The network evening newscasts on Thursday gave positive reviews to President Obama's speech in Cairo, with the NBC Nightly News the most glowingly positive, and ABC giving the most attention to skeptics in the Muslim world. NBC focused on positive reactions to the speech, quoting one observer who got "goose pimples," and another who compared the speech to that of President Kennedy in Berlin. NBC’s Andrea Mitchell seemed to have the most elevated expectations of what will result from Obama’s speech. After acknowledging that Obama risked alienating Jews for his criticism of Israel, she suggested the "rewards" may be worth it: "That said, the reward is huge. This was a transformational speech potentially, by reaching out to the Islamic world, by using the language, as Richard pointed out, by saying "As-Salamu ‘Alaykum," he has transformed the view of America among 1.5 billion people, and that is potentially the biggest, biggest benefit of all. This could change the Obama presidency."

All three made a point of characterizing Obama’s use of the Arabic phrase "As-Salamu ‘Alaykum," or, "Peace be with you," as a gesture that would greatly impress the Muslim world. CBS’s Lara Logan talked about the "excitement" in Cairo over Obama’s "historic" speech, and highlighted Obama’s personal popularity there: "This is a first in Cairo – the name of an American President on T-shirts and souvenirs on sale here. It's a sign of Barack Obama's personal popularity and how much is resting on his shoulders."

Thursday's NBC Nightly News featured Andrea Mitchell chastising and correcting former Vice President Dick Cheney for his speech on fighting terrorism, but the network saw no need to correct anything asserted by President Obama in his address on the same topic while anchor Brian Williams asked if Republicans are “happy” to have Cheney as “their messenger?”

CBS delivered contrasting conclusions in their two stories: With Obama, stressing his rebuke of his critics; with Cheney, emphasizing his unpopularity. Chip Reid ended his report on Obama by relaying Obama's charge that “opponents of closing Guantanamo Bay are using the politics of fear,” but, moments later, Bill Plante concluded his look at former VP Cheney's address on fighting terrorism by highlighting “Republicans who fear that the high-profile criticism coming from someone as unpopular as Cheney isn't helping their party.” The two conclusions on the May 21 CBS Evening News:

Chip Reid: “The President said opponents of closing Guantanamo Bay are using the politics of fear and he promised it will be closed.”

Bill Plante: “The former Vice President has made it clear that he intends to continue speaking out, ignoring Republicans who fear that the high-profile criticism coming from someone as unpopular as Cheney isn't helping their party.”

Who did MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell feature to respond to Michael Steele's Tuesday speech about the future of the Republican Party? Chris Shays, the liberal, former Republican congressman with a lifetime American Conservative Union score of 44, appeared on "Andrea Mitchell Reports" to critique the chairman of the Republican National Committee.

After Shays insisted that Dick Cheney shouldn't be deciding who is and isn't a solid member of the GOP, Mitchell complimented, "Chris Shays, a good Republican." Responding to the Steele speech, Mitchell pontificated, "No mention of Dick Cheney. No mention of Rush Limbaugh. Is he [Steele] trying to move the party to a broader party, one that would include you? You were the last standing moderate from the northeast."

For the past three weeks, controversy has swirled around Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has called for a “truth commission” to expose the supposed war crimes of the Bush administration but who herself was briefed years ago on the use of waterboarding and the other enhanced interrogation techniques that are now drawing howls of outrage.

ABC, CBS and NBC have said nothing about the Speaker’s shifting stories, or the potential hypocrisy of her once supporting (or at least not objecting to) policies that she would later condemn as illegal “torture.”

The current round of stories began April 22, after the Obama administration released selected memos from the Bush administration on the legal limits to interrogation. That night, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell offered a brief mention of how Pelosi was one of those who had been told: “Members of Congress were briefed at the time and reportedly didn’t dissent, including intelligence committee leaders Nancy Pelosi, Porter Goss, Bob Graham and Richard Shelby.” ABC and CBS said nothing about Pelosi that night.

