World News investigated and followed the Republican for four minutes and 38 seconds over two days. In comparison, the program could only manage a scant 48 seconds of coverage for Rangel. (Anchor Diane Sawyer on Wednesday finally asked George Stephanopoulos about the news that Rangel was stepping down from his powerful Ways and Means committee.)

The difference here is that Rangel's story was an actual scandal and ABC only treated Bunning's actions, which amounted to not giving unanimous consent to a $10 billion spending bill, as a scandal.

At one point, he solemnly queried, "If the President doesn't change the language, if your language is not accepted, you and your 11 colleagues who voted yes the last time will vote no this time. Does that mean you're prepared to take responsibility for bringing down this whole bill?"

Notice that Stephanopoulos placed the obligation on Stupak and not on pro-abortion Democrats who, one could argue, are more concerned with that issue than with passing health care. Earlier in the segment, the ABC journalist grilled, "So, if the President doesn't change the Senate bill, you can't vote for it?"

MATT LAUER: Let's move on to health care, another subject that's a lightning rod. The President now says he'll go it alone with the Democrats in the Senate and, and in the House, this reconciliation idea. You only need 51 votes. But it's not clear whether he has those votes.

BROKAW: Well, that's the big issue for him. If he loses this one, this is a, not a fatal blow to his presidency, because he still has three years to go-

LAUER: But if you take this controversial step and miss on it- 

BROKAW: And miss on it. It's a big, big setback in his first year. He's been there just a little more than a year now. Republicans want to keep him mired down, for political reasons, in this health care debate for as long as possible. They know the public is very confused and very anxious about cost. People who have health care coverage say, "You know, I'm okay." And they're not looking at GDP and what percentage of it they're contributing to. They're just saying," I just want to make sure I've got health care." The people who don't have it are in a much smaller number. They don't have the political clout, for example, that the Tea Party now has. A number of people who are very close to the President, as financial advisers, are very anxious about this next two-week period. They think he's got a get a quick, clean bill that concentrates primarily on reducing cost.

LAUER: And gotta get back to dealing with the economy and jobs.

BROKAW: Well, the big thing is, Matt, come the fall, if the job picture is significantly improved and health care has been passed, health care doesn't kick in for a while, people will be responding much more to the job picture than they will be to the health care bill that was passed six months earlier.

LAUER: If we had sat here a year ago, and we probably did, you know, about a month after President Obama was sworn in.

BROKAW: Right.

LAUER: And the Democrats were riding high on this spirit of change. Could you have imagined that a year later the President's popularity numbers would be dwindling, the Democratic Party would be reeling and they'd be justifiably nervous about the midterm elections?

BROKAW: Well you've heard me say this before. I've been covering politics for a long, long time. My favorite theory is the UFO theory, the unforseen will occur. This is the unforseen in terms of it occurring. Once they got bogged down in health care and the unemployment numbers stayed as high as they did, they didn't pivot in a way that a lot of people, including some of their most enthusiastic supporters, felt that they should have. And there is a continuing anxiety about not enough people in the administration who have run big things, who are tied closely enough to successful businesses, not to the businesses that have failed. So they, they think they need to have a shake-up.

LAUER: Alright Tom Brokaw. Tom, good to have you here.

BROKAW: It's always good.

7:00AM TEASE:

HARRY SMITH: President Obama says the health care debate is over. He wants a reform bill on his desk in the next few weeks. Does he have the votes from fellow Democrats?

[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: Health Care Fast-Track]

7:06AM SEGMENT:

MAGGIE RODRIGUEZ: This morning President Obama is putting health care reform on the fast track, declaring that it's year-long journey must be completed in Congress quickly. CBS News senior White House correspondent Bill Plante has the latest this morning. Good morning, Bill.

BILL PLANTE: Good morning, Maggie. The President yesterday rejected Republican calls to start over, saying that it is time to make a decision on health care.

[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: Health Care Battle; President Wants Legislation On Desk In Weeks]

BARACK OBAMA: Not just for the past year, but for decades.

PLANTE: The President's plan includes some Republican ideas like grants for malpractice reform and expansion of health savings accounts. But he made it clear that he's willing to get this done with a legislative maneuver requiring no Republican support.

OBAMA: Reform has already passed the House with a majority. It has already passed the Senate with a supermajority of 60 votes. And now it deserves the same kind of up or down vote that was cast on welfare reform.

PLANTE: Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell promised to make that an issue in November.

MITCH MCCONNELL: The administration and the majority are very arrogant about this.

PLANTE: Political analyst Reid Wilson agrees that the vote could hurt Democrats, but says that what they really need is an end to the health care battle.

REID WILSON [EDITOR, HOTLINE ON CALL]: The bottom line calculation, though, is that they just need to get this thing done and they just need to get it passed and that will be the best possible outcome for this, even though it's still not a very good one.

PLANTE: But this is by no means a done deal. There are a lot of Republicans and Democrats in the House, Republicans united in opposition, Democrats wavering because of elections this fall. The President will go out and start campaigning for this next week. Maggie.

RODRIGUEZ: Bill Plante at the White House this morning. Thank you, Bill.

It will go down in history among the events that shaped our times, the decision by President George W. Bush to go to war in Iraq after the United States had been attacked on 9/11 with no direct connection between the two. The United States has paid a heavy price for the war, which will be seven years old later this month. That's a year longer than all of World War II....The Iraq war is back in the news tonight because of new violence there, just like the old days, and because of a new take on the war from an old hand in the Bush operation, Karl Rove.”

The White House press corps hasn't asked Mr. Obama about the Iraq war in months. The president was last asked about the conflict on Dec. 7, during an Oval Office press availability with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. But the question came from a Turkish reporter - after an Associated Press reporter asked about the economy.

In fact, the last time a White House reporter asked about the Iraq war was June 26, when National Public Radio's Don Gonyea asked an Iraq-related question during a joint news conference of Mr. Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, according to records kept by CBS Radio reporter Mark Knoller....

The three main broadcast networks - ABC, NBC and CBS - have moved on to other topics as well. In 2008, the Iraq war was the seventh most heavily covered story, with the three networks devoting 288 minutes to reports about the war, according to the Tyndall Report, which monitors the weekday nightly newscasts of the networks. In 2009, the Iraq war dropped off the top 10 list, with just 80 minutes of coverage.

The New York Times wrote 374 "substantial" stories on Iraq in 2008 (meaning the word "Iraq" appears at least 10 times in article), according to the Nexis database. In 2009, that dropped to 208. The same went for The Washington Post - 422 "substantial" stories on Iraq in 2008; 169 in 2009, after Mr. Obama had taken office.