It's Fat Tuesday and we're on location tonight in New Orleans, with Campbell Brown anchoring the broadcast. As promised, you'll see more of Brian's exclusive interview with former FEMA director Michael Brown. How does he react to criticism that his agency was ineffective in the wake of Hurricane Katrina? And does he think the federal government would perform any better if it happens again? You can read and watch part one of the interview here.

We'll also bring you the two viewpoints of this year's Mardi Gras. Martin Savidge talks to some folks in New Orleans who say this is hardly the time for celebration, while Campbell introduces you to a family who embraced the festival as a homecoming.

We hope you'll join us for those stories and all the rest of the day's news.

While Brian and much of the Nightly News team were in Torino, I was vacationing in Tucson, Ariz., riding horses on a ranch and making friends from all across America who had a lot of questions about the news.

My favorite question was from a young oil executive from Oklahoma. Over drinks at the nightly happy hour, he wanted to know: "is this bird flu thing for real?" We were joined by another friend, an emergency room doctor from Minnesota, and both the doctor and I quickly insisted that, of course, it was: my friend invoked the CDC statistics he receives each week, while I mentioned our own reporting, and journalist friends who have traveled to Romania and Italy to cover the story.  (All this transpired before this weekend's news, where infected ducks and turkeys marked the arrival of the flu in France.)

But heading back to New York, I wondered: did the doctor and I properly answer the question? Our friend wasn't asking whether the news media was making the story up, but whether avian flu, after all the media attention, really posed a health threat to him, to us here in the states.

His question reminded me that we face a constant challenge in journalism: How to report far-away stories when we have a natural tendency to care the most about what happens –- or we believe might happen -— to us. I vividly remember watching the Robert Altman movie "Short Cuts" shortly after my son was born and sobbing during a vignette about a couple whose son is hit by a car on his way to school, fully aware that I was personalizing a fictitious story. Many people experience news the same way, and who can blame them? It's why we start a lot of reports about abstract policy issues with real people and their real problems. And it may explain why the avian flu, because it thankfully hasn't hit our shores, or developed the deadly ability to jump species, doesn't register as a "real" story with all of our viewers.

Scooter Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, has hired a renowned memory-loss expert to assist him with his legal defense. Harvard psychology professor Daniel L. Schacter tells NBC News he has been retained by Libby as a consultant. An official familiar with the Libby defense team confirms the news.

Schacter, who has been at Harvard since 1991 and who has a 29-page resume, is the author of "The Seven Sins of Memory" and  "Searching for Memory: The Brain, the Mind and the Past." His books offer explanations for the "vulnerability of memory." Schacter writes that if we are distracted as an event unfolds, "we may later have great difficulty remembering the details of what happened." Time, of course, often weakens our memory. And, he writes, it is easy to "unwittingly create mistaken -- though strongly held -- beliefs about the past."

Libby's lawyers hinted in court filings last week that memory loss will be "central themes" of Libby's defense. Libby's lawyers write: "...any misstatements he made during his FBI interviews or grand jury testimony were not intentional, but rather the result of confusion, mistake or faulty memory."

Libby's lawyers say that, during Libby's hectic days handling sensitive national-security matters, "it is understandable that he may have forgotten or misremembered relatively less significant events. Such relatively less important events include alleged snippets of conversations about Valerie Plame Wilson's employment status."

Libby has been charged with lying to investigators about his role in the disclosure of Valerie Wilson's role as a CIA operative. His trial is scheduled to begin in January 2007.

The Supreme Court's ruling today on abortion protest is a setback for abortion groups, taking away a powerful weapon they had used against organized protesters who blocked clinic entrances and whose demonstrations sometimes turned violent.

But there's been a significant development since the National Organization for Women (NOW) began its legal campaign against abortion protesters: Congress passed the Federal Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) law, which makes it a crime to engage in some of the behavior the women's groups originally targeted.

Even so, women's groups are sure to see the ruling as a blow for two reasons. First, it takes away a weapon they used to strike at the finances of abortion protesters, by suing for money damages. And second, many women's groups find FACE unsatisfying, because it depends on the willingness of local prosecutors to invoke it.

The landscape has changed somewhat, though, from what it was when this legal battle began 20 years ago. The number of abortions performed every year has declined, and the frequency and virulence of protests have diminished somewhat.

Today's ruling was unanimous (8-0, with Alito sitting it out). The court said Congress never intended federal racketeering laws to cover such a wide range of behavior. And the abortion protesters had the support of organized labor, which feared that a ruling for NOW could have exposed labor unions to lawsuits when they picketed and demonstrated at job sites.

Editor's note: Donna Gregory is on assignment in New Orleans for MSNBC-TV.

NEW ORLEANS - Tragicomedy is the right word for it. It's the feeling of that first holiday you spend after a loved one dies. There's music, special food, celebration and sadness. Sadness for those who've been lost. Sadness for those who can't come back. And here, a sadness for the loss of innocence that comes with the realization that the party didn't last forever.

