Forget, for a moment, about whether there is some .0000001% chance that an officer in the Texas Air National Guard would have used a $12,000 typesetter to dash of a few lines in a memo. The fact I have been waiting for someone to confront Rather with is this:

Mr. Lively said he had proof that Col. Walter “Buck” Staudt — who supposedly forced an underling to favorably alter reports on Mr. Bush’s activities as a member of the Guard in the early 1970s — had been honorably discharged nearly 18 months before the date of the memos, purportedly written by Lt. Col. Jerry Killian.

Powerline was already wondering about that two days ago (thanks to an astute reader). Now that the major media has picked up on it, I'd like to hear what CBS has to say. Isn't this the sort of background information that a major news network like CBS would routinely check? One would think so. It appears their rush to air damning information in favor of the Democrats prevented them from performing a simple journalistic maneuver.

Already CBS' peers have joined in their defense. This morning, Tim Russert speculated that Karl Rove is the one responsible for planting documents that obviously would be outed as fakes. Assuming that is true (and ignoring the fact that the documents were in John Kerry's campaign's hands for several weeks prior to Rather's blunder), what does it say about CBS that they would be so easily taken in?

Powerline makes an additional point: We can no longer assume old media will not implode its own journalistic ethics to score political points. I think this is an excellent point and it has been true for some time (read Bias and Arrogance by Bernie Goldberg). When truth in media takes a backseat to political ideology, journalistic standards disintegrate and old media is dead.