THE INSTAWIFE says she sees a lot of Kerry bumper stickers, and wonders if he’s ahead in Tennessee. Apparently not:

President Bush would beat Democratic challenger John Kerry in Tennessee by 16 points if the election were held today, a new statewide poll indicates.

Bush would do a better job handling the war in Iraq, the issue of terrorism and homeland security, and issues related to the economy, poll respondents said.

Kerry, a U.S. senator from Massachusetts, did his best on the economy question but still lagged Bush by 8 points on that issue.

Well, Knoxville is a college town.

UPDATE: Uh oh. Somebody’s getting the bends.

MARK STEYN WONDERS why Ra^therGate has been allowed to fester so long:

Why has CBS News decided it would rather debauch its brand and treat its audience like morons than simply admit their hoax? For Dan Rather? I doubt it. Hurricane Dan looks like he’s been hit by one. He’s still standing, just about, but, like a battered double-wide, more and more panels are falling off every day. No one would destroy three-quarters of a century of audience trust and goodwill for one shattered anachronism of an anchorman, would they? . . .

The only reasonable conclusion is that the source — or trail of sources — is even more incriminating than the fake documents. Why else would Heyward and Rather allow the CBS news division to commit slow, public suicide?

Power Line speculates that the only thing more incriminating than falling for a forgery is falling for one that came from the Kerry campaign. But in light of this meta-story, maybe that doesn’t even matter.

SUMNER REDSTONE DUMPING STOCK? My first thought is that this has nothing to do with Ra^therGate — but of course, my first thought on Ra^therGate was that CBS’s case couldn’t possibly be as flimsy as it looked.

On the other hand, betting on Sumner Redstone being an idiot looks to be longer odds than the same bet regarding Dan Rather.

UPDATE: A reader emails that insider knowledge couldn’t be involved:

National Review wonders if Sumner Redstone sold his stock based on “knowledge unavailable to the general public”. How could that be? Within a day or two of CBS’s promotion of the inept forgeries, anyone who was interested was well aware that CBS had – at the least – screwed up horribly. By September 14th Dan Rather and his producers were the only ones left who claimed to believe that CBS news hadn’t just driven off a cliff.

That works for me.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A less charitable take on the subject here. I still don’t think Redstone’s that dumb, and expect that this will turn out to have an innocent explanation. But this point is a good one: “Where is the Viacom board of directors, by the way? . . . Boards of directors of public companies, particularly in our Sarbanes-Oxley world, have the obligation to act like Johnson & Johnson in the Tylenol crisis, not like Arthur Andersen or Enron.” Indeed.

MORE: Professor Bainbridge thinks he knows what’s going on, and it’s not nefarious.

STILL MORE: More on the non-nefarious side, at Power Line.

GERMAN ELECTIONS: Bad news for Schroeder, who continues to learn that you can’t successfully organize a party around anti-Bush sentiments. But it’s also bad news in general, given that it’s the extremist parties who are doing better.

NATO: A fraudulent coalition?

RA^THERGATE UPDATE: Howard Kurtz has more on CBS’s rush to broadcast while questions remained unaddressed:

An examination of the process that led to the broadcast, based on interviews with the participants and more than 20 independent analysts, shows that CBS rushed the story onto the air while ignoring the advice of its own outside experts, and used as corroborating witnesses people who had no firsthand knowledge of the documents.

This is quite embarrassing, especially given the political cast. But in my opinion, their behavior since the broadcast has been worse. Anybody can make a mistake, even a stupid one. It’s their consistent refusal to admit it, amid a fog of counteraccusations, that has been really disgraceful.

UPDATE: A Ra^therGate Web of Connections, at PoliDock.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More from Newsweek:

CBS insiders are increasingly worried that the credibility of the network’s news division has been grievously damaged by anchor Dan Rather’s persistent defense of a story which relied on questionable documents about George W. Bush’s National Guard service. “This has clearly hurt us,” one veteran correspondent told NEWSWEEK. Network sources describe finger-pointing within the news division, with concerns greatest among “60 Minutes” producers, who fear the issue has tainted their entire program. While CBS News president Andrew Heyward has publicly backed Rather, the network has quietly assembled a team of additional producers to work the case. Rather is privately telling colleagues he remains “confident” that the story, and the memos, will be vindicated. . . .

Emily Will, a documents expert approached by CBS to examine the memos, told NEWSWEEK that she was told by a CBS News producer that the network’s source had received the memos anonymously through the mail.

Hmm. Sounds like an L.A. Times headline: “Rather aides increasingly confident!”

THE LOS ANGELES TIMES WRITES ABOUT BLOGGERS: Professor Bainbridge writes back. Shockingly, he discovers errors and misrepresentations.

A RATHER NEGATIVE ASSESSMENT of John Kerry’s military career, in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. I still wonder why he decided to make Vietnam the keystone of his campaign. Even without problems like this, Vietnam doesn’t have positive associations for most voters. As I’ve said before, it seems like bad “branding.”

RA^THERGATE, explained.

I’VE POSTED SOME NEW IMAGES over at the Exposure Manager site, on subjects ranging from UT street scenes (always much in demand from UT alumni and Knoxville expats) to “suburban wilderness” images. The pictures shown here, and some others (it’s indicated in the galleries) were taken with the Sony 5 megapixel pocket camera that I bought a while back. They’re not as good as the ones that the Nikon D70 produces . . . but the Nikon doesn’t fit in your pocket, either.

I hope you enjoy them.

I’ve got a lot more to process and upload, alas. The problem is that driving around and taking pictures gets me away from my desk and the computer. Processing and uploading them, alas, does not.

And I like getting away from the computer now and then. I spend way too much time here as it is.

Maybe I should go back to darkrooms and film. . . .

THE FOLKS AT NRO fought off a bogus libel suit. They were successful, but are asking for contributions to defray the cost.

TOM MAGUIRE REMAINS ON NICK KRISTOF’S CASE: “Kristof may have deliberately crafted his statement in a way that is misleading, but accurate.” Hey, that’s better than fake, but accurate! And there’s a reflection on “the question Kristof does not ask (although Don Imus did!).” Ouch.

UPDATE: More on Kristof’s problems here, here, and here.

Don’t these people have editors?

“FAKE, BUT ACCURATE:” Heh.

OVER AT THE MEDPUNDIT SITE you can read this quote:

“When many cures are offered for a disease, it means the disease is not curable” -Anton Chekhov

Over at RealClearPolitics you can read this:

Advice For Mr. Kerry: Leon Panetta | Donna Brazile | Bob Kerrey | Paul Glastris
Kerry’s New Call to Arms – Richard Wolffe & Susannah Meadows, Newsweek
Kerry’s Muddled Message – Gloria Borger, US News & World Report
To Win Kerry Will Have to Answer Hard Questions – Clive Crook, Nat’l Journal

Hmm.

JEFF HARRELL’S SHAPE OF DAYS BLOG was nine days ahead of the big media in looking at the Selectric Composer and realizing that it couldn’t have produced the Ra^therGate documents.

