The Media Vultures Rip Up Rathers Carcass

The Inquirer leaps on the Dan Must Go! bandwagon:

Memo to Dan: It's time to go.
The unforced error served up by CBS News about President Bush's service in the National Guard is not the end of mainstream journalism as we know it. But it ought to spell the end of Dan Rather's career.
As mistakes go, this one was colossal. CBS and Rather rushed pell-mell to broadcast apparently bogus memos, which purported to show Bush had disobeyed a direct order to take a physical exam in the National Guard in the 1970s.
We now know the network aired the story despite warnings from documents analysts that the memos might be phony. The source of the documents, retired National Guard official Bill Burkett, finally admitted this week that he lied to CBS about where he obtained the memos. CBS News officials still cannot satisfy themselves about the documents' origins.
If CBS News is to salvage its credibility, Rather must go. Whether or not his producer did most of the prep work for this report, Rather put his weighty seal of approval on the story. Such carelessness by a veteran journalist, especially on a high-profile story about a sitting president in the heat of a campaign, has irreparably damaged Rather's credibility. His apology Monday night was overdue.
Viewers are now left to wonder whether a veteran anchor was blinded by competitive juices or, worse and more unlikely, motivated by partisan bias. That kind of taint won't wash off, even in a hurricane.

They couldn't help themselves when it came to slamming Bush though:

But don't let the smoke of this blunder utterly obscure the story beneath. There is little doubt that Bush received preferential treatment to get into the National Guard so he could avoid more dangerous service in Vietnam. After doing so, he went missing for many months during his six-year commitment. Apparently, at the time, he was a somewhat aimless twenty-something who was years away from settling down and becoming the man who would become president. All this, which was known in 2000, should hardly matter, were it not for the screaming hypocrisy of Bush supporters throwing mud on John F. Kerry's decorated service in Vietnam.
Whether Bush's Guard duty matters much to you or not, the most pressing question has to be why so much energy and ink are being lavished on what these candidates did during a war that ended 30 years ago, rather than what they've done, and would do, about the urgent quagmire in Iraq.
The best thing might be a moratorium on the distracting phrases Swift boat and Texas National Guard for the rest of the campaign.

A moratorium on free speech? Is that what the Inquirer advocates? This is what McCain Feingold has wrought. 527 groups can operate and say whatever they wish with little impunity. As I recall, the Inqy supported McCain-Feingold. You reap what you sow.