Just watched Jay Rockefeller tell a reporter that what CBS did was nothing because the president is just misleading us. Anybody think this dipstick has a twisted view of reality?

Um, yeah.

I dunno the fact that he says he burned the originals makes me think he forged them, you would never burn originals. And then tell CBS to authenticate them? He's a nutbar.

But my big question is why did USAToday wait until now to reveal him? Out of courtesy to CBS? That seems farfetched?

Allah been on the USAToday memo angle for like 10+ days. They've known all this time.

Everyone celebrate! Either CBS News will pay millions to settle or everyone involved in this thing gets called before the court. I'm guessing that Mr. Burkett will no longer be a 'broke rancher'. And good for him.

BTW, Kerry-Edwards has lost 12 days of news coverage to this. Right about the time this fades away the new SBVFT ad will come out. Good call guys. I wasn't sure there could be a worse month in campaigning than August, but September is worse. Vote Kerry-Edwards, the Arthur-Anderson to CBS's Enron.

The problem with a lawsuit is that it gives cover to any CBS efforts to limit the range or depth of their own and other's investigation into what happened and how far it goes (as in DNC involvement). They can now claim that they cannot comment, or answer questions, or reveal any progress in their internal investigation on advice of counsel. The public might still be outraged, but it does seem to be the acceptable reaction to a lawsuit.
FWIW: I am not a lawyer.

mikem:

True, but if this is anything like OJ, Kobe, Peterson, etc. lawyers like to leak their side of the story.

“ At 11:59 p.m. on the night of the broadcast, a poster on the conservatives’ Web site Free Republic, going by the name of Buckhead, said the memos had typographical issues and spacing problems and could not have been created by a typewriter available in 1972.”

When did the Free Republic become “the conservatives’ Web site”. Alas, more spin, I fear. I suspect that these people are going to try to pin the fake documents on the Republicans. Now we’ve got this shadowy source that put the docs in Burkett’s hands. Could have been a Republican operative, right? Here’s a mentally unstable, avowed Bush hater who will most surely pass along anything he “finds” to the Kerry people. Who better to dupe into passing off the fakes?

And by 11:59 (the very same day!), we have a mysterious “conservative” who has already determined that the documents are fake because such a type writer wasn’t available in 1972. How could he have possibly known what typewriters were available back then that so quickly?

Yes, I know this is just a rehash of the gibberish of the most loony of the wingbat conspiracy theorist types. But now we have the words put out in print. As we have seen, they are now fair game to be cited, quoted, and disbursed.

Part of the stonewalling by CBS was surely an effort to buy time to work up some strategies. “The Republicans did it” theory is so far fetched, that they surely can’t expect to convince many people that its true. But like any good lawyer, they are probably hoping to establish some sort of remotely plausible explanation, with the idea that creating reasonable doubt is good enough in this situation.

jmaster---re conservative web site viz. free Republic.

good catch.

that is a typo and I have asked our copy desk to look at it.
my original copy said the conservative web site. Obviously, the apostrophe denotes some form of ownership, which is not the case. I suspect a very human error in a long proofing process.

Thanks Rod. And what a great way to avoid the being painted with the Dan Rather brush. You guys must really be on red alert right now (so to speak).

Wouldn't it be great if Burkett had audio tapes of his discussions with CBS and Joe Lockhard