Leaving Dan Standing

A lot of commentary has been written this week regarding the release of the CBS report on Dan Rather / 60 minutes "memogate" forged document debacle. The report finds plenty at fault with the reporting of the story, and four CBS executives were fired or resigned in it's wake. The report also refuses to adequately address the main issues of the story (press bias, the authenticity of the forged documents,etc., and is therefore flawed. The main outcome is that it leaves Dan Rather damaged but still standing.

The most insightful editorials on the topic come from Tony Blankley, who points out that the "independent panel" is on the payroll of CBS and is certainly not independent (my thoughts exactly) and from Jay Bryant, who picks up on the angle of leaving Rather standing in his excellent piece "Not finding bias, or ducks" on towhhall.com. Bryant says:

Dick Thornburgh thereby joins the growing fraternity of establishment Republican report writers who have proven themselves unwilling to rake any real muck, call a spade a spade, a liberal a liberal or a bucket of hogwash a bucket of hogwash.

Other notables in this group include Thomas Kean, chairman of the 9/11 Commission and John Danforth, author of the official report on the Branch Dravidian disaster. Frankly, Ken Starr belongs in the wimp club, too, and I don't care what it says in Bill Clinton's library.

Bryant is right on the money, and he's hit on one of my pet peeves as a Republican over the years. Our Republican leadership has two traits that you can always count on:

- they fall on their swords and resign when they've misbehaved. Examples include Nixon, Newt Gingrich, Bob Livingston, etc. They don't have to be forced out of office.

- they always let Democrats off the hook. Examples, including those cited by Bryant above, abound. Republicans, especially U.S. Senators, are too civil to pull the trigger when they have the evidence. They simply let it fade away. In other words, they fail to do justice.

The downside of this second tendency is that they leave the Democrat misbehavors (Clinton, Reno, etc) still standing to claim innocence and victimhood. We all saw it in spades with Bill Clinton's autobiography. It's clear that he has no shame or remorse for his misdeeds and considers himself a persecuted man vindicated by history. As I've said before, I blame the Republicans in the U.S. Senate for leaving him standing to make that ridiculous claim.

And now, it's happened again. Dan Rather, who in my opinion misused the resources of a national network news organization to broadcast a one-sided smear piece using forged documents in a blatant attempt to affect a United States Presidential election and to defeat a sitting President for political reasons, will be left standing. His underlings took the hit and were fired. Rather, who is still on the air every evening, will be allowed to retire gracefully.

Wait a minute. That would be the result if we relied only on the MSM and their trumped up "independent report", and another Republican who couldn't pull the trigger. However, it's a new game now and the bloggers are not done yet. This story is not dead yet.