Dan Klaidman

After failing for the entire calendar year of 2012 to cover the Fast and Furious scandal, the PBS NewsHour suddenly showed up on the beat Tuesday night -- not to question Holder, but to wonder why Holder was being punished by Republicans. Online, the segment title was "Why Eric Holder Is a 'Lightning Rod to Conservatives'." Why on Earth does "lightning rod" have to be in quotes? Because it's just so implausible?

Woodruff invited on two liberal journalists -- NPR legal correspondent Carrie Johnson and Daniel Klaidman of Newsweek -- to discuss how Holder is being punished because he's liberal, not whether he's stonewalled and lied to Congress.

NBC's Matt Lauer invited on Newsweek managing editor Dan Klaidman, on Wednesday's Today, to answer Sarah Palin's charge that the magazine's recent cover photo of her, in a jogging outfit, was "sexist," but Klaidman denied the accusation as he claimed: "Well, what it really represented was what the story was about, and that's what our mission is. I mean, look, since she's been on the national stage, there have been these questions about her gravitas, about her seriousness." The photo – which was a reprint of a Runners World cover – was, as Palin noted "taken out of context," and intended to diminish her as a political figure, something that even Lauer, to his credit, noticed as seen in the following exchange with Klaidman and his other guest, the Daily Beast's editor-in-chief Tina Brown: [audio available here]

MATT LAUER: But on this week, as she's launching this book that, that she wants to use to kind of establish herself and perhaps as a run for 2012, why that image? Why do you think that represented what she's all about at this point in time?