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DanRather to Resign 24 yrs after

The veteran anchor has been under fire in recent months for his role in a ''60 Minutes Wednesday'' story that questioned President Bush (news - web sites)'s service in the National Guard, which turned out to based on allegedly forged documents.
Rather, 73, said he will continue to work for CBS, as a correspondent for both editions of ''60 Minutes.''
He made no mention of the National Guard story in announcing the change, saying he had agreed with CBS executives last summer that after the Nov. 2 election would be the right time to leave.
''I have always been and remain a `hard news' investigative reporter at heart,'' he said. ''I now look forward to pouring my heart into that kind of reporting full time.''
CBS did not mention a potential successor for Rather, who has been at CBS for more than four decades and made his name as a reporter covering the Nixon White House.
''He has been an eyewitness to the most important events for more than 40 years and played a crucial role in keeping the American public informed about those events and their larger significance,'' CBS Chairman Leslie Moonves said.
A report on what went wrong with the National Guard story, from a two-man independent investigative panel, is due imminently. Rather anchored the story and initially defended it when it was criticized.
Rather's announcement comes eight days before his NBC rival, Tom Brokaw, steps down as ''Nightly News'' anchor and is replaced by Brian Williams.
The triumvirate of Rather, Brokaw and ABC's Peter Jennings has ruled network news for more than two decades. Rather dominated ratings after taking over for Cronkite during the 1980s, but he was eclipsed first by Jennings and then by Brokaw. His evening news broadcast generally runs a distant third in the ratings each week.
His hard news style was mixed with a folksy Texan style that led him to rattle off homespun phrases on Election Night. But odd incidents dogged him: In 1987 he walked off the set, leaving CBS with dead air, to protest a decision to let a tennis match delay the news. And his claim that he was accosted on the street by a strange man saying, ''What's the frequency, Kenneth?'' led rock band R.E.M (news - web sites). to write a song with the same name.

-----------------------RATHER WON?’T BE MISSED BY AMERICA!!!

By taking over from WalterCronkite

THE ISLAND TIME FORGOT

What with Natalie Jacobson, Pat O'Brien, Bob Arnott, Tim Russert, and The New York Times's COO Janet Robinson already on the island, Nantucket's become quite the in spot for media types. The newest members of the club are Chris Matthews and his TV anchor wife, Kathleen, who just bought a place for $4.35 million. The couple are introduced to the neighbors in the latest issue of the Nantucket Times -- they're on the cover of Bruce Percelay's mag -- and the ''Hardball'' host even says a few interesting things. About Teresa Heinz Kerry, he remarks, ''She's a very beautiful woman, very attractive in a lot of ways and very charming. But I'm a sixties guy. I would have a totally different attitude towards her than a guy living in Ohio.'' As for John Kerry, Matthews, who was a top aide to Tip O'Neill back in the day, predicts the state's junior senator will try again in 2008. ''I think he runs again because of the narrowness of the options if the Democrats don't turn on him the way they did on Al [Gore.] I don't think they're going to do that. Nobody turned on Stevenson. Nobody turned on Humphrey. Republicans never turned on Goldwater. You don't have to destroy your champion.''

By IN THE LAND OF THE LIBERALS

The word liberal has a bad odor

The word ?“liberal?” has a bad odor to it these days, a situation which the American left blames on conservatives, accusing them of ?“demonizing?” it in the public mind. From their perspective, the average citizen is incapable of coming to an independent judgment, having observed decades of failed liberal policies.

Instead, it must be evil conservatives who have propagandized the public into believing American liberalism is a failed ideology. The liberals?’ underlying contempt for the ability of the ordinary man and woman to understand reality and make meaningful choices is once again revealed.

Liberals are not exactly pragmatists, but they have discovered that burnishing the liberal label is a lost cause. So they have adopted a new brand name for their politics, ?“progressivism.?”

A large insurance company (whose principal owner is a major funder of MoveOn.org and other left wing causes) is named Progressive, so the label is already supported by a fair amount of advertising aimed at generating a friendly image. Probably, this is a coincidence. But the fact is that most people have not given much thought as to the real meaning of the term progressive.

Capitalism itself is an engine of progress. Entrepreneurs continuously search for new and better ways of providing the needs and wants of potential customers. The ?“creative destruction?” which Joseph Schumpeter celebrated sweeps away the old and inefficient through the engine of competitive markets.

The left has no use for this sort of progress. There is no room in it for the wise and all-powerful hand of government, which is what the left is really seeking to augment.
Buried in the term ?“progressive?” (as the left uses it) is the assumption that history is moving inexorably, even if by fits and starts, in a certain direction, one that is understandable to those who possess the secret decoder ring. This is why government is so necessary. It alone can bring order to the chaos and messiness which individuals, left to their own devices, impose on their masters, and on the intellectuals who see so clearly what the rest of us cannot perceive.

You know code they have mastered. It was explained in Das Kapital. Capitalism is but a stage. At the time when feudalism needed to be destroyed, capitalism was a progressive force. But by the late Nineteenth Century, the elect were able to see that it was a malign force, impoverishing the proletariat, and wasting too many resources on needless goods and services, at least as need and worth were understood by Marxists. Capitalism became, and remains, bad.

Progressives are still stuck, conceptually and politically, in the era of railways, steel, sewing machines and coal tar-based chemicals as high technology. The era when labor unions were the defenders of oppressed workers pressed against the margin of starvation. Their current day protectionist policies, as well as their adherence to unions which have become bastions of restriction on free exchange, reveal this nostalgic set of priorities quite clearly.

Every child goes through a stage like this, where every part of the body is to be explored as an instrument of pleasure, before the customs and taboos of society are imposed from without. Sigmund Freud labeled this stage ?“polymorphous perversity.?”

Most people travel through this stage and attain normal adulthood, but some remain in this stage throughout their lives.
Progressives seek to take us all back to that stage, overcoming the repression that Freud outlined as necessary to move past it. In a very real sense, progressives today want to take us back to a pre-adult stage of life.
I therefore propose that we rectify the name of this political tendency, dropping the label progressive in favor of the more accurate term: regressive. They are the regressives.


By left blames on conservatives