Bill and Nicki Burkett (along with their children) have started a blog of their own. (For those who don’t know, Bill Burkett is the fellow who gave Dan Rather the forged National Guard memos.)

Charles at LGF thinks this is an ill-advised move, given their impending legal battles. That may be true, but it’s certainly none of my concern, and meanwhile I am grateful for a venue to talk directly to the Burketts in a public forum. (No I’m not. See update, below.)

Yes, their blog has comment posting enabled, but they are deleting the abusive comments, so if you post there, be civil.

A long comment, evidently by Nicki (I say “evidently” only because all the Burketts’ posts are signed “Admin” regardless of the author, but this post refers to “my husband”), claims that Col. Burkett never actually lied about the source of the memos, but did commit the sin of allowing others to assume that George Conn was the source. But he’s sorry about that, and anyway, it’s betwixt him and the Lord. I posted a comment asking for a clarification, since it was my impression that Burkett did tell CBS and USA Today that Conn was his source. My question has not yet been answered, but it hasn’t yet been deleted, either.

UPDATE: Oops; now my question has been deleted, as have most of the posts and comments that used to be on their blog. It seems the Burketts are deleting not just abusive comments, but all comments, and even most of their own posts. I’ll bet they disable commenting soon. I take back what I said about being grateful.

By the bye, the domain is registered to a Geoff Staples of Dallas, TX. Here’s his blog.

Well, they’re funny again. Check out MoveOnPlease.org, where National Lampoon satirizes the lunatics at MoveOn.

There’s a website, RatherBiased.com, that needs help. They’ve been aiming the Cold Spotlight of Truth at Dan Rather for four years now, and doing a darned fine job of it. But due to the recent unpleasantness, they have exceeded their bandwidth limitations, and now their site is down. They need money and advice. (They’re asking for the money, but like most folks, they aren’t asking for the advice.)

I’m in no position to give them money right now. If you are, I highly recommend you swing by this here web page and give what you can.

Here’s my advice to RatherBiased.com, which, if followed, should be worth a few hundred bucks, so this shall be my contribution to the effort. I love your site, guys, especially the political cartoons; but if bandwidth is a consideration, don’t put 80 large cartoons on a single page. By putting all those large files on a single page, you were forcing people like me, who only wanted to see the most recent ones, to download all 80 of them every time. One or two per page, archive the rest. And keep up the good work.

For my 38th birthday, which occurred last month, my brother Kevin gave me the book Unfit for Command. I mention this now, both to thank Kevin publicly (Thanks publicly, Kev!), and to test some code for my Amazon associate account.

For instance, I could just mention in passing that I got this book, Unfit for Command, and there you have an Amazon link. Tasteful, easy on the eyes, no distractions, just pure hyperlinked satisfaction.

On the other hand, I could do the image thing. Here I’ve got a nice little image of the book cover, that folks can click on and go buy the book. If they want to, I mean.

You say you want a bigger image? I guess I can do a slightly bigger image. It does make it easier to read the title, although I notice the subtitle is still mostly illegible at this size. And it’s still difficult to count all the ridges in the senator’s forehead. (I happen to know there are six. But then, I have the book to refer to.) Anyway, you can go to Amazon and buy the book, or read reviews of the book, or add it to your “wish list,” or what-have-you.

Good gravy! You say you want an even bigger image!? I’ll see what I can do. Stand back…

Aaaaaarghh! Run away! I guess I won’t be doing the huge image too often. Not with really ugly book covers, at any rate.

(I posted this satirical transcript of the Sept. 10 CBS Evening News, in a thread on a Mothering.com forum. Then Instapundit linked to it, so it must have been good.)

Hi, I’m back. I actually slept through the CBS Evening News, but then I woke up and found this transcript of the first segment. I think it clears everything up pretty well, and all further inquiry should cease.

TRANSCRIPT OF CBS EVENING NEWS
September 10, 2004

RATHER: Good evening and welcome to CBS Evening News. I’m Dan Rather. There were attacks today on the CBS News “60 Minutes” report this week raising new questions about President Bush’s Vietnam-era service in the Texas Air National Guard. The questions raised by our report include:

• Did Bush’s Air Force physical indicate the presence of a gall?
• Did Lieutenant Bush’s physical indicate chimp-like characteristics?
• If not, why not?
• Did George Bush at any time mitigate any galls during the Vietnam era?
• Should CBS viewers vote for war hero gentleman senator John Kerry?
• If so, why so?

RATHER: These questions grew out of new memos, including… sorry, did I say “new” memos? I mean, not new, no I mean old memos. They’re like 30 years old, so they can’t be new, right? Ha, ha. Christ, who wrote this copy? Anyway, they aren’t fake, okay? Okay. So, um, let’s go to the interviews. We have with us tonight Mr. Marcel Matley. Good evening Mr. Matley.

MATLEY: Good evening.

RATHER: Mr. Matley, your expertise is in the field of handwriting, is that correct?

MATLEY: It sure is, Dan.

RATHER: And having looked at the four memos, and compared them with other memos known to be genuine, what is your opinion of the four new memos?

MATLEY: Well…

RATHER: Old! Not the four new memos! My fault, my fault. Not new, as in…

MATLEY: …I…

RATHER: Yes, of course, I’m sorry to interrupt. Please go on.

MATLEY: Well, Dan, with my wide knowledge in handwriting analysis, I can confidently say that these memos are almost certainly not handwritten.

RATHER: Not handwritten?

MATLEY: Almost certainly.

RATHER: And, ah, when you say, “not handwritten,” you…

MATLEY: Very likely a mechanical device of some sort, Dan.

RATHER: And, to your knowledge, did mechanical devices exist in the Vietnam era?

MATLEY: Almost certainly, Dan.

RATHER: Thank you, Mr. Matley. Our next guests tonight are Robert Strong, who has very harsh opinions about George Bush and the whole Vietnam thing, and a guy who wrote a book about how much George Bush sucks. Mr. Strong, are these memos the real thing?

STRONG: They have to be real, Dan, because George Bush is such a jerk. And I’ll tell you what, I’d say that even if you weren’t paying…

RATHER: Thank you, thank you, Mr. Strong. And Mr. Moore, you wrote a book about how much George Bush sucks, didn’t you?

MOORE: That’s right, Danny.

RATHER: Dan.

MOORE: Beg pardon?

RATHER: It’s Dan, not Danny. I mean, you may call me Dan.

MOORE: But last night, you…

RATHER: Mr. Moore, um. Mr. Moore, do these new, (expletive)! (coughing)

MOORE: Danny?

RATHER: Dan. I’m fine. Mr. Moore, do these, old memos coincide with your expert impression of how much George Bush sucks?

MOORE: Oh, without a doubt, um, Dan. That’s why I’m sure they’re real. A lot of so-called “experts” say they’re forged, but they’re all ultra-right-wing nut-job fascists, like over at National Review, American Spectator, Fox News, CNN, The Boston Globe, NBC,…

RATHER: Yes, thank…

MOORE: …ABC, Slate, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Associated Press, and the Internet.

RATHER: Yes, thank you. Mr. Moore. After a break, we’ll be back with a pastry chef who is certain that the memos are not filled with custard. Stay with us.