Manhattan correspondent Steve M. comments:

…I just noticed the "FOR HIRE" sign on the cab Ed Murrow is stepping into above your comment for last Friday. At some point between Murrow and Rather, did CBS decide to become the American Left's limo service?

* * *

If the Kerry campaign's fingerprints are found on the Ra^thergate forged memos it would not be the first time Kerry operatives were implicated in apparent campaign dirty trickery.

In his 1972 congressional campaign, Kerry's brother and his campaign field director were charged with breaking and entering in what was headlined as a local "Watergate."

Kerry blamed foul play orchestrated with a news organization. Imagine that.

To win the primary, [Kerry] overcame the election eve arrest of his brother, Cameron, and campaign field director Thomas J. Vallely, both then 22, in the basement of a Lowell building that housed the headquarters of Kerry and another Democratic contender, state Representative Anthony R. DiFruscia of Lawrence. It was almost 2 a.m. - 30 hours before the polls opened - when the two were arrested on charges of breaking and entering with intent to commit larceny.

That day's Sun blared a memorable, double-deck headline: "Kerry brother arrested in Lowell `Watergate."' DiFruscia, getting some extra ink in the campaign's waning hours, had drawn the parallel to the break-in at Democratic headquarters in Washington three months earlier.

The Kerry camp declared it a setup, saying that the two responded to an anonymous phone call, minutes earlier, threatening to cut the campaign's 36 phone lines on the day before its get-out-the-vote effort. Lowell Police arrested the pair in an area near the trunk line for all of the building's phones.

To this day Kerry becomes animated talking about the episode, convinced it was part of a conspiracy against his insurgency. He said he does not know who was involved. He dismissed as ridiculous the charge that DiFruscia was a target. "He didn't figure in the race," said Kerry.

But some of Kerry's claims in the Lowell break-in are wildly at odds with the facts.

"That headline was held open. That page was held open, according to [Sun] typesetters, at 1 o'clock in the morning," Kerry said. "That doesn't happen at a newspaper, you know that. And that headline was out there on the streets the next morning, first thing."

The Sun, however, was an afternoon paper, and its first deadline was hours after the arrests, in plenty of time to write the story for that day's editions. The Eagle-Tribune of Lawrence also reported the arrests that day, in a smaller story under the headline "Shades of Watergate?"

So Kerry claims to have been a victim of a setup in which the major local media outlet was complicit. Is Ra^thergate Lowell politics writ large?

* * *

"Without fear or favor?"

I can readily envision a political campaign calling a news organization to "move a story forward" – but the news organization calling the campaign?

A USA Today piece indicates Dan Ra^ther's "unimpeachable" source was anything but. The Llama Butchers revel in schadanfreude, or the act of taking delight in the misery of Dan Ra^ther, while Wizbang proclaims: Anchor's Away!

Hugh Hewitt: Is it acceptable for a major American broadcast organization to work hand-in-glove with a presidential campaign --to conspire-- to surface forgeries with the intent of influencing the presidential election? *

A senior Kerry aide phoning the forgery-passer at the request of CBS? CBS is advising the Kerry campaign? And the Kerry campaign is following the advice? Fire them all. *

Power Line: Okay, Mary, is CBS an adjunct of the Kerry campaign?

Glenn Reynolds: Shouldn't CBS just register as a 527 and have done with it?

E.L. Core appears to have been on to something with his secret history of the CBS Eye.