Joe Lieberman hijacked news coverage for a while this week, but it was Howard Dean's defense of real health care reform that inspired White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs to a snarling personal response. Ben Bernanke was anointed Time's Person of the Year despite a hold on his renomination and a bill passing the house to audit the Federal Reserve. Is the Establishment closing ranks around its own? John Nichols, Washington correspondent for The Nation and co-author of the upcoming The Death and Life of American Journalism, thinks so. Karen Fragala Smith of Newsweek and Peter Hart of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting also join us to discuss this week in news. Mark Danner, reporter, professor, and author, takes an anything but conventional look at American foreign policy, war, and torture in his new book, Stripping Bare the Body: Politics Violence War. He joins Laura in the studio to discuss the book, and hopes and fears for the U.S. under Obama. The subtitle of Rory O'Connor's documentary on the Durban II conference is "Israel, Palestine, and the United Nations." O'Connor takes a look at the way the conflict over Israel took over the discussion at two successive United Nations conferences on racism. Mohammed Rezwan told the Washington Post about his floating schools in Bangladesh, a creative solution that looks all the more necessary as climate talks tank in Copenhagen. He stopped by the GRITtv studios to tell us about his organization, Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha, which brings services to the people by boat.