 |
         
|
There were actually more votes in the Senate, 54, to extend background checks for would-be gun-show-and-online purchasers of firearms than there were votes against, 46. Yet because of the ground rules for debate, would-be checkers did not reach the 60-vote supermajority required. NBC's Kelly O'Donnell and CBS' Chip Reid covered gun control from Capitol Hill; ABC's Jonathan Karl and CBS' Major Garrett brought us President Barack Obama's reaction from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. ABC's Karl confusingly taunted that the measure "could not even get passed in the Democratic-controled Senate," as if the decisive votes blocking the supermajority were not Republican.
Also addressing both ends of that avenue were the Memphis-postmarked letters to Roger Wicker (Republican of Mississippi) and Barack Obama (Democrat) that were intercepted at post office sorting facilities in Maryland. "I am KC and I approved this message," was the sign-off. All three networks assigned a correspondent -- CBS' Wyatt Andrews, ABC's Jim Avila, NBC's Andrea Mitchell -- to investigate whether the envelopes contained ricin, the toxic extract of castor beans. Mitchell helpfully reminded us that Soviet spies in London had applied the poison to a sharpened umbrella tip in the 1970s in order to deliver a fatal jab to a Bulgarian dissident.
CBS has covered the case of the murdered Kaufman County prosecutors most heavily, so it was no surprise that it should send Manuel Bojorquez to the scene to cover the arrest of Kim Williams, the wife of a local Justice of the Peace who was targeted by those very prosecutors for theft of office equipment. ABC also had a correspondent on the case: Pierre Thomas filed remotely from the DC bureau, where he narrated his network's imaginary Virtual View computer-animated depiction of how the hit went down.
Good luck, for once, befell the public relations operation of American Airlines. On a day of normal breaking news, the embarrassment of having to ground the entire daily operation of 1,200 flights would have been magnified by coverage on all three newscasts. This time, only ABC relayed the bad news of the computer software snafu via a reporter: David Kerley from DC's National Airport.
Immaculee Ilibagiza rounded out the day's news. She had already been profiled seven years ago on 60 Minutes for her work on truth-&-reconciliation in her native land of Rwanda, having dodged the genocide there by hiding for three months in a church bathroom. Now CBS' Bob Simon files the follow-up of her leaving the verdant fields of Africa for America's fruited plain. See Immaculee be naturalized.
You must be logged in to this website to leave a comment. Please click here to log in so you can participate in the discussion.
