Don't expect me to begin this post with a disclaimer similar to that given by those who "support our troops".  It's more important than that.

I wonder, do we serve our movement by helping shame a Liberal into acquiescing to the mantra of his fold?  Is there no truth to what Rather said?

Katie Couric was brought to the Evening News to add a different 'look' to the news.  Did she 'dumb it down' further than what Schieffer had going?  Yes.

Katie "tarted up" the news?  Well, was she not known as "perky" before taking the helm?  Did she not joke on her morning show about "castrating" men who jilt their bride?  Consider a man performing a similar operation on a woman with a cordless drill and a paddle bit.  Did she ever apologize?

Ok, we'll have our fun with Rather for having, (or developing?) some of the same opinions we either voice or feel.  Maybe we should, in some measure, rejoice in his sour grapes induced epiphany.

We are doing our part in presenting what we see as the logical presentation of more utopian ideals, but along the way we are also contributing to the death of individual thought.

How many of you remember a teacher who presented a futuristic, cause and effect, opinion on current events?  Well, that teacher is missing from our schools today.  And no, we can't point to the 'groupthink' of Global Warming.

Where was the opposing view on ethanol - that the World at large would condemn us for putting their food in our gas tanks.  Where is there an analysis of the final solution to the glut of elderly entering the unfunded Welfare State?

I recognize this site is dedicated to exposing the hypocrisy of the Left, but to a very real extent, I have to say:

Right on Dan!

Lysdexics Untie!

Dan Rather, Rick Kaplan and all the rest at CBS couldn't report a straight piece of news if their lives depended on it.  Reason being truth and facts are an alien concept to them.  Suggesting that Kaplan is talking down Rather to keep this train wreck in the news is too clever by half.  IMO CBS blew it way back when they selected Dan Rather over Rodger Mudd to replace their old queen Walter Cronkite.

"Is Rather a jerk, or is he the best there is? "

Rather is the best jerk there is.

There's nothing like a post about Dan Rather to bring out the wingnuts!  The Pavlovian response is always good for a laugh.  Listening to the critics on NewsBusters rant about Rather is a bit like watching pseudo-jocks in a sports bar talk about the professional jocks as if they are qualified to be in the same league.  This is NewsBusters for christ's sake - the site devoted to distortion and half-truth.  It's exists to lead the right-wing charge to make you believe that everything you hear or see in the MSM is liberal bias.  Nevermind that the corporate media is just as biased toward the left.  The percieved "liberal" bias, therefore, drives everyone into the echo chamber of the right-wing media where you can be propogandized 24/7.

Take a look at what happened with the Memogate "scandal".  The memos were investigated at length by CBS by a committee led by a life-long conservative, Richard Thornburg, former U.S. attorney general and former Republican governor of Pennsylvania, and never shown conclusively to be faked. The Thornburg investigation left conservatives furious when the panel failed to conclude that the memos were forgeries and that the National Guard story was fueled by anti-Bush bias inside CBS. However, the panel concluded that the National Guard story was rushed to the air for competitive reasons and characterized the story as a train wreck: "Basic journalistic steps were not carried out in a manner consistent with accurate and fair reporting, leading to countless misstatements and omissions."  I'll bet not one of you wingnuts, after all the Rather stories you've seen, knows these simple facts.

While the PROCESS was questionable, THE MATERIAL IN THEM WAS AUTHENTIC, as cooberated by three people most in a position to know at the time of Bush's "service". One of those, Marian Carr Knox, the secretary to Lt. Col. Jerry Killian who was Bush's immediate commander in the TANG, told CBS that she believes the documents are fake but that they reflected the sentiments of Kilian. "I know that I didn't type them. However, the information in those is correct".

Rather has said repeatedly - and apparently no one is listening - that the material in the documents is accurate. He had three people in the TANG most in the know about Bush and his record that told him that.  That's why Rather stood by the story so stubbornly. 

It was an important story because it showed how Bush had been reprimanded for failing to keep current on his medical exams which caused him to be removed from flying status and how the superiors in the unit leaned on Col. Kilian to "sugarcoat" Bush's records. Most guard units at the time were a ticket out of the Viet Nam war and, as such, were next to impossible to get into. So, part of the CBS story was how Bush's family connection helped him get in the unit and avoid Viet Nam. And, even after using the TANG to avoid Viet Nam, the Boston Globe found that Bush fell well short of meeting his military obligations in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War. The story also put Bush's history during Viet Nam in stark contrast to Kerry's record.

To make sure that Bush's records were never going to be a problem, a team under the direction of Karen Hughes, Governor Bush's Chief of Staff, contacted the TANG while Bush was governor of Texas and requested Bush's files. The conversation was overheard by Col. Bill Burkett, who at the time was the assistant to the commanding general. Burkett says they wanted to remove anything that might be embarrassing. When Burkett later went public with this, the Guard retaliated. He was shipped out on a foreign assignment and returned over a year later with a serious disease. At that point, the Guard refused to cover his medical expenses. You might find it interesting to know that Burkett was the CBS's source for the questionable documents. You can see why he might be a little bitter and why he might have an axe to grind.

There's much more to this story but I'll leave it there with the fact that people had justifiable reasons for wanting to see Bush brought down and plenty of motivation to reconstruct documents to do that.  ANd they apparently did a good enough job of reconstruction that they got their facts right and a commission, after weeks of study, couldn't discredit their work.