Rosie O'Donnell made two things clear yesterday: an article written by the Culture & Media Institute's Colleen Raezler got under her skin, and Rosie is clueless about NewsBusters. [Audio available here.]

Raezler penned a piece on O'Donnell's recent comments on the "QuiverFull" movement, in which the radio host called the movement "even scarier" because it is made up of conservative Christians. O'Donnell noticed the article, and had this to say on her March 18 XM "Rosie Radio" show:

There's a lot of posts about the QuiverFull movement. Remember ... I was saying how [girlfriend] Tracy loves the Duggars? ...This is this crazy woman, Colleen Razier [sic], some Christian something. [Rosie reads from the NewsBusters post.] Oh, God ... I just wanna say, Colleen, why don't you come on the show and chat with me face to face, little Colleen Razier [sic] from the NewsBusters evangelical Christian media blog [sic] ... Those people are weird.  

NewsBusters is evangelical Christian? Who knew?

Huffington Post blogger Tamara McClintock Greenberg gave one more reason in support of same-sex marriage - without it, her friends "might be forced to leave the country."

Greenberg lamented her friends' situation: "As same-sex partners, not only do they lack the basic rights of any couple in love to marry, since one person is an immigrant on a student visa, they may have to move to another country that acknowledges gay rights and marriage."

With that unique argument out of the way, the rest of Greenberg's post was a textbook-perfect liberal screed against those standing in the way of marriage for gay and lesbian couples. She was ashamed of America and compared it to countries where atrocious human rights violations are committed everyday. She blamed Christianity for our intolerance, and argued that homosexual couples are no different than heterosexual couples.

Yesterday the Associated Press and Newsweek latched onto a pro-ObamaCare letter circulated by a left-wing group and signed by 59 nuns. Today, liberal Washington Post columnist and practicing Catholic E.J. Dionne took to the op-ed page to encourage House Democrats to "listen to the nuns."

Dionne ably expressed the sentiments of perhaps many a liberal journalist giddy over the news:

House members voting on health care will be representing primarily their positions as Americans and as agents of their constituents, though many will also be influenced by their faith. Those with a special affection for the Roman Catholic Church have an extra reason for voting in favor of the health bill.

By passing it, they would save the bishops from the moral opprobrium that would rightly fall upon them if they succeeded in killing the best chance we have to extend health coverage to 30 million Americans. I suspect that many bishops would be quietly grateful. In their hearts, they know the nuns are right.

But today, National Review's Kathryn Jean Lopez noted another group of nuns that probably won't get as much, if any, media coverage precisely because they stand with the nation's Catholic bishops with their concerns about inadequate protection for the unborn in the legislation before Congress.

Given recent liberal statements disparaging having children, it's easier to understand left-wing opposition to a pro-life amendment to the health care reform bill. Just one day after Rosie O'Donnell essentially stated that public funding of abortion would solve the problem of paying for "all of the unwanted kids and the half-million of them in foster care," she disparaged the QuiverFull movement as "even scarier" when she found it was made up of conservative evangelical Christians.

QuiverFull became a topic of discussion on O'Donnell's March 16 Sirius XM "Rosie Radio" after she mentioned that her new girlfriend enjoyed watching the TLC program "19 and Counting," about the Duggar family. [Audio available here .]

The Duggars have 19 children and are part of the movement, in which married couples forgo birth control to give God complete control over how many children they will have.

"That's their religion. It's a movement among [stated in a fake-Southern accent] conservative evangelical Christians," explained Pete Mele, a staff member.

"Oh. Uh-huh. Even scarier," O'Donnell interrupted.

"Hot on the heels of Kucinich's declaration of support for health-care reform, the Associated Press is reporting that Catholic nuns are urging Democratic lawmakers to support health-care reform," Newsweek's Katie Connolly informed readers of the magazine's The Gaggle blog this morning.

"This is a major break with the church's bishops, who have strongly opposed the legislation on the grounds that some federal subsidies may end up funding abortions," Connolly gushed, later closing her blog post with the conclusion that "[a]t the very least, the letter damages the validity of [pro-life Democrat Rep. Bart] Stupak's argument."