Watching the children grab beads tossed from passing carnival floats, it's easy to forget that most of the kids haven't come back.  More than half the pre-Katrina population is still gone. Few public high schools in the area are open, so the marching bands are sparse at best. Many out-of-town bands had to stay away, since there's no room at the inn for the players and chaperones.

There aren't as many parades this year, but there is a new, somber one that's drawing camera-toting crowds. It's the parade of tourists through the devastated 9th Ward and St. Bernard Parish. They line up in their rented SUVs and creep along, snapping shots and cell-phoning them back home. They see for themselves why this city needs so much more help, more money, more compassion. The glitz of the carnival can't mask the tattered truth just a few blocks outside the party zone.

Yet still, they celebrate. It's part of the culture here during the best of times, and they're not letting it wash away with the floodwaters. So they suit up in their purple, green and gold armor, and battle the twin demons of doubt and despair. They rally to reclaim the city they love, and numb the pain with excess: trinkets, tackiness and all that jazz... washed down with cafe au lait and a beignet.

Really, where else would you find a costume show with designer outfits fashioned from  FEMA blue tarps? It's another symbol of "Re-New Orleans"... a brand new Mardi Gras spirit in the city where the locals will make the good times roll once again.

From the outside it looks like the most free-form, free-floating party in America, but don't let appearances fool you -- the *real* Mardi Gras has special rules, strange customs and a language all its own. Here's a brief vocabulary lesson:

Krewes -- Krewes are the leaders of New Orleans' society, and they ride floats, throw balls and hold other events during the season. They often wear masks to keep their identity  secret -- a tradition dating back to Roman times.

Rex -- Every parade has a king, but there is only one king of carnival, and that is "Rex." Rex's parade is the climax of Mardi Gras.

Zulu -- The Zulu parade is the first parade on Mardi Gras morning. Zulu, or the oldest African-American krewe, is one of the most recognized krewes in New Orleans, with its first recorded reference in 1909.

Mardi Gras -- French for "Fat Tuesday," the final and most elaborate day of the Carnival season.

Lundi Gras -- French for "Fat Monday," the day before "Mardi Gras" when Rex meets Zulu to kick-off Tuesday's celebration

Throws-- stuff thrown off the floats to the spectators. Tradionally, it's coins and beads. In recent years, stuffed animals, plastic drink cups and other trinkets and toys have been added. Spectators develop special yells and techniques for collecting the most throws.

Doubloon -- a plastic coin with the "krewes" name on one side and the parade theme on the other.

Flambeauxs -- At the night parades, you'll see flambeaux, or torch, carriers. They are "keepers of the light" and light the way for parades.

Neutral Ground -- Some of the revellers are standing on what most of us would call the "median strip"in the road. But here it's called the "neutral ground." When the city was divided between the French and Americans, it was the one place where the two sides would meet peacefully.

And if there is one word they would like to strike out of their vocabulary, even for just a few hours -- it's "Katrina."

Editor's note: Hoda wrote more about this first Mardi Gras after Katrina in Dateline's blog. You can read it, and watch a web-exclusive video log about her return to New Orleans by clicking here.

Here in the Nightly newsroom tonight, all of our thoughts are with Brian and his family (link). Here's what we have coming up on the broadcast.

We begin with Brian's exclusive interview with former FEMA director Michael Brown who was fired after Hurricane Katrina. Brown shares some of the e-mails he wrote during the crisis and voices his frustration at the administration, claiming he was hung out to dry.

David Gregory has the latest on the port controversy. The deal to give control over operations of some of the America's busiest ports to a company owned by the United Arab Emirates has been delayed. He'll explain what that means and what happens now.

Also one of the most popular novels of all time is at the middle of a lawsuit, and that could delay the launch of "The Da Vinci Code" movie.

Finally... an insider's look at Mardi Gras. The lingo, the customs and costumes... from Hoda Kotb.

I'll see you tonight.

I was in New Orleans this morning when I received word that my sister, Mary Jane Esser, had died after a long and courageous struggle with breast cancer. She was a mother of five children and grandmother of four, and was a foster parent for infants in need. She was 60 years old.

I was with my sister before departing for New Orleans. I had planned to return to her bedside after my trip, but she slipped away this morning. While I very badly wanted to celebrate Mardi Gras with the people of New Orleans and broadcast live from there over the next two nights, it is imperative now that I be with my family during this time. Campbell Brown has graciously agreed to fill in for me, and I'm so very grateful for that.

I'm also very grateful for the years I had with my sister, and for the expressions of condolence I have already received from my NBC family. I know so many of our viewers have many similar experiences -- and I join millions in hoping for a cure in our lifetime.