Anchor Andrew Mitchell presented radical homosexual activist Dan Savage, most famous for licking doorknobs in the campaign office of Republican Gary Bauer in an attempt to infect him with the flu, as an expert on the Catholic Church and Catholic issues during her MSNBC program on Wednesday afternoon. She introduced Savage, who writes a graphic sex-advice column called “Savage Love,” as the “editorial director for Seattle’s weekly newspaper, The Stranger...political commentator and social critic.” Mitchell lead into her question about President Obama’s commencement address at the University of Notre Dame by stating that the editor was also “sensitive and very well aware of the cultural fault lines within the Catholic community.” She did not mention the Bauer incident during the segment, nor the fact that Savage is an atheist who thinks the Catholic Church is a “criminal organization.”

Mitchell had Savage on as a guest just before the bottom half of the 1 pm Eastern hour of her Andrea Mitchell Live program. She brought up President Obama’s upcoming commencement addresses at Arizona State University and Notre Dame as a topic, and how in the case of his speech at the Catholic school, “critics are taking issue with the president’s positions on gay rights, abortion rights, and stem cell research.” After giving her introduction of the “editorial director...political commentator and social critic,” Mitchell asked, “Why is Notre Dame, which has long, you know, had this tradition from Theodore Hesburgh on -- especially, you know, during the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement, of being a broad tent -- why is the Notre Dame commencement so controversial this time?”

The leaders of nations who quarreled when George Bush was President now hug each other, thanks to President Barack Obama deigning to take time from his busy schedule to hold a meeting which displayed the “quintessential Obama” and the “Obama doctrine at work” in bringing “two sides together.” Or at least that's how Wednesday's NBC Nightly News gushed over Obama meeting with Afganistan's Hamid Karzai and Pakistan's Asif Ali Zardari, an exuberantly pro-Obama spin not adopted by ABC or CBS.
 
Anchor Brian Williams admired how even “with they have going on, the Obama White House has chosen to devote this kind of time to this,” prompting Chuck Todd to propose “that we will look back on this and say this is quintessential Obama.” The White House correspondent touted how “this is the Obama Doctrine at work. Bring two sides together, get them talking and do this a lot.” From the State Department, Andrea Mitchell then trumpeted how in contrast to the last time leaders of the two nations met when Bush was still President and “they wouldn't even shake hands,” with Obama in the room, Karzai, and the new President of Pakistan, had “a warm embrace.” Mitchell maintained:

They're trying to build trust between the two of them, and they've pointed out that as in contrast to the last time, the Afghan leader and a previous Pakistani leader met at the White House, another President, George W. Bush, they wouldn't even shake hands. This time there was a warm embrace.

In a piece that could've been crafted by Hillary Clinton's PR shop, NBC's Andrea Mitchell, on Monday's "Today" show, gushed on and on about the Secretary of State's new "role of a lifetime," as a "a foreign policy superstar," and cheered Clinton has the "highest approval ratings of any time in her career."

Mitchell's theme throughout her story was that the "anger of the primaries," between Clinton and Barack Obama was long gone and that in her role of Secretary of State she has proven to be a "key asset to Team Obama," as "Today" co-anchor Matt Lauer observed in the intro. There wasn't a hint of skepticism or negative note in the story as Mitchell threw in soundbites from John Podesta, Joe Klein and presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin who chimed: "She seems to be really enjoying herself, as does he."

The following is a complete transcript of the segment as it was aired on the May 4, "Today" show:

NBC's Andrea Mitchell on Wednesday night mentioned how the “Obama administration's own Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, wrote his employees last week” about how, what NBC described as “harsh” interrogation techniques, “produced 'high-value information,'” a view from an Obama insider left out of stories on ABC and CBS. But Mitchell described Blair's assessment as conveying “controversial comments.” Not controversial to Mitchell? The hook for her story, liberal Democratic Senator Carl Levin's charge that “there were very strong warnings against the use of these techniques and...they attempted to destroy the warning.”

