'For Us, This Was a Good Day'

There haven't been many good days for this scourge of broadcast journalism in the nearly five years since he used forged documents to try and sway a presidential election. So let Dan Rather enjoy this one while he can. Hopefully it'll just make his ultimate defeat all the more painful.

If you believe Dan Rather's lawsuit against CBS is close to finished, folks, you'll believe rocks can grow.

The anchor's $70 million lawsuit against his former employers got a new lease on life today when a Manhattan judge restored his previously dismissed fraud claim against the network.

"I think by any reasonable, objective analysis, this was a bad day at Black Rock," Rather, 77, quipped after the hearing before Manhattan Supreme Court Judicial Hearing Officer Ira Gammerman. "For