Will the unfolding crisis in Japan lead to a debate over the safety of nuclear power in the United States? Initial signs are not encouraging.

NBC's Meet the Press (3/13/11) had an interview with Marvin Fertel of the Nuclear Energy Institute. Host Chuck Todd prefaced one question with, "I understand that you represent the industry's interests in this...."

Later on the show, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D.-N.Y.) was asked to weigh in--since he had been speaking out in favor of nuclear power, a position he doesn't appear to be abandoning:

Well, we're going to have to see what happens here. Obviously, it's still, still things are happening.  But the bottom line is, we do have to free ourselves of independence from foreign oil.... So I'm still willing to look at nuclear. As I've always said, it has to be done safely and carefully.

 On the CBS program Face The Nation, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I.-Ct.) was on to say:

I've been a big supporter of nuclear power because it's domestic. It's ours and it's clean. And we've had a good safety safety with nuclear power plants here in the United States. But I think we've got to--I don't want to stop the building of nuclear power plants, but I think we've got to kind of quietly--quickly put the brakes on until we can absorb what has happened in Japan.

ABC's This Week, to its credit, had Joe Cirincione of the Ploughshares Fund. He also appeared on Fox News Sunday--which featured pro-nuke Sen. Mitch McConnell (R.-Ky.) right afterward.

In the New York Times today (3/14/11) we see the headline "U.S. Nuclear Industry Faces New Uncertainty." But the article only quotes proponents of  nuclear power.  The lead graph:

The fragile bipartisan consensus that nuclear power offers a big piece of the answer to America's energy and global warming challenges may have evaporated as quickly as confidence in Japan's crippled nuclear reactors.

So we hear from a member of that "fragile" consensus (which never included "mainstream environmental groups," as the article claimed). Is the Times planning on running a separate piece detailing the concerns of critics of the nuclear power industry?

The Washington Post has a similar Reuters piece (3/14/11) headlined, "Some Nervously Eye U.S. Nuclear Plants." The lead sentence:

Anxiety over Japan's quake-crippled nuclear reactors has triggered calls from U.S. lawmakers and activists for a review of U.S. energy policy and for brakes on expansion of domestic nuclear power.

But the only quotes come from nuke boosters: Joe Lieberman, a spokesperson for the Nuclear Energy Institute and a White House spokesperson. If there really is "anxiety" and calls from "activists," readers should hear them.

Meet the Press announced that its show this Sunday will feature two conservative Republican guests, Sen. Jim DeMint (S.C.) and Gov. Chris Christie (N.J.). Well, that's only natural, because the GOP did so well on Tuesday, winning back the House.... Right?

Oh wait.... Here's Meet the Press's then-host Tim Russert on November 12, 2006:

Our issues this Sunday: The voters send a loud and clear message to the White House, and give the Democrats control of the House and the Senate for the first time in 12 years. What now for the Republicans? We'll ask a man who is positioned to seek the GOP nomination for president in 2008: Sen. John McCain of Arizona. What now for the Democrats? We'll ask a man who lost a Democratic primary, but was just re-elected as an independent: Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut.

Glenn Greenwald (8/27/09, ad-viewing required) of Salon's series of New Republic quotes morphing from condemning a perceived "anti-Lieberman jihad" to calling for "knocking off Democrats like Conrad and Joe Lieberman" charts the outlet's "rapid and total reversal--one effectuated without the slightest acknowledgment that it even occurred."

Calling the change "just the accountability-free nature of Beltway punditry," Greenwald also spies "a more important point highlighted here":

namely, it is a sign of how dysfunctional the Democratic Party is--and how meaningless is their glorious super-majority--that even the New Republic, which long prided itself on safeguarding the party from nefarious left-wing influences, is now calling for "centrist" Democratic senators (even including Joe Lieberman) to be thrown out of office by means of primary challenges (I believe that was once called a "purity purge"), even if doing so results in a loss of Democratic seats. [TNR editor Jonathan] Chait's rationale is that allowing "centrist" dominance within the party means that the same corporate interests (rather than the interests of constituents) and the same political agenda end up being served regardless of which party is in control, meaning that--as he put it--even "a filibuster-proof Democratic majority isn't worth having" because nothing meaningful changes. You don't say.

But, notes Greenwald, "that, of course, was exactly the motivating premise of those who sought to remove Joe Lieberman from the Senate in 2006." Those were "the people Chait demonized back then as 'left-wing fanatics' who 'refuse to tolerate any ideological dissent.'"