Hard deadlines -- like the one that was looming at the end of the week on the ports deal -- are anathema to the political mind. Issues take time to mature, coalitions need time to form, controversies need time to breathe. Politicians thrive in an environment of ambiguity, and none of this happens when congressional leaders are forced to act when a political firestorm is at its hottest, as would have been the case this week had not Dubai Ports World (DPW) voluntarily submitted to an investigation. 

House Republican leaders had set aside their weekly Tuesday closed-door planning session to figure out how they were going to deal with the terminal takeover, which was set to go into effect March 2. Two hearings looking into both the issue and the process that led to approval of the deal were slated for the week. All of those events will still go forward, just not with the same urgency that surrounded them before Sen. John Warner, R-Va., announced the takeover delay yesterday on "Meet the Press." (Transcript link)

So as it stands now, your U.S. House returns tomorrow from a week-long recess with another break -- St. Patrick's Day merits a week off this year -- awaiting them a brief three weeks hence.
 
-- On WEDNESDAY the House will finally vote on final congressional action on the PATRIOT ACT extension. So confident are House leaders of passage that they are bringing up the measure under special rules that require the support of two-thirds of those voting. Debate is limited to 40 minutes and and no amendments are permitted.
 
-- Also on WEDNESDAY, the Prime Minister of Italy Silvio Berlusconi addresses a joint meeting of Congress in the House chamber.
   
-- The normally bickering Republican and Democratic leaders of the House will lead a bi-partisan delegation to the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast on THURSDAY to assess recovery efforts and the effect of more than $100 billion in federal aid so far. Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., will bring 30 members -- though that number could increase -- along on the three-day trip. Separately, a hearing on fair housing issues surrounding the recovery is planned this TUESDAY.
   
-- The aforementioned ports issue will get a hearing on WEDNESDAY in a House subcommittee, to focus on the CFIUS process... Armed Services will meet THURSDAY to hash out the national security implications... On Wednesday DoD official Gordon England will be on hand at the budget committee. Since England was in on the approval process for DPW, we can expect questions on that topic, as well. And Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., will introduce a bill this week that would require a 45-day investigation of any transactions of the sort affecting the ports when it involves a foreign government.
   
-- Democrats on the House Armed Services will use committee procedure to try and force an investigation of the administration's domestic surveillance program. We can expect that the effort will fail for lack of support in the full committee.

The Senate appears to have averted a short-term showdown with the White House over the United Arab Emirate's acquisition of six domestic seaports. In a deal brokered over the weekend by Majority Leader Frist, the Dubai company will voluntarily allow for the 45-day national security investigation senators had been clamoring for since the deal went public. But the furor is far from over, as several issues remain unresolved. Among them, will the investigation be transparent and comprehensive enough to quell the criticism and stop a push for a law that would prohibit any foreign country from running American ports? Will a bipartisan group of senators go forward with legislation that would ultimately give Congress the power to approve the deal? 

Those questions will likely be raised in floor debate and in two hearings this week. A Thursday morning hearing in the Banking Committee will look at the legal underpinnings of the acquisition and includes testimony from representatives of the departments of Treasury, Homeland Security, and Defense. Tuesday, the Commerce Committee is designed to examine "what the proposed purchase means for terminal operations at ports."

The ports deal has also renewed the debate on port security, cargo screening and the money needed to pay for both. We can expect Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to face some questions on those points Tuesday in a budget subcommittee hearing. 

The Judiciary Committee holds its second open hearing on the NSA surveillance program Tuesday, this time with testimony from experts and academics on both sides of the debate. This will also be a critical week for the intelligence committee as they continue to negotiate with the White House on the once super-secret spy program. The White House has little more than a week to reach an agreement with the committee on how to give it more oversight and find a legislative fix. On March 7, the committee has the opportunity to vote on whether to launch a broad investigation if members aren't satisfied with the administration's efforts.

Other highlights this week: the Senate should complete the procedural hurdles and renew the Patriot Act with some modifications -- DNI John Negroponte testifies before the Armed Services Committee on worldwide threats on Tuesday. This could also be a forum to quiz him on NSA spying and port security. -- debate starts on Thursday in the Judiciary Committee on a bill allowing illegal immigrants to stay in the county through a guest worker program. This issue has divided many in the GOP. -- A Thursday hearing on mine safety and health resulting from the West Virginia mining tragedies -- two committees start writing lobbying reform bills spawned by the Jack Abramoff scandal.

On the Security Council agenda: U.S. Ambassador John Bolton concludes his tenure as council president for the month of February with a focus on the crisis in Darfur, Sudan and what to do about it. Last year, the Security council authorized targeted sanctions against those impeding the peace process and appointed experts to investigate whom sanctions should be imposed against. On Monday, council members will begin discussions on the panel report, which names about 18 individuals who could eventually be subject to sanctions, which would include a travel ban and asset freeze. Those individuals include Sudan's ministers of defense and interior and its intelligence chief, as well as some senior military and police officers, two militia leaders and three rebel commanders. U.S. diplomats said Monday's meeting is a step toward the U.S. goal of getting U.N. sanctions imposed on specific individuals and the U.S. is already working in Washington to get the names listed. What's not clear is whether various council members -- like China which has opposed sanctions against Sudan in the past -- has had a change of view. 

