Shep goes off on rants every once in a while renewing my impression that he's not the brightest bulb in the Fox fixture. I remember he was making fun of a hurricane evacuation when the storm veered off. That was VERY irresponsible and could lead to people ignoring the next warning when it doesn't veer. He is a youngster and tends to engage mouth before engaging brain.
Having lived through Hurricane Betsy (we were awaken in the middle of the night by neighbors telling us to get out due to rising water -- eight feet of water in the house the next morning) I can relate. That's the same kind of irresponsibility we're seeing from the people claiming that the terror alerts are politically driven. When the time comes that we need to heed those alerts, people will tune them out because the media told them it's all an election ploy.
Ever wonder why Shep didn't cover the Iraq War (the closest he got was Amman, Jordan, for about a week), why's he's absent on election night, and rarely leads coverage of breaking news (unless it happens when he's on the air)? That's because, for all his broadcasting skills, Shep is a lightweight, a teleprompter reader, the Ron Burgandy of Fox News. He has a certain, impatient style that works on the Fox Report, but that's about it. Ol' Shep better hope that CNN and PMSNBC never get their act together; if he ever had any real competition, he'd be back on his way to Ft. Meyers, chasing fire trucks on Action News, or whatever they call the local newscast down there...