Norah O'Donnell Bemoans Lack of Attention to Waterboarding During Brown-Coakley Race

Watching a dour Norah O'Donnell reporting from Senator-elect Scott Brown's exuberant victory bash in Boston, I half-expected O'Donnell to tell MSNBC's Rachel Maddow ... the mood here tonight is grim ...

O'Donnell didn't quite say that, at least not publicly, though she did cough up this gem --

O'DONNELL: Another interesting thing. You pointed out some of the odd things, talking about the availability of his two attractive daughters and also being willing to take his truck down to show it to the president and play basketball against him, but there was one part of the speech that I don't know if you heard. He said, our tax dollars should not be spent on weapons to stop them and not lawy-, let me start that over. Talking about terrorists, he said, our tax dollars should be spent on weapons to stop them, not on lawyers to defend them.

Scott Brown defends waterboarding. He did during this campaign. I don't know how many voters or people know that, but that was part of the issues, one of the issues in this campaign that really didn't get played out that much. And one of the reasons is because during a critical three-week period between Dec. 19 and Jan. 5, Martha Coakley was not on the air. As one Democratic official said, she literally went on vacation. So there were a number of issues that probably did not get a lot of play. Rachel.

Yes, and while Coakley wasn't "on" the air during that pivotal timeframe, someone else was "in" the air, a Nigerian jihadist named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab who nearly brought down Flight 253.

Also between Dec. 19 and Jan. 5, a Jordanian double-agent detonated a suicide bomb and killed seven CIA agents in Afghanistan.

Less than two months after a radical Muslim in the Army killed 14 people at Fort Hood.

Which took place two weeks after a Sudbury, Mass., man was arrested on charges of plotting to shoot people in a mall with automatic weapons.

O'Donnell, not incidentally, provided her editorial commentary in the guise of reporting within a few miles of Logan International Airport, from which two of the four planes hijacked by terrorists took off on 9/11.

Coakley has taken loads of flak for blowing a 31-point lead and expecting to coast by dint of a "D" next to her name, but I'll give my state's attorney general credit for this -- her ear is not so tinny to believe that what MSNBC reporters/editorialists consider of vital importance actually dovetails with the priorities of Bay State voters.

Had Coakley made waterboarding an issue with Brown -- an Army National Guard JAG lawyer who has served in the military for three decades -- an even more dour O'Donnell would have reported on Brown's double-digit landslide from a hotel ledge.