Mitchell began her piece, without any hint of a political motive by Levin, by summarizing the report the Michigan Democrat decided to declassify:

According to the Senate report, the harsh techniques used at Guantanamo and other prisons were ordered by top Bush cabinet-level officials and launched months before they were approved by lawyers. Today's Armed Services Committee report also says abuses at the notorious Abu Ghraib Prison, including 'stress positions, removal of clothing, use of phobias such as fear of dogs,' were systematic, not just the work of a few rogue soldiers, as the Pentagon claimed at the time.

On Tuesday’s Andrea Mitchell Reports on MSNBC, Mitchell hosted two liberal guests in a discussion about President Obama’s national service program and the prospects for more gun control laws being passed by Congress in the near future. Speaking to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Mitchell repeated a grossly inaccurate statistic that 90 percent of guns used by Mexican drug cartels are manufactured in the U.S. Mitchell: "Mr. Mayor, first to you, why not go after the assault weapon ban, as President Calderone in Mexico is calling for? Ninety percent of the weapons used in the drug cartel crimes south of the border are said to have originated in the United States."

But, as previously documented by Mike Sargent, FNC's William LaJeunesse reported on April 2 that 83 percent of guns recovered from Mexican drug cartels are not from the United States. Most of these weapons are never submitted to the U.S. for tracing because they are clearly not American in origin.

After Bloomberg advocated passage of an assault weapon ban, but later indicated that almost all those killed using guns each day are killed using "illegal handguns," Mitchell did not take the opportunity to challenge the Mayor on just how much impact an assault weapon ban could have if such guns are are so rarely the weapon of choice by criminals. She then moved on to set up New York’s Democratic Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy to promote the passage of more gun laws. Mitchell: "And, Mr. Mayor, you mentioned Virginia Tech, Columbine anniversary was yesterday. Only weeks ago, we had the killings of police officers in Pittsburgh and in Oakland. Congresswoman McCarthy, is there any chance that something will be done in Congress? And also the gun show loophole which is sitting out there?"

While reporting on the ongoing drug war in Mexico, CBS, NBC, and ABC have all cited a dubious statistic that claims that 90% of the guns being used in the violence are from the United States. On Thursday’s CBS Evening News, correspondent Bill Plante reported: "Mexican drug gang violence spilling into the U.S. is the urgent issue of President Obama's visit...A major sore point -- more than 90% of the weapons which could be traced were bought legally in the U.S. and smuggled into Mexico by the cartels."

On Thursday’s NBC Nightly News, White House correspondent Chuck Todd declared: "In a joint press conference following their private meeting, President Obama acknowledged that 90 percent of the guns used by the drug cartels in this war with Mexico come from the United States." On Thursday’s Good Morning America on ABC, co-host Diane Sawyer referenced, and even further embellished, the figure while interviewing Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano: "95 percent of the guns used were out of the United States. What is the U.S. going to do to stop the guns from getting there?"

However, on April 2, Fox News reported that 90% figure to be inaccurate: "The fact is, only 17 percent of guns found at Mexican crime scenes have been traced to the U.S. What's true, an ATF spokeswoman told FOXNews.com, in a clarification of the statistic used by her own agency's assistant director, ‘is that over 90 percent of the traced firearms originate from the U.S.’ But a large percentage of the guns recovered in Mexico do not get sent back to the U.S. for tracing, because it is obvious from their markings that they do not come from the U.S." The network reports failed to explain those details.

NBC's Matt Lauer and Andrea Mitchell, on Thursday's "Today" show, pressed their guests (Lauer with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Mitchell with Mexican President Felipe Calderon) about reinstituting the assault weapons ban. First up, Mitchell – who pushed Hillary Clinton last month to bring back the ban -- offered Calderon an open to blame Mexican drug cartel violence on guns imported from the U.S.:

ANDREA MITCHELL: President Obama will not deliver long-promised Blackhawk helicopters, nor a ban on assault weapons smuggled south. He campaigned as a candidate against the assault weapons. Now that he's in office, he's had to back off.

