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I am warming up to watch the documentary Rather, celebrating the career of the disgraced former CBS News anchor. It is to be aired this coming Wednesday on Netflix. Apparently having access to a screener for media critics, the Star Tribune’s Neal Justin found the documentary to be wanting (“when it comes to the stumbles, like walking off the set when a tennis match went long, the legendary broadcaster goes missing”). Speaking of “stumbles,” we have the matter of Rathergate. However, “stumble” doesn’t quite capture it. “Disgrace,” “disaster,” and “fraud” are more like it. Award-winning CBS News producer Mary Mapes...

On September 11, 2004, I posted a thread here in the P.M. entitled "Two More 'Killian' Documents". It was my first post and it received significant viewing. It has come to my attention thanks to Otto, a commenter at the Beldar Blog, that the story has now been verified by the Washington Monthly. Links here. http://beldar.blogs.com/beldarblog/2004/09/rasupthsupergat_1.html (Search for "Otto") washingtonmonthly.com I initially thought that the White House must have given the major news media outlets all six documents but as it turns out, CBS never gave the White House the six documents (if they have all six), just the four...

The broadcast network morning shows put a much higher priority Thursday morning on hyping the Jerry Killian memos as damaging to President Bush than they did Friday morning to exploring the possibility that the memos were forged. At the top of Thursday's Good Morning America, Charles Gibson trumpeted: "New questions about President Bush's military record. Did family friends pull strings? Did he get special treatment? And did he disobey orders?" While GMA gave more time Friday than CBS and NBC combined to the forgery possibility, George Stephanopoulos gave credence to how "a lot of Democrats suspect this was a set...

The signatures on the CBS documents do not appear to be authentic. Check out the two signatures below, courtesy of Michele Catalano of The Command Post. The one on the left is an actual signature of Lt. Col. Jerry Killian. The one on the right is from one of the CBS documents. It's not even close; in fact, it doesn't even look like the person who signed it made any attempt to copy Killian's signature: Since I posted this, a number of readers have written to disagree with me--they think the signature on the right is a crude effort at...

February 14, 2004 Files Offer Glimpse of Bush After CollegeBy RICHARD W. STEVENSON ASHINGTON, Feb. 13 ? It was February 1968, just a few months before he would graduate from Yale, and George W. Bush's plan to enlist in the National Guard had hit a snag. According to records released by the White House on Friday night, Mr. Bush reported to an Air Force base in Massachusetts for a medical examination on Feb. 21 of that year and was deemed "not qualified" because of problems with his teeth. So Mr. Bush visited a dentist in New Haven, Conn., on...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Hundreds of pages of documents that the White House said comprise President Bush's entire military record offer no new answers to the election-year questions that have swirled around his Vietnam-era service. Democrats who have led the criticism greeted Friday's release of documents with skepticism. "Each revelation of material from the Bush White House has raised more questions than it has answered," said Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Debra DeShong. "It remains to be seen if these newest documents will provide any answers." The White House distributed the two-inch stack of papers, and allowed reporters a brief look through...