How to select only date from a DATETIME field in MySQL?

I have a table in the MySQL database that is set up with DATETIME. I need to SELECT in this table only by DATE and excluding the time.

How do I SELECT in this table by only date and bypassing the time, even if that specific column is set to DATETIME?

Example

Now it is: 2012-01-23 09:24:41

I need to do a SELECT only for this: 2012-01-23