Bolton is also expected to press ahead for a new Security Council resolution authorizing a major U.N. peacekeeping mission in Darfur to take over from a smaller African Union-run effort. But again, the US seems be out front on this move, with other council members determined to wait until the African Union officially approves such a transfer. The group meets on Friday, March 3.

On Tuesday, the Middle East takes center stage with an open meeting and closed-door consultations on the topic. The sessions will provide a chance for council members to discuss the status of an ongoing investigation into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and the state of Syrian cooperation with the inquiry as well as recent Palestinian elections and what to do when a new Hamas-led cabinet is formed, most likely in March. U.N. Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Alvaro de Soto is also to brief. He's been warning that cutting funds for Palestinians now could lead to a collapse of the current caretaker Palestinian government.

On Wednesday, the Security Council presidency rotates to Argentina for the month of March and a program of work for the month is being formulated.

Management Reform: U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan -- who returns from meetings abroad -- is slated to present a long-awaited report to the 191-member General Assembly on Thursday about overhauling management at the U.N. Last week, his chief of staff, Mark Malloch Brown, promised the plan would include "radical" proposals. The U.S. has been on the vanguard of pursuing far-reaching and continuing reform, and Ambassador Bolton has stressed that "reform is not a one-night stand." 

A New Human Rights Council? Last week General Assembly President Jan Eliaason presented a compromise plan for a new council to replace the long-discredited Human Rights Commission. He hoped it could be approved as early as this week. But the U.S. was not completely pleased with the text and indicated it might need to be renegotiated in order to strengthen it. Various member states, human rights groups and the secretary general gave it qualified support but urged approval.

Former FEMA director Michael Brown names names in our exclusive interview, giving us the inside story of what he says went wrong at the White House and who shares the blame. You can watch the part of the interview that aired this morning on "Today" by clicking here. 

Despite the unusual daytime curfew today in Baghdad, there was more violence.  We learned this afternoon that President Bush spent about an hour on the phone  calling Iraqi leaders today about the recent violence.   He praised the leaders for their calls for restraint in the wake of Wednesday's mosque bombing and he condemned the destruction of the Golden Mosque and the loss of life.
The question now is whether Iraqi leaders can stop the violence and avoid a potential civil war.
  NBC's Mike Boettcher is in Baghdad... and NBC's Rosiland Jordan will have the latest tonight from the White House.
 

As Mardi Gras gets going in New Orleans, we have an interesting story from NBC's Chief Investigative Correspondent Lisa Myers tonight about the more delays for survivors of hurricane Katrina getting housing assistance from FEMA.

We'll talk about the controversy over the deal with Dubia Ports to take of the operations of some of the ports in this country.

And from Torino tonight the story on the science and the art of waxing skis to give the world class races the edge. It's all coming up tonight on Nightly News.  We hope to see you then.

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby seemed relaxed this afternoon as he strode down the hallway on the second floor of the federal court just before his motions hearing. Libby greeted waiting reporters and then walked to a small office in the courthouse, punching in the number of a cipher lock to a room, referred to as the "skiff," where, since his indictment in October, Libby has come nearly every day to examine classified documents that could be used for his defense.

Libby's wife Harriet Grant was in court today - first time since the indictment. Libby first sat next to her in the front row, gave her a hug, then moved to the defense table.

If there was a headline to the nearly 2 1/2 hour hearing, it was Judge Reggie Walton's stern words.  Judge Walton said that the case could be sabotaged by Libby's efforts to obtain the highly classified Presidential Daily Briefs (PDBs), which were provided to him during his morning intelligence briefings with the Vice President.

There was plenty of courtroom drama aside from special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald exclaiming that the classified document's release could be the "third rail" for his efforts to prosecute Libby.

Always impassioned lead defense attorney, Ted Wells, infamous for his courtroom surprises, didn't fail to amuse with a small stunt. Wells argued that all one has to do is "push a button" at the CIA and all the PDBs he has requested to defend Libby would emerge. He then showed a blue document bag to the judge. Wells produced a key to the zipper-lock on the bag and offered it to Judge Walton to examine.  The judge summoned Fitzgerald and other lawyers to the bench as he accepted the invitation to unlock the back and inspect its contents. Wells, clearly satisfied, declared, what you are looking at are classified queries that Libby asked during one of his intelligence briefings with the Vice President. Wells said his defense team was given this portion of a PDB in his document dump. For a moment the hearing was pure theater.

For the next 20 minutes, both sides referred to the PDBs as "family jewels." Ted Wells argued that a key defense for his client will be that Libby -- during the time that he is accused of passing on the name of Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA employee to reporters -- "was busy with the 'family jewels."  Wells said Libby could not recall passing on Valerie Plame's identity to reporters.