FELIPE CALDERON: But most of the weapons, almost 16,000 are assault weapons and 90 percent of those were sold in United States.

Then Lauer, in his segment with Napolitano, repeated Calderon's inaccurate line that 90 percent of drug cartel weapons came from the U.S.:

MATT LAUER: You know President Calderon wants a reinstatement of the assault weapons ban that was, that expired during the Bush administration. When you look at the numbers, that 90 percent of the 12,000 weapons Mexican officials recovered from these drug cartels in the last year or so were made and sold in the United States, and many of those, as we just heard from President Calderon, are assault weapons, how can President Obama, who ran on an issue against assault weapons, how can he not deliver on that?

It may well be that a growing share of the American public favor expanding interaction with Cuba, but in reporting President Barack Obama's decision to allow Cuban-Americans unlimited travel and money transfers to the island, ABC's Jeffrey Kofman and NBC's Andrea Mitchell characterized opponents in a belittling manner -- while Mitchell also advanced complaints Obama did no go far enough. “With today's announcement,” Kofman asserted on ABC's World News, “President Obama is making it clear he is not going to do business as usual.” Kofman then declared: “It is now only the very hard line who want the policy to stay as it is.”

Mitchell, on the NBC Nightly News, acknowledged “some Cuban-Americans...still argue that the Obama White House is only helping Raul Castro and his ailing brother Fidel,” but she dismissed those opponents as “a dwindling number.” She emphasized the view Obama came up short: “President Obama did not propose a far more sweeping step, getting Congress to lift the trade embargo that has lasted for half a century, disappointing opponents of the policy.” Mitchell concluded by adopting that complaint as her own: “For the past year, European countries and the Vatican have been getting Cuba to release political prisoners, but the Obama administration still refuses to negotiate directly with Havana.”

NBC's Andrea Mitchell, in a taped interview from Mexico with Hillary Clinton on Thursday's "Today" show, partially blamed the Bush administration for Mexico's current drug cartel violence as she charged that "90 percent of the guns used by gangs," were available because the Bush White House and Congress let the assault weapons ban lapse. Mitchell even went as far to push the Secretary of State to "challenge the gun lobby," and "reinstitute," the ban.

ANDREA MITCHELL: And 90 percent of the guns used by the gangs come from the U.S., including the powerful assault weapons that were banned until Congress and the Bush White House let the ban expire.

MITCHELL TO HILLARY CLINTON: Why not take that on? It would be tough but why doesn't the administration challenge the gun lobby and take on the assault weapons ban and reinstitute it?

CLINTON: I'm, I'm not gonna, you know sugar coat it. It's a very heavy lift. I think that's a mistake. I think these assault weapons, these military style weapons don't belong on any one's street.

The following is a complete transcript of the segment as it was aired on the March 26, "Today" show:

Afraid that the AIG executive bonus bailout just may be the demise of the Democratic Party, MSNBC’s Chief White House Correspondent Chuck Todd trivialized the death of Terry Schiavo by suggesting the fight over Schiavo’s life was the demise of the Republican party.

Host Andrea Mitchell, Gene Robinson, and Chuck Todd were discussing Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s survival of the AIG scandal on Mitchell’s March 20 show MSNBC Live when Todd inserted this bit of political wisdom:

 “An… Andrea? Really fast? You never know, you never know, when you know, this could turn into a Schiavo moment. And remember how the Terry Schiavo thing ended up being the beginning of the end for the Republican Party and their control. You just never know when one of these stories just catches wildfire in the popul…, in sort of the populist front. Sometimes you can’t stop it no matter which party you are.”

