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Newsday columnist James P. Pinkerton supplies the kind of lead ("lede" is affectation) they teach you to write in J101 or on your first job at the Exurb Gazette: "Sept. 9, 2004, will be remembered as a paradigm-shifting day in media history. That was the day the 'blogosphere' took down CBS News." Except for "paradigm-shifting."

Weekly Standard executive editor Fred Barnes sums up CBS's posture re the forged documents: "Who are you going to believe, CBS or your lyin' eyes?"

New York Post columnist John Podhoretz gets down to your basic ABCs: (a) they're not only forgeries, they're bad forgeries; (b) there are not experts on both sides of the forgery/authentic issue, only on the forgery side; and (c) if you profess to disagree with (a) or (b), you are either an idiot or a liar. OK? OK.

Virginia Postrel thinks that it's worse than you think: "What's so devastating for CBS is that it didn't make an esoteric mistake, requiring rare expertise. It made a boneheaded mistake on a big story."

Today's piece by Washington Post writers Michael Dobbs and Howard Kurtz categorically and implacably dismisses CBS's forgery defense. That is good. It supplies a conclusive break in the mainstream media's desperate neutrality on the subject. That is good. It is also very carefully buried on page A8. That is bad.

The Daily Standard's Jonathan V. Last compares the Post's coverage with that of the Columbia Journalism Review and the rest of the "liberal media-criticism establishment." Hint: the Post wins.

National Review guest columnist George Conway reports that "CBS News on Friday defended its report that President Bush had used $3 bills to bribe Texas Air National Guard officials in 1973." Yes, it is a spoof.

Hugh Hewitt describes the most recent carnage (all to CBS) in his communique from the front.

Jonah Goldberg compares Power Line as Gavrilo Princip (the guy who shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand) and CBS to the Hapsburg Empire a few years later. Dan Rather is a "buffoon" providing tragic comic relief. The scenario is vastly more coherent than anything emerging from CBS recently.

And as Washington Times columnist Tony Blankley sees it, there's been a revolution, even if CBS views it as merely revolting. Paging Dan XVI, paging Dan XVI: Your tumbril is waiting, sir.

Are the blogs more trustworthy than the major media? Instapundit Glenn Reynolds muses about links and other stuff.

How "bizarre" is John Kerry's candidacy? Let David Limbaugh count the ways ...

According to UPI, five 9/11 widows are endorsing Kerry. Let's see ... app 3,000 dead ... app 2/3 of those were men ... the majority of those men likely were married ... so five out of more than 1,000 is news--and some sort of political plus for Kerry? Another shrewd maneuver from those deft hands running Campaign Titanic.

Writing in Tel Aviv Ha'aretz, former Israeli defense minister Moshe Arens keeps it simple: it's us vs. them--and the voters will elect the the guy they think will keep them safe.

London Times columnist Stephen Pollard saw the newest anti-American play, and all the fashionable and clever people laughed in the right places, particularly the references to the Axis of Evil ... Taliban Afghanistan; Saddam's Iraq; and pre-nukey Iran and North Korea. Axis of Evil? How funny is that?

Remember the name: Nicolas Sarkozy. Sounds Hungarian (his parents emigrated), but he's French. Three things ya gotta love about the guy: (1) he's pro-US; (2) Jacques Chirac hates him; because (3) he plans to depose Chirac. He's also Jewish--a sure-fire vote-getter there--yet it doesn't seem to be hurting his popularity. Washington Times reporter Jennifer Joan Lee supplies a useful profile.

Did you ever read Mary Schmich's famous 1997 "Sunscreen" column in the Chicago Tribune? It was adapted into a hit pop song by Baz Luhrmann, who then went on to produce and direct Moulin Rouge. Go on--treat yourself.