Most of you have probably been seen this on Atrios and Americablog, but it’s potentially quite significant, so for the benefit of anyone who might have missed it …

It started with this exchange from a transcript on the NBC website:

New York Times reporter James Risen first broke the story two weeks ago that the National Security Agency began spying on domestic communications soon after 9/11. In a new book out Tuesday, “State of War,” he says it was a lot bigger than that. Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Andrea Mitchell sat down with Risen to talk about the NSA, and the run-up to the war in Iraq….

Mitchell: Do you have any information about reporters being swept up in this net?

Risen: No, I don’t. It’s not clear to me. That’s one of the questions we’ll have to look into the future. Were there abuses of this program or not? I don’t know the answer to that

Mitchell: You don’t have any information, for instance, that a very prominent journalist, Christiane Amanpour, might have been eavesdropped upon?

Risen: No, no I hadn’t heard that.

Okay, so what does Andrea Mitchell know? Why is she asking if Risen knows if a specific journalist has been wiretapped?

It gets stranger, when NBC deletes that part of the transcript from the website, offering this lame explanation:

“Unfortunately this transcript was released prematurely. It was a topic on which we had not completed our reporting, and it was not broadcast on ‘NBC Nightly News’ nor on any other NBC News program. We removed that section of the transcript so that we may further continue our inquiry.”

Hard to know what’s going on here. Clearly somebody knows something they’re not telling yet. The only mainstream journalist who has much of a track record for taking on his peers on stories like this is Keith Olberman, and since he’s at MSNBC, I kind of doubt he has the leeway to do the job. Hope somebody does.

One aspect of the Abramoff scandal that’s not getting much attention in the media, at least that I’ve seen, is his proximity to an apparent gangland murder:

While Abramoff’s influence-buying schemes are likely to entangle prominent politicians in bribery cases in Washington, the Fort Lauderdale murder-corruption case surrounding the SunCruz casino stands out as possibly the biggest embarrassment for the Republican power structure, since it may feature appearances by Abramoff and his onetime aide Michael Scanlon.

Fort Lauderdale homicide detectives are interested in questioning Abramoff about the 2001 murder of SunCruz casino owner Konstantinos “Gus” Boulis. Prosecutor Brian Cavanaugh told me he most certainly “will be spending time with Mr. Scanlon.”

Boulis was gunned down in his car on Feb. 6, 2001, amid a feud with an Abramoff business group that had purchased Boulis’s SunCruz casino cruise line in 2000. On Sept. 27, 2005, Fort Lauderdale police charged three men, including reputed Gambino crime family bookkeeper Anthony Moscatiello, with Boulis’s murder.

As part of the murder probe, police are investigating payments that SunCruz made to Moscatiello, his daughter and Anthony Ferrari, another defendant in the Boulis murder case. Moscatiello and Ferrari allegedly collaborated with a third man, James Fiorillo, in the slaying.

I’m sure he was in plenty of trouble anyway, but I can’t help but wonder if this figured into the plea deal at all.

Related cartoon (from October) here.

In the wake of the tragedy in West Virginia, I’d love to see the press take a step back and try to examine how hearsay gets transformed into fact. (Sounds like a good assignment for Judy Miller.)

Looking through the front pages on Newseum, I’m struck with how often the exact same photograph is used to convey opposite meanings. With a simle change of headline, relief turns into frustration and tears of joy become tears of grief.

Also, I can’t let the Boston Herald’s awful (and in retrospect, horribly inappropriate) headline go without comment. Now that we know the twelve miners were killed, does this mean America’s prayers weren’t answered? Just like gambling addicts remember their big wins but not their losses, the fate of the twelve miners has transformed from a faith-inspiring act of God to another horrible tragedy in which it’s impolite to mention religion at all. Cute little sayings like “the Lord works in mysterious ways” are cop-outs for the logical conclusions that many of us draw from experiences like this. If something fantastic and improbable can be used as proof that there’s a benevolent god, doesn’t the reverse point toward the conclusion that a higher power is indifferent at best? If you believe in a god that could have saved these men’s lives (which I don’t, btw), why didn’t he? People are quick to throw around the word “miracle” when something wonderful happens, so what the hell do we call this?