Free Republic

"Certainly this isn't the first Hollywood production done in by the competing corporate and personal interests that funded it (consider the unspoken implications—both commercial and propagandistic—of the film's last-minute title change from Flight 93 to United 93), but it is the only one I've come across where the families of those onboard gave it their full-on approval. Not all the families, of course. All evidence suggests that the terrorists' relatives were left entirely out of the creative process, an action which goes a way toward revealing the film's hagiographic bias (how easy it then becomes to turn victims into heroes...

Before Dan Rather signed off March 9 after 24 years as a news anchor for CBS, conservative "netizens" already were cheering the man they believe led to the tidal wave of criticism that forced Rather to leave his post a year early: Atlanta attorney Harry W. MacDougald. MacDougald, 46, who has been with Atlanta's Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice PLLC since 2002, was the blogger "Buckhead" who first started a cascade of criticism about a report Rather aired Sept. 8 on CBS's "60 Minutes II" about President George W. Bush's Air National Guard service.