CBS on Tuesday night managed to deliver a full story, on the passing of General William Westmoreland, without mentioning how in the early 1980s, as the Washington Post described in its obituary, “he filed a $120 million libel lawsuit” against CBS News for a CBS Reports documentary which “charged that Westmoreland directed a 'conspiracy' to 'suppress and alter critical intelligence on the enemy.'”

In what was a precursor to last year's “memogate,” the Post obit noted that in settling the lawsuit “CBS acknowledged that the documentary had been seriously flawed.” NBC and ABC raised the lawsuit.

For the entire CyberAlert article.

July 20 CyberAlert item:

Flip-flop flap tapped for some cheap Bush-bashing. An un-bylined Tuesday AP dispatch, about the controversy over how several members of the championship women's lacrosse team at Northwestern University wore flip-flops when posing last week for a photo with President Bush at the White House, gratuitously included this paragraph: "In 2001, Bush's daughter Jenna, then 19, wore black flip-flops in court, along with pink capri pants and a sleeveless black shirt, when she pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of being a minor in possession of alcohol."

CBS's Early Show brought on David Zinczenko, the Editor of Mens Health magazine, to discuss whether the women committed a faux pas, but he felt compelled to mock Bush: "I think it's totally inappropriate. But here's the thing, I don't even think President Bush noticed. I mean, he didn't even notice when Karl Rove was, you know, crossing his fingers while talking about a CIA leak. He certainly didn't notice this."

John Roberts, the CBS News correspondent, gives grudging respect to the White House for message management, if not the Supreme Court nominee who shares his name, in a web posting to CBSNews.com today.

We are so determined to crack the nut of this uber-disciplined White
House that any dribble of information is lapped up like mother's milk.
And, I must admit, we created a media echo chamber yesterday.
Eventually, we began to hear back rumors that were prompted by our own
inquiries. I'm certain that there was no end of glee at the White House
as officials watched us chase our tails all day. And I'll bet they
chuckled to themselves as they let their telephones ring and ring as
their caller IDs flashed up the numbers of White House reporters.

As a correspondent, it was one of the most frustrating days of my
life. A lot of my fellow White House denizens share the same
sentiments. My BlackBerry was buzzing all day with messages from
colleagues – "I HATE this" and "Just SHOOT me now" were two of the more
popular expressions of exasperation.

It wouldn't be so bad to take our lumps and move on, except that
we're all aware that at some point, Chief Justice William Rehnquist WILL retire, leaving us to do it all again.

So, score another one for a White House that displays a remarkable
ability to control leaks. And send us back to the dog pound of the
Briefing Room to await the next opportunity.

• Ken Shepherd's blog
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In his analysis piece on whether Judge John Roberts will face smooth sailing towards confirmation or be shipwrecked by a liberal Democratic "Borking," CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen says to "Go Ahead and Bet the Ranch" that Roberts is the next associate justice of the US Supreme Court.

After going over how he thinks Roberts will not face any major snags on the abortion issue or his views on the Endangered Species Act, Cohen not-too-subtly hints that he hopes Roberts becomes an O'Connoresque "disappointment" to President Bush and Bush's most conservative supporters, saying that the nation "needs him to grow into his job":

Once Roberts is affirmed, he no longer can or will be beholden to the man who gave him the job. He will be his own man, free to chart his own path through the thicket of the law.

Indeed, the nation needs him to grow into his job; needs him to cut the very ties that got him to where he is today. Becoming a Supreme Court Justice may mean never having to say you are sorry. But it also means you have have to strive to rise about the political froth that churned out your name in your time.

Roberts may be precisely the sort of Justice that President Bush hopes he will be. Or he may be another David Souter, Anthony Kennedy or Sandra Day O'Connor, all of whom were less (or more) than their patrons bargained for.

The irony, of course, is that disappointing the guy who gave you the job doesn't necessarily mean you end up being a disappointing Justice. Just ask Lady Justice herself, the soon-to-be-departed Justice O'Connor, who rides off into the Western sunset as popular and revered as ever despite a recent string of rulings that would have popped President Ronald Reagan's hair out of place.

Remember that nice tee shot by President Bush, the one that started off just to the right of the fairway? Well, over time, those shots have a way of bending back to the middle before they are done.

In case y'all might not have noticed, you can click on a person's name to call up their user info. From that page, you can reach another that has only that user's posts as well as link to that blogger's XML feed (sometimes called RSS).

In addition, the category pages also have XML feeds. This is designed so that people who only want to read news about a particular media outlet/personality can do so more easily.