Say goodnight, Gracie

Cannot turn in without a look at two last bits:

1. Plamegate at Daily Kos. Byron York, whose incomparable reporting of the Valerie Plame kerfuffle ought to (but won't) win him a long look from the Pulitzer committee, has this priceless account of the Valerie Plame Panel at the event dubbed YearlyKos, a celebration by the nuttiest of the nutroots at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas.

It was here, in which the largest crowd at the--convention, do we call it?--assembled to hear, for the millionth time, of the "outing" of "covert" CIA "operative" Valerie Plame was engineered by Karl Rove with the approval of the "highest reaches of power."

York's writing here is important for a revelation that 99.9% of the country, I'll wager, was innocent of: for, oh, let's wildly say somewhere between four thousand and ten thousand Americans, Plamegate was not just a scandal or a crime or an incident worthy of inquiry. It was, quite simply, the mechanism by which Rove, Cheney, and Bush would be driven from power, and quite likely to jail.

York's account is unmissable.

2. Finally, this. Ding-Dong, the Dan is gone. Announced today, CBS will not renew Dan Rather's contract. This draws to a close, I guess the "60 Minutes" story on President Bush's TANG memos (you know, the ones composed on Microsoft Word in 1971), and the subsequent controversy, aka the Greatest Story in The History of the World.

This was the story that introduced the world to blogs. This was the story that made me second-guess not going into journalism. And this was the story that, ultimately, made me want to take this thing up. All, for good or ill. I leave you with the words of the best Rathernot commentator of them all, NRO's Jonah Goldberg:

Dan Rather Was Fired [Jonah Goldberg]

I don't think we can over-estimate the significance of the fact that Dan Rather will be leaving CBS. I don't see how you can interpret this as anything less than his firing over Memogate. Undoubtedly, in my mind, CBS felt in 2004 that they couldn't sack him on the spot because of how it would appear. His slow departure and temporary job-shuffling was a face-saving effort for both Rather and CBS. But, the delay doesn't discount the fact that if it weren't for Memogate, Rather would probably still be the esteemed anchor of CBS News. This constitutes a monumental triumph for the rightwing blogosphere and I don't think we should let it be obscured by the kabuki dance CBS put on to downplay their embarrassment.
Posted at 1:09 PM

Good night, Gracie.