The bloodletting from Dan Rather's ongoing lawsuit at CBS continues, although this time, Rather is going after himself saying that no one wants to hire him after his forged document scandal:

Dan Rather has filed an amended lawsuit against CBS that says other TV networks refused to hire him because of the damage executives at his former company did to his reputation after a disputed 2004 report on President Bush.

Rather’s lawyer, Martin R. Gold, said new papers were filed because a judge said in April the initial lawsuit did not specify how CBS injured Rather in his occupation. The judge said the veteran newsman could submit an amended complaint. [...]

Rather says he met with CNN, ABC, and NBC in 2006 to talk about employment after his departure from CBS, but they refused to hire him because he brought “too much baggage.”

Despite her Bible mangling, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi presents herself as a "devout Catholic," and was kissing the ring of Pope Benedict in Washington last week, no doubt honoring him as "Your Holiness." But in the April 21 Time, she recommends the Dalai Lama to be in Time's Top 100 (most influential people, and he's also "His Holiness." How many gods does Pelosi worship? Devout Catholics worship one God. Tibetan Buddhists worship a multiplicity of gods. Pelosi wrote:

His Holiness the Dalai Lama describes himself as a "simple monk," but he represents so much more to so many. He is a source of spiritual refuge, and has used his position to promote wisdom, compassion and nonviolence as a solution to world conflicts.

That's certainly the title that the Dalai Lama uses, but that doesn't mean everyone in public life does. In fact, Dan Rather also recommended the Tibetan monk for the Person of the Year honors in the December 17, 2007 issue without the honorific:

At the end of Thursday’s CBS "Early Show" co-host Harry Smith interviewed former CBS News anchor Roger Mudd about his new memoir, "The Place to Be: Washington, CBS and The Glory Days of Television News," and teased the upcoming interview by declaring: "And we're also joined this morning by one of the great legends of CBS News, Roger Mudd, who's covered every major story in Washington for decades and worked along some of the best reporters who ever lived." One of those "best reporters," Mudd later explained, was Dan Rather: "There was a front row, Harry. And in the front row was Dan Rather, Marvin Kalb, George Herman, Dan Schorr, Roger Mudd."

Mudd went on to describe Rather and his numerous other colleagues in these terms: "No, it was a -- it was just a great conjunction of very talented, very hard working, very honest, ethical men and women, linked up to 20 years of some of the greatest and most profound stories that could have happened." Of course after Rather’s controversial National Guard story about President Bush in 2004, based on forged documents, the terms "honest" and "ethical" do not exactly come to mind.

Near the end of the segment, Smith asked about Mudd’s famous interview with then Democratic presidential candidate Ted Kennedy in 1979 in which Mudd asked Kennedy why he was running for president. Mudd recalled to Smith: "And his answer was -- it wasn't incoherent, but it wasn't really coherent either. And I think the answer is, Harry, that he really hadn't thought very seriously about why he wanted to be. And that exposed a weakness. That interview was not helpful." Smith later commented that: "Wow and it ended his candidacy." However, that interview was in November 1979, just as Kennedy announced his candidacy and he did not drop out of the race until the Democratic convention in 1980.

Rachel Sklar of The Huffington Post interviewed Dan Rather, which is not a real surprise, since she’s been supportive of his vengeful lawsuit against CBS News (and his partner in fraud Mary Mapes is a Huff-Poster). But why would she ask Rather to decry the dishonesty of the Bush administration, considering his own wallowing in falsehoods? Does the Huffington Post need to share Rather’s apparent delusion that the phony documents are real until he can be convinced otherwise? In Part II of her interview, after Rather denounced how bad economic news snuck up on us because "we were lied to and people dealt in sophistry at best and misled by big people in positions of power," the honesty question followed.

SKLAR: You mentioned people in positions of power not being forthright, or lying outright. There are so many echoes in that elsewhere, especially with respect to the Iraq war, obviously. Do you see this as a pattern of how this administration has operated?

HDNet anchor Dan Rather gets checked by a U.S. Secret Service special agent prior to boarding a bus to cover Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama D-Ill., Monday, March 31, 2008, in Harrisburg, PA (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

The hard-left hootenanny known as the "National Conference on Media Reform," -- usually ahem, distinguished by a long Bill Moyers rant about the media being saps for the neoconservative war machine -- has a new star this year: Dan Rather. The former CBS anchor will join Moyers, Arianna Huffington, Katrina Vanden Heuvel and Pacifica's Amy Goodman in calling for courageous, independent (read: radical left) journalism, free of corporate cowardice, from June 6 to 8 in Minneapolis.