Both Connolly's post and the underlying AP story failed to delve into this, but the letter in question was not simply cobbled together by apolitical nuns. It was pushed out to the media by a group with a left-wing agenda, reports CatholicCulture.org:

Stephen Kurczy of the Christian Science Monitor tried to dispel "persistent myths" about St. Patrick in a Monday article on the patron saint of the Irish, but ended up forwarding outlandish claims. Kurczy even went so far to inaccurately contend that "Patrick...isn't even recognized by the Roman Catholic Church as an official saint."

The correspondent made that astonishing claim three paragraphs into his article, titled "St. Patrick's Day: Did Patrick become Christian for the tax breaks?" In fact, at his general audience at the Vatican on Wednesday, Pope Benedict XVI "addressed a special greeting to Irish faithful who are today celebrating the feast of their patron, St. Patrick." The Catholic Church wouldn't commemorate his feast day if he wasn't an "official saint." Even the Eastern Orthodox, who have no substantial presence in Ireland, recognize Patrick as a saint. Kurczy could be confused by the fact that the saint was recognized prior to the institution of the formal canonization process by the Church.

Apparently, March 15 was “get Beck” day at the Washington Post. Columnist Howard Kurtz criticized Fox News’ Glenn Beck for “dividing” Fox. He pointed out that companies have boycotted the show, and noted all the controversial things that Beck has said. Yes, Beck is wildly successful, “But that growth has come at a price, at least for those at Fox who believe that Beck is beginning to define their brand.”

That same day, Post religion writer and leftist hack Anthony Stevens-Arroyo attacked Glenn Beck on March 15 in a “Catholic in America” entry to the Post’s On Faith blog.

“Glenn Beck’s anti-Catholic Rants,” sprang from Beck’s position on the social justice movement in the Catholic Church. Stevens-Arroyo first attempted to discredit Beck and wrote, “Few people are better at making accusations with code words than Glenn Beck, the Fox News celebrity. With his chalkboard logic, Beck creates conspiracies that almost always make him a savior against anything named ‘Democrat’ or ‘Obama.’”

"Why Does Glenn Beck Hate Jesus?" asked Time's Amy Sullivan in a Sunday March 14 Swampland blog post:

When Glenn Beck told listeners of his radio show on March 2 that they should "run as fast as you can" from any church that preached "social or economic justice" because those were code words for Communism and Nazism, he probably thought he was tweaking a few crunchy religious liberals who didn't listen to the show anyway. Instead he managed to outrage Christians in most mainline Protestant denominations, African-American congregations, Hispanic churches, and Catholics--who first heard the term "social justice" in papal encyclicals and have a little something in their tradition called "Catholic social teaching. (Not to mention the teaching of a certain fellow from Nazareth who was always blathering on about justice...)

So to whom did Sullivan turn for complaints about Beck's characterization? Some theologically conservative Catholic theologian? A conservative Protestant theologian like Baptist seminary president Al Mohler or Presbyterian theologian R.C. Sproul?

Nope. She highlighted two stalwarts of social gospel-oriented liberal Christianity:

On ABC last Wednesday, both World News and Nightline featured a report filed by correspondent Dan Harris in which he linked the activities of some American evangelical Christian pastors with anti-gay hatred and attempts by Uganda’s parliament at passing death penalty legislation to punish homosexuals in the African nation. Each of the reports focused on the extreme views of American pastor Scott Lively and Ugandan pastor Martin Ssempa, without including the views of more mainstream American evangelical leaders.

On World News, anchor Diane Sawyer teased: "Gay terror: Have some American evangelical ministers helped threaten the lives of homosexuals in Africa?" She later plugged the report again: "And still ahead on World News, a death threat for gays. It happened after American evangelicals delivered a potent message."

In the version of the report that ran on Nightline, Harris made a point of mentioning Pastor Rick Warren as being a "one-time friend" of Pastor  Ssempa. And, though Harris’s reference to Pastor Warren as a "one-time friend" perhaps implies a falling out between the two men, the ABC correspondent could have more directly informed viewers that Pastor Warren released a statement last October declaring that he had not associated with Pastor Ssempa since 2007.