I THOUGHT THAT FOOTBALL FANS FOR TRUTH was just an amusing bit of election-year distraction.

But having seen this incriminating video, well, I think it’s a serious matter. . . .

HERE’S AN EVEN MORE DEVASTATING COMPARISON OF CBS DOCUMENTS WITH THE REAL THING, courtesy of The Washington Post. If Dan Rather still has a job tomorrow, well, CBS is in even bigger trouble than I thought.

IRAQ UPDATE: StrategyPage reports:

September 19, 2004: Anti-government forces are desperately trying to shatter the morale of police and reconstruction personnel. But suicide bombing attacks on police facilities, and gun battles against police patrols in Sunni Arab areas have not worked. The police continue to recruit, and police patrols grow larger and more aggressive as they move into Sunni Arab neighborhoods in cities like Baghdad, Kirkuk and Mosul, and arrest known, or suspected, terrorists and armed anti-government activists. There is less aversion, among the majority of Iraqis, to playing rough with the Sunni Arabs who comprise nearly all the anti-government forces. A growing network of informers in Sunni controlled areas provide targets for daily bombing attacks on buildings the anti-government forces are using. The government has said that it will hold national elections, as scheduled, even if voting is not possible in some Sunni Arab areas. It’s thought that an 80-90 percent vote is better than a delayed vote. This is because a national vote will be concrete proof, to dubious Shia Arab Iraqis, that Saddam is truly gone, even if thousands of Saddam’s thugs are still running around killing people. The vote will also make it clear just how much power the Kurds hold, on a national scale, and get started negotiations to sort out how much autonomy the Kurds will have in a predominately Arab country.

Partial elections, disenfranchising the rebellious? Like Mickey Kaus, I think that’s the right approach. I also think that for the widely-disliked Sunnis to put themselves into this position is extremely unwise. But, then, “extremely unwise” is a pretty good description of their strategic approach all along.

This tidbit is also interesting:

September 19, 2004: The Pakistani army says it has cleared foreign (al Qaeda) fighters from the Pushtun border areas (Waziristan) along the east Afghan border. Some 70 foreigners were killed in a week of operations, plus a dozen or so Pakistani soldiers and civilians. But there are still several hundred foreign fighters still on the lose, mainly men from Chechnya and Central Asia. The army says it knows where these men have fled to, and will move on them next. The border areas north of Waziristan contain Pushtun tribes less receptive to Taliban activities.

Of course, an item beginning “the Pakistani Army says,” is only slightly more reliable than one beginning “CBS News has learned. . . .” And there’s this:

September 19, 2004: Russia is opening a terrorism liaison office in Indonesia. Because of recent terrorist acts in Russia, there is renewed enthusiasm for sharing terrorist information internationally.

I suspect that Russian anti-terror operations will emphasize assassination and covert ops rather than the more straightforward approach that has marked (most) U.S. operations.

Meanwhile, back in Iraq, The Command Post notices that a lot has been going on below the radar. You don’t say.

UPDATE: It’s also worth reading this piece by Thomas Bray: how Europe became a 90 pound weakling.”

In Bosnia, where the French and Germans did collaborate in the sort of coalition Kerry favors, the United States had to deliver an embarrassing 85 percent of the missile strikes because of the primitive condition of the European air forces.

Why is Europe so weak? The trend began well before the end of the Cold War. Increasingly, Europe opted for the free-rider approach, happy to let American taxpayers shoulder the major share of the burden. But Europe’s continuing power-slide strongly suggests there may be an even more fundamental reason for its weakness: the debilitating effect of the vast European welfare state. . . .

A broader European coalition to help out in Iraq? Don’t count on it. There isn’t much that France and Germany could contribute, beyond some marginal peacekeeping forces, even if they wanted to. And they are likely to remain unwilling to do so even if John Kerry is elected.

Europe just doesn’t matter much on the military front. That’s unfortunate.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Who do you believe? Sometimes it’s easy to know, sometimes it’s not.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Carnival of the Liberated, the regular roundup of Iraqi blog posts, has moved. Dean Esmay is hosting it now. Be sure to check it out. It’s not all cheerful by any means, but it’s different from what you hear from Peter Jennings. Much less Dan Rather.

MORE: Daniel Drezner notes that Anthony Cordesmann thinks Bush hasn’t done well, but that Kerry’s approach is vapid.

MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT:

SEATTLE – A radio talk-show host said Saturday he has been fired for criticizing CBS newsman Dan Rather’s handling of challenges to the authenticity of memos about President Bush’s National Guard service.

“On the talk show that I host, or hosted, I said I felt Rather should either retire or be forced out over this,” said Brian Maloney, whose weekly “The Brian Maloney Show” aired for three years on KIRO-AM Radio, a CBS affiliate here.

Maloney says he made that statement on his Sept. 12 program. He was fired Friday, he said. . . .

Maloney said he had felt free to comment on the controversy and on Rather.

“I really felt he was taking the network’s credibility down with him,” Maloney said in a telephone interview.

“Talk-show hosts have generally had a lot of independence in these kinds of issues,” he said. “Nobody’s ever said, ‘You can’t criticize CBS News.’”

KIRO Radio is affiliated with CBS but owned by Entercom, a national radio broadcasting company based in Bala Cynwyd, Pa.

Dan Rather — behind today’s new McCarthyism? And here I’ve been blaming John Ashcroft!

UPDATE: Ed Morrissey has more.

AS I’VE SAID BEFORE, everybody comes to Knoxville eventually. Today it was Wind Rider of Silent Running. (That’s not his real name, but I didn’t think to ask him how he felt about my using his real name on the blog; he’s the one on the left.)

He didn’t mind being photographed, though, and thanks to a helpful counter-gal at the Barnes and Noble Starbucks, the visit was memorialized. Note that, at this magnification at least, the post-surgical swelling in my cheek is almost invisible!

BOIFROMTROY has the rundown on Kerry’s gay marriage flipflops.

DARFUR UPDATE: This is progress of a sort:

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution on Saturday threatening Sudan with oil sanctions if it did not stop atrocities in the Darfur region where Arab militias are terrorizing African villagers.

The vote was 11-0, with abstentions by China, Russia, Pakistan and Algeria on the U.S.-drafted resolution that also calls for an expanded African Union monitoring force and an international probe into abuses, including genocide.

China, which exploits oil in Sudan, earlier threatened to veto the measure but said it did not want to hinder the African Union, which may send in 3,000 monitors and troops to investigate and serve as a bulwark against abuses.

But Beijing’s U.N. ambassador, Wang Guangya, served notice he would veto any future resolution that would impose sanctions. “That is the message,” he told reporters.

Co-sponsoring the resolution with the United States were Britain, Germany, Spain, and Romania. Also voting in favor were France, Brazil, Chile, Angola, Benin and the Philippines.

Getting China not to veto, and getting France — which has oil interests of its own — to vote in favor certainly counts as a diplomatic success. But I have to say that I think this is too little, too late. Guns and special-forces trainers are probably more to the point now.

