Back for his first day in more than two weeks due to a family emergency, Joe Scarborough made some time Wednesday to talk with the NYTimes' Jacques Steinberg. The story focuses on how Morning Joe went from post-Imus gap filler to must-stop shop for politicians and their surrogates during the primaries. Steinberg also reveals Scarborough has signed a contract extension with MSNBC until March, 2011.

While it would be premature to declare Mr. Scarborough's show, 'Morning Joe,' an unqualified success — it still lags its competition on Fox News Channel and CNN — the show drew an estimated 360,000 viewers each morning during the recently concluded May sweeps rating period, which is about what 'Imus in the Morning' was attracting in the weeks before its host's firing.

Scarborough also couldn't resist getting in his two cents on a certain feud...

"Like Obama we try to be post-ideological," he said, before adding, in reference to a certain rival of MSNBC's in the evening, "We also don't yell at anybody, and we don't tell them they're in the 'no spin zone.'"