Furthermore, last December, Pastor Warren released a video message for Christians in Uganda in which he attacked the proposed anti-gay law as legislation "I completely oppose and I vigorously condemn," as he went on to declare, "The potential law before your parliament is unjust, it’s extreme, and it’s un-Christian toward homosexuals, requiring death penalty even in some cases."

On Friday’s Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, during a discussion of Mitt Romney’s recent altercation with rapper Sky Blu on an airplane, host Maher seemed to suggest that Romney might have been motivated by anti-black racism in confronting the rapper as the Real Time host brought up racially tinged quotes from former Mormon church president Joseph Fielding Smith – who died in 1972 at the age of 95 after serving two years as president – as if the words were relevant to Romney’s scuffle. Maher: "I just couldn't help but think maybe this has something to do with the fact that the Mormons traditionally have not had a great relation with the black people."

After reading a quote from Smith that came from a 1963 article in Look magazine, in which Smith contended that "I would not want you to believe that we bear any animosity toward the Negro. Darkies are wonderful people," Maher claimed that the words were only 20 or 30 years old. Maher: "I'm just saying if you're a Mormon and this is the ‘pope’ of your church and he says things like this about Negro and darkies – and this is only like, I don't know how long ago this was, 20, 30 years ago." The HBO host then read a quote from the book, The Way to Perfection, published by Smith in the 1930s, without divulging the date.

NBC's "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" has consistency working in its favor: the biggest "victims" are its depictions of conservatives and Christians.

Part of "SVU's" appeal is its ripped-from-the-headlines storylines, but the program's writers frequently use these storylines to promote liberal agendas and to bash Christians.

Three different episodes have aired since February 10 and all promoted a liberal agenda. In the past month, audiences saw Christians portrayed as kinky sex addicts and murderers, heard propaganda that supports the idea of special punishment for hate crimes based on sexual orientation, and heard the detectives on the show refer to the abortion debate as "pro-choice or no choice."

If anyone was looking for a self-righteous extreme feminist, they found one in Angie Jackson. This is a woman who was so proud she was aborting her baby that she announced she would "tweet" her chemical-cocktail abortion live, as it happened, on Twitter. The liberal media found this made-for-TV slaughter fascinating, and not at all a controversy worthy of discussing with two sides.

Newsweek’s Sarah Kliff proclaimed: "One hundred thousand people have watched Angie Jackson's abortion. Late last month, Jackson posted a video of herself to YouTube, recorded after she took RU-486, a medication used to end pregnancies." Kliff asked only "why shame remains" about the act of killing one’s baby. Jackson was honored for her courage in "demystifying" and "destigmatizing" the procedure: "We need 10,000 more of her," proclaimed Peg Johnston, chair of something called the Abortion Care Network. This desire for 10,000 more unashamed abortions is what "pro-choice" is all about.

Overall, this was just another classic tale from the "news" magazine that lamented 20 years ago that "Sadly, many home [abortion] remedies could damage a fetus instead of kill it." What about the pro-life side?

CNN's Kate Bolduan aired a slanted report on Catholic Charities of Washington's decision to no longer offer benefits to spouses of new employees on Saturday's Newsroom, playing four sound bites from proponents of same-sex "marriage" and none from opponents. Bolduan also omitted the liberal affiliation of one of the homosexual "marriage" advocates.

During the report, which first aired 11 minutes into the 10 pm Eastern hour (and reran during the 1 pm Eastern hour on Monday), the correspondent noted how homosexual couples could get their civil marriage licenses in DC starting on Tuesday, and that there was "controversial fallout" from the move: "Catholic Charities, the social services arm of the Archdiocese of Washington, just announced it will no longer offer health benefits to spouses of any new employees or current employees who aren't already covered under its plan. As a result, the nonprofit is effectively avoiding having to give benefits to same-sex partners, keeping with the Church's opposition to same-sex marriage."

Perhaps this was a cry out for relevancy - something she hasn't been since the Clinton administration, but comedienne Roseanne Barr is showing her social commentary knows no bounds.