ERNEST MILLER notes an example of real-time fact-checking at the Washington Post. Message to Terry Neal: Welcome to what we in the blogosphere experience all the time!

HOW GULLIBLE IS CBS? Just look at this side by side comparison of an authentic Killian document and the one that Dan Rather fell for. Jeez.

“What kind of a fool do you take me for?” “First class.”

THE LOS ANGELES TIMES’ TIM RUTTEN:

Watching Dan Rather unravel over the past week has been something like watching a train wreck unfold: You know it’s all going to end badly, but you just can’t look away until you’ve seen how many cars ultimately go off the rails. Well, now we know, and there’s not much left to do but wave at the caboose as it careens over the side. . . .

Inevitably, bad things happen to good news organizations. The test of a serious journalistic enterprise is how it reacts to internal crisis.

The Los Angeles Times had its Staples Center scandal; the Washington Post Janet Cooke’s fabricated Pulitzer Prize-winner; the New York Times had Jayson Blair; and USA Today, Jack Kelley. In each instance, the organization immediately and exhaustively investigated what had gone wrong and put the findings in their entirety before their readers. CNN did precisely the same thing after its so-called Tailwind scandal, as did NBC in 1992, when its “Dateline” newsmagazine was caught broadcasting staged events.

Thus far, no such action has been undertaken by CBS executives, which is worse than inexplicable. . . .

CBS’ initial report on President Bush’s National Guard service was an embarrassment to Murrow’s legacy. But the implications of that mistake pale alongside the potential consequences of the network’s continuing refusal to do what the situation now demands: to forthrightly admit error, to undertake an independent inquiry and, then, to give a clear public accounting of how this happened. If the current custodians of CBS News willfully refuse to keep faith with their viewers, they will have disgraced Murrow’s memory.

Indeed.

STACY TABB is requesting help.

IN THE MAIL: Jeff Hawkins’ new book, On Intelligence, which looks very interesting.

JOURNALIST RYAN PITTS writes on CBS and Ra^therGate:

Other news outlets have jumped in admirably with investigations into the forgery story, but it’s time to see some harsher words for the failure of journalism that CBS has displayed in its wake. (Andy Rooney should have used a bigger curmudgeon stick, but maybe this Chicago Tribune piece is a start.) Would the media be eating one of its own? Too bad. CBS has screwed all of us over — both with the way it ran the story and with the way it’s handled the backlash. The network’s behavior has confirmed every single nasty thing that everybody believes about the media, and it’s not like we’ve got a nice fat reserve of goodwill to squander right now.

This is where CBS jumps on the grenade. Only fair, considering they pulled the pin and fumbled it in the first place.

Fair, but how likely?

“WHAT BLOGS HAVE WROUGHT:” Nice history of Ra^therGate to date. And what’s really nice is that it doesn’t mention InstaPundit. Nor should it. I’ve written about this, but other blogs did all the heavy lifting. As I wrote earlier, the blogosphere has matured into a full-fledged system in which no node is of vital importance, which is a very good thing.

UPDATE: Oops. InstaPundit actually is mentioned in passing toward the end — I just missed it because it wasn’t a link. The point still holds, though.

STUART BUCK WRITES that efforts by The New Republic and Kevin Drum to draw a parallel between CBS’s faked-document reportage and Fox News’ reporting of a doctored Kerry/Fonda photo are unfair and wrong, as Fox repeatedly noted that the photo was fake.

NAVY: Kerry’s medals properly approved. This report says that there was nothing wrong with the approval process where Kerry’s medals were concerned. That doesn’t explain his claim of a nonexistent “V” on his Silver Star, and it doesn’t get at the underlying facts, but it’s probably enough to put this issue to bed. But as I’ve said before, it’s a distraction anyway.

Beldar has much more on this.

UPDATE: Tom Maguire, as is his wont, notes something that I missed:

This latest AP story demonstrates that the Navy has military records for John Kerry that have not been disclosed. John Kerry promised to fully disclose his military records in an appearance with Tim Russert, and claims that he has fulfilled that pledge. However, he has refused to sign the Form 180 authorizing the Navy to release files protected by his privacy rights so that his claim can be independently verified. We now have compelling new evidence that his file has not been fully disclosed.

Read the whole thing.

BLOWIN’ IN THE WIND: Amusing Kerry commercial, if somewhat reminiscent of this George McGovern flipflop commercial from 1972 (5th down in the lefthand column). But with better music!

VARIOUS PEOPLE have asked me questions about the blogads on the site, and I thought I’d round up some of the more common ones:

Does it help you if I click through the ads? Yes and no. I don’t get paid by the click-through, but I suppose that if you do — and especially if you buy stuff from the people who are selling things — it makes them more likely to advertise again. So don’t kill yourself, but as Hugh Hewitt points out, you should always try to patronize the advertisers of sites you like.

Why do you run ads from so many lefty sites? I decided early on to take ads from pretty much anybody unless I thought they were offensive to me or to too many readers. I’m not easily offended by political views short of Nazis, Communists, etc. I don’t do porn sites — I’ve got nothing against porn, but it’s not my idiom, as they say — and I won’t do hate groups. Otherwise it’s pretty open. Most of my political ads have been from the left (though my biggest advertiser has been an art gallery) and I’m pretty sure that most of them were funded by George Soros one way or another. I figure the money’s doing more good in my pocket than his, and at any rate this insulates me from claims that my content is dictated by advertisers! And of course, some of the lefty groups — like Planned Parenthood or the pro-gay-marriage folks — are groups that I support.

Are you getting rich? Will you buy a Gulfstream? The answer to that question is summed up by the headline to this article: Bloggers find clicks don’t equal cash. Considering that I’m getting money for doing something I used to do for free, blogads are a great deal. But I won’t quit the day job.

What about donations? I still get those, and I have to say that a dollar of donation money makes me happier than a dollar of ad money. There’s something about someone paying you when they don’t have to that makes it nice. It offsets any number of hatemails. . . .

Do you recommend blogads? Yeah. It’s very easy, costs you nothing, and I’ve been pretty happy.

THE WASHINGTON POST has been doing some investigative journalism where Bill Burkett — thought by many to be the source of forged CBS Ra^therGate documents — is concerned:

The former Texas National Guard officer suspected of providing CBS News with possibly forged records on President Bush’s military service called on Democratic activists to wage “war” against Republican “dirty tricks” in a series of Internet postings in which he also used phrases similar to several employed in the disputed documents. . . .

In e-mail messages to a Yahoo discussion group for Texas Democrats, Burkett laid out a rationale for using what he termed “down and dirty” tactics against Bush. He said that he had passed his ideas to the Democratic National Committee but that the DNC seemed “afraid to do what I suggest.” . . .

The CBS documents include several phrases that crop up in Web logs signed by Burkett, including “run interference,” and references to a pilot’s “billet.” Former Air National Guard officers have pointed out that “billet” is an Army expression, not an Air Force one. Burkett has also used the expression “cover your six,” a military variant of the vulgar abbreviation “CYA,” which appears in one of the CBS documents.