Former UPI reporter Helen Thomas is also hitting the left-wing hustings, this very weekend, in fact. She is a keynote speaker at the Women, Action & Media (WAM!) Conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts, sponsored by a group called the Center for New Words and the Women's Studies program at MIT. Leftist sponsors also include the sites Alternet, Feminist.com, the Feministing blog, and the magazines Bitch, Dollars and Sense, and In These Times.

Standard-free journalism on parade all day on NBC's Sunday

Forgotten But Not Gone

Over the weekend NBC offered up their latest versions of Tim Russert's Meet the Press and the Chris Matthews Show -- the latter being political television's answer to Jerry Springer. In them we were treated to two more glittering examples of all that is wrong with the Jurassic Press.

That being the woeful lack of journalistic ethics demonstrated by those at the heights of the media mountain, and the utter shamelessness they and their colleagues exhibit upon their being outed as amoral hacks.

If you're the New York Times' Jim Rutenberg or Bill Keller the last person you probably want in your corner is Dan "National Guard Forgery Story" Rather. Yet on the syndicated "Chris Matthews Show," Rather jumped to their defense, on last week's McCain hit piece, by declaring them "outstanding journalists."

Now Rather did hedge a bit saying if the story wasn't true they could be "in a heap of trouble," but he concluded, that in the end, their reporting should be trusted because they were: "Very responsible journalists."

When Chris Matthews asked the former "CBS Evening News" anchor for his opinion on the Times story, Rather offered the following take on the February 24, edition of "The Chris Matthews Show:"

Fidel Castro Resigns. That’s a fantastic headline, and should be cause for celebration. But just because the doddering dictator is stepping aside doesn’t mean that Cuba’s abandoning tyranny. And just because he’s leaving doesn’t mean the media are dropping their fictions about Castro, the Cuban "president." Glancing at a TV set, I caught this CNN screen graphic: "Fidel Castro Resigns: Cuban Pres. Rejects New Term." Where on earth is the media’s regard for accuracy?

A "new term"? This murderous despot has only had one, long, abusive term, and it’s lasted 49 years. Anyone who says otherwise, that the Cuban "parliament" would be setting another "election," is not just a useful idiot, he’s simply an idiot.

Exactly 20 years ago tonight, January 25, 1988, millions of Americans saw one newsman’s liberal agenda laid bare, as CBS anchor Dan Rather attempted to ambush then-Vice President George H.W. Bush, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, in a live TV interview on his CBS Evening News. But Bush held his own during the on-air confrontation, and the lasting effect was to reveal how Rather was driven by his personal biases, at one point lecturing the Vice President: “You’ve made us hypocrites in the face of the world.”

Shorter Video (0:31): Windows (1.00 MB), plus MP3 audio (155 kB). Full interview (9:15) Windows (5.81 MB), plus MP3 audio (2.72 kB)

Dan Rather's lawsuit against CBS may go forward.

By omitting key facts of the original "Rathergate" story from his report Thursday, Associated Press Writer Samuel Maull managed to give the former CBS news anchor's contentions an appearance of credibility.

Here is how Maull's report began (HT Little Green Footballs; more permanent link to same story used here):

A judge said Wednesday that he was leaning toward allowing Dan Rather's $70 million lawsuit over his being fired by CBS to proceed.

"I concluded there was enough in the complaint (by Rather) to continue with discovery (pretrial research)," state Judicial Hearing Officer Ira Gammerman said at a hearing on CBS' motion to dismiss the case.

Are we seeing some fractures in the liberal media? Talking about Senator Obama’s surge to the lead in New Hampshire polls on Monday’s ‘Morning Joe’ on MSNBC, Hardball host Chris Matthews asserted that the “establishment press” would be part of Hillary Clinton’s resurgence. “There’s an establishment press — which is just as establishment as the establishment of the Democratic party — who can’t wait to write that fawning piece, ‘Here come the Clintons again.’”

Upon hearing that, ex-CBS anchor Dan Rather suggested that the media is really anti-Hillary right now: “I think they’re waiting to write the obituary....They’re just waiting to write ‘finis’ to the Clintons.”

