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NEW YORK (AP) — Longtime “Today” show viewers are being treated to a familiar sight this week as Katie Couric returns to the co-anchor chair for the first time in more than a decade. Couric rejoined Matt Lauer on Monday to begin a weeklong stint on the NBC morning program. She told Lauer, “It just feels like I never left.”

Actually, Jesse Lee's new title is Director of Progressive Media & Online Response in the White House Communication Department, working under Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer, according to the HuffPo. Here's how Sam Stein, a self-described personal friend, defines Lee's new job in the White House: "The post is a new one for this White House. Rapid response has been the purview of the Democratic National Committee (and will continue to be). Lee's hire, however, suggests that a portion of it will now be handled from within the administration. It also signals that the White House will be adopting a more...

WASHINGTON — President Obama is ending the first half of his term the same way he began it — with a storm of activity of impressive, even historic, dimensions. Year-end victories on taxes, economic stimulus and landmark cultural change are reshaping the image of a president who seemed isolated and out of touch only a month ago in the wake of an enormous midterm election defeat. Suddenly, he looks like a deal maker who can reach across party lines to get things done and, perhaps, make progress that Americans found lacking when they went to the polls in November. Obama...

So. The most recent poll released for Delaware last weekend (Rasmussen on the 14th) - showed Christine O'Donnell apparently surging almost 10%. All polling then, stopped.

Howard Kurtz quoted MSNBC president Phil Griffin in two stories in Monday's Washington Post, and both quotes seriously strained credulity. In a front-page story on how politicians campaign on cable news, Griffin tried to argue that they're not simply a Democrat talking-points factory and promoter of Democrat candidates. Oh no, claimed Griffin, just because Republicans choose to decline their invitations doesn't mean they're in the tank for the DNC: The reality, said MSNBC President Phil Griffin, is that "politicians want to hit their base." But "we're different than Fox," he added. "We ask for people to come on from both...

A Justice Department prosecutor defied his superiors by testifying at a U.S. Civil Rights Commission hearing Friday, where he leveled an explosive allegation: top officials in the department gutted a voter intimidation case against a fringe African American militant group because the suspects were black and their alleged victims were white. The prosecutor, Christopher Coates, also said the downgrading of the case against the New Black Panther Party was evidence of a Justice Department culture which discouraged “race neutral” enforcement of civil rights laws, frowned on prosecuting minority perpetrators and folded under pressure from black and Latino rights groups. After...

O'Donnell Fires Back at Personal Attacks GOP Senate candidate responds to Democrats' smear campaign on Fox News. 7 minute interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News.

In a strange departure from Morning Joe's typical spontaneity, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski issued what was clearly a scripted, teleprompted, manifesto this morning. The statement purported to be non-partisan condemnation of "angry voices" and a call, citing a WWII poster, to "keep calm and carry on." But even a cursory analysis reveals that the manifesto's message suits Dem themes to a 'T', and carries clear echoes of a recent partisan speech by Pres. Obama at a political event. The manifesto amounted to a condemnation of the "angry voices" and the "political extremists" who, claimed Scarborough, "are dominating the airwaves...

Joe Scarborough believes Christine O'Donnell's win has cost Republicans the Delaware Senate seat and their best shot at a Senate majority. And the Morning Joe host made no bones about singling out the person he considers responsible: "I blame Sarah Palin," said Scarborough bluntly on today's show. Scarborough's comment came not long after Morning Joe aired a clip of Karl Rove's scalding comments about O'Donnell, which I noted here last night, in which among other things the former Bush adviser declared that O'Donnell "doesn't evince the characteristics of rectitude and truthfulness and sincerity and character that voters are looking for."...

Well, New York Republicans went out and got themselves an angry man. They may come to regret it. That's the upshot of yesterday's gubernatorial primary, in which Carl Paladino, multimillionaire developer from Buffalo, pretty much expelled the GOP establishment's candidate, ex-Rep. Rick Lazio, from public life. Actually, Lazio can be said to have lost this race far more than Paladino won. To say the former Long Island legislator kept a low profile is putting it mildly: Lazio ran as the Invisible Man -- refusing to debate, speaking in platitudes and generally just boring folks to tears. Even his notoriously uninspired...