In a somewhat less impressive feat of investigative journalism, the Los Angeles Times has discovered that a poster on Free Republic is a “conservative activist.” (“Stunning news!” — Patterico). They need to get out more. . . .

IRAQ UPDATE: Ed Morrissey posts a letter from a Marine Corps Major in Iraq. It’s a must-read.

Stephen Green also has a lengthy post that’s worth reading. And M. Simon observes: “Wars are never competently managed. Projects can be managed. People can be managed. . . . Wars cannot be managed because there is active and relatively unpredictable opposition. Even if you know what the opposition can do the actual mix of possible actions is always in doubt. So what can we do about wars? Win them or lose them.”

Victor Davis Hanson has further thoughts that are very much worth reading.

As Andrew Sullivan wrote a while ago (in response to this post of mine), “the notion that this was all going to be perfect and easy is as foolish as the notion that it is doomed.”

Constructive criticism is good. Doomsaying and MoveOn-style surrendermongering isn’t.

UPDATE: This long post from Varifrank is worth reading, too, as is this one on pre-war exit plans.

And Rand Simberg has thoughts on Iraq and the evolution of democracy.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The Belmont Club has more in its ongoing analysis of the Iraqi military situation. Conclusion:

If the pattern of American casualties shows that most fighting is happening in Al-Anbar it is not because Administration officials are manufacturing the results to camouflage a “widening insurgency”. It is because there is no power vacuum among Kurds and Shi’ias as complete as that in the Sunni triangle. Civil war, if it eventuates, will not be result of military failure but from a lack of commitment to create a replacement Iraqi State. If we build it, it will come.

Read the whole thing.

A PICTURE A DAY OF WANDA: I think I’ve linked to this lovely photo-tribute from a man to his wife before, but it’s worth looking at again.

ERNEST MILLER HAS POSTED a lengthy and thorough chronology of Ra^therGate (or as some are calling it, “Danron”).

BRAVO FOR THE AP, which (at the behest of bloggers) has corrected a story quoting a Navy SEAL — who turned out not to be a Navy SEAL — criticizing Bush’s National Guard record. The whole chronology is here.

ANOTHER GENDER GAP:

By 49 percent to 42 percent, women are supporting Bush over Kerry (this was true in last week’s poll as well).

The bellicose-women trend identified here, here, and here almost three years ago would seem to be alive and well.

UPDATE: Reader Gina Vener offers an alternative explanation.

But, actually, I think they go together. Thanks, Dan!

A DC-AREA PR FIRM IS CLAIMING CREDIT for Ra^therGate. I don’t recall getting anything from them. Neither does Charles Johnson. This seems to have been a story largely generated by blogs, not email, anyway.

And if they were really smart enough to do something like this, would they be dumb enough to be bragging about it before it was over? I certainly wouldn’t hire a PR firm that did mind-bogglingly stupid things like that, and I can’t imagine why anyone with any sense would do so. Perhaps I’m wrong, but this looks like rank, and transparent, opportunism.

UPDATE: Power Line: “Victory has many fathers. You know the Rathergate battle has been won when PR firms step into the breach and try to take credit.” Timing issues with their claims are noted.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Bill Ardolino: “Horsecrap.”

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: The PR firm apologizes handsomely. They’ve raised themselves in my estimation. (A quick apology — good PR. Maybe CBS should hire them!) Click “read more” for the full text, as I don’t think the link above is permanent.

MORE: Kathy Kinsley has the right idea! “I’d also like to add, that if they want to communicate with me and ask me to push a story, they can stuff it or buy a blogad. Their choice.”

Continue reading ‘A DC-AREA PR FIRM IS CLAIMING CREDIT for RatherGate. I don’t recall getting anything from them. Ne…’ »

EVERYTHING WENT FINE, but I don’t want to be blogging under the influence, so serious blogging will have to wait. But don’t miss this piece on UNScam, and the links between oil-for-food money and Osama.

And note still more trouble for Dan Rather:

ABC News has just within the last 15 minutes or so posted an exclusive report based on exclusive interview with Col. Walter Staudt, the retired former brigadier general of the Texas Air National Guard. ABC News reports that Staudt is refuting CBS News’ assertions (based on those now-infamous forged documents) that Staudt pressured others in the TANG to help cover for George W. Bush during his stint in the TANG. Staudt also says Bush didn’t get preferential treatment to get into the TANG, and nobody pressured him to accept Bush into the Guard.

Pajama-wearers might want to read these thoughts from Jim Geraghty. And then read this post. Back later.

TODAY IS DENTAL-SURGERY DAY, which I’m not too happy about. It also means that blogging will be limited, and not until later. (I may hang out and watch the DVD of Barcelona, which I bought a while back and still haven’t watched. Or it may just be more Gilligan). I wish I had the almost-out Neal Stephenson book, but it’s not out until next week.

Thanks to all the people who sent sympathy email when I mentioned this. It’s a lingering consequence of a car accident some years ago. Given what happened to the other people involved, I got off pretty light (thanks to wearing a seatbelt, and leaning against the back of the seat ahead of me at the last minute), though I’d prefer not to have to deal with this. But that’s life. See you later.

“THE CAMERA BLINKS: A nation of fact-checkers, a network in denial.”

UPDATE: From fake boos to fake cheers?

INSTAPUNDIT READERS will know that I think the 21-year-old drinking age “spearheaded” by Liddy Dole is a terrible idea. But now Radley Balko has much more on the latest developments in this ill-conceived, and dangerous, policy.

DAN RATHER VS. THE PAJAMA-BLOGGERS: Amusing cartoon.

UPDATE: Kinko’s surveillance tapes explain all!

ANOTHER UPDATE: On the other hand, this guy clearly hasn’t been following the story. Get him some pajamas!

THEY’RE BAAACCKKK! Pretty funny.

HERE’S THE FULL STORY on the Gallup poll mentioned below, which shows Bush with a 13-point lead. Still seems like an implausibly large lead for Bush, despite all the help he’s been getting from Dan Rather and MoveOn. (Compare it with the other polls listed here.) But what do I know?

I don’t think Al Hunt knows, either, but this has him worried.

UPDATE: Lots more on polls and reactions thereto here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Mickey Kaus says it’s the CBS forgery business that’s killing Kerry:

One obvious possible way to half-reconcile the divergent polls, suggested by Rassmussen’s robo-survey: Wednesday 9/15, when the probable Danron forgery began to sink in, was a gruesome day for Kerry. The Harris poll (Kerry up 1) stopped Monday. The Pew poll (Kerry down 1) stopped on Tuesday. Gallup (Kerry down 14) includes Kerry’s bleak Wednesday.

Thanks, Dan!

Meanwhile, Scott Koenig forecasts the next self-defeating attack — but surely the Dems are smarter than that.

DON’T REINVENT THE WHEEL: Thoughts on intelligence reform.

