Rather Gone

He's retiring from the anchor job in March. Yet, he'll continue on 60 Minutes, twice a week, the very platform from which he launched his final biased broadside at Bush. Huh?

And where's the results of that outside investigation CBS initiated? I think we all can guess the answer. NRO's Jim Geraghty says:

There's no way CBS will face the music and admit that the "60 Minutes II" story was a cheap-shot, amateur, sloppy, partisan, nasty, half-witted bit of hackery and that the guys in pajamas ran rings around them. If it was, they wouldn't be letting Rather stay on to keep doing "60 Minutes II" reports.

And they wouldn't be delaying his "Evening News" departure until March.

No, the arrogant suits at CBS are going to ignore the hard, accurate work of the blogs, the scolding from other media, the blatant culture of bias, cynicism, and disregard for the facts that has taken root in the news division. To face the music would be too hard.

It's fitting that the Nixon-hating Rather ends his journalism career at the center of a massive cover-up.

More:

The New York Times has more details on the investigation. It's discouraging:

The inquiry's two panelists, Louis D. Boccardi, the former chief executive of The Associated Press, and Dick Thornburgh, a former United States attorney general, have interviewed dozens of people - from the highest echelons of CBS News to its rank and file, as well as outside it - and are expected to submit their report to senior network executives early next month. Among the central questions they are examining is why Mr. Rather, who anchored the segment, and Mary Mapes, the producer who shepherded it, were so convinced of the authenticity of four memorandums purportedly drawn from the personal files of Mr. Bush's Vietnam-era squadron commander.

It hardly requires three months to answer that question--because they wanted Bush to lose!