Marketing consultant Christine O'Donnell upset Rep. Mike Castle in the Delaware Republican Senate primary tonight, handing the tea party movement a major victory and giving Democrats an unexpected chance to hold the First State seat.O'Donnell, who is making her third run for the Senate in as many elections, relied heavily on national surrogates -- from the Tea Party Express to former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin -- to fuel a shoestring campaign against the iconic Castle who had held elected office in the state for more than four decades. "The people of Delaware have spoken," said O'Donnell in her victory speech....

Calif. Senate Boxer (D) 48% Fiorina (R)44% CNN/Time Tuesday, September 7, 2010 Matchup Results Source Dates Sample Boxer vs. Fiorina Fiorina (R) 48% Boxer (D) 47% Rasmussen Reports 9/6 750 LV Wednesday, August 25, 2010 Matchup Results Source Dates Sample Boxer vs. Fiorina Boxer (D) 44% Fiorina (R) 43% Rasmussen Reports 8/24 750 Calif. Governor Whitman (R)48% Brown (D)46% CNN/Time Fla. Governor Sink (D)49% Scott (R) 42% CNN/Time Wednesday, September 1, 2010 Matchup Results Source Dates Sample Sink vs. Scott Scott (R) 45% Sink (D) 44% Rasmussen Reports 9/1 750 LV Friday, August 27, 2010 Matchup Results Source Dates Sample...

ABC News has thrown in the towel on the liberal media's efforts to downplay the huge numbers of Americans who came to the Restoring Honor rally held today at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. by radio and TV host Glenn Beck.The subheadline of an online report at ABCNews.com reads: Restoring Honor Rally at Sight of MLK's 'I Have a Dream' Speech Draws Hundreds of Thousands of PeopleSarah Palin, speaking to Politico during an impromptu interview at Reagan National Airport after her speech at the rally chided the Associated Press for lowballing the monster crowd: Holding her BlackBerry up with...

"There is a debate to be had about the sensitivity of building this center so close to Ground Zero. But we can not let fear and rage tear down the towers of our core American values." -- Katie Couric's Notebook, 8-23-10 [emphasis added] Hey Norah: Katie's stealin' yer lines! As I noted here, last week Norah O'Donnell accused mosque opponents of acting "like the people who attacked America and killed 3,000 people." In her "Notebook" of yesterday, Katie Couric sounded the same theme. Couric employed WTC imagery to claim that "fear and rage" [translation: animated mosque opponents] were threatening "to...

At a cost of $700,000 of taxpayers’ money, Andy Griffith is on the air peddling President Obama’s propaganda about how wonderful ObamaCare is going to be for Medicare. He doesn’t have a clue as to what he is talking about. The Obama administration itself released a report this week confessing that ObamaCare cuts $575 billion from Medicare over the first 10 years alone. The cuts will soar to $126 billion for just one year by 2019. Obama is also trying to hide how high the Medicare cuts accumulate over the longer term by delaying the annual report of the Medicare...

Katie Couric, whose real name is Katherine Anne Couric, mocked the names of Sarah Palin’s children during a rehearsal in her studio. Her comments, made during the 2008 presidential campaign, are being discussed in the blogosphere today after being leaked. “Where the hell do they get these names from?” she asked, referring to Palin children Trig and Track, sending her crew into peals of laughter. I have some new names for CBS. In a tragedy in Louisiana this Monday, six young teenagers drowned. Their names were: Takeitha, JaMarcus, JaTavious, Litrelle, LaDairus and Latevin. These, like the names of Palin’s children,...

One of the delights about the Internet is watching new people use a new technology to make the same old mistakes. Consider the admissions by Politico and Greg Sargent that they regularly run items on Sarah Palin simply to drive traffic. From Politico: “More traffic comes from an item on Sarah Palin’s ‘refudiation’ faux pas than from our hundreds of stories on the complexities of health care reform or Wall Street regulation.” Perhaps if Politico were as vigilant in its coverage of health care reform and Wall Street regulation as it is every slip by Sarah Palin readers would be...