8 January 2005 @ 3:48PM >> After CBS News was caught airing bogus memos in an story critical of President Bush’s service in the National Guard, CBS News President Andrew Heyward promised that a full accounting of the fraudulent report would be released in “weeks, not months.” Nearly four months later, CBS News still hasn’t explained what happened, and the network’s affiliates are getting antsy.

Bob Lee, a former Chairman of the CBS Affiliates Board, was quoted by PoynterOnline, “I was, on the one hand, encouraged that the network brought in independent investigators to conduct a thorough look. I am, on the other hand, perturbed that it has taken so long.”

Lee continued:

“It was the first time that the bloggers and the Internet component took to task a story that one of the traditional network news department had aired. The immediacy and the apparent precision with which the bloggers disassembled the stories took us by surprise. Suddenly we had a new watchdog.”

[...]

“The public puts an extraordinary trust in those who are permitted to come in to their home each night with their daily news. It was like people really thought they were scammed on this one; that they were given a concocted story. They were asking ‘If I can’t believe this what else can I not believe?’”

Or, to think of it another way, one wonders how many times CBS News has aired fraudulent stories and gotten away with it.

8 January 2005 >> Not content to keep their socialist paradise within their own borders, the president of France would like to impose a worldwide tax on every citizen of every nation:

French President Jacques Chirac made a new call today for an “international tax”, saying such a levy would help generate funds to help poor countries and those hit by disasters such as the Asian tsunami.

“These events stress the need to increase public aid towards development and to find innovative financing mechanisms such as an international taxation,” Mr Chirac said in a New Year speech to the Paris diplomatic corps.

That’s just what I’ve been thinking since first seeing the horrific devastation of the tsunami: why aren’t there more taxes?