Fitzgerald argued that during the first part of July 2003 it was not the "family jewels" that consumed Libby, but protecting the White House from the damage of Ambassador Joe Wilson's Niger trip findings. Fitzgerald said: "He was consumed with it more than he should have." The special counsel said Libby told reporters, "He even wanted to be referred to as a 'Hill Staffer'," in an attibution to the Plame leak.

Stay tuned, Judge Walton promised to rule on the "family jewels" in two weeks.

If South Dakota's governor signs the bill passed by the legislature this week, outlawing abortion except when needed to save the life of the mother, it will generate a fight in federal court, which is just what the sponsors intend. They hope their vote will prod the U.S. Supreme Court into revisiting, and ultimately overruling, its 1973 Roe v Wade decision. 

But it's unlikely that such a scenario will play out, and here's why. There's no doubt the governor's signature will spark a legal battle. Planned Parenthood has already announced that it will go to court immediately. Both a federal judge in South Dakota and the federal appeals court will almost certainly declare the state law invalid, because both are bound by the Supreme Court's abortion decisions.

The state would then ask the Supreme Court to hear the case. But the justices are unlikely to do so for several reasons. The court's more liberal members who support the Roe v Wade decision -- Justices Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer -- might think it would be good to take the case and strike down the South Dakota law to discourage other states from trying a similar gambit. But can those four be confident that Justice Anthony Kennedy, who has supported Roe in the past, will provide the crucial fifth vote this time? He joined the dissenters six years ago when the court struck down Nebraska's "partial birth" abortion law. Will he be with the Roe supporters this time? 

Conversely, it might seem plausible that the court's known anti-Roe justices, Scalia and Thomas, would want to take the case to strike Roe down. But can they expect Kennedy to vote with them? And are they certain that John Roberts and Samuel Alito are prepared to overturn Roe, after both said during their confirmation hearings that Roe was a precedent worthy of respect? And there's another factor: a decision against South Dakota could forestall further challenges to Roe for several years.

In short, neither side can be confident it would have the necessary five votes to prevail.

A Supreme Court expert, appellate lawyer Tom Goldstein of Washington, D.C., offers another reason the court is unlikely to take the case. While the justices make legal decisions, they are fully aware of the political impact of their actions. Even assuming Roberts and Alito are prepared, someday, to overturn Roe, they might well think it would be perceived as blatantly political to reach out, so soon after arriving at the court, to the first frontal assault on Roe that comes their way. They might worry that such an action would be perceived, Goldstein says, as a payback to the Bush administration.

We have conducted an exclusive interview with the former head of FEMA, Michael Brown, a small portion of which will air this evening on the broadcast. Most of our conversation with him will air during our remote broadcasts from New Orleans on Monday and Tuesday. Effective today and with the six-month anniversary approaching, he has broken his silence on a number of aspects of the Katrina debacle -- and chiefly about where the blame should be placed for what happened in the aftermath. 

Also in the broadcast tonight: the dodged bullet in Saudi Arabia and on worldwide oil markets with the apparent foiled bombing today...the situation in Iraq...the move to re-classify government documents already in the public domain... making sense of recent medical studies... and making sense of the Olympic results for the U.S. team.

We are busy preparing material for tonight and for next week's broadcasts. We wish you a good weekend and hope you'll join us tonight.

The maker of BlackBerry hand-held e-mail devices, and the 3 million Americans who use them, dodged a bullet in federal court today when the judge in the massive patent lawsuit against the company put off a ruling that could have shut the service down.

A tiny Virginia firm claims it filed patents first for a system to connect desktop computers wirelessly to portable e-mail devices, and a federal judge has found that BlackBerry infringed on those patents. There's no finding that BlackBerry stole the idea, but under patent law, that doesn't matter: whoever files first is normally entitled to licensing fees if someone comes along later and turns the same idea into a product.

A federal judge in Virginia had threatened to issue an order today directing BlackBerry to stop using the system. And even though BlackBerry claims it has worked up an alternate system that would keep BlackBerries working, users were nervous, because the "workaround" is untested. The federal government was so worried it asked for an exception to make sure government BlackBerries would not go dark.

Also today, BlackBerry's lawyers say, the U.S. Patent Office rejected the Virginia company's claims, so their side may be weakening.  Though it's still possible BlackBerry's maker may end up having to pay the Virginia firm some kind of licensing fee, that's no longer a certainty.

The view from the "pool" car of Secretary of State Rice's Middle East motorcade.

BEIRUT - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made an unannounced trip to Beirut, Lebanon on Thursday. NBC was the TV pool traveling with the secretary. "The Pool" consists of a crew and producer who cover the secretary for all five American networks.