In a March 4 post on her blog, Barr used the suicide of Marie Osmond's son, Michael Blosil, to go on a sick and twisted anti-religion screed. According to the former sitcom star, any underlying issues that led to Blosil taking his own life were a result of "his church and the people in it":

"marie osmonds poor gay son killed himself because he had been told how wrong and how sick he was every day of his life by his church and the people in it. Calling that ‘depression' is a lie!"

Huffington Post writer and White House adviser Eboo Patel asked who deserves to be called something greater than an “American patriot?” Even a “faith hero” – something Patel only bestows upon the “true giants of history?” Van Jones. Yes, Jones, the former “Green Jobs” czar who resigned in September when controversies surrounding him, such as him being a communist, began to emerge.

In a March 5 article on Huffington Post Religion, “Van Jones, Faith Hero,” Patel, however, put all of Jones’ troubles aside and put him on a pedestal. Although if Patel was only receiving his news from the traditional media it would be understandable because they largely failed to report Jones had his name on a petition that questioned if 9/11 was orchestrated by the U.S. government.

Having closely examined this week's slanted coverage by the Washington Post of the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington's decision to end spousal health care benefits, GetReligion.org's Mollie Z. Hemingway zeroed in on the heart of the media bias present in today's piece, "Catholic Charities' health-plan change called 'devastating'"*, which begins with a former Catholic Charities officer lamenting the organization's decision to not grant health insurance to spouses of future employees in order to avoid having to cover same-sex couples married in the District of Columbia:

The narrative on this story could be framed as one where the Catholic Church is doing everything in its power to be able to continue serving the poor here in DC against an oppressive government crackdown on religious freedom — even changing its benefits structure so that it won’t be in violation of church teaching. Instead, it’s basically framed as a choice that the Archbishop decided to make so as to mess with gays. The power to frame a story is huge and largely unseen by readers.

Hemingway did an excellent job breaking down the coverage. You can read the whole post here.

Would you like some religion with your brie?

“Huffington Post” and “religion” may sound like an oxymoron, but the two are attempting to go together. The liberal blogspot – which regularly features Bill “Religulus” Maher – announced on February 24 that the website was launching HuffPo Religion. Founder Arianna Huffington touted it as being, “a section featuring a wide-ranging discussion about religion, spirituality, and the ways they influence our lives.”

While that may have been the intention, in reality HuffPost Religion’s discussions are based on promoting the liberal agenda toward religion.

Updated below (Feb. 24)

The Washington Post was curiously silent about the ideological and/or partisan bent of blogs that prompted its coverage of a controversial statement made last Thursday by Virginia Delegate Robert Marshall (R), who suggested, the Post reports, "that women who have abortions risk having later children with birth defects as a punishment from God."

Kunkle noted that Marshall couched his controversial comments in reference to a study by Virginia Commonwealth University that "was published in 2008 in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health and suggested that there is a higher risk of premature birth and low birth weight in children born to women who have had an abortion."

"Few seized on the remarks at the time Marshall made them," the Post's Fredrick Kunkle noted in his page B2 February 23 story, "[b]ut outrage built on social networking sites and political blogs after some Virginia newspapers picked up the story from Capital News Service, a program at VCU's School of Mass Communications."

But which blogs, exactly? It's not a stretch to imagine it was mostly left-wing or Democratic blogs seeking to hype a controversy to make Virginia Republicans -- who control the House of Delegates -- look bad, particularly in an election year in which the Democratic majority in the state senate is in jeopardy.

Yet Kunkle failed to inform readers which blogs tipped him off to the story and what political axes they have to grind.

On Monday’s Countdown show, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann singled out Texas to mock the religious beliefs of the state’s residents during one of his regular "Quick Comments." He began the segment by mocking the majority of Texas residents: "A mind may be a terrible thing to waste, but if you waste 15 million of them, apparently you get Texas."

After detailing statistics which show that most Texans did not realize that dinosaurs became extinct before humans existed, or that only about half believe in human evolution, Olbermann seemed to lament that he could not use the statistics to attack Republicans exclusively since the numbers are similar among members of both major parties: "I’d love to be able to pin this on political affiliation, but it’s almost a tie – 51 percent of Democrats said they either never go to church or only go once or twice a year; 45 percent of Republicans said they either never go to church or only go once or twice a year."

