This story pretty much does it. Bad day for CBS.

Apparently cowed by a piece earlier today about their absence from the CBS News story, Columbia Journalism Review‘s Campaign Desk has posted an explanation. Steve Lovelady writes:

The short answer to the question is, we’re not in the business of saying, “You may be a bad boy; drink your medicine.” We’re in the business of saying “You are a bad boy; drink your medicine.” And, as of this moment, despite the flurry of charges and counter-charges, it’s not clear whether CBS has been had by some undercover operative intent on smearing the president, or whether the network itself is the victim of a smear campaign.

You see, they have no idea what the truth is. CBS might be involved in a hoax. CBS might be the victim of a vicious right-wing smear. The whole thing is–what’s the word?–inconclusive! If the people at Campaign Desk are guilty of anything, it’s that they’re too fair-minded to get caught up in this hasty, rash, ugly business.

I believe them!

And until someone shows me a videotape of the forger sitting at his Dell, typing the documents, hitting print, taking the documents off the laserprinter, Xeroxing them, and handing them to Dan Rather, CJR is going to continue to uphold their standards of fairness and decency!

Of course, it wouldn’t hurt to do a little reporting on this stuff, would it? After all, there are actual facts involved in the story which a fair-minded organization might try to chase down. Oh never mind.

One other question for Lovelady: Why did CJR ignore the AP no-boo story last week, too? [Duh . . . Fairness and decency.–ed Right!]

Update 4:59 p.m.: This post is probably too mean. Let me be clear: I really like Campaign Desk. It’s part of my daily reading. We kid because we love.

Now that the CBS News documents have been proven beyond a reasonable doubt to be forgeries, it’s time to start wondering where the forgeries came from. This is not an academic exercise–the origin of the forgeries will probably determine whether or not CBS comes clean.

The universe of people who could have created the forgeries is relatively small. Creating them required an intense command of the details of Bush’s National Guard service and a familiarity with the known literature and documentation. It required time and patience. Who would have the necessary tools, information, and inclination? Three groups immediately come to mind:

(1) The Democratic National Committee and/or Kerry campaign. The DNC and Kerry campaign have opposition research offices which could have fabricated the documents fairly easily. The Washington Prowler reports that an unnamed CBS producer thinks they might have gotten the documents from the Kerry campaign, but this is hardly definitive. In truth, if would be terribly dangerous for any official Democrat to get involved in forgery. It is difficult to believe that any professional political hand would take such a risk.

(2) An unofficial Democratic hack. The world is full of one-time political operatives–people like Sidney Blumenthal–who aren’t bound by official duties, have equal access to documents, and have good access to high-level media Pooh-Bahs. (Note to Lawyers: I’m not suggesting Blumenthal is behind this! I’m just using him to illustrate a class of people.) These people are also, on the whole, more politically rabid than the folks who work directly for the party. Don’t forget, it was Susan Estrich was exclaimed, “You have to fight fire with fire, mud with mud, dirt with dirt.” That was on September 1, while the CBS story was well in the works (the Post reported this morning that CBS has had the documents “for more than a month”).

(3) Someone connected with the Texas Air National Guard. Presumably down in Texas there is a finite number of anti-Bush people who have ties to the Texas Air National Guard—people like Robert W. Strong. (Note to Lawyers: I’m not suggesting Strong is behind this! I’m just using him to illustrate a class of people.) Power Line has an interesting post on Strong, who’s role in the CBS story seems unclear, except that he’s the last man standing on the question of the documents’ veracity. Says CBS: “Robert Strong was an administrative officer for the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam years. He knew Jerry Killian, the man credited with writing the documents. And paper work, like these documents, was Strong’s specialty. He is standing by his judgment that the documents are real.”

If someone like Strong is behind the forgery, there’s a good chance CBS will come clean eventually. CBS has been placed in the position not simply of having been duped, but of continuing to facilitate the fraud. That seems untenable.

Unless, of course, the truth is worse. As things stand, CBS can avoid revealing the source of the documents because they maintain an obligation to confidentiality. But that obligation collapses once you admit the documents are forged. If CBS admits the truth, then they have to reveal the source.

People around the web are expecting Rather to fall any minute. That depends on who would go down with him.

A belated welcome to Duane over at Radio Blogger, good to have you onboard.

Holy publicity stunts! The scaling of Buckingham Palace by a man dressed as Batman yesterday was apparently done to bring awareness to fathers who demand access rights to their children (presumably after losing a custody battle). Thirty-two-year-old Jason Hatch, a decorator, climbed the ledge of a first-floor balcony at the palace, hung a banner, and kept police at bay for six hours before agreeing to step aboard a cherry-picker truck and face questioning. Of greater concern was Hatch’s ability to evade security and pose a potential threat to the royal family, who was not present at that time. His sidekick, David Pyke, dressed as Robin, did not fare as well and was apprehended after a short time. “It was unbelievably easy,” Pyke told the Daily Telegraph. “We used a ladder to get on to the roof of a palace building which was just [10m] from the road. The only security was [120cm] fence. I had a bag with me, there could have been anything in there, explosives or anything.” Too bad he didn’t have a utility belt.

Richard Cohen I don’t get (pace JVL, who had a kind word for him last week). The Washington Post columnist seems to judge the credibility of accusations by how repellent they make Bush out to be. It didn’t matter that Bush never justified the war in Iraq by charging the Saddam Hussein played a role in the 9/11 attacks. For Cohen to pummel this strawman in column after column, it was apparently enough that this particular slander made Bush out to be a really unconscionable and over-the-top liar.

And now, in Cohen’s eyes, Ted Kennedy is a font of wisdom on the subject of President Bush. This is the same Ted Kennedy who recently said that U.S. soldiers were no better than Saddam’s torturers. And now Kennedy says that “arrogant ideological incompetence” explains, in Cohen’s words, “all that ails both Bush and his administration—everything from a misguided crusade to liberate Iraq (and the Middle East) from despotism to the strut of the president himself.”

First off, the phrase is barely English. Ideology, incompetence, and arrogance are not the same thing as “arrogant ideological incompetence.” Also, by Cohen’s own account, what the president suffers from is wishful thinking, especially in imagining that Iraqis would get all warm and fuzzy about being liberated. But wishful thinking is hardly an exclusive property of Bushies or neoconservatives or even incompetent people. Part three, Kennedy, last I checked, was a key adviser to the Kerry campaign, and it is as an unabashed Kerry partisan that he is delivering red meat to the hungry left-wingers who are demoralized since the Republican convention. How is that a smarter-than-thou columnist like Cohen lets himself be seen lapping it up?

But let’s get back to the non-warm-and-fuzzy Iraqis. Is it somehow only moral to help nice people? Only cotton-sweater, bank-commercial types should be liberated from the brutal fist of dictatorship? Which kind of people does Cohen believe deserve to be free? Only ones who say thank you?

My piece on Jim Romenesko, CJR, and the Washington Post is up.

Katherine Mangu-Ward catches the AP at it again:

In order to slant a Saturday (Sept. 11) story against Bush, they use interviews with former National Guardsmen that were conducted before the forgery allegations were well-known.

Katherine talks to the AP’s interview subjects, and they’re not happy.