THE BELMONT CLUB has more thoughts on what’s going on in Iraq. (Via Power & Control).

COULD THIS BE RIGHT? “A Gallup poll being released Friday has Bush up 54-40 in a three-way matchup.” Thanks, Dan!

But I suspect that this is a fluke. (Via who else?)

UPDATE: Well, if it’s not true now, it might be after this story: “Three-year-old Sophia Parlock cries while seated on the shoulders of her father, Phil Parlock, after having their Bush-Cheney sign torn up by Kerry-Edwards supporters on Thursday, Sept. 16, 2004, at the Tri-State Airport in Huntington, W.Va.” I guess it’s part of the new climate of fear in America. Sheesh.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Power Line has more.

MORE: Here’s a claim that Parlock is the Greg Packer of protesters.

My new position: The incident may be fake, but the story is true!

MORE STILL: A handsome apology from the union. So I guess it’s true? Kip thinks so.

But Captain Ed is skeptical: “this one smells pretty bad, folks.”

R.I.P. JOHNNY RAMONE.

ROGER SIMON has lots of interesting posts, and many of them have nothing to do with Dan Rather.

IF YOU FEEL LIKE YOU’VE MISSED THE THREAD of the “Ra^therGate” CBS forged-memo story, this report from The Scotsman provides a useful roundup. Pajamas are mentioned, though they’re spelled “pyjamas.”

Also, today’s Marketplace radio show from PRI has a nice piece on blogs and Ra^therGate. (You’ll have to stream the whole show, as they don’t break out individual segments like NPR. It starts at about 12:30 into the broadcast.) Pajamas are mentioned there, too.

UPDATE: Ah, you can find the link to the individual story on this page. Or just click here. (Thanks to reader Dave Shardell). It’s worth a listen.

And Hugh Hewitt writes on what happens when you don’t defend the brand. “Didn’t anyone at Viacom or CBS go to HBS?” He contrasts the Ra^therGate experience with the famous story of how Johnson & Johnson responded to the Tylenol scare.

ARTHUR CHRENKOFF notes some ironies.

IN LIGHT OF THE ONGOING BIG-MEDIA VS. THE PAJAMA-PEOPLE TALK, it’s worth noting that I still regard the relationship as more symbiotic than adversarial, though I have to say that reading this column by Edward Wasserman from just last week is, well, especially amusing in the wake of Ra^therGate.

MICKEY KAUS has questions for Dan Rather and his staff.

LEONARD NIMOY as Dan Ra^ther.

ERIC S. RAYMOND is back to the blogosphere.

LOTS MORE ON RA^THERGATE over at Best of the Web. Plus, we learn that James Taranto will be on O’Reilly tonight talking about Dan Rather’s travails.

TOM MAGUIRE has lots of interesting posts.

STEVE VERDON recalls earlier predictions of InstaPundit’s demise, which turned out to be premature.

WILFRED BRIMLEY strikes again! “Is it true?” “No, but it is accurate.”

UPDATE: Heh.

BLAME IOWA: BoiFromTroy is imagining what the election would be like if Dick Gephardt were the nominee. At the very least, the bumper stickers would be amusing. . . .

Let’s imagine what today’s election would be like if Gephardt were the nominee:

The Democratic Convention would have focused on issues, not a 35 year-old war.

There would have been no Swift Boat vets.

There would have been no debate over whether serving in the National Guard were honorable or if it was tantamount to being a deserter (both Bush and Dick served in the Guard during Vietnam)

There would have been no Rather-Gate/Forged Memos to distract the American people from Iraq, etc.

On the whole, John Kerry has been a distraction from his own campaign. Because of him and his need to focus on four months of his biography, the American people have been denied an honest debate about the issues that we would have had, if only Iowans would have picked Dick.

But I think he’s onto something. I agree with Hugh Hewitt that the candidate is a big problem:

Kerry’s problem is that he is simply the worst major party candidate of my lifetime, period running against a likeable incumbent backed by a growing economy and a record of bold action in the global war on terrorism.

Yeah. You’ve never seen me sing the praises of George W. Bush the way that, say, Andrew Sullivan was doing at one point. I think he’s okay, and he at least takes seriously the notion that we’re at war, and he seems steady, and not flighty. But overall, really, I give him a B. Maybe a B-. Trouble for the Democrats is that they’ve nominated a guy who gets — at the very most charitable — a weak gentleman’s C.

I’m not crazy about Gephardt, especially on trade, but he takes the war seriously and he seems steady and not flighty, too.

The Democrats’ problem is that the base, which, like bases do, cares mostly about emotional returns, wanted Howard Dean. But the leadership, which, like leaderships do, cares about status and connections and thus about winning, knew that Dean couldn’t win. They tried to split the difference with Kerry, whom they thought could fool the gullible folks in flyover country into seeing him as a more-macho version of Bush, while winking to the base that he was really a tall Howard Dean with some medals. This was a dumb idea, and it hasn’t worked.

Worse yet, if it does somehow get Kerry elected, he’ll be a cripple as soon as he’s sworn in. The anybody-but-Bush crowd won’t have any particular reason to support him once he’s given them what they want, and he doesn’t have much in the way of another constituency. It’s telling that he doesn’t really even have the usual tight-knit “mafia” of longtime supporters the way that Bush, or Clinton, had. He’s got a revolving-door assembly of party apparatchiks and paid consultants. That’s a bad sign.

So, yeah, blame Iowa. I wish we were seeing the election BoiFromTroy envisions, instead of the one we’ve got now.

PLAME UPDATE: I’m not sure what this means, but I don’t think it bodes well for the conspiracists.

CHANNELING CHEAP TRICK? MoveOn calls for surrender. But I think they just gave themselves away.

UPDATE: Bob Dole doesn’t like the ad:

It’s one thing to debate whether we should take the fight to the terrorists, but depicting an American soldier in effect surrendering in the battle against the terrorists is beyond the pale.

I cannot believe that John Kerry, who reminds us daily of his Vietnam service, would possibly approve the disgusting and demoralizing portrayal of American soldiers fighting for us in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world. . . .

This defeatist attitude undermines the great progress and sacrifices of our men and women in the military and the contributions of our allies who are fighting against terror and standing up for freedom around the world.

The politics of pessimism that is being pursued by John Kerry and the extreme liberals demonstrates they are consumed by the past with nothing to offer but attacks on the President’s agenda for creating a safer world.

Read the whole thing.

JOSH MARSHALL TAKES THE BAIT: President Bush gave a speech yesterday in which he equated membership in state militias with membership in the National Guard. That’s silly, and Josh Marshall points out the silliness of equating the two. (And here’s another example — I’ve got a commission as a Colonel in the Tennessee Militia, which may or may not still be valid since it’s signed by Lamar Alexander, and which at any rate amounts to no more than a certificate on my wall — but still, I’m not a member of the National Guard.)

But wait a minute. We’ve heard for years from the left that the Second Amendment only protects a right to arms on the part of the state militias, and that those, nowadays, are the same as the National Guard. (The Brady Campaign, for example, talks about “Today’s equivalent of a ‘well-regulated’ militia – the National Guard.”)

