth, they're coming. $86 billion in automatic budget cuts," anchor Carol Costello warned. And "draconian" was in the CNN talking points as Costello and her colleague Christine Romans repeatedly gave that label to the cuts. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CNN media critic Howard Kurtz ripped the press infatuation with Sen. Marco Rubio's water sip as "profoundly depressing," but on Sunday's Reliable Sources he wouldn't call out his own network's attempt to use the incident to drive headlines.  

Last Wednesday, CNN's The Situation Room took the trivial and blew it up. CNN showed a still-shot of Rubio sipping water with headline flashing "Career-Ender?" Host Wolf Blitzer asked his panel if the incident was a "big deal." The headline stoked outrage on Twitter and CNN jumped to explain it as a "joke," but Kurtz didn't mention any of this hullabaloo.

The same network that wondered if Sen. Rubio's sip of water was a "big deal" is now asking just why Republicans are "so fixated on Benghazi" when they asked Defense Secretary nominee Chuck Hagel about the Libya fiasco.

"This, despite testimony on Benghazi from General Petraeus, Hillary Clinton, Admiral Mike Mullen, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, General Martin Dempsey, among others. But it's not enough," an obviously flustered Carol Costello huffed. The CNN headline later flashed, "Why are Republicans so fixated on Benghazi?" [Video below the break. Audio here.]

<<UPDATE BELOW>> On Wednesday's The Situation Room, host Wolf Blitzer absurdly wondered if Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) pausing his State of the Union response for a drink of water would "break" his career. The CNN chyron flashed "Career-ender?"

"So can a drink of water make or break a political career?" Blitzer asked. "A U.S. Senator, possible presidential candidate. We're going to find out, whether he likes it or not." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Now that Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has stepped onto the national stage by delivering the Republican response to President Obama’s State of the Union address, the media’s effort to undermine him is underway. On CNN’s Tuesday night post-address coverage, senior political analyst Gloria Borger sought to misrepresent Rubio’s view on the role of government.

Here is Borger’s take on the Florida senator: [Video after the jump. MP3 audio here.]

On Monday night, CNN's Erin Burnett badgered the Catholic church to change its doctrine and accept birth control, gay marriage, and women priests. All day long on Monday, CNN asked if the church was going to change with the times but Burnett was blatant in her push for liberalization of doctrine.

"Isn't it time for the church, which is supposed to be an inclusive, generous, giving organization, to move ahead on gay rights?" she asked her guest a loaded question. When he answered no, she hit back, "Even if they [gay people] love each other, isn't the Catholic Church supposed to be about love?" [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Right as CNN's The Situation Room reported the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, correspondent Brian Todd launched into a litany of the "controversies" of his papacy and pushed the positive analysis to the bottom of his report.

"Pope Benedict's papacy has been marked by serious controversies," began anchor Wolf Blitzer. Todd followed up that as far as "controversies" were concerned, "there was certainly no shortage of those during his papacy." [Video below the break. Audio here.]