We were told Wednesday night, in Saudi Arabia, to be on the buses at 7:45 a.m. ready to go to Abu Dhabi, where Secretary Rice was going to have some meetings with the leaders of Dubai and the foreign ministers of the Gulf Corporation Council. Of course, we all should have figured something was up when the State Department press folks told us there was no schedule available yet, but we all went to bed planning on a light day in Dubai.

While we slept, the Lebanese press learned of the visit and it was leaking out. The Diplomatic Security team that protects the secretary had late night meetings with the secretary's staff and expressed their view that, by losing the element of surprise, the secretary (and her traveling party) would be at a somewhat greater risk in Beirut. The decision was made to continue with the visit.

We were told about the unannounced trip to Beirut at about 7:30 a.m. by press spokesman Sean McCormack, but he asked us not to report anything until we landed and to not announce times for her meetings. Just who she would be meeting with?

In my roll as "pool producer" I had to try to figure out a way to feed the tape of the secretary's visit to Beirut without letting anyone know she was going there. I called NBC's usual person in Beirut, planning to ask if he was available to do something for us. As soon as I identified myself he said, "I was waiting for you to call." He knew more about the schedule than I did! I asked him to meet us at the prime minister's office, where he would take the tape to a feed point to get everything we shot back to the states.

On the flight from Riyadh to Beirut, the secretary came back to brief us on why she wanted to go to Beirut and what she hoped to accomplish. The Diplomatic Security guys on the plane were much more animated than usual as we got closer to Beirut. As soon as we touched down, we got a shot of the secretary coming down the stairway from the plane. Then we jumped into our assigned van in the motorcade and things got interesting. 

Our first stop was a visit with the Patriarch of the Maronite Catholic Church, Cardinal Nasrallah Sfeir. He lives in a beautiful old church complex called Bkirki, in the mountains overlooking Beirut. He is very influential in Lebanese politics. Once the motorcade started rolling we all knew this was not a normal 50-minute drive into the mountains. The motorcade moved at between 50 and 80 miles per hour through downtown Beirut. These were armor-plated Suburbans and armor-plated 10 passenger vans. It was amazing. 

All the drivers are very well trained, but there is nothing like taking corners at 55 mph while people are just a few feet away standing on the curb. Every vehicle had a security officer with not only a sidearm, but also an assault rifle at the ready. Several Lebanese government security police were riding in the back of an open top truck - rifles drawn and ready. 

Normally, when a motorcade gets on the highway, it is single file with the a few police cars or motorcycle police leading the way and the press in the back. Not this motorcade. To keep any possible attackers guessing, Diplomatic Security used what they call a more "aggressive" motorcade.  All the vehicles constantly changed positions. At times we were doing 80 mph, three vehicles abreast on one side of a divided highway. It was like NASCAR and any number of chase scenes in the movies. 

I have ridden in motorcades all over the world for about 18 years -- from a Striker armored personnel carrier in Mosul, Iraq to a Greyhound bus in Iowa. This was the best ride I have ever had. Amazingly, only one member of the press got sick riding in the back of one of the vans.

Once we got to Bkirki it was clear all of the local media knew our schedule. There were lots of cameras and live trucks. After a photo-op and short statement by the secretary it was back in the vans and down the mountain, this time taking a somewhat different route to the office of the prime minister for a meeting and joint news conference with the secretary and Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. 

Once again there were lots of cameras and live trucks. Our local producer met us there and took our tape to be fed out for everyone. We moved on to a meeting with the Sa'ad Hariri and Druze leader Walid Junblatt. Hariri is the son of the former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri who was assassinated last year.

Next up was an added meeting with Nabib Berri, the @!$%#e Speaker of the Parliament -- another photo-op. Finally, we headed back to the airport and got back on the plane and off to Abu Dhabi. The visit lasted less than five hours, but I am sure the NBC crew of Geoff Doyle, Jim Greene and I will not soon forget our visit to Beirut.

You'll meet a woman who takes calcium supplements and follows a low-fat diet. But all the conflicting reports and studies leave her wondering what to do. What do the doctors recommend? We'll help you sort out all the confusion in part two of our special report on women's health. You can read part one, by correspondent Bob Faw, here.

Again today, there is an astoundingly spot-on piece of sportswriting in The New York Times. It's a page one story (deservedly so) about how these games have produced no major figures (in a marketing sense or in any other way) and may explain why many Americans may be having flashbacks to the Olympic Basketball "Dream Team" in Athens. For many, the losses don't hurt as much as the glaring lack of class and sportsmanship on the part of some of the (most prominently featured) American athletes. Click continued for excerpts from today's front page story by Karen Crouse.

With four days left, no American has won multiple gold medals, and the athletes that were hyped to the heavens have plunged -- literally, in the case of snowboarder Lindsey Jacobellis -- to earth.

...for Madison Avenue, the face of the United States that has emerged from these Games is an unattractive sell of bad manners and poor sports.

"It's probably the most hyped and most disappointing Olympic team we've had," Bob Williams, the president of Burns Entertainment & Sports Marketing, said Wednesday by telephone from Chicago.