Watch as people pile on Bush for this statement, uttering quotable bits about the obvious distinction between state militias and the National Guard, which can be brought up in debates and court cases on the right to arms later.

To paraphrase Wilfred Brimley in Absence of Malice: “Mr. Rove, are you that smart?”

UPDATE: I wonder what self-described Second Amendment enthusiast John Kerry has to say about this question?

Just remember: “Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Hey, it looks like Kerry agrees with Bush:

For more than three centuries, as you know better than anyone, our National Guard has stood on the frontlines of freedom. The Guard fought in that first great revolution, and has defended our country ever since, here in America and around the world.

The official “National Guard” dates to the Dick Act of 1903 — so Kerry must be counting the militias. For more on this stuff, read this.

A HAYEKIAN PERSPECTIVE on why blogging works.

HOLMAN JENKINS: “The network didn’t just fall for fake documents; it reportedly used fake documents to pressure/entice its other ‘source,’ notorious Texas pol Ben Barnes, into publicly claiming he helped pull strings to get Mr. Bush into the Guard and giving CBS a ‘scoop.’ From a journalistic standpoint, that’s very, very bad — the kind of ‘mistake’ it’s hard to recover from.”

HEH: “If they were done in Word™, your defense is absurd.”

CBS RATINGS ARE PLUNGING: So much for the theory that this was a ratings-boosting stunt. This story also reports some growing unhappiness among affiliates, though I suspect that’s just starting to take off, as rather a lot of readers have been sending me copies of the complaint letters they’re sending to their local affiliates, but that’s just started since last night.

BILL ADAMS: “Rather doesn’t realize that with Knox’s testimony, he’s convicted himself. . . . But in context, her interview makes Rather’s fact-checking team look worse, not better.”

UPDATE: Jeff Goldstein: “Were I to stake my reputation as a world-class lover on the say-so of an ex-girlfriend’s 86-year old mother, you’d be justified in your skepticism. ”

JAMES LILEKS:

In any case, the whole “fake but accurate” line shows how tone-deaf these people are; it’s like saying a body in a pine box is “dead but lifelike.” It boggles, it really does: the story is true, the evidence is faked, but the evidence reflects the evidence we have not yet presented that proves our conclusion – ergo, we’re telling the truth. They just can’t give it up; they just can’t say the memos were typed by the guy in the “Dude, you’re getting a Dell!” commercial and leave it be, because that that puts the knife in the story regardless of what happened. So they keep going.

The lifelike corpse is CBS’s reputation. And it’s not looking all that lifelike anymore. . . .

David Hogberg fires up the crematorium with this dissection of Andrew Heyward’s statement. “The statement reflects an organization that is arrogant, bullheaded, and in denial. It is an organization whose credibility is shot, and whose reputation will soon lie in ashes.”

I would say “ouch,” but a dead body feels no pain.

JEEZ: Over 440,000 pageviews yesterday. No wonder the server seemed a bit slow.

UPDATE: To be honest, except for a little while last night, the server didn’t seem especially slow, and I had no idea of the traffic until I happened to look at the stats today. The Hosting Matters folks handle this so well that I’m blissfully unaware of server loads.

DIGITAL CAMERAS: Via DPreview.com, a link to a brochure for the forthcoming Nikon D2x, a 12.4 megapixel digital SLR. I want one already. . . .

Actually, since I’m getting really good 20×30 prints from the Nikon D70 that I already own, I don’t know that I need more. But it’s awfully cool.

What I’d really like is this Nikkor 12-24 zoom lens, but it’s kind of pricey. If anyone knows of a good collection of reviews on compatible lenses for the D70, drop me a line. (Please put “Lens” in the subject line, so it doesn’t get lost in the unbelievable flood of email I’m getting these days.)

Readers in or near New York might be interested in this photobloggers’ get-together at the Apple Store in Soho on September 30.

BLOOM COUNTY ON DAN RATHER: Some things don’t change.

UPDATE: More cartoon-related observations here. And, yes, this is becoming rather comic, in a Wile E. Coyote ongoing-disasters sort of way.

I WAS ON NPR’S ALL THINGS CONSIDERED YESTERDAY, talking about Ra^therGate. You can hear it by following the link and scrolling to the bottom, or by going here. Pajamas are mentioned.

They asked me about the wisdom of Congressional hearings. I said I was against them, as media self-policing (as opposed to CBS self-policing) seems to be working. That part didn’t make the broadcast, but I think it’s worth noting.

STRATEGYPAGE takes a three-year look back at the war:

After three years of the war on terror, the lack of a conventional “front line” or large battles, has made it difficult to easily determine who is winning. But a little effort reveals battles won and lost, and who is occupying what territory. Three years ago, al Qaeda had most of Afghanistan available for training camps and other facilities. There was even a “forged documents office” that operated openly in Kabul. Al Qaeda, or related organizations, operated extensively in over fifty countries, especially places like Indonesia, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Chechnya, Iraq and Western Europe. Over 70,000 people were actively involved in planning and carrying out attacks. And the number of attacks against American targets grew during the 1990s, starting with a bombing of the World Trade Center in New York in 1993. But al Qaeda was handled as a criminal matter until September 11, 2001. After that, it was war.

In three years, al Qaeda has been driven out of most of its sanctuaries. Initially, al Qaeda was very popular among Moslems, and the slaughter of thousands of infidels (non-Moslems) on September 11, 2001, caused spontaneous celebrations throughout the Moslem world. That celebratory mood has been slowly changing, as more and more Moslems see al Qaeda for what it really is. After the slaughter of children in southern Russia earlier this month, the Moslem media finally moved broadly against al Qaeda and its terror tactics. This is significant, for Islamic radical terrorists are nothing new in the Islamic world. There have been several outbreaks in the last few centuries. Such violence can be defeated, and always is. One of the key factors in defeating these outbreaks is the local media turning against the radicals. . . .

The terrorists have been forced to make their attacks in out-of-the-way places. With thousands of similar targets world wide, and hundreds of thousands of eager young men and women willing to join their cause, al Qaeda has been able to accomplish little.

A “forged documents office,” eh? And they want to destabilize U.S. elections. . . ? Hmm. Naw, couldn’t be.

There’s also this summary, somewhat more mixed, of what is going on in Iraq at the moment. There’s also more on Iraq in this post from yesterday. And David Warren has thoughts on the strategy in Fallujah:

The Americans have made one big mistake since entering Iraq. It was to make local peace deals in Fallujah, and elsewhere, which left the fox in charge of the hens.

The idea was not, however, as stupid as it now looks. It was a risk: that if you put a few old Saddamite officers, and tribal leaders with lapsed Saddamite connexions — the ones not currently wanted for war crimes — in charge of a town, they will know how to restore order. They will prevent it from becoming a staging area for terrorist hits elsewhere, because if that happened the Marines would be back. And psychologically, one is likely to earn the gratitude of your erstwhile enemy, if you recruit him when he is expecting to be shot.

