CNN embarrasses itself once again.

The vanguard of the America Last media and The Cesspool Turner Built, CNN, threw one of its own babes under a bus while trying to make the president look bad. Phil Rosenthal of the Chicago Tribune provides details of the seventh-graders' antics.

President Bush, who was caught earlier this year by an open microphone saying something he didn't necessarily mean to express publicly, should be sympathetic to what CNN anchor Kyra Phillips experienced during coverage of his speech Tuesday.

Phillips' brother and sister-in-law, maybe not so much.

As the president spoke in New Orleans to commemorate the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina hitting the U.S. coast, another conversation could be heard on CNN, the most trusted name in ... Phillips family gossip.

Phillips apparently had her microphone switched on, and no one in the Atlanta master control noticed or bothered to shut it off. So what CNN viewers heard above Bush's vow that "if another hurricane comes, there will be a better, more effective response," was Phillips, quite possibly in a restroom, praising her husband as "a really passionate, compassionate great, great human being," to a colleague.

Embarrassing, maybe, but not the worst thing for someone to share with the world.

Unfortunately, Phillips went on to speak of how "brothers have to be, you know, protective." She paused as something was zipped.

Obviously it wasn't her mouth.

"Except for mine. I've got to be protective of him," she told CNN viewers. "He's married, three kids, but his wife is just a control freak."

Ouch.

It was at this point someone told Phillips her microphone was live, and Daryn Kagan was cued at the anchor desk.

"All right, we've been listening in to President Bush as he speaks in New Orleans today," Kagan said. "Let's listen in once again to President Bush."

As if all of this weren't humiliating enough, clips of the incident soon were showing up all over the Internet on YouTube.com, NewsBusters.org and other sites, some with rough transcripts.

CNN issued a statement noting the network "experienced audio difficulties during the president's speech," which is one way of describing the incident, and apologized "to our viewers and the president for the disruption."

Phillips went on to offer her own apology for "an issue we had" with mikes during CNN's "Live From ..."

"There was a crossover," she said. "We didn't realize there was a problem. We've looked into it. We think we have it solved. So we apologize for a little bit of an interruption there."

No word on what, if anything, she said to her brother and his wife.

Might be a little chilly around the Thanksgiving table this year.