The skier Bode Miller was weighed down by expectations and a few extra pounds. He did not win a medal in four events in the mountains at Sestriere -- 60 miles from here -- with one event remaining. After missing a gate in the combined, one of his best events, Miller said, "At least now I don't have to go all the way to Torino" to pick up the medal."

Jacobellis won no style points turning a sure victory in the inaugural women's Olympic snowboardcross into a silver medal when she tried to show off with a trick and crashed yards from the finish line.  She immediately returned to the United States, saying, "I'm excited to go back home and have a nice steak and a normal-sized bathroom."

Chad Hedrick's speedskating victory in the 5,000 meters has been overshadowed by his ungraciousness in defeat in the team pursuit, the 1,000 and the 1,500, and his open feud with teammate Shani Davis, the first black athlete to win an individual gold medal in the Winter Olympics. "I'm here to win," Hedrick said in dismissing his bronze medal in the 1,500. "It's all or nothing."

Davis provided a sharp contrast to Hedrick on Tuesday, congratulating the Italian speedskater who beat the two Americans in the 1,500. He then turned churlish during a post-race interview with NBC, the network televising the games. He kept his answers short and his gaze averted.

"This is certainly not the kind of interview you're used to hearing from an Olympic gold medalist," NBC's Dan Hicks remarked afterward to the studio host, Bob Costas.

"When there are incidents of misbehavior, it's more obvious and generates more attention because there are higher expectations and higher standards for an Olympian," said Darryl Seibel, a spokesman for the United States Olympic Committee. "We embrace those standards. We celebrate the fact that more is expected of them.  And if we need to do a better job of making sure our athletes understand those standards, we will."
(If you'd like to read the whole article, click here.)

THE ROAD AHEAD
Sad news arrived while we were having a planning meeting concerning our coverage of New Orleans: I looked at the MSNBC screen and learned that the U.S. had lost seven soldiers in two separate explosions in Iraq. When our travel schedule calms down and we are clear of a few major stories and upcoming anniversaries, among my vows for the future direction of our coverage would be to check in on what I think is the most remarkable daily sacrifice in this country: families with loved ones serving overseas. Second to the military service itself (only in terms of the danger and living conditions), it deserves our attention and respect (and coverage) on a more regular basis. On the NOLA front, we will of course be broadcasting from New Orleans next week for Mardi Gras, and to mark the six-month anniversary of the storm and the botched response to it.

Tonight's broadcast will have heavy coverage of the current situation in Iraq, the report out today on the Katrina lessons, the port cargo/security story that is not going away, and the confusion over the conflicting health evidence in the news. If you adhere to a particular medical theory, it's safe to say that if you're willing to wait long enough, a "major study" will come your way to prove your thesis.  We'll also take a look at Russia's hope tonight on ice, Irina Slutskaya.

Those of you unable to keep replaying the last presidential election will be interested in this AP item coming out today. And the Diageo/Hotline poll on HRC has some interesting numbers [she trails Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., by 10 points in a hypothetical match-up for the White House in 2008, and her favorable ratings have increased 4 points since last month (up 10 among Democrats and 6 points among Independents polled)].

Tomorrow night, with Mike Taibbi's help, we'll take a step back and take a good, hard look at the Olympic Games so far. Until then, we hope you'll join us tonight.

From low fat diets to supplements to prevention of arthritis and osteoporosis -- every other day, it seems new research turns conventional wisdom on its ear. Tonight, we begin a special two-part report to help you understand what's going on.

There is something remarkable about this port deal flap everyone is talking about. Think about it: President Bush, the 9/11 president who says he thinks every day about how to protect the country...  who said he wanted Osama bin Laden "dead or alive"... whose top political adviser Karl Rove said in January, "Republicans have a post-9/11 view of the world and Democrats have a pre-9/11 view of the world"... his administration is now making a much more nuanced argument about why the U.S. cannot block a deal with the UAE just because it's an Arab government with terror links. Two 9/11 hijackers were UAE citizens and money for the plot went through UAE banks.

A top Bush adviser, who preferred to remain anonymous since he was offering more than the White House line, sent me an e-mail yesterday saying: "The President feels strongly that if we're to win this war (on terror) we've got to be adding partners in the ME (Middle East), not subtracting them. We can't pull the rug out from under them." This is an economic hearts-and-minds argument. We can't coax autocratic, anti-western Arab governments to be more modern and to clamp down on jihadists in their countries if we tell them, "We want you to modernize, but you can't do any business in the U.S. because we don't trust Arabs."

Democrats are still playing catch up on the security politics of this White House, so they are happy to run to the right of the president on this. That's what Republicans are so worried about.

At the White House, officials said today it was unfair to hold Dubai Ports World, a state-owned company in the UAE, to a different standard than a British company that had the contract until Dubai Ports acquired them. The real point he was making is that there are good Arab governments and bad ones. The UAE is a solid military partner for us in the Persian Gulf and we don't want to sever that relationship.