The risk may have been worth taking, in hindsight, for what the U.S. learned from it. We now know the policy backfired badly. The territories put off-limits to U.S. and allied patrol became terror havens immediately, as the local Jihadis came out of hiding to celebrate an “American defeat” — even as the Marines, who had nearly exterminated them, were in the act of withdrawing, according to agreement.

Warren joins the list of those calling for a more vigorous approach:

Election or no election, the Americans must now undo their mistake. They must, regardless of casualties, retake every town in the Sunni Triangle, and clean each one out, properly. Or, go home beaten by the Jihad. There really isn’t a third option.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Max Boot says that spreading democracy has been shown to work, and that we need to move faster on that front, too.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The Belmont Club is looking at casualties in Iraq:

While these figures do not address all of its dimensions, I hope they provide some objective basis for bounding claims that are made. Based on the pattern of casualties, it is hard to reach the conclusion that Iraq is descending into anarchy or that the resistance is spreading uncontrollably. If that were true we would be seeing a different distribution of casualties. Combat in Iraq is complex politico-military phenomenon. Some aspects of the psychology and politics are covered in the CSIS Report. I hope to move onto other aspects tomorrow.

Read the whole thing.

ABC IS POINTING OUT RATHER’S SLIPPERINESS: “RATHER DOES NOT MENTION KNOX IS A DEMOCRAT.”

Mickey Kaus: “Judging from tonight’s televised non-retraction by CBS news chief Andrew (‘This is going to hold up’) Heyward, it looks as if CBS will continue to twist slowly, slowly in the wind.”

Mickey’s hope that this will somehow hurt Bush in the polls, however, seems ill-founded.

UPDATE: Dan Rather issues another challenge to his critics!

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Michael Richards emails:

What if the Swift Boat Vets had manufactured documents that proved John Kerry did not deserve his Silver Star? And they leaked them to Brit Hume at Fox News who rushed them on the air as part of an expose which included an extended interview with John O’Neill. And what if the left wing bloggers proved the documents to be false? And finally, what if Brit stubbornly stuck to his original story about the Silver Star and said, “The documents don’t have to be real because they accurately reflect the truth.”

How long do you think Brit would have kept his job?

Not very.

CBS HAS A NEW BLOG OF ITS OWN. The title says it all. . . .

UPDATE: Heh.

DRUDGE IS REPORTING: “WASH POST: Documents allegedly written by deceased officer that raised questions about Bush’s service with Texas National Guard bore markings showing they had been faxed to CBS News from a Kinko’s copy shop in Abilene, Texas… Developing…”

Hmm. What — or who– is in the Abilene area?

UPDATE: Here’s the Washington Post story:

There is only one Kinko’s in Abilene, and it is 21 miles from the Baird, Tex., home of retired Texas National Guard officer Bill Burkett, who has been named by several news outlets as a possible source for the documents.

That tends to support a lot of blogospheric speculation regarding Burkett.

More thoughts here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: On the other hand, several readers are skeptical of the Burkett connection, and suggest that it’s a bit too convenient. Stay tuned.

ERNEST MILLER has produced a savage Fisking of CBS’s latest statement.

UPDATE: It’s okay to plant evidence, if you really think the suspect is guilty, right? “If Dan Rather is CBS’s answer to Jayson Blair, Andrew Heyward is Howell Raines. Both must go.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Edward Hyde emails:

Dan Rather could have asked the secretary the make and model typewriter she used in her job.

All secretaries have this information locked forever in their memory.

It might have settled the question of forgery once and for all.

He may not have wanted to hear the answer.

WVLT, the CBS affiliate in Knoxville, isn’t showing 60 Minutes II. There’s some sort of movie on instead. (Thanks to Knoxville reader Steve Lewis for the tip.) I wonder if any other affiliates are doing the same?

UPDATE: Another reader emails: “Hey Glenn – just an update, the Charleston, SC CBS affilliate didn’t show 60 Minutes tonight either, although I managed to catch the fun on the Savannah, GA affiliate which we also get here.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: More on affiliates’ reactions here.

MORE: I don’t know about other stations, but a reader who works at a different television station in Knoxville says that 60 Minutes II was scheduled to be pre-empted all along.

CAYMAN HURRICANE UPDATE: According to Cayman Net News, the CEO of Cable & Wireless is calling for U.S. military intervention to deal with widespread looting.

This surprises me. Cayman isn’t as orderly as it used to be (crime was virtually unknown when I first visited almost 20 years ago) but I didn’t expect much in the way of looting. I will note that the British-style near-complete gun prohibition makes dealing with looters much more difficult than it is in the United States.

David Radulski has more.

“FAKE BUT ACCURATE” — that seems to be the gist of this longer CBS statement, via Drudge.

UPDATE: Sullivan is giving them hell on Paula Zahn, and says bringing in the secretary is an admission of fraud. Howard Kurtz pretty much agrees: The underlying facts have been “totally overshadowed” by their handling of the story, and it’s a “huge black eye” for Rather and CBS.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Kurtz halfheartedly defends CBS against Andrew’s charges of political motivation, but says it’s hard to understand why they’d blow their credibility on a story with such obvious problems. He can’t understand why they didn’t spend another week on it. Andrew repeats that it was Bush-hatred that blinded them to the story’s weakness.

ALLAH LOOKS AT the Dan Rather / Michael Moore connection.

ANDREW SULLIVAN will be on Paula Zahn tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern. He’ll be talking about Ra^therGate with Howard Kurtz.

HURRICANEBLOGGING: Beyond Salvage is blogging from Mobile. So is Weatherbug. Susanna Cornett is blogging, as is Brendan Loy. And Mike Roetto is blogging from New Orleans.

UPDATE: Red Coyote is hurricaneblogging from Ft. Walton Beach, and observes: “Can we get rid of ‘hunker down,’ please? I know it fits the situation, but ohmigawd, with Charley, and Frances, and now Ivan, it’s been beat into the ground.”

It fits the situation with Dan Rather, too.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More New Orleans hurricaneblogging. Plus, praise for drunken trannie hookers. Because, after all, New Orleans in a hurricane is still New Orleans!

WAITING FOR RATHER: Jeff Quinton is liveblogging the non-news-conference.

UPDATE: This is a statement? Give me a break. [LATER: Reader Joe Woodbury writes: "The best part is the president of CBS news can't spell! I guess that's proof they didn't use Microsoft Word!'] What’s next? This?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Hey, is it just me, or does this look like Dan Rather? (Nope, it’s not just me).

More thoughts on the statement here. And reader Glen Hughes spots some weasel-wording: “Note the memos have officially gone from authentic to ‘accurate’.” And this is funny.

Finally, reader Jefferson Perkins suggests: “Perhaps they should be stripped of their status as a ‘news organization’ for purposes of McCain – Feingold?”

Heh.

DAN RATHER: Apparently, still wriggling on the hook. Forget it, Dan. You’re caught.