NewsBusters and affiliate The Business & Media Institute have been reporting for many months the continuous, bearish assessments of economic gloom and doom by America's press.

Of course, this all comes despite 24 straight quarters of Gross Domestic Product growth, 50 consecutive months of job gains, higher wages for virtually all Americans, and last month's consumer spending explosion.

Ignoring all this Sunday morning were panelists on "The Chris Matthews Show" who demonstrated such a deplorable lack of economic acumen that maybe they shouldn't be allowed to comment on such matters when cameras and microphones are on.

Host Matthews set this segment up:

As NewsBuster Mark Finkelstein reported, Sunday's "This Week" wasn't a good omen for Hillary Clinton or her supporters.

Fortunately, for those of us that enjoy Hillary bashing as much as a Gershwin tune (how 'bout you?), dessert was served on "The Chris Matthews Show" as panelists including Dan Rather, Norah O'Donnell, Katty Kay, and Andrew Sullivan gave conservatives an early Clinton kicking Christmas present to savor.

Is this still payback for Bill and Hillary chastising Tim Russert for his behavior during October's debate in Philadelphia? Maybe more important, have press members decided that if they continue to pile on the supposedly inevitable one, the Democrats' only chance in 2008 is if Mike Huckabee is the Republican nominee?

Before we get there, here are some marvelous examples of Hillary bashing from seemingly unlikely sources to brighten your day:

When you have the following meeting of the minds in a public forum - NBC News White House Correspondent David Gregory, former "CBS Evening News" anchor Dan Rather, New York Times White House correspondent David Sanger, and former White House bureau chief and correspondent for United Press International Helen Thomas - there's a near certainty something outrageous will be said.

And that was the case on November 26 at The National Press Club when this roundtable discussion occurred for the taping of "The Kalb Report," a public affairs program broadcasted on various television stations throughout the country.

[Click here for audio]

Gregory Considers White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett a ‘Minister of Propaganda'

Whatever Dan Rather does in his post-CBS television career, let’s hope it’s not on shows children watch. In another personality trait echoing his old historical nemesis Richard Nixon, Rather’s interview with Joe Hagan of New York magazine is loaded with expletives (undeleted). The internal CBS report on the story was "pure, unadultered [BS]." When that internal review board included former Bush attorney general Richard Thornburgh, Rather reacted: "Un-f-ing-believable!" Thornburgh was a "total ass." Rather wore a T-shirt on his last night in the anchor chair that said "F.E.A." for "F— ‘Em All." When he called his producer Mary Mapes to commiserate over the fiasco, he identified himself as "Dan Rather plus three," meaning he’d drank three bourbons. That might explain why he claimed no one at the White House denied his story.

The story’s headline is "Dan Rather’s Last Big Story Is Himself." As he described Rather’s "lower lip jutting out like an ornery fish resisting a hook," Hagan sympathetically recounted:

CBS has struck back against Dan Rather's lawsuit alleging the network made him a scapegoat for his discredited Air National Guard story about President Bush shortly before Election Day 2004.

The network filed a 30-page motion in New York Supreme Court Thursday to dismiss the case claiming it was "mystified and saddened by the baseless and self-serving allegations and distortions of fact raised in his lawsuit."

As reported by the New York Observer (h/t Charles Johnson, emphasis added throughout):

"Dan Rather is one of the most important figures in the history of broadcast journalism, and for more than 40 years was one of our most valued colleagues," CBS said in the statement. "That is why we at CBS are mystified and saddened by the baseless and self-serving allegations and distortions of fact raised in his lawsuit."

"Today we are filing a motion to dismiss," added the statement. "If we are required to proceed beyond this point, we will defend the case vigorously and demonstrate that the lawsuit is wholly without merit, and that the bizarre allegations by Mr. Rather are untrue."

Maybe even better, CBS questioned Rather's motives for the suit:

The United States is not the only country turning out spoiled children, ungrateful for the blessings of life in their land. Cuba is suffering from the same affliction, to judge by "My father's 'crime'" by Yan Valdes Morejon, which appears in today's Boston Globe.

Morejon's column turns out to be just one long complaint. Rather than giving proper thanks for all the wonders of the workers' paradise, like members of our MSM regularly do, it's filled with this kind of kvetching:

To commemorate the Media Research Center’s 20th anniversary this month, we’ve just published a special expanded edition of our ‘