There may be a dollars-and-cents argument just as important as the hearts-and-minds appeal. As Steve Liesman from CNBC told me today during an interview, the U.S. is running a $7 billion trade SURPLUS with the UAE, not including a recent $10 billion deal between the Emirates and Boeing to buy airplanes. We don't have many trade surpluses around the world and we don't want to start a trade war with some pretty big markets.

It's not clear how any of this will turn out, but I can't be alone in scratching my head about how the administration let this one catch them off guard.

If it's Wednesday, it must be New York, meaning we're back home. It will be interesting for all on our travel team to now get to view the Olympics like a viewer: at home, where they should be watched, surrounded by family on the couch, where I do a decent job every four years pretending to be excited about a well-executed triple toe-loop. It was a great privilege to have been there. It's also a welcome sight on the in-house monitor to see Studio 3C going through lighting and camera checks, having been "dark" for so many straight weekdays.

On the broadcast tonight, we will examine the significance of the bombing of a nearly 1,200-year-old shrine in Iraq, an incident some have theorized could explode exponentially from here, and become the "tipping point" for Iraqi-against-Iraqi violence, if not outright Civil War. We'll also update the port security story... and tonight we hope to add some context to the debate with an additional piece.

How about that Bode Miller? We'll be mentioning his name in the broadcast tonight, and here's a hint: it WON'T be in connection with his Olympic successes on the slopes.

We do have a wonderful spot tonight that represents a great piece of reporting by our own Kevin Tibbles. A die-hard hockey fan himself, Kevin knows one when he sees one. He's found an unforgettable bunch... we'll introduce them tonight.

It's great to be back on home ice. We sure hope you'll join us tonight.

In a court filing late last night, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's lawyers revealed some of their defense strategy -- namely, that their client simply can't remember things like, "snippets of conversations about Valerie Plame Wilson's employment status." Libby's defense, according to court documents, is that he was overwhelmed by the demands of his job at the White House, and might have forgotten, or misconstrued conversations.

His lawyers included portions of Libby's grand jury testimony that highlight the "pressing matters" of his job that may have affected his memory. Libby told the grand jury on March 5, 2004: "I tend to get between 100 and 200 pages of material a day that I'm supposed to read and understand and I -- you know, I start at 6:00 in the morning and I go to 8 or 8:30 at night... I can't possibly recall all the stuff that I think is important, let alone other stuff that I don't think is as important... I apologize if there's some stuff that I remember and some I don't."

Ted Wells, Libby's lead attorney, writes, "the defense of confusion, mistake or faulty memory is a valid and well-recognized defense in perjury." He continues: "Given the urgent national security issues that commanded Mr. Libby's attention, it is understandable that he may have forgotten or misremembered relatively less significant events. Such relatively less important events include alleged snippets of conversations about Valerie Plame Wilson's employment status."

The defense team notes that they have reviewed "extensive research on the functioning of memory," and cites scientific literature on memory that "shows that people tend to remember things that are personally important to them and may forget or confuse things that are not."

The filing also indicates that "it is highly likely that Mr. Libby will testify at trial."

You might think, 230 years into our history as a nation, that the courts would long ago have decided such a basic issue as this one: can you sue the post office if you slip and fall on mail left on your front porch? But that question wasn't finally answered until today, when the U.S. Supreme Court said, yes, you can.

The court ruled in favor of a Pennsylvania woman, Barbara Dolan, who tripped over packages left on her porch instead of where her mail was normally dropped off. The fall resulted in serious injury to her wrists and back, so she sued the U.S. Postal Service.

Federal law allows some lawsuits against the federal government, but there are exceptions, and the Postal Service argued that Mrs. Dolan's was blocked by one of them -- barring claims due to the "loss, miscarriage, or negligent transmission of letters or postal matter." After all, the government said, the Postal Service delivers 660 million pieces a day to 142 million addresses and shouldn't be sued whenever a postal customer trips on some of it.

Not so, the court concluded today. That section of the law, the justices said, blocks lawsuits dealing only with a failure to deliver the mail on time, in good condition, and to the right address. Just as the Postal Service can be sued when its delivery trucks cause a traffic accident, so it can be sued in a case like this, the justices ruled.

The court voted 7-1 in favor of Mrs. Dolan. Justice Clarence Thomas dissented, finding that the law blocks lawsuits in a case like this. And the newest justice, Samuel Alito, was not on the court when the case was argued in November and took no part in the decision.

The Postal Service says that it is taking two actions as a result of today's decision:

-- all letter carriers will be reminded of Postal Service policy requiring them to leave packages "in a safe place;"
-- the policy of leaving packages when customers are not home will now be reviewed.

However, a postal official says that, at this point, it is considered unlikely that the review will result in any change in the policy.