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Saturday Fallout

John Seigenthaler will be back next weekend. I'll be sitting-in for him again tonight.

Last Saturday on this broadcast we were reporting the "day after" political reaction and fallout to the surprise resignation of Republican Congressman Mark Foley over inappropriate emails he sent to a former Congressional page.  It was clear even then that political battle lines were being drawn. Now, a week later, with more pages, more e-mails, and a flurry of political charges and corresponding damage control in high-gear, we are getting some hard data on just what all this may be costing the Republican party.  The headlines from a brand new Newsweek poll spell trouble for the GOP.  Tonight, now 31 days from the midterm election, NBC's Chip Reid will look at the issues that may be turning the course of this campaign late in the game, and how both parties’ are playing it.

Also, while October 7th may not be a date that stands out in the minds of most Americans, it marks one of the defining moments of our post 9/11 world. It was on this date in 2001, the United States led the invasion of Afghanistan.

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How to help the Amish

Hundreds of you e-mailed us or posted comments asking how you can help the Amish community recover in Lancaster Co, Pa. Here are a variety of options:

Mennonite Central Committee
21 S. 12th St.
P.O. Box 500
Akron, PA 17501
(717) 859-1151

Mennonite Disaster Service
1018 Main Street
Akron, PA 17501
(717) 859-2210

Tax-deductible donations can be made to both organizations. You can contribute online or by mail. If sending a check, write "Amish School Recovery Fund" in the memo line.

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Loose ends at week's end

As I foreshadowed on this morning's Early Nightly, this could be the first time in five nights when the lead story switches from domestic (the Amish murders and the Capitol Hill Page scandal) to foreign (Iraq). The Iraq story has picked up prominence based on this recent and horrible run of violence that has taken close to two dozen American lives in just the past few days, AND the intelligence that our reporters are picking up. We'll cover all three topics tonight. 

Also this evening: two stories that are part of our ongoing series of reports: the "Homefront" segment tonight features Mike Taibbi, who will tell us about an interesting and unusual group of exceedingly patriotic Americans. Also, since it's Friday, it's time for "Making a Difference." Producer Shauna Alami blogged about it below, but it's a story you'll want to see on the air.

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Singing songs of love

We are always looking for good stories for NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams and the Today Show. For tonight's "Making a Difference," we pulled a story from our own files. Correspondent Rehema Ellis suggested the story about John Beltzer, I wrote the pitch and Nightly News liked it. Ellis had been the correspondent and I had been the producer nine years ago when we did this story for the Today Show. As I recall, a young desk assistant named Dean Arrindell found the story in a newspaper from the Midwest. It was assigned to Ellis and me.

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Early Nightly is up

Brian checks in after the morning editorial meeting, with more discussion about the images NBC News chose not to air last night that major newspapers chose to print this morning.

Click here to watch the vlog.

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Progress in airline security

After months of difficult negotiations, the U.S. has reached an agreement with European countries that allows federal agents to get a larger amount of data about passengers on flights to the U.S. and to share that information with U.S. intelligence agencies.

Shortly after the aborted London plot was revealed, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff called for quick action on an agreement to let the U.S. share what's called Passenger Name Record data. It includes the name and address of the passenger, but also how the ticket was booked, form of payment, phone numbers, and sometimes parts of the travel itinerary.

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The speaker speaks

While Speaker Hastert may have viewed or intended today's statement/news conference with a certain "that's that" finality, it appears the damage will continue to fall all around him.  One prominent Republican described a party in "free fall" to me today, a House of Representatives in need of entirely fresh management -- and I was reminded that if all goes according to schedule, Congressman Foley will emerge from therapy right before election day.  That might generate a little bit of news coverage. I also note that today's Washington Post printed some of the offensive message traffic.

This is a nasty story, both in terms of the material in the public domain and the damage it has already caused to private citizens. We have carefully chosen whatever small bits of text we have aired from this case -- based on our feeling that our viewers fully understand what's going on here, and an excess of this sort of thing crosses a line during a dinner-hour evening newscast. We have a decency obligation to our audience, something I remember well from trying to raise young children during the Lewinsky matter.  Our children became accustomed to my own broadcast being muted during any discussion of that topic. We'll cover the political fallout from all of this again tonight.

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'Early Nightly' is up

Brian is in New York today, but a good portion of his thoughts -- along with those of many folks around the country -- are in Washington, where the fallout from the Mark Foley scandal continues. The big question: will Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert survive? Tonight's broadcast will have the latest news from Capitol Hill.

Also on tap for tonight's broadcast: more from our 'Homefront' series and a heartwarming story about Rose Kennedy and her knack for never throwing anything away, including thousands of letters between her and her children.

Click here to see today's vlog.

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R.I.P. Johnny Apple

When you get to be a certain age -- which I have and I admit to -- you find yourself writing obits for friends of many decades.

Two weeks ago it was for the legendary Gordon Manning, broadcast executive par excellence.

Today it is for R.W Apple, known to almost everyone as Johnny, who died Wednesday and was in so many ways the gold standard for journalists. After an early start in broadcast news -- 1963 with NBC and the Huntley-Brinkley report -- he went back to his first loves: the written word and the New York Times. 

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Remembering Mr. Apple

If there's one truth I've learned in journalism it's that you often get your best sound bites where you least expect it. So when a group of people sat down in Ann Arbor near the University of Michigan on Oct. 18, 2000, to watch a presidential debate and then comment for one R.W. Apple, I was there to observe and learn as a student, but technically I was just there to pour the coffee. I didn't know at the time that the man moderating the discussion after one of the debates between Al Gore and now President Bush had done more in journalism than I could ever imagine or aspire to. I didn't know he had a tireless appetite for news, specifically politics, and later, food and wine. I couldn't know that only one election cycle later I would study him almost exclusively among the giants of political reporters to prepare for my turn as a "boy on the bus" for NBC News during the 2004 presidential primaries.

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