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The Washington Post 's Dana Milbank dished about White House press operations on MSNBC's "Countdown With Keith Olbermann" last night after Olbermann played a clip of White House press secretary Tony Snow being challenged by CBS newsman Bill Plante over the definition of the term "civil rights:" OLBERMANN : Big picture here. We had dictionary time with Tony Snow at that news conference. We got this memo from the communications director, Dan Bartlett, to the press. He‘s described all the progress that the White House has made on everything from Iraq to immigration, as if we, you know, we‘ve been out or something for the last five years. But does the—does the administration, the White House, still believe its main, if not only, problem is getting its message out correctly? MILBANK : Well, I don‘t think that they believe that. But it‘s the only thing that they can do something about right now. So I—you had this sort of unfortunate thing where Dan Bartle...

The liberal blogs were all abuzz yesterday afternoon over White House press secretary Tony Snow 's comparison of the Marriage Protection Amendment to "civil rights matters." (The proposed Constitutional amendment, being debated today in the Senate, would, if passed, forbid judicial challenges to anti-gay-marriage legislation at both the state and federal levels.) Raw Story has posted the relevant piece of the transcript from yesterday's White House press briefing: WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY TONY SNOW: Whether it passes or not, as you know, Terry, there have been a number of cases where civil rights matters have risen on a number of occasions, and they've been brought up for repeated consideration by the United States Senate and other legislative bodies... BILL PLANTE (CBS News): You mentioned civil rights. Are you comparing this to various civil rights measures which have come to the Congress over the years? SNOW: Not -- well, these -- it -- PLANTE: Is th...