It took six years but Steven Hatfill now has an apology from New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof for the distress caused by his columns, beginning in 2002, that tied Hatfill to the 2001 anthrax attacks that caused five deaths. Hatfill sued Kristof and the Times for defamation, but had nothing to show for his [...]

Forty-five years ago, when the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his `I Have a Dream` speech at the March on Washington, four members of my family witnessed history. On August, 28, 1963, my mother boarded a bus with other members of our Catholic Church, dressed as though she were headed to Sunday Mass instead [...]

I happen to like my Scotch straight up, unadulterated by ice or water. And I like my Convention coverage the same way. That’s why on the first two nights of the Democratic Convention I turned to C-Span, which offered without interruption what was going on at the stage level and also down on the floor. [...]

DENVER – Coming off her Monday speech at the Democratic National Convention, Michelle Obama didn’t pause to wait for the reviews, although she admitted the day after that she had heard about positive comments from friends. She stopped listening to reports — good and bad — sometime after the Iowa primary, she said, when so [...]

At the Democratic National Convention on Monday night, it was family night. The featured families challenged stereotypes of what family is and is not in America. It was no surprise to me. When Barack Obama’s family took the stage, it was the United Nations. It was all-American. Attacks on Obama’s politics don’t bother me. If [...]

GOOD NBC COVERAGE: NBC-TV commentators and analysts did their homework. The informed commentary, particularly in track and field and gymnastics, was reminiscent of how the late Jim Duncan prepared for his stints as the “voice of the Drake Relays.” He knew what was supposed to happen in a race, what might happen and what might [...]

DENVER — Covering a political convention is a little like covering a Super Bowl. Thousands of people gather in one place, and not all of them are there for the main event. Each day of the week builds excitement, with receptions and parties. Celebrities and protestors collide, using the ready-made televised stage. At the Democratic [...]

I may have been the only person watching NBC network news the night Tim Russert misspelled Iraq. At least I never saw any mention of it in the press at the time, nor in the obituaries and tributes that were published after his death on June 13. The misspelling was months before Russert’s death. On [...]

In his Sunday New York Times column, Frank Rich noted that “the real story” about John McCain “has yet to be fully told.” A ninety-minute biography on CNN Wednesday night filled in some of the blanks. Since McCain isn’t shy about mentioning what he did and didn’t do when he was a POW in Vietnam [...]

Has anyone among our mainstream political pundits noticed that however this presidential election turns out, the bankers can’t lose? The bankers I speak of are a strange pair of allies: former Sen. Phil Gramm, a right-wing Texas Republican, who remains an economic adviser for Sen. John McCain, and Robert Rubin, Treasury Secretary for Bill Clinton [...]