UPDATE: I wonder if we’ll see more of these?

KNOXVILLE LOW-POWER RADIO STATION KFAR has been shut down by the FCC for unlicensed broadcasting. Given the FCC’s dishonesty and foot-dragging in licensing low-power radio, it’s hard to justify this sort of thing. More on this here, here, and especially here.

ERIC HOFFER on Ra^therGate and the blogosphere.

Well, pretty much.

UPDATE: Reader Brian Buchanan emails:

Someone at CBS News should be taking notes for the inevitable business school case study … How CBS News followed the Arthur Anderson and Enron road to disaster.

Yeah, probably so.

WHO KNEW WHAT, WHEN? Naturally, I find out stuff about goings-on in Tennessee, involving a Kerry lawyer I’ve had dinner with, from an Australian blogger.

UPDATE: More here. Be sure to read the update at the bottom. People sometimes miss those.

DRUDGE is now reporting that CBS has postponed its announcement until 5. Jonah Goldberg has doubts about this PR strategy:

Tell an already blood-hungry media that you will come out with a statment and then keep them waiting for hours. This is exactly the sort of crisis management and public relations that looks great on the resume. Maybe they should pee in all the cans of Mountain Dew at the press conference before they let the journalists in. Thaat will really win friends.

I think they’ve already peed in the media’s Mountain Dew. But I don’t think this represents strategy. I think it represents the kind of infighting that will make a fascinating story at some point in the future. And the good news is that, if there’s infighting, it means that there might just be somebody at CBS who cares about credibility.

THE BOSTON GLOBE has retracted its erroneous Bouffard headline, which misrepresented his views on the authenticity of the CBS documents. This marks a success for Bill at INDCJournal.

(Via Ace).

I DON’T KNOW HOW MUCH THIS MEANS, but reader George Dunham notes that Viacom stock seems to have taken a modest tumble today. Could there be a reason other than the troubles at its CBS holding? Note the sharp drop just before 3:00.

UPDATE: A reader says that Viacom has other things going on that might affect the stock price. I won’t bother to list them here, but of course that’s entirely possible. It’s also suggested that putting the announcement off until 5 is designed to let bad news hit after the market closes. Could be.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Related thoughts here, from Professor Bainbridge.

MORE: A reader emails:

This is my train of logic:

1. Once CBS admits that these were forgeries, then there is no journalistic ethic preventing them from naming the source of the documents — actually the source should be exposed.

2. As long as CBS is “investigating” the documents, then they haven’t admitted to the forgery and they can protect their source’s identity.

3. Therefore, the source is so politically explosive that it’s worth the permanent damage to their brand and their news credibility. Who or what could possibly be worth that?

Janet Tague, Stamford CT. Not a political operative. Actually a registered Democrat (although I voted for Bush last time and most certainly will again now).

There’s a lot of that going around all of a sudden. . . .

NEW THEORY: “You can almost hear Jon Lovitz doing his Tommy Flanagan bit: ‘Yeah, yeah. They’re not forgeries, they’re, uhhhhh . . . replicas! Yeah, replicas — that’s the ticket!’”

UPDATE: Reader Houston Foppiano emails:

Rather’s New York Observer interview, where he seems to be utterly frustrated by the fact that people are focusing on the authenticity of the documents, rather than their “content,” reminds me of possibly my all time favorite episode of the Simpsons – “Homer’s Enemy.” If you will remember, Frank Grimes becomes increasingly obsessed with the fact that no one seems to be bothered by Homer’s incompetence at the nuclear plant, and tries to set him up by tricking him into entering the “build a model nuclear plant contest” meant to be entered by children. When Homer enters – and wins – and no one seems to mind that he’s competing against children. Grimey loses it and goes nuts, ultimately grabbing exposed power cables and getting fried.

Rather is heading down this path whether he was responsible for the original deceit of the documents or not. He can’t understand why no one is getting upset about his “blockbuster” story that Bush might not have met all his ANG requirements, and it’s making him crazy. He has completely missed the point that most people already assume Bush got preferential treatment, and was not the most repsponsible person in his youth – AND THEY DON’T CARE. They’ve already put that into their voting calculus, and if it didn’t hurt Bush when he was relatively unknown in 2000, it certainly ain’t gonna after he’s been Commander in Chief for four years. Why someone would put their credibility and career on the line to make this politically insignificant point continues to baffle me.

Me, too.

RICH, BLOGGY GOODNESS: The second-anniversary Carnival of the Vanities is up. Don’t miss it.

JAY ROSEN OFFERS “A Stark Message for the Legacy Media.”

In related news, U.S. Air has filed for bankruptcy. (And yes, it is related.)

Meanwhile, Carroll Morse offers further lessons:

CBS has set itself up for special scorn in this matter. The blogosphere’s complaint is not just that they may be pursuing an anti-Bush agenda, the complaint is that they have abandoned basic reporting — the core function of their organization — in an attempt to manipulate the agenda. Reasonable and answerable questions, including provenance of the documents, the precise qualifications of their experts, and the criteria used to establish authenticity have gone unreported, have been sluggishly reported, or have been sloppily reported and debunked in just a few hours.

Ultimately, CBS fundamentally altered the nature of the editorial trade-off. Instead grudgingly adjusting the level of reported detail out of economic necessity, they willingly sacrificed the quality of their reporting in their attempt to manipulate the agenda.

Read the whole thing.

FROM THE OPINIONJOURNAL POLITICAL DIARY:

“If my forgeries looked as bad as the CBS documents, it would have been, ‘Catch Me In Two Days’” — ex-forger and con man Frank Abagnale, made famous by Leonardo DiCaprio in the film Catch Me If You Can.

Plus, I’ll bet that Dan Rather didn’t get to sleep with Jennifer Garner.

UPDATE: Mike Krempasky writes that this is where the Abagnale quote first appeared.

HERE’S SOME HELPFUL ADVICE FOR CBS: “A source lies to you, and you find it out, you burn him. Period.”

(Via Tom Maguire, who has lots of interesting stuff.)

UPDATE: Still no promised CBS statement. A reader emails:

CBS is buying time with this stonewall tactic. I think that THEY’RE TRYING TO FORGE THE FORGERIES. They know that the presentation of mechanically produced exact replicas will weld their case against Bush.

I’m very afraid that some company with linotype capability is working on this right now. If these “forged forgeries” show up who would be left to denounce them but a bunch of right-wing lunatics in pajamas?

Or am I overly suspicious?

I’d think so. But then, just a couple of weeks ago I would have thought it unthinkable that CBs would go ahead with obviously forged documents.

But, honestly, I don’t think anyone’s going to take any suddenly discovered new evidence from CBS very seriously. It’s clear that they went ahead with reckless disregard for obvious problems with the Killian letters, and as Beldar notes: “Nothing — not even Lt. George W. Bush using TANG aircraft to traffic in cocaine sales to minors — could justify what CBS News has done.”

Is CBS waiting for Ivan to change the subject? I don’t think that will work.