By Brian Williams, Anchor and managing editor

This will have to be brief. I'm in a holding room with Senator Clinton, typing this on my Blackberry, while she participates in a conference call with Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm and New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine. The subject is the economy. We're on the campus of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas -- where we accompanied the Senator in her motorcade after our first stop at a hotel on the Vegas strip.

Senator Clinton held a roundtable here on the subject of Yucca Mountain (the proposed nuclear waste site here) before a small but enthusiastic crowd. Tonight we'll show you a slice of life inside the Clinton campaign, coming off what they believe was a very good outing for them last night at the debate here in Las Vegas.

Tonight we have more on foreign ownership of U.S. financial institutions, as well as a great piece on the pronunciation of Nevada (even though in a moment of debate fatigue I briefly insisted we were in California last night) about which there's been much talk and attention (at least in our newsroom and that of our Las Vegas affiliate) of late.

We'll see you from Las Vegas tonight, and following the horrors of the redeye, back home in New York tomorrow night. Thanks for watching it all.

Editor's note: Brian Williams's interview with Senator Clinton airs tonight on the broadcast, and can be seen online in its entirety tonight. Here's a preview.

By Mike Taibbi, NBC News correspondent

Editor's note: Mike Taibbi filed this while on the road this week with Rudy Giuliani in Ft. Myers, Florida. His report airs tonight on the broadcast.

Rudy Giuliani was beaming, and with good reason. He'd just finished the second of six stops during a long day of his Florida bus tour, this one a town meeting in the megachurch centerpiece of the Shell Point senior citizens complex, and the place had been packed with people who sure sounded like supporters. One of them, an enthusiastic woman named Bonnie Raymo, sounded like she'd been briefed in detail on the 63-year-old former New York mayor's "late start" strategy of launching his campaign with a Florida win while his opponents spent their ammo in a circular firing squad before getting to Florida, none of them the clear leader and all of them weakened enough to cede the front page to a new lead story: Rudy!

"It seems like he's putting all his eggs in this basket, (but) he's trying everywhere," Bonnie said, "and it has been unpredictable for everyone. And, the polls are all wrong. I think he knows how to operate…and he's the one who's going to beat Hillary!"

At Shell Point, Giuliani hit every applause line and the crowd of nearly a thousand responded. He was for "staying on offense in the Islamist terrorists' war against us," and for stimulating the economy by making the Bush tax cuts permanent and by pushing for new cuts in the corporate and capital gains taxes. He'd been introduced at this and other stops by Steve Forbes, the "flat tax" Republican who'd sought the White House himself a couple of cycles ago, and now Giuliani was finding a moment in each appearance to wave a single sheet of paper in front of him. "A one page tax return," he said. There were cheers each time.

"These people give you your enthusiasm," he told me after the Shell Point appearance, sitting in his campaign bus. "They're terrifically excited. You've got to look at the states where you can look at the voters, you look at the polls and you say to yourself 'this is the place I can make the biggest impression.'" (Photo: Chris O'meara, Associated Press)

He concedes it's an unconventional strategy that may not work. "We'll see," he said several times in the days we spent with his campaign both in Florida and in New Hampshire before that state's primary. There'd been stories this past weekend that a dozen or so of his senior campaign staff are forgoing salaries for the month of January to husband dwindling resources. And he'd smiled, ruefully it seemed, when during an appearance at the El Ray Jesus Church in Cuban-American Miami the chorus had sung "I'm somewhere in the future… and I look much better than I do right now!" By the time he took a seat in that church his longtime double-digit lead in Florida had evaporated completely; he'd fallen into what was essentially a four-way tie and there was time to fall farthur before the January 29th winner-take-all primary.

"But you don't posit all the worst things that could happen," he told me, "and then say, 'are you done?' if they happen. I believe we're gonna win Florida and I think that'll turn the whole thing around."

Maybe, but a lot of trends would have to break in a different direction for that to happen. This is a candidate who as recently as early December was still seen by many as not just the favorite on the Republican side but as the inevitable nominee. This was Rudy, after all; everybody knows him, the thinking went (and, as Giuliani reminded reporters during a fundraising visit to London last summer, he was one of the "four or five" best known Americans on the planet); and everyone knows what he's known for.

Turns out that in a wide-open race, high name recognition hasn't been enough. They may have known him in Iowa but they didn't vote for him… a weak fourth. In New Hampshire he spent millions of his war chest, then pulled his television ads, then skipped to Florida having bagged barely 20,00 votes, another weak fourth. No numbers, no buzz, in a state where logic suggested he should have had some traction just for being, well, Rudy.

It could be that the would-be Giuliani juggernaut was never really a juggernaut at all… that he was just the best-known name brand until the others caught up. It could also be that his legitimate fame and iconic status were badly damaged by both his limited participation in the early part of the nomination process and by a series of negative press reports about his personal and business lives, and about his connection to and support for his indicted friend Bernie Kerik, the former New York Police Commissioner Giuliani touted to President Bush for the job of Homeland Security chief.

In Florida I suggested that if he became a viable candidate again after success in that state's primary, all those reports about all those controversial issues would be given an explosive new life. I mentioned the Swift Boat Veterans' efforts to derail the John Kerry campaign. "That stuff doesn't matter," he told me. "People don't vote on things like that. People vote on who's going to be the best to lead the country. Who's going to be the best to deal with the economy, who's going to be the best to deal with Islamic terrorism. What you're talking about happens to every candidate… you just have to rise above it."

But "those things" do matter to some voters we talked to. At a later event Monday afternoon, Giuliani was giving his stump speech to a good-sized crowd at a waterside shopping mall in Punta Gorda. One man, a transplanted New Yorker named Bob Clarke, listened intently but kept his hands in his pockets after each of the candidate's applause lines.

He liked Giuliani, Clarke explained. "I think he's got a plan for America. But if he gets more successful I think there'll be some things coming out about his background…whether they be true or false. He's got a very public track record… and I know that divorce and other things that are in his background will come into play with some voters." Clarke added, "I'm a registered Republican and I'd like to stay there if I can. I'm still looking for a candidate."

Another woman in the crowd, looking at Giuliani almost adoringly, told me she'd been waiting for more than two hours for his campaign bus to arrive. "I've always wanted to see him," she said, snapping off another photo. "For years!" So, I asked, I guess you're voting for him?

She looked right at me, her brow furrowed and her eyes revealing an inner conversation. "I think so," she said, a lingering question in her answer, and turned her camera to the podium again.

 By Savannah Guthrie, NBC News correspondent

Should it be easier for boys than girls to get into college? The simple answer, of course, is no. But as we prepared the third installment of our series, "The Truth About Boys and Girls," we learned that nothing is simple when it comes to the college admissions process.

The story starts with some good news: Girls are shining academically. Girls have done so well, in fact, they now represent the majority of the student body on many campuses nationwide.

But all that success has led to some unintended consequences. At certain schools - particularly, liberal arts colleges overloaded with female applicants - the only way admissions offices can keep a gender-balanced student body is to admit a greater percentage of boys and reject more girls. That means better qualified girls are sometimes turned away just to increase male enrollment. An admissions dean from Kenyon College caused a firestorm in the academic world for acknowledging as much in a New York Times op-ed entitled, "To All The Girls I've Rejected."

On the other hand, many schools point out that a diverse student body - whether it's by race, gender, or geography - is a legitimate goal for colleges.

"As far as I'm concerned," one admissions officer told us, "not only is there not anything wrong with that, but we ought to be doing that, because we are all about building a community here."

By the way, during our encounter with high school senior Courtney Duffy, we came across her charming - if unorthodox - college admissions essay. Her chosen topic: why she loves milk. You may be wondering what milk has to do with getting into college. So were we. Click here to see Courtney explain it, and here to read the essay that got her admitted to her first-choice school, Trinity College in Connecticut.

Editor's note: Savannah Guthrie's report airs tonight on the broadcast. For her findings on how to find gender biases in college admissions, click here.

Army Staff Sgt. Sean Gaul was on his fifth combat tour. Sgt. Zachary McBride liked to read satire. Sgt. 1st Class Matthew Pionk was married with three small children. The three soldiers were among six members of the First Armored Division killed Jan. 9 when a bomb exploded inside a house in Sinsil, Iraq, north of Baghdad (the image below is what the aftermath of a bombing looks like).

"They entered that house totally convinced that they were just checking it out, cleaning it out," a relative of one of the men told the Kansas City Star. "And it was booby-trapped."

The six deaths underscore the continued vulnerability of U.S. troops to improvised explosive devices, which account for half of the American dead and wounded in Afghanistan and two-thirds of the casualties in Iraq.

"None of us is afraid of the firefights, the guns, and all that," Army First Lt. David Moore told the New York Times. "It is the deep-buried stuff that you can't see. I don't think we have lost anybody from our company in a firefight; we have only lost people from explosions."

Twelve of last week's 16 combat deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan were from explosive devices.

1. Army Spc. James Gudridge, 20, of Carthage, N.Y., enjoyed hunting, fishing, and camping. He enlisted while in high school and left for basic training after graduating in 2005. "He wanted to be in the action," his father told Newsday.com. A chemical operations specialist with the Third Infantry Division, Gudridge was killed Jan. 6 by a roadside bomb in Baghdad. "I asked them if it could be a mistake," his mother told WSYR, "and they said, 'No.'"

2. Army Pfc. Timothy Hanson, 23, of Kenosha, Wis., lost 35 pounds in four months to meet the Army's weight requirements. Deployed to Iraq with the Third Infantry Division, he took along his portable DVD player and most of the 300 DVDs in his movie collection. "He loved everything from foreign films to romantic comedies," his mother told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Hanson was shot and killed Jan. 7 while on guard duty in Salmon Pak, Iraq.

3. Army Sgt. James Healy, 25, of Hesperia, Calif., was responding to the discovery of a bomb in Laghar Juy, Afghanistan, when a second bomb exploded, fatally wounding him on Jan. 7. He was with the 703rd Explosive Ordinance Detachment. Healy is the third member of the Hesperia High School graduating class of 2000 to die in the Middle East conflicts. His widow, Shannon, also graduated from Hesperia in 2000. They have a 13-month-old son.

4. Army Maj. Michael Green, 36, of Chagrin Falls, Ohio, loved fishing on the Mississippi bayou, not far from where he trained troops for overseas duty. He had never been deployed himself until he went to Afghanistan about a month ago. "He felt like he was being slighted," his mother told the Mississippi Press. "He did not want to just send men out but wanted to serve beside them." Green, a Green Beret, died in the same bomb blast as Sgt. Healy.

The following three members of the 101st Airborne Division were killed Jan. 9 during combat operations in Samarra, Iraq. Their deaths were under investigation to determine whether they were killed by the enemy or "friendly fire" from U.S. troops.

5. Army Sgt. David Hart, 22, of Lake View Terrace, Calif., was remembered as "a wonderful young man" by the mother of a soldier who served in Iraq with him. The mother said in legacy.com that her son was "visibly shaken" by the news of Hart's death. "I'm also very shaken," she said. Hart, who joined the Army in November 2003, is survived by his widow, Nicole. Capitol flags in California were flown at half-staff on Jan. 11 in honor of Hart.

6. Army Pfc. Ivan Merlo, 19, of San Marcos, Calif., listed the following details about himself in MySpace: Status: Married. Orientation: Straight. Hometown: San Marcos. Body type: 5' 11". Ethnicity: Latino/Hispanic. Zodiac sign: Scorpio. Smoke/Drink: No/No. Education: High school. Occupation: Soldier. Income: $45,000 to $60,000. Merlo was due home later this month from a yearlong deployment in Iraq. He is survived by his widow, Nicole.

7. Army Pfc. Phillip Pannier, 20, of Washburn, Ill., was active in Future Farmers of America and 4-H and played high school football and soccer. He joined the Army after graduating in 2006. "This upset his mother and me, but that's what he wanted to do," his father told the Bloomington Pantagraph. Pannier hoped one day to become a police officer. "That's one of the reasons he picked the Army," his mother told the Pantagraph.

8. Army Sgt. David Drakulich, 22, of Reno, Nev., attended two semesters of junior college before enlisting in 2004. A member of the 82nd Airborne Division, he was on his third tour in Afghanistan when he was killed Jan. 9 by a roadside bomb in Chagali. "His death was very sudden," his father told the Reno Gazette-Journal. "He probably didn't know what hit him." Drakulich had planned to attend college when he came home in April.

The following six members of the First Armored Division were killed in that Jan. 9 explosion in Sinsil, Iraq.

9. Army Spc. Todd Davis, 22, of Raymore, Mo., almost attended the University of Oklahoma to study architecture. He was enrolled and his car was packed, but he decided at the last minute to join the Army, largely inspired by his late father, a Marine who served two tours in Vietnam. His father died a few years ago of a brain tumor. His mother has not been in contact with the family since Davis was a child. He and his brother lived with an aunt and uncle.

10. Army Staff Sgt. Jonathan Dozier, 30, of Chesapeake, Va., had ancestors who fought in the Civil War, both World Wars, and Desert Storm. Dozier joined the Army in 1997, left the service to attend college, and re-enlisted in 2005. Before deploying to Iraq, he asked his father, "Is it weird to really want to do this?" "No," his dad replied, according to dailypress.com. "This is what you're trained to do." Dozier is survived by his widow, Amy, and infant daughter, Emma.

11. Army Staff Sgt. Sean Gaul, 29, of Reno, Nev., enjoyed martial arts, scuba diving, and fly fishing. A triathlete, he enlisted in the Army in 1997 and deployed to Afghanistan soon after 9/11. Since then, Gaul served four more combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. "Sean loved his job, knowing the risks he re-enlisted during his fifth deployment," his wife, Jessica, said in a statement. "It seemed Sean was a lifer for sure." Besides Jessica, Gaul leaves behind their daughter.

12. Army Sgt. Zachary McBride, 20, of Bend, Ore., liked to read satire, history, and politics. "He read a lot, and he remembered, it seemed, everything he read," a friend told the Oregonian. "He had a wealth of useless and useful knowledge." An "A" high school student, McBride surprised his parents by enlisting in 2005. "It's just tragic," his pastor said of his death, according to the Bend Bulletin. "It's a loss that I don't think parents ever fully recover from."

13. Army Sgt. 1st Class Matthew Pionk, 30, of Superior, Wis., enlisted and married in the same year, 1998. He earned a Bronze Star during a previous tour in Iraq for helping an injured soldier. "His whole life was the military," his wife, Melanie, told the Superior Daily Telegram. Besides Melanie, Pionk is survived by Dillon, 8, Ashley, 6, and Brandon, 3. "He was a great dad and a great soldier," Melanie told the Daily Telegram. "That's about all I can tell you."

14. Army Sgt. Christopher Sanders, 22, of Roswell, N.M., was remembered as an active child by his mother. "Always getting into something, always on the move," she told the Las Cruces Sun-News. He graduated from the New Mexico Military Institute in 2003 and briefly attended Eastern New Mexico University before enlisting in 2004. On his second tour in Iraq, Sanders was due home in November. He leaves behind his widow, Dara, and a young son and daughter.

15. Army Lt. Col. Richard Berrettini, 52, of Wilcox, Pa., was a high school nurse who volunteered to serve in Afghanistan with the Army National Guard. Due home later this month, he was severely injured Jan. 2 by a roadside bomb in Khowst Province. He died Jan. 11 at Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas. He is survived by his widow, Jane, and sons Vincent, 26, a graduate of the Air Force Academy, and Christopher, 22, a West Point graduate.

16. Army Pfc. Keith Lloyd, 26, of Milwaukee held various retail jobs after graduating from high school. "He tried to find himself for a while," his father told the Associated Press. "But he wanted to get himself a career." Lloyd joined the Army last year as a food service specialist and apparently found his career. "He was already talking about reupping," his dad told AP. Lloyd, with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, was killed Jan. 12 by a roadside bomb in Tal Afar, Iraq.

17. Marine Lance Cpl. Curtis Christensen Jr., 29, of Collingswood, N.J., hiked 1,200 miles of the Appalachian Trail several years ago. "Whatever he got into, he would really get into," his mother told the Courier-Post. Before joining the Marines at age 28, he stopped smoking and drinking and joined a gym. "It was probably a good idea," his mom said, "since he was like the grandfather there." Christensen died Jan. 11 in a non-hostile incident in Iraq's Al Anbar Province.

Washington Producer John Rutherford is a decorated Vietnam veteran. He posts a weekly tribute to service members killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

By Brian Williams, Anchor and managing editor

Not much time to report on our day here in Las Vegas because of our pre-debate schedule. Tonight, it's safe to say, what happens in Vegas will get beamed all over the country.

We just did a facilities check of the theater and the set where we'll broadcast the debate tonight--a decidedly different setting and format than we've seen in the past. One unique aspect of tonight's format: the candidates will have the ability to question each other during one particular segment. We will be lucky if we get to ask half of the questions we have prepared. We have one more prep session scheduled for the time period between the first East Coast feed of Nightly News and the 9 p.m. (Eastern) start time. For those on the West Coast who miss the 6 p.m. live broadcast, we will re-broadcast the debate at 10 p.m. (1 a.m. on the East Coast).

Tomorrow morning, I will transition to the campaign trail for a part of the day, to continue our reporting from the ground level. We take the stage tonight with these candidates at, shall we say, an "interesting point" in the Democratic campaign. My partner Tim Russert and I will do our level best. Emphasis on level. So we'll look for you for Nightly News and--depending on your particular time zone and your choice of airing options-- or the Democratic Debate on MSNBC.

By Rehema Ellis, NBC News correspondent

When I first started researching this story on single-gender education I wasn't surprised to learn that some kids test scores improved. I was however, surprised to learn that, at least in the school we visited outside of Orlando, Florida, the boys showed considerably more improvement than girls.

By allowing the boys to move all about the classroom -- on the floor, huddled in tents, or in rocking chairs -- the teachers essentially allowed the boys' energy and creativity to run free. There was no insistence on learning by sitting at desks and quietly raising their hands and waiting their turn. Instead, the boys got to respond to at will.

It's a radical concept.

Were this to is happen in a mixed class, or even in an all boys class, in a public school with an untrained teacher, I suspect there's a good chance those boys could be seen as unruly or labeled A.D.D. -- Attention Deficit Disorder. Many parents, and teachers will tell you they think there has been a rush to judge fidgety boys as inattentive boys. Maybe, just maybe, the labeling is not totally correct.

Yes, there is a furious debate in this country about the merits of single-gender education in public schools. But whether you think it's the right way or the wrong way to go--

It is working for some. And there could be a surprise benefit: our nation's educators might be learning something about our children that goes beyond how to improve test scores.

By Andy Franklin, NBC News senior producer

If there's one word Barack Obama likes more than "change," it's "hope." It punctuates his speeches and has a prominent place in the title of his autobiography. After Obama's win in Iowa, change and hope became all the rage in presidential politics, among Democrats and Republicans alike. For Hillary Clinton, political survival meant blunting that winning message, even as she made it a part of her own. She didn't have much time; just four days separated Iowa from New Hampshire. Midway through that gauntlet, facing the double threat of Obama and John Edwards in the ABC News debate, she fought back. It was a show of emotion as vivid as the one that came two days later. But this wasn't weepy vulnerability; it was full-throated anger. "I think it is clear that what we need is somebody who can deliver change," Clinton said. "And we don't need to be raising the false hopes of our country about what can be delivered."

"False hopes." That was an opening for Obama, and he went for it. Over the next two days, he told New Hampshire crowds, "We don't need leaders to tell us what we can't do. We need leaders to tell us what we CAN do, and inspire us." Obama gave examples: Sending a man to the moon. Rebuilding Germany and Japan after World War II. Freeing the slaves. Extending voting rights to women. And he invoked the name of one of America's greatest visionary leaders, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.: What if Dr. King's dream had been abandoned as a "false hope"?

On Monday January 7, the day before the New Hampshire primary, a Fox News reporter quoted Obama's remarks about King to Senator Clinton during an interview, and asked her to respond. This is what she said:

Suddenly, we were on a trip in the Wayback Machine, hurled back in time to the civil rights era of the early 1960's. A fair reading of Clinton's remarks (and a knowledge of her record) makes clear she was not trying to play a race card (though she did anger blacks and whites by seeming to sell Martin Luther King short, a mistake she later tried to correct). But by invoking President Lyndon Johnson, and implicitly identifying with his political skills, she WAS offering a reading of history -- and that reading is fair game.

First of all, President Johnson didn't "pass" the Civil Rights Act of 1964; Congress did, with Johnson's prodding, after much delay and a bitter debate that began well before Johnson took office. For his part, Martin Luther King Jr. had emerged as a national figure during the Montgomery bus boycott of the mid-1950's, when he was not yet 30 years old. King was soon America's preeminent civil rights leader, and by 1963 his strategy of nonviolent confrontation had triggered racial clashes across the South, with King in the thick of it. He was not yet the revered figure he later became; he was detested and feared by many whites, even so-called "moderate" whites, who thought he was a troublemaker, trying to do too much too fast. King had no patience for such thinking. From a Birmingham, Alabama jail cell that April, he wrote, "We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed." And King was critical of President Kennedy's civil rights policy, saying that in succeeding Eisenhower, Kennedy had merely substituted "an inadequate approach for a miserable one."

It's true that President Kennedy's early stand on civil rights was cautious at best. Kennedy had been elected by the narrowest of margins and had little political room to maneuver, and civil rights was an explosive, divisive issue. Kennedy may have hoped to hold off on civil rights until the 1964 election gave him a stronger mandate, but events soon forced his hand. By 1963, the struggle over civil rights was tearing the country apart, with televised images of police dogs and fire hoses turned on protestors, the bombing and torching of people's homes, and an American governor barring a schoolhouse door to block integration. As historian Robert Dallek points out, the struggle was also an international embarrassment, reflecting poorly on America as it competed with the Soviets on the world stage during the Cold War. The American people began to realize that something had to change, and finally, so did the president. On June 11, 1963, Kennedy gave one of the defining speeches of his presidency, saying, "The time has come for this nation to fulfill its promise" of equal rights, a promise made but not kept since the Civil War. "One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free," Kennedy acknowledged. As if to prove his point, black civil rights activist Medgar Evers was shot and killed in Jackson, Mississippi just hours after Kennedy's speech.

President Kennedy backed up his words with a strong civil rights bill, sent to Congress later that month. It promptly disappeared into the House Judiciary Committee, even as the civil rights struggle pressed on. That summer, one of the biggest demonstrations in American history unfolded on the Washington Mall, with Martin Luther King as its keynote speaker. We remember that speech for its soaring "I have a dream" rhetoric, but King also had this to say:

It was a whirlwind, all right. Less than three weeks later, the bombing of a black church in Birmingham, Alabama left four young girls dead. In November, Kennedy's civil rights bill went to the House Rules Committee, where it seemed destined to be bottled up indefinitely. Then the world turned upside down. John F. Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas, and Lyndon Johnson of Texas became president of the United States. Two days after the nation buried its fallen leader, Johnson went before a joint session of Congress and said, "No memorial oration or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy's memory than the earliest possible passage of the civil rights bill for which he fought so long." Johnson made the bill a priority, and used his considerable political skills to push it through the House, and then the Senate. Both bodies dragged their feet, even in the face of JFK's memory. It took months, and Johnson had help, including from Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen, a Republican from Illinois. At one point, Dirksen quoted Victor Hugo on the Senate floor, saying, "Stronger than all the armies is an idea whose time has come." It helped end a 75-day filibuster -- one year after Kennedy's landmark speech.

Meanwhile, Dr. King kept up the pressure, saying that any compromise in the civil rights bill "would be a tragic error on the part of the Administration -- both morally and politically." And it couldn't have escaped anyone's notice -- including the president's -- that of all the people who had made a difference in 1963, it was Martin Luther King Jr. who was chosen as Time's Man of the Year.

The Civil Rights Act finally passed, and when Lyndon Johnson signed the bill into law on July 2, 1964 -- two days before Independence Day -- Martin Luther King Jr. was there to see him do it, promising that he would waste no time putting the new law to the test. (Later that year, King was awarded the Nobel peace prize.) Robert F. Kennedy was there as well; his brother's tragic death seven months earlier had put a strong wind at the backs of those who supported and fought for the bill -- including Lyndon Baines Johnson.

So, did it "take a president" to make civil rights the law of the land in 1964, as Hillary Clinton claimed? Historian and Johnson biographer Robert Dallek calls that sort of thinking "reductionist," saying, "It took both Martin Luther King and Lyndon Johnson to get this done," along with a reluctant Congress that was finally pushed, prodded and shamed into action by the collective will of the American people. But, Dallek says, "the weight of importance goes to Dr. King, and the circumstances put in place by King's assertive campaign for civil rights."

Happy birthday, Martin. We now return to the 2008 presidential campaign, already in progress.

Hi. Only got time for a few items today, but they're pretty good ones. Citigroup hit the confessional this morning, and the implications of what they reported about their past, present and future are sobering. Also, a smart person sends up a warning flare for conditions that could lead to a stock market crash, Senators Obama and Clinton turn back on to the high road, and inquiring minds want to know what really happened in the Strait of Hormuz last week.

So it was Citigroup's very bad, truly awful, no-good day: and the litany of bad news included a $10 billion loss, an $18 billion write-down, a dividend cut, 4,200 layoffs, a $14.5 billion chunk of itself sold to investors including Singapore and Saudi Prince Alwaleed, and at the end of today a 41% drop in its stock price in just 3 months. The NYT rounds it up. And if you have a WSJ subscription, here's their version. That, combined with a weak retail sales report from December sent stocks plummeting, with the Dow closing below the August swing low for the first time.

That last fact brings up a commentary by fund manager John Hussman, in which he describes market conditions that might be the set-up to an exceedingly rare outright market crash. QUOTE: "..I am emphatic that investors should evaluate their risk exposures and tolerances now, in order to allow for substantial further market weakness. Market conditions presently feature a Pandora's Box of rich valuations, vulnerable profit margins, rising default risk, rapidly deteriorating market internals, failing support levels, and accumulating evidence of oncoming recession. As I noted in my December 17 comment, "there is one particular scenario that would be ominous in my view. That would be if we see a relatively uninterrupted series of declines that breaks cleanly through the August and November lows, followed by a one-day advance of 200-400 Dow points. That's a script that markets tend to follow pre-crash. Though it's not a strong expectation or forecast, it's something worth monitoring, because we've started to see the pattern of abrupt jumps and declines at 10-minute intervals that is often a hallmark of nervous markets.""

Oh and Paul Krugman sees yet another sign that the Apocalypse is here.

And one more note on this: USA Today's editorial page did a nice job of arguing that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is not responsible for Wall Street's excesses. 

And here's a nice segue from the economy to politics, a survey of financial advisors that finds their biggest fear is a Democrat in the White House next year. Here's an answer to those fears from House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank, who points out that what the world needs now, is a little less Republican laissez-faire. On the other hand, who was responsible for loosening banking rules that allowed the "financial innovation" that got us into this mess  in the first place? Bill Clinton and his Treasury Secretary (now Citigroup elder statesman) Bob Rubin would be one place to look. Read more about the long demise of the Glass-Steagall Act here. 

Steve Benen at the Carpetbagger Report points out that, as Senators Obama and Clinton have pledged to knock off the race-based rhetoric, it's the Clinton surrogates who seem to be the ones to watch.

And Cernig at Newshoggers is asking some pointed questions about the Iranian fast boat incident in the Strait of Hormus last week. He also posts the full video, which doesn't look a whole lot like what we saw on TV last week.

By Brian Williams, Anchor and managing editor

Tonight you'll see us in our familiar Los Angeles bureau, largely because we were anxious to gather our debate/political team here on the West Coast. We're here to prepare for tomorrow night's Democratic debate (9pm ET on MSNBC) which seems to take on more importance with each passing hour of the campaign.  And please remember, it's not too late to submit a question of your own -- something you'd like us to ask the candidates tomorrow night. Click here to see how; we'll get to as many of your questions as we can.

We have a lot of campaign news to cover tonight: Ron Allen is with the Republicans, Andrea Mitchell covers the Democrats. For good measure, we'll also report on medicine, the Saudis, the environment, cars and gender (the start of a special series called "The Truth About Boys and Girls").  After tonight's broadcast from Los Angeles, we head to Las Vegas for a debate prep session upon arrival -- another tomorrow morning and another tomorrow night before air time.  It's the definition of a "working" trip to Vegas -- luckily, I don't gamble, so its not like I'm fighting a huge temptation to hit the blackjack tables instead of preparing for the debate. We'll originate Nightly News from Las Vegas tomorrow night, and then we'll peel away for that final prep session. Lester Holt will update the later feeds of Nightly News because I'll be tied up with the debate while those are airing.  We'll even have a little something for all those of you who have written us about the proper pronunciation of "Nevada."  That's pretty much the way things will work for the next 24 hours -- we hope you'll be with us to watch it all.

By Robert Bazell, NBC News Chief science correspondent

That men and women behave differently is well known.  The idea that there are fundamental  differences in the brains between the sexes is something many people assume to be true.  Thousands of articles and hundreds of books on the subject have appeared.  But there are far fewer differences and far less evidence than popular culture would have you believe.
 
It takes a highly skilled anatomist to know whether a brain removed at autopsy  comes from a man or a woman – the differences are that slight.  Many papers report an experiment that purports to show a difference between the behavior of male and female brains, and those often make news because there is so much interest in the subject.   But often subsequent attempts to repeat the experiment fail and those do not make news.
 
Tonight we report on one experiment that has been repeated often enough by some many researchers that it is highly believable.  When it comes to storing emotionally-rich memories women's brain place the memory in a part where emotions and details remain intertwined.  For men the emotions get separated so the recall often becomes "just the facts".  This makes for some amusing scenarios like the couple we show with differing memories of their wedding day.  But it could also have medical applications.  Women suffer almost twice as much depression as men.  This difference in brain function could account for that and someday suggest better treatments.

by Lester Holt, NBC News anchor

After TODAY Show duty this morning, I became a man on a mission in search of my snow boots.  We haven't needed them around here in quite some time, but the word from our friends at NBC Weather Plus, is that New York City is in for its first snowstorm of the season – beginning tonight.  We may see as much as a foot in some parts of the region. The fast moving nor'easter could cause big travel problems tomorrow from Philadelphia to Boston. Bill Karins from Weather Plus will come on the program tonight for a brief update. In the meantime, I can report I found the boots, along with my favorite down vest, buried deep in a storage closet. Now, if I could just find those earmuffs I got for Christmas a few years ago that double as ipod headphones…

If it's Sunday, this must be Nevada. Or is it South Carolina? Or maybe Michigan?  Welcome to the world of the presidential candidates who are focused on so many states, with so little time.  From Hillary Clinton's revealing hour-long sit down with Tim Russert this morning, to John McCain's challenge to the apparent Mitt Romney lead in Michigan, there are some intriguing story lines in a week that features three primary elections. We'll be covering many of them tonight.

President Bush sounded off against Iran during a speech in Abu Dhabi today, calling it "the world's leading state-sponsor of terror."  Earlier, he stopped in Bahrain, where he got a briefing from Naval commanders about that dust up in the Strait of Hormuz last week between American warships and Iranian speedboats. John Yang is on the road with the president and will tell us more about the speech, as well as report new details about that confrontation at sea.

We're at the big Detroit auto show where an industry battered in the present is looking toward the future, and we'll tell why tonight's Golden Globe awards presentation will some day be the answer to an entertainment trivia question. 

Thanks for checking in.  I hope you'll be back for tonight edition of NBC Nightly News.
  

by Lester Holt, NBC News anchor

If you've been anywhere near a TV this past week you've heard plenty of references to the 'R' word – as if the word recession is some sort of profanity – or that actually saying it will make it come true. Economist say if we're not there yet, we are, in fact, close to a recession. Either way, it's certainly nothing we should be talking around. A new AP-Ipsos poll finds the economy has now tied the war in Iraq as the issue of most concern to Americans. Tonight on Nightly News we will show you how the faltering economy is putting enormous pressure on both the White House and Congress to act, and why there could be a rare moment of cooperation to get something done quickly. 

The economy is also on the lips of the Republican presidential candidates making their way through Michigan this weekend. Michigan has lost a lot of jobs, and that will be on the minds of voters in next Tuesday's primary. NBC's Ron Allen will set the scene for us there tonight.

We will have a late update this evening on a story many of us have been following involving a missing pregnant Marine. The burnt remains of Lance Corporal Maria Lauterbach were recovered today from the backyard of a fellow Marine, along with the remains of the unborn baby she had been carrying. That fellow Marine, who Lauterbach had accused of raping her, is now wanted for her murder. NBC's Martin Savidge is working that story for us.

We'll also have Dawn Fratangelo's look at what a military tour of duty in Iraq is like through the eyes of the children who watch their moms and dads march off to war.

I hope you can join us tonight for the Saturday edition of NBC Nightly News.

By Brian Williams, Anchor and managing editor

If all the weeks in this year to come are going to last as long as this one seemed, it's going to be a tough slog, and I'm not even running for office.  We're capping off the week with a crazy day -- planning our travels for next week, and our debate Tuesday night among the Democrats in Las Vegas, a place I last visited on Wednesday of this week.  Before we do Nightly News, I get to go upstairs and tape Conan O'Brien for tonight.

I've been trying to stay on top of the avalanche of emails and posts following our political coverage (and my essay) this week.  To the gentleman who wrote about the Obama speech and his use of a teleprompter - it's an issue I raised following the Iowa Caucuses.

We have some great coverage to show you tonight: on the economy, the president's trip, the campaign, and our Friday Making a Difference segment.  Thanks for joining us all this week -- next week also promises to be eventful. Have a good weekend.

"Wake up, it's snowing! Don't miss the view!" Those were my 13-year-old niece's words when she called me early this morning.

I felt pleasure and joy in her words, jumped out of my bed and ran to the window. It was much more beautiful than can be described; a scene I have not seen before in my lifetime in Baghdad.

My family used to call my niece Snow White because she has pale skin, very blue eyes, and dark hair – plus she was a fan of the cartoon. So today she was especially pleased, because for the first time she felt what the taste of snow was really like.

AP

An Iraqi man and his child enjoy light snow fall in Baghdad on Friday.

AP Photo
Iraqi girls play in the snow in Sulaimaniyah, 260 kilometers (160 miles) northeast of Baghdad, Iraq on Friday, Jan. 11, 2008. 

AP Photo

* The names of local journalists are not used to protect their identity.

Click here to read more from the World Blog.

By Brian Williams, Anchor and managing editor

Just a quick travel update: We're back in New York after a whirlwind week (which started with checking into the Holiday Inn Express on the Interstate near the New Hampshire-Vermont border Sunday night) that brought us from New England to Nevada last night and back East again. It's one of those weeks. It feels like it ought to be Friday. Is anybody with me here? I'm gratified by the response to my essay, "Something's Happening Here," and equally gratified by the number of outlets that have picked it up and the quality of the comments from so many folks. I would never expect everyone to agree with me - nobody wants to live in that kind of a world. My aim was to share what I saw, record what I think we experienced this week in New Hampshire, and engender a lively conversation. Thanks to all who have read it and participated. It only gets more interesting from here, and a reminder: I make my second trip to Nevada in five days when Tim Russert and I moderate the Democratic candidates' debate next Tuesday night. Thanks for joining us tonight. I hope you are all enjoying the new Web site, which we are all enormously proud of.

Editor's note: The following was filed by the NBC News White House team traveling with the President in the Middle East.

The White House team had a unique experience today. We got to ride with the President on board Marine One as he flew from Ramallah to Bethlehem. The press often tags along on Air Force One, or some of the accompanying press planes. Rarely, however, do we get the chance to fly in the President's personal chopper, seeing him in a more relaxed mood as he moves from one set of meetings to another.

Mr. Bush arrived in the Holy Land on Wednesday, trying to nudge the Israeli and Palestinian leadership to go back to negotiations in an effort to find solutions to issues that have so far derailed all the previous peace processes.

Following his meetings with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Mr. Bush headed to one of Christianity's holiest sites: The Church of the Nativity, the place where Christ is believed to have been born. We joined the President in Ramallah for his 20-minute flight as he made his way to the biblical town.

WATCH EXCLUSIVE VIDEO

With the U.S. Secretary of State Condi Rice sitting in front of him, Mr. Bush looked out the window as the craggy hills of the West Bank disappeared beneath us. One of his aides unfurled a map of the region next to him, as the President compared the cartographer's dots with the realities on the ground.

Palestinian towns dotted the hills, with their minarets and church steeples poking through the skyline. Across the valleys, Jewish settlements with their manicured lawns hugged the mountains. It is the future of these settlements that will prove to be very tricky. Removing the settlers, who number in the tens of thousands, will be much harder than uprooting a few families here and there. Without their removal however, it would be impossible to create a viable Palestinian state with contiguous territory--something that the President insists must happen for the peace process to be successful.

As we continued to fly, the President leaned further into the window. "Is that Jerusalem over there?" he asked as he pointed to the horizon.

The city, a holy site to all three monolithic religions of the world, is a series of neighborhoods, mostly Jewish in the west and Arab in the east. The two sides of the city eventually melt into each other. Sometimes, they are separated by nothing more than a road or an alleyway. Nowhere is that fact truer than in the old city, rich as it is in its layers of history and religious significance.

Earlier in the day, Mr. Bush also saw first-hand another of the hot issues here: the barrier that snakes its way through the West Bank. The Israelis call it their security wall, and point to the fact that the number of suicide bombers has been reduced dramatically since its construction. The Palestinians, however, claim it is nothing more than a land grab and a way of inflicting mass punishment on the whole population.

Issues like the settlers and the future of this city, have been described as unsolvable problems. Yet President Bush is asking peace negotiators to tackle these issues head-on and somehow break the impasse that has stalled this peace process in the past.

As we flew along, the President sought information from the Secretary of State, whose involvement in the peace process in recent months has made her increasingly familiar with the issues at stake. Yet, despite the obvious challenges that can be seen from the air, both Rice and the President knew full well that other issues still loomed large: the right of return of Palestinian refugees, the critical issue of water and so much more that could scuttle this latest diplomatic effort.

The Israelis and Palestinians have promised President Bush to try to reach a peace agreement that will lead to the creation of a Palestinian state by the end of this year. It will not be easy.

Today, as we hitched a ride on Marine One, we witnessed first hand the president seeing for himself the scale of the very obstacles that have stood in the way of his numerous predecessors from claiming what would have been their greatest foreign policy achievement: Peace in the Middle East.

Hi. After a break over the holidays, this twice-weekly tour of the internet and the blogosphere in particular is back. Did anything happen while I was out?

Oh yeah. People actually caucused and voted! Since you can get your fill of horserace and tactics coverage from innumerable sources, I'll just stick to the relentless and deserved bashing the media is taking in the wake of New Hampshire. Salon has two representative offerings up: Joe Conason takes the overall view of media hostility toward Hillary Clinton boomeranging (a phenomenon which has shown itself in the 800+ comments posted to Brian's essay on this very blog.) And Rebecca Traister looks at it from the female voters' point of view.

And Josh Marshall looks at Karl Rove's offering on Obama in today's WSJ and points to the "dog-whistle" words embedded therein.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke says the Fed is ready to aggressively lower the fed funds rate because "downside risks to the economy have become more pronounced." See Citi/Merrill below for more on the nature of the downside. BUT! (and there's always an ever-lovin' but, isn't there) the Chairman acknowledges that inflation pressures may be putting the fed's ability to slash at will into a nasty box. QUOTE:  "...any tendency of inflation expectations to become unmoored or for the Fed's inflation-fighting credibility to be eroded could greatly complicate the task of sustaining price stability and reduce the central bank's policy flexibility to counter shortfalls in growth in the future." To quote a great American philosopher: D'oh!Read Bernanke here.

Oh and by the way, Wall Street may have its collective opinion about the dire need to slash the Fed Funds rate,  but Fed Funds has its own marketplace, and that freely-traded free market is NOT indicating the need for a rate cut. See for yourself. (Note the difference between the TARGET rate and the daily (EFFECTIVE) Fed Funds rate. Hint: there isn't one.) 

And then there was today's big "news" that Bank of America may, or may not, buy troubled Countrywide. At least Bloomberg's version of the story is less heavy on the may/may not than the WSJ item that broke the news. I'll try to find the stat I saw that the value of Countrywide's Real Estate Owned (REO-- foreclosed houses that end up on the lender's balance sheet) is approaching the value of the entire company. Oops.. found it. 

Alan Abelson's Barron's column is a good read this week-- with an important note that I've highlighted here in the past: the Bureau of Labor Statistics "birth/death model" and its distortion of the jobs numbers in this country. QUOTE:  "All told, supposedly 18,000 jobs were added. We might note right off the bat that there were no fewer than 66,000 mythical jobs added, courtesy of the infamous birth/death adjustment; save for that curious confection, the total would have gone considerably negative. That handy adjustment, incidentally, was responsible for 89% of all the reported payroll additions in 2007. Unemployment jumped to 5%, from 4.7%. And the big losers were widely dispersed, paced by construction, where 49,000 jobs vanished last month and manufacturing, which lost 31,000. Apart from health-care and restaurants and bars, there were virtually no conspicuous gainers. As Philippa and Doug quip: "Our new economic model: eat, drink and check into the hospital." And here's the whole thing.

Citigroup and Merrill Lynch are hitting up foreign investors before hitting the confessional to discloses Q4 loses that could top-- ahem - rrrrr - cough, cough-- 25 billion dollars. WSJ page 1 today. (sub req. for full article)

The housing/mortgage/economy blog CalculatedRisk has gotten a burst of MSM attention lately, including links in Paul Krugman's blog (niiiice!). And I'm proud to say this space has been a longtime proponent of CR and Tanta's work. Here's today's link to CR's post Goldman Sachs' 2008 recession call. [And by the way, here's a shameless plug: CR and Tanta have started a subscription newsletter on housing and mortgage issues. If you are thinking of buying or selling a house, or if you just want to stay on top of this vital economic issue, you can click on the link at the top of the site to subscribe. I already feel like I've gotten my 60 bucks worth. OK plug over.]

Ami Neiberger-Miller lost her brother Chris (below, left) to a roadside bomb in Iraq last summer. Army Spc. Christopher Todd Neiberger, 22, of Gainesville, Fla., was killed Aug. 6 in Baghdad and buried at Arlington National Cemetery. In her grief, Ami turned to TAPS, a national support group for families of fallen service members.

"I find that within the TAPS community, I'm surrounded by people who understand what I am going through, who are caring and loving, and who want to help support each other in dealing with loss," Ami said.

Ami and TAPS organized a screening Wednesday night in Washington, D.C., of a new movie, "Grace is Gone," starring John Cusack as a father who grapples with telling his daughters their mother has been killed in Iraq.

"There is this sense of - now what do I do?" Ami said. "I can relate to that feeling of just wanting to shut down and tune the world out. After my brother's burial at Arlington, I just felt like closing the door of my house and not going outside for a week."

Ami found the movie "remarkably poignant and touching." "Grace is Gone" is out now on limited release. You can view the movie's trailer here.

In the real world of war, eleven American service members died last week in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, and the Arabian Sea.

1. Army Pfc. Joseph Berlin Jr., 21, of Chelsea, Ala., was remembered as a fun-loving kid who liked football and computers. "He did a lot of computer stuff," his father told WTVM. "He was really, really smart with computers. He built his own." Berlin joined the military in 2006 as a fire support specialist and deployed to Iraq in December with the Fourth Infantry Division. He died Dec. 20 in Baghdad of injuries suffered in a non-combat incident. His death was under investigation.

2. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Victor Jeffries, 52, of Honolulu was a high school physical education teacher and Navy reservist who deployed to Kuwait in September on a six-month tour to expedite the customs process for service members returning home from Iraq and Kuwait. He was injured in a vehicle accident on Christmas Eve and died on New Year's Eve. Jeffries, a Gulf War veteran, was one of the oldest service members to die in the Middle East conflict.

3. Army Sgt. Reno Lacerna, 44, of Waipahu, Hawaii, died Dec. 31 in Al Qayyarah, Iraq, of an undisclosed illness. Lacerna, with the Third Infantry Division, was a contact for AnySoldier.com. He agreed to receive goods from people in the States and give them to soldiers who received little or no mail. Lacerna represented 10 male and three female soldiers who requested foot powder, beef jerky, body lotion, razors, noodle soup, can goods, and phone cards.

4. Army Pfc. Brian Gorham, 21, of Woodburn, Ky., was remembered as likable and helpful. "When my dad was sick, Brian and his mother would come over and help him up and get around the house," a neighbor told the Associated Press. Gorham, with the 173rd Airborne Brigade, suffered severe burns from a roadside bomb on Dec. 12 in Afghanistan and died Dec. 31 at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. "My son was a fighter," his father told AP. "He fought the whole time."

5. Army Sgt. Shawn Hill, 37, was an all-region high school football player in Wellford, S.C. "The biggest thing about Shawn you remember is that he had one speed and that was full," his high school coach told the Spartansburg Herald Journal. Hill, a self-employed electrician and member of the South Carolina National Guard, was killed Jan. 2 by a roadside bomb in Khowst Province, Afghanistan. He leaves his wife of 16 years, Julie, and their three sons, ages 15, 13, and 11.

6. Army Staff Sgt. Ryan Maseth, 24, of Pittsburgh was an Army Ranger and Green Beret. At one time, Maseth, his twin brother, Brandon, and their younger brother, Adam, were all fighting in Iraq. Ryan was electrocuted Jan. 2 in Baghdad while taking a shower. Brandon, a sniper in Iraq, was brought home, at least temporarily. "I don't want to lose another boy," their father told KDKA. "Who wants to lose one?" Ryan was the latest of nearly 800 non-combat deaths in Iraq.

7. Army Pfc. Joshua Anderson, 24, of Jordan, Minn., enlisted in 2006 and deployed to Iraq in October as a combat medic with the Third Infantry Division. He spoke online with his wife, Hannah, on Jan. 1. "He said he loved me, and I said I loved him, and those were our last words," Hannah told the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Anderson was killed Jan. 2 by a roadside bomb in Kamasia, Iraq. He is survived by Hannah, 20, his wife of four years, and their 3-year-old daughter, Savannah.

8. Army Maj. Andrew Olmsted, 37, of Colorado Springs, Colo., was killed Jan. 3 in As Sadiyah, Iraq, by small arms fire. Olmsted, with the First Infantry Division, was a prolific blogger who posted regularly for the Rocky Mountain News on his experiences in Iraq. He prepared a special blog in the event of his death. "I'm dead," he wrote in part, "but if you're reading this, you're not, so take a moment to enjoy that happy fact." Olmsted is survived by his wife of 10 years, Amanda.

9. Army Cpt. Thomas Casey, 32, rode mountain bikes, played soccer, and was on his high school swim team in Albuquerque, N.M. He joined the Army out of college and retired three years ago after his first tour in Iraq. He re-enlisted last spring and redeployed last summer. "He liked the discipline," his mother told the Atlantic City Press. Casey died in the same fire fight that killed Maj. Olmsted. Casey leaves his widow, Leslie, and sons, Joseph, 3, and Michael, 16 months.

10. Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Menelek Brown, 24, of Roswell, N.M., was declared dead Jan. 4 after apparently going overboard from a guided missile destroyer in the Arabian Sea the day before. The USS Hopper was conducting maritime security operations when Brown, an information systems technician, disappeared, prompting a 30-hour sea search. It was initially believed he had a good chance of surviving in the calm, 79 degree water, but he was never found.

11. Army Pfc. Jason Lemke, 30, of West Allis, Wis., had a family history of military service. "His grandpa was in the Marines, his uncle was a Marine," Lemke's father told the Associated Press. "My father was in the Army, and my older brother was in the Army. He wanted to make a mark, I guess." Lemke, proficient in Arabic, was killed Jan. 5 by a roadside bomb in Ibrahim Al Adham, Iraq. He was with the Second Infantry Division. He leaves two children living with his former wife.

Washington Producer John Rutherford is a decorated Vietnam veteran. He posts a weekly tribute to service members killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

By Brian Williams, Anchor and managing editor

WRITTEN EN ROUTE FROM NEW HAMPSHIRE TO NEVADA — On Monday afternoon in Manchester, New Hampshire, I called my executive producer in New York and said that we needed to pencil in more time than we had allotted for Andrea Mitchell's report on the Clinton campaign. It needed to be enlarged to include a 48-second sound bite of Hillary Clinton at a roundtable, answering a question about the campaign. She was tired, and she was emotional. She did what any of us would have, and have done at times: She briefly lost control of her emotions. At that very moment, while he was miles away and unaware of it, Barack Obama started to lose control of what we had been told was a commanding lead in New Hampshire.

I am a son of New England — my father is from Framingham, Mass., my parents met in college in Maine, and over a lifetime of immersion I came to know the psyche well. The core of the older, native New Hampshire population (albeit in a state that is rapidly changing) is still made up of the sons and daughters of the original  Puritans. They take civic responsibility seriously, they take care of those who need it and they take pride in process. In modern political terms, they generally don't like negativity, they reward the downtrodden, they earnestly deliberate over their choice of candidate and they venerate the sturdy among us. In short, they are good people to have in your corner. Hillary Clinton was bloodied in New Hampshire. The people of New Hampshire saw it and didn't like it. They saw assumptions forming and didn't like them.  Some felt they were being told what to think: the race was decided, Hillary was desperate and inauthentic. Worst of all — and this was made very clear to me by more than one person — when some in the media quietly doubted that Hillary Clinton's emotions at that roundtable were real (there was quiet snickering about an "acting job" born of an urgent need to seem normal) it was proof to them that cynicism had taken hold of the politics/media realm, and they simply refused to believe that.

Had Bill Clinton not famously coined the title "The Comeback Kid" for himself, his wife would have rightfully claimed it for herself in New Hampshire. That the same state rewarded these two imperfect politicians, in the same way, years apart, is remarkable.

Also remarkable was the apparent transformation of the candidate. The senator who failed to gain the full support of women voters in Iowa was saved by them in New Hampshire. The woman who gave a victory speech after losing in Iowa admitted in her New Hampshire victory speech that what she had really lost was her own voice.

There will be numerous deconstructions over the days to come. Theories about how African-American candidates for office have confounded pollsters (see: Bradley, Wilder, Gant, Jackson) will receive a thorough airing, and deservedly so.  We in the media will beat ourselves (and deservedly so) for reaching conclusions before the voters have spoken. A further prediction?  Give us a few weeks — we will promptly forget the lessons of this debacle in polling, predictions and primary politics. We will all live to screw up another day, though our performance in New Hampshire will be hard to beat.

It should be noted that virtually everyone got it wrong. The only point of agreement among all the competing campaigns in New Hampshire was that Barack Obama was headed for a double-digit victory, as they told anyone who would listen.  I have an e-mail from a Clinton fundraiser who denounced Hillary as a lost cause and threw his support to Obama while the polls were still open on Tuesday. A veteran Clinton loyalist spoke of the campaign in New Hampshire in the past tense on the morning of the election, saying the senator from New York had run smack into "an ideal... a movement," called Barack Obama. There was no defeating an ideal, said this completely defeated politico. Not this year, not in New Hampshire.

In his beautiful, soaring concession speech, Obama mentioned the town of Lebanon for a reason. I was with him in Lebanon the day before — and what we saw there was a defining moment in the campaign. It surprised him, his staff members, the Secret Service on board the campaign bus, even the bus driver. We turned the corner toward the event and saw hundreds of people lined up through the streets of the town just to see him, to feel his aura and to later say that they'd done it — they'd been there.  There were hundreds more than the venue could hold, and they stood there anyway, and kept coming. Obama, overwhelmed by the overflow crowd, insisted on an outdoor speech before his indoor speech. This much is important, and should be said: Any journalist covering any candidate that day, in that town, would have come away as I did after seeing those people,  saying something akin to the old song lyric, "Something's happening here." A colleague of mine contends Obama got caught up in the history he was making. I don't think that's quite fair. The candidate didn't change his message as much as Iowa changed the way we heard it.

That day, I saw people embrace Obama the way people embrace loved ones returning from foreign battlefields. I saw people with small children, brought along simply so their parents could years later tell them, to the point of predictable annoyance, "You were there."  Losing in New Hampshire may well make Obama a better candidate. While it's the kind of thing that is always said at times like these by those of us whose names have never appeared on a ballot, I think it might just be true in this case.

On the eve of the primary, I attended the last big rally of the Clinton New Hampshire campaign. While large and boisterous enough to distract attention from the decidedly inelegant venue (the indoor tennis courts at the Executive Health and Fitness Center in the shadow of the Manchester airport control tower) it was packed and it was emotional. Our producer spotted tears in Chelsea's eyes. Campaign workers were trying to seem upbeat. A British journalist called the press credential hanging around his neck "a ticket to the last supper." Senator Clinton gave her stump speech, only infused with more emotion: shades of anger, melancholy, frustration and wistfulness.  She made a forceful and direct appeal for support, at one point aimed specifically at the women in the audience.  Her husband nodded and clapped supportively behind her and shook every hand in the rope line afterwards. I stood several feet away, watching the familiar ballet of incoming hands and thinking of the two years I spent covering his presidency, and how much has changed since then. He's still in the family retail business, where the basic transaction remains the same.

New Hampshire voters, masters of retail politics and educated consumers all, saw what their Iowa counterparts had done days earlier, and chose not to follow the same path. They instead gave their approval to a former POW, and a former first lady. Poles apart in many ways, now joined together in the history of this strange process.

As politicians, John McCain and Hillary Clinton have a lot of mutual respect for each other. They have traveled to Iraq together during a dangerous time in the conflict, and they lived to tell about it. Now they can say the same thing about New Hampshire.

Editor's note: Check out the newly redesigned Web site: nightly.msnbc.com

By Andy Franklin, NBC News senior producer

In the end, the New Hampshire Democratic primary was a close race with a clear winner. Hillary Clinton beat Barack Obama, 39% to 36%. But the outcome was a surprise -- an "upset" and a "comeback" -- in part because of the expectations created by the polls, commentary and press coverage in the days leading up to the primary, much of it wrongly predicting a double-digit margin of victory for Obama. The "experts" got it wrong, but it was hardly the first time.

The most famous case in point: the 1948 election of Harry Truman, a victory predicted by virtually no one except Truman himself. That year's false expectations were immortalized in the Chicago Tribune's famous "Dewey Defeats Truman" headline, held aloft on election night by the beaming president-elect himself. But the Tribune wasn't alone. Truman's expected political demise was conventional wisdom in the fall of 1948. Respected pollster Elmo Roper was so sure Republican Thomas Dewey would win he actually stopped polling in September -- almost two months before the election. That October, Newsweek published a poll of 50 of the nation's "leading political writers." All of them — every single one — predicted a Dewey victory. Dewey himself, a New York governor who had been running for president since 1940, was so sure 1948 would be his year that he ran an overcautious, overconfident, low-key campaign that never caught fire. Meanwhile, Truman was giving 'em hell, criss-crossing the country, drawing ever larger and more enthusiastic crowds at one whistle-stop after another. Something was happening out there, and almost nobody saw it coming -- certainly not the political and media intelligentsia of the time.

On Election Day, November 3, 1948, Truman beat Dewey, 49.6% to 45.1% (Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond got 2.4%.) It was an upset, a comeback, and a surprise. That night, Harry Truman made the hapless Chicago Tribune famous. Less well-remembered is an apology (masquerading as a gag) that appeared the next morning on the front page of the Washington Post:

It was a telegram sent to Truman by the Post, inviting him to a "crow banquet," to which the paper said it was inviting "newspaper editorial writers, political reporters and editors, including our own, along with pollsters, radio commentators and columnists." The Post said that everyone would eat crow and wear sack cloth, while Truman would dine on turkey and dress in white tie. As the "dean of American election forecasters (and the only accurate one)," Truman was invited to "share the secret of your analytical success."  We don't know if Truman responded to the "invitation," but the Washington Post deserves some credit for stepping up to the plate with a little humor at its own expense.

It would be nice to report that everyone learned from the mistakes of 1948, and that those mistakes were never repeated. No such luck, as we were reminded again last night. Perhaps the best we can do is remember the still-timely words of vice-president-elect Alben Barkley as he welcomed Harry Truman back to the White House, two days after the 1948 election: "There is one thing that this election has demonstrated aside from any partisan or personal victory, and that is that the American people do their own thinking and their own voting on the day of the election." Amen, Alben.

The new Nightly News Web site makes every video crisper than it's ever been. But if you're not seeing the videos -- you may need to download the latest Adobe Flash player. Click here or http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/ for more on how to do that.

Update -- the Netcast is available on this site. (Click on "Previously in the menu bar to the left). For more on that, click here.

They are as common a piece of household electronics as the television. It's hard to find a family anymore without at least one computer and a connection to the Internet. But I couldn't find either when I spent an evening recently in the sprawling home of Lesli and Christos Catsouras, and it soon became apparent why.

The couple has suffered every parent's greatest fear -- they've lost a child. Nikki was a free-spirited 18-year-old when she slipped out of the house with the keys to her dad's sportscar and crashed into a freeway tollbooth. Agony enough for a lifetime, certainly, but for Lesli and Christos it was just the first blow in what's now been more than a year of torment and heartache and unimaginable pain.

Gruesome police photos of Nikki's mangled remains were leaked onto the Internet. Within days, they were on a thousand websites. Chat room users posted the family's address and encouraged others to harass them. Christos and Lesli started getting emails with the photos attached saying "your daughter deserved it." Someone replaced Nikki's MySpace profile with one that included the morbid pictures. Each incident was a fresh assault. When the couple tried to track down the haters, one dead end was followed by another. It was all done anonymously.

In a Nightly News web exclusive, we look at the rise of Internet bullying and what's being done about it, including an effort by the nation's Attorneys General. The harassment is manifesting itself in vicious forms, but few as cruel as the invasion mounted against the Catsouras family and their three young daughters.

It's why, in a home lacking for almost nothing, you won't find a connection to the Internet. It's difficult to be unplugged in an email-dependent world, Lesli says, but logging on has proven too emotionally dangerous and just not worth the risk.

By John Yang, NBC News White House correspondent

JERUSALEM – Whenever a president participates in an event, he's carefully briefed on what's planned. No doubt President Bush was told that when he went to call on Israeli President Shimon Peres at his official residence in Jerusalem, there would be a "children's performance," which was the guidance that was given to the press.

By Brian Williams, Anchor and managing editor

I see from a tour of the web that we find ourselves in the position of having our own words and reporting turned back around on us, and I wanted to clarify something we posted yesterday.

During my day with the Obama campaign, I took Lee Cowan aside for a brief interview. Lee covers Obama for us, and we're lucky to have him on our roster... he is one of the very best in the business. In the interview, which you can see right here, Lee admits "...it's almost hard to remain objective..." which as he implies is our goal in our work every day. He's referring to what all of us who have covered campaigns have felt from time to time: it's impossible to get the long view...the view from 40,000 feet...while operating at sea level, and inside the bubble.

Lee was talking about the swirl of excitement that has hit the Obama campaign after Iowa -- the crowds, the hoopla -- all of it. Today we learned that rival political efforts were spinning this as some kind of "bias" on the part of either Lee, or me, or this News Division, and that's just ridiculous. My response is as it always is in these situations: look at it again, listen to what's being said, and judge us by the quality and fairness of our journalism.