In his first public appearance since the Democrats were swept out of power in the House of Representatives, President Obama took questions from reporters in the White House press room Wednesday. ABC New's Jake Tapper asked the president about his feelings on the loss:

"The toughest thing, over the last couple days, is seeing really terrific public servants, not have opportunity to serve any more," Obama revealed.

"Not only sadness about seeing them go," he continued. "But there's also a lot of questioning on my part in terms of could have I done something differently or done something more so those folks would still be here. It's hard. And I take responsibility for it in a lot of ways."

Of course Obama shouldn't feel too bad for this year's vanquished politicians, as they are each just a few phone calls away from an extremely lucrative career in lobbying.

It was big news this week about Charlie Gibson retiring. Later on, when the headline flashed that Charlie was "livid" that Diane Sawyer was chosen to succeed him at the ABC World News anchor desk, I have to admit I was stunned. Why on earth would Charlie Gibson be so vexed by his former Good Morning America partner taking on the job he had chosen to give up?

The Daily Beast story claimed that his reaction came from a unnamed source, and that's what Variety's BLTV was writing about today. He suggested that perhaps the reporter, Rebecca Dana, had relied too much on scuttlebutt and chose to believe that Gibson was ticked off and, thus, went with the story.

This must be the day for lists. First the Harris Poll says that Ellen DeGeneres is more popular than Oprah Winfrey, and now the Tyndell Report has announced their list of the 20 most heavily used reporters in 2007.

I'm not sure who I would have thought was number one, though I guess the names Andrea Mitchell and David Gregory come to mind, since they seem to be every newscast. But number one is actually ABC's Jake Tapper, who handles a lot of political reporting for the network. Gregory and Mitchell are on the list, at numbers two and three, while CBS' David Martin is fourth and Nancy Cordes fifth. Cordes is listed as being on both CBS/ABC, so I'm assuming she left CBS and went to ABC? I'm surprised to see Steve Hartman on the list, since I thought he only did the Friday night "Assignment America" series. Maybe he does other reporting.

The full list is after the jump.