Below is a complete transcript of the second "Quick Comment" from the Monday, February 22, Countdown show on MSNBC:

The New York Times is pro-voodoo, or perhaps they are just an informal Voodoo Anti-Defamation League. On Saturday, religion writer Samuel G. Freedman wrote a story headlined "Voodoo, a Source of Comfort in Haiti, Remains Misunderstood." For political junkies, this passage was the most indulgent:

In American political rhetoric, "voodoo" functions as a synonym for "fraudulent," going back to George Bush’s description of supply-side economics. Would any public figure dare use "Baptist" or "Hindu" or "Hasidic" in the same way?

Freedman also lamented this religion’s mistreatment at the hands of Hollywood movie executives (not a normal complaint from the Times if the movies are raucously caricaturing Christianity). The intolerance emerged from a 1929 book titled Magic Island:

Uniquely among Friday’s broadcast network evening newscasts, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams gave his viewers a glimpse into the undignified exit from the White House endured by the Dalai Lama, who was made to walk past a number of trash bags as President Obama sought to keep the Chinese government from noticing the meeting. A photograph of Tibet's exiled Buddhist spiritual leader walking past the bags was shown as the NBC host read the piece.

Below is a transcript of the news item from the Friday, February 19, NBC Nightly News, as read by Brian Williams:

He's made some crazy statements in the past, but pop singer Elton John now claims Jesus Christ was gay.

In an interview scheduled to be published by Parade magazine this Sunday, John says, "I think Jesus was a compassionate, super-intelligent gay man who understood human problems."

This of course seems absurd coming from a man who in 2006 said, “I think religion has always tried to turn hatred towards gay people,”

Regardless of the incongruity of such remarks, John is further quoted as saying according to FoxNews.com (h/t Story Balloon):

Vice President Joseph Biden's very public wearing of ashes, a Lenten practice for Catholics, on Wednesday led to several befuddled reactions from the mainstream media. Sky News's Kay Burley had to apologize after confusing the ashen mark for an injury. More egregiously, ABC News's Karen Travers omitted the past controversy over his support for legalized abortion, and portrayed him as a devout Catholic.

The Vice President bore the ashes on his forehead as he introduced President Obama at a White House event celebrating the one-year anniversary of the so-called Recovery Act. Burley asked Greg Milam, Sky News's US correspondent, about the mark as they monitored Biden's remarks: "What's happened to his head? I'm sure that's what everybody's asking at home." After a short pause, Milam replied, "Yes, I don't know. It's a simple answer. Maybe we'll get a chance to find out a little later." Burley then remarked, "It looks like he walked into a door, doesn't it? I'm sure that's one of the questions that the networks will be asking him." (video clip above is from Thursday's Morning Joe on MSNBC; audio available here).

Kathy Griffin is once again gunning to be the most crude, offensive, and downright disturbing comedian on air.

On Feb. 16, she appeared (appropriately enough) on Headline News Network's "The Joy Behar Show" to promote as much of herself as humanly possible: her recently released stand-up DVD "She'll Cut a Bitch," her appearance in an upcoming Law & Order episode as a lesbian rights activist (which she claims will garner her an Emmy), and her live comedy act at Madison Square Garden where she'll be "worse than she's ever been."

In a CNN video posted at Story Balloon, left-wing comedian Sarah Silverman expressed her disgust at the nation’s rejection of same-sex marriage as she declared that she is "starting to get appalled by anybody who would get married in this day and age." She went on to compare getting married to joining a racially exclusive country club in the 1960s. Silverman: "I mean, it’s like, if you say, if you joined a club, a country club, you know, in the 60s that, where no blacks or Jews were allowed. Why would you want to join that country club? ... I find marriage has a very ugly mark on it right now, and I would not want to be a part of it."

And, as she made a distinction between her Jewish ethnic heritage and her religious beliefs, she described herself as agnostic, and related that she is only religious when "I’m very, very sick, and, like, on the bathroom floor." Silverman: "I’m not religious. I mean, the only times I’m religious are when I’m very, very sick, and, like, on the bathroom floor, like in sweat, I will definitely find God, or in incredible amounts of turbulence."

Below is a transcript of relevant portions of the video, which can be seen at Story Balloon: