I watched all of the news shows that I can. It was a better than average Sunday. I even thought that Meet the Press had a good roundtable. Usually I think Meet the Press is boring, because it has people like Andrea Mitchell and her husband, Alan Greenspan, big name folks who have a very narrow view of events.

Low and Behold, today they had a panel with some different folks, and there were some really good give and takes. David Brooks was the one over exposed talking head on the panel. The others were the youngest U.S. congressman, from central Illinois, Rep. Aareon Schock, former Memphis congressman Harold Ford, now New York political talking head, Wall Street consultant, and likely candidate for the U.S. Senate in New York, running against the party candidate, and MSNBC political commentator Rachel Maddow.

That discussion spanned a wide range of viewpoints. I think Maddow scored the best political blows against Schock when first she said that she had seen videos of Schock at a ribbon cutting ceremony for a new facility at a community college in his district which was paid for by stimulus dollars, making political points from it, when he voted against the stimulus and had been vocal criticizing Obama for federal spending. Secondly, Maddow point blank asked Schock what was wrong with giving someone their Miranda rights. In both cases, particularly the first one, Schock seemed off guard and without a good answer.

To the Contrary had a great discussion and piece on environmental justice. Their panel went so far as to blame it on housing segregation. I thought that was a great piece. In fact, their feature example - an African American family in Dixon, Tennessee of which I am aware and have had some contact. This case was first brought to my attention years ago when Alton McDonald, a vice president of the National Action Network whom I met when he was in our region several years ago to help bring some folks to justice in the Jessica Currin murder case. I give the family great credit in elevating this issue. But, in reality, sadly, it is but one of thousands of such cases across our country. We simply do not take environmental protection seriously.

McLaughlin tried to make a big picture observation about the Washington D.C. city government’s response (or lack thereof) to the + or - 50” of snow they had in a couple days being tied to founding father’s designations of Washington D.C. in the constitution. He further tried to tie that to the probability that it indicates that D.C. is not prepared for a terrorist attack. I do think, over all, that he is onto something, but it needs refining. You can’t ignore the fact that much of the D.C. city residents are minority and low income.

I do give McLaughlin credit for bringing up the importance (or lack thereof) of our relationship with Russia, in the context of the announcement that the U.S. wants to move its missile shield to Romania. But, there was scant discussion about how we were courting Russia to join us in sanctions of Iran, and how that may be impacted by this proposal. It’s going to pretty much insure that Russia is going to drag their feet on sanctions against Iran.

I was also surprised that there was not ONE mention of the death of the Georgian luge athlete who died at the Olympics on Friday. There will be political ramifications of that - especially because Canada with the US media joining right in - quickly tried to say “it wasn’t our fault.” That was crass, especially while, at the same, they are slinking out in the middle of the night to do some obvious safety changes which should have been obvious, especially considering the ongoing concerns about the difficulty and speed of the track. We haven’t heard the last of this.