President George W. Bush had a female First Lady and a woman as Secretary of State, but NBC's Brian Williams on Wednesday night hailed, as the fulfillment of President Barack Obama's promise of “change,” how he has a “power duo” in a woman First Lady and a female Secretary of State. Williams cooed, with “Women of Distinction” as the on-screen heading:

President Obama won the presidency promising change. There was more evidence of that in Washington today. His wife, now First Lady, Michelle Obama, and his former rival, now Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, a former First Lady herself, joining arms, joining forces. A study in style, substance and power, really.

Pegging her story to Michelle Obama's visit to the State Department, reporter Andrea Mitchell touted “two strong women coming together of after a tough campaign” and how “two of the world's most powerful women” are now “both role models.”

The Treasury Department oversees the Internal Revenue Service. But if the Secretary of the Treasury - or any other political appointee being considered for the Treasury Department - didn't pay his income payroll taxes, it doesn't matter. That's the message from House Banking Committee Chairman Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., and he blamed the fourth estate for acting like it does matter.

On MSNBC's March 11 broadcast of "Andrea Mitchell Reports," host Andrea Mitchell asked Frank to respond to criticism in a March 11 piece from New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman that too many appointees were being held up for what he deemed insignificant reasons.

"I think it's a problem, although I will say this - for the media to blame that entirely on the Senate seems to me a little bit self serving," Frank said. "I mean, the media is the problem here, in part. It is the over-focus on part of people in the media to relatively minor infractions that causes this. I guarantee you my colleagues would not on their own be doing this. So I do think we are in a culture now where a lack of perfection exacts too strong a toll, but that's the politicians reacting to the media."

NBC's Andrea Mitchell reported on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's first official trip to Asia on Monday's Today, and she couldn't help recalling Mrs. Clinton's trip to the United Nations summit in Beijing in 1995: "Starting today in Tokyo she will cover 21,000 miles in seven days....In Beijing her reception will be a lot friendlier than 15 years ago when as First Lady, Clinton provoked the Chinese by campaigning for women's rights."

As you can see from a photo that appears in Mitchell's memoir Talking Back, Andrea and Hillary didn't find the whole trip too unfriendly. Hillary wrote: "To Andrea who helped make our trip a lot more fun!"

Mitchell added this caption in her book: "Sharing a joke with First Lady Hillary Clinton en route to Mongolia after the Beijing women's conference in September 1995."

During MSNBC's live coverage on Tuesday of the sudden resignation of Health and Human Services nominee Tom Daschle, reporter Andrea Mitchell suggested to Republican Senator Jim DeMint that the American public will see this as the GOP having "brought him [Daschle] down." The Democratic nominee resigned over a growing controversy which revealed that the former Senate majority leader owed $140,000 in back taxes. (He has since paid them.) Mitchell sympathetically described talking to the ex-senator: "I just got off the phone with Tom Daschle. And it was an emotional conversation. He was clearly- it sounded as though he were tearful, overwrought." [audio excerpt here]

Later, while speaking to DeMint, Mitchell bristled at the South Carolina senator's contention that Democrats were also skeptical of Daschle's nomination. The journalist chided, "Well, Senator DeMint, you can say that the Democrats were uncomfortable as well, but they were all supporting him publicly." She then lectured, "So, this does read to the public as though the Republicans went after this man, someone that the President very much wanted, and brought him down."

Acting like Caroline Kennedy's PR flack NBC's Andrea Mitchell, on Monday's "Today" show, first delivered the news that the Kennedy family was "furious," at the way her Senate bid was treated by New York Governor David Paterson, but then she quickly merged her own personal opinion into the story, calling the smearing of the former First Daughter, "inexcusable." Curiously Mitchell never revealed to viewers, what specifically Paterson or those close to Paterson had said of Kennedy, only vaguely mentioning "they went after her on personal issues."

The following exchange occurred on the January 26, edition of the "Today" show:

MATT LAUER: While Caroline Kennedy's Senate bid crashed and burned some Democrats are burning at the way New York's governor handled the whole affair. NBC's Andrea Mitchell is in Washington. Andrea, good morning to you.

Barack Obama’s inauguration was hardly a triumph of media objectivity, with reporters competing to see who could be the most adoring of the new Messiah-President. As always, the latest edition of MRC’s bi-weekly Notable Quotables newsletter has the most obnoxious liberal media quotes from the last two weeks.

Here’s a sneak peek at a few of the quotes that are contained in the January 26 edition; to see the whole set, you can sign up for the free e-mail newsletter or visit www.MRC.org on Monday (the whole package should be posted by Monday afternoon).

A Day When Even the Seagulls Were Awed

“We know that wind can make a cold day feel colder, but can national pride make a freezing day feel warmer? It seems to be the case because regardless of the final crowd number estimates, never have so many people shivered so long with such joy. From above, even the seagulls must have been awed by the blanket of humanity.”
— ABC’s Bill Weir on World News, January 20.

Liberal pastor and civil rights leader Joseph Lowery’s strange benediction prayer hoping that one day "white will embrace what is right" wasn’t ignored on the Tuesday night news, but it wasn’t portrayed as at all controversial. CBS skipped over it. But ABC, NBC, and PBS’s NewsHour all featured it, often without interrupting their gauzy promotional tone. Here’s a brief tour of how it unfolded.

ABC: In the first half-hour of a 60-minute World News, Charles Gibson recalled a legend praying:

GIBSON: The Reverend Joseph E Lowery, the legendary civil rights leader, delivered the benediction.

Rev. JOSEPH LOWERY: We ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man and white will embrace what is right. That all those who do justice and love mercy say amen.

GIBSON: As hundreds of thousands on the Mall savored what they had just seen.

NBC's Andrea Mitchell encapsulated the veneration for Barack Obama and what his inauguration means to the media elite as she began a Tuesday NBC Nightly News story about her day watching the festivities: “It may take days or years to really absorb the significance of what happened to America today, even for those of us who were lucky enough to have a very close up front view.” Showing a clip of the new President saying “I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear,” Mitchell proudly trumpeted: “His very name opening doors, as did his speech, to the rest of the world.” And while most saw a sea of people waving flags, Mitchell saw something more meaningful for Obama, though it reflected more about her: “The mass flickering of cell phone cameras on the mall seemed like stars shining back at him.”

She also touted “the final blessing from a civil rights icon, the Reverend Joseph Lowery, changing the tones of official Washington,” but his prayer hardly saw a unified nation. In the soundbite she aired, he lectured the American people: “We ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man, and when white will embrace what is right.”

Are you a latte liberal who can't make the pilgrimage to D.C. for the Obama inauguration? Or do you think that if you did, you'd in the January chill without your mid-day brew? Well, MSNBC is looking out for you!

The Obama leg-thrill network has teamed up with Starbucks Coffee to open more than 600 java joint locations in New York City, Seattle, and San Francisco.

Not into coffee? MSNBC also has movie theaters dedicated to the ceremony, although sitting next to Chris Matthews in a dark room watching Obama sounds a little sketchy to me.

On Wednesday’s Today show, NBC News principals Matt Lauer, Meredith Vieira, and Tom Brokaw all gushed over Hillary Clinton’s testimony in front of a Senate panel for her confirmation as Secretary of State. During an interview of Senator John Kerry, Lauer asked, “Did you see any area, Senator, where she didn’t show, I guess, a complete mastery of the issues?” In the following segment, Vieira and Brokaw lauded how “smart and well-prepared” the former First Lady appeared to be. “She’s the kind of woman I would like to sit next to in class,” Brokaw indicated. “She’s so smart,” Vieira added.

The NBC morning program’s coverage of Clinton’s hearing in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee began with correspondent Andrea Mitchell briefly mentioning during a report that the “only controversy [was] over possible conflicts of interest with foreign donors to her husband’s charities.” This was followed by a clip where Republican Senator Richard Lugar raised the issue and the outgoing New York Senator responded to his point. Mitchell concluded her report by stating that “no one questioned Bill Clinton’s good works -- only the possibility of undo foreign influence on his wife. Clinton says that she and her husband are already doing more than the ethics rules or the law require, and support for her confirmation is so overwhelming that her senate colleagues are holding a farewell party for her today.”

NBC’s Andrea Mitchell appeared on the PBS show Charlie Rose on Wednesday night, and discussed what aroused her political zones. Rose clumsily asked which story "turns you on," and naturally, Mitchell said "this young president" with a globe-traveling upbringing and his team of "meritocracy," an "extraordinary group of very large figures," stars who will resolve today’s crises.

Mitchell decried the idea that new media would trouble the President’s first days: "I guess my passion is for something to happen to fix these problems and for dialing down of all of the sharp criticism that we have on cable talk, on talk radio, from the, you know....the blogosphere. I just wish that we could find something in the center that would be bipartisan and would be productive and constructive."

Rose and Mitchell discussed the Gaza fighting before turning back to the domestic front:

Does Maureen Dowd moonlight at MSNBC as Andrea Mitchell's writer? Here's how for, purposes of defending Caroline Kennedy in her NYT column today, Dowd mocked former New York Republican Senator Al D'Amato [emphasis added]:

[B]elieve me, she talks a whole lot better than the former junior senator from New York, Al D’Amato, who once wailed that he was “up to my earballs” in some mess, and another time complained to me that those “little Jappies” bring over boats full of cars and then take the boats back empty.

Now check out Mitchell's comments made during her 1 PM time slot on MSNBC today:

On Friday’s NBC Nightly News, correspondent Andrea Mitchell filed a report that reminded viewers of an embarrassing political episode from Hillary Clinton’s past: the controversial hug and kiss she shared with Yasser Arafat’s wife, Suha, during a trip to the West Bank. The NBC correspondent related that Clinton had taken a position favoring a Palestinian state early on, but, after her controversial "embrace" with Mrs. Arafat, she became known for being "an unrelenting supporter of Israel," and argued that Mrs. Clinton’s popularity in the Arab world, and that of former President Clinton, would be an asset as Secretary of State.

Mitchell: "As first lady, Hillary Clinton was an early advocate of a Palestinian state until a misplaced embrace of Yasser Arafat's wife, Suha, backfired politically back home. From then on, Clinton was an unrelenting supporter of Israel but, experts say, is still well known and liked by Arab leaders."

The Obama administration suffered a possibly embarrassing setback Sunday when the president-elect's choice for Commerce Secretary withdrew his name for consideration.

Given the ongoing love affair media have with Barack Obama, it's going to be very interesting to see how this gets covered in the next 72 hours.

Interestingly, it appears the news was broken by Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC (video embedded below the fold).

The following comes from an MSNBC.com report published minutes ago (h/t NBers Blonde and R D Helm):

Does Barney Frank think incest is worse than pedophilia?  The question arises because, chatting with Andrea Mitchell this afternoon, here's how Frank reiterated his opposition to Barack Obama having granted Rick Warren the honor of pronouncing the invocation at the inauguration. 

BARNEY FRANK: I think Rick Warren's comments comparing same-sex relationships to incest is deeply offensive, wildly inaccurate and very socially disruptive.

View video here.

But Warren didn't limit his comparison of gay marriage to incest.  In the same statement  in which Warren alluded to incest he also invoked polygamy and pedophilia.

The people just don't know Caroline like I do.  That was the essence of Andrea Mitchell's defense of the would-be senator after Pat Buchanan analogized her to another nominee who famously flopped.  Appearing on Morning Joe, Buchanan unleashed a merciless metaphor.

PAT BUCHANAN: It's not only entitlement.  It appears–we are getting close to Harriet Miers country, where Bush put her out there, and it became transparent when people started going after her that she wasn't quite up to this --

Buchanan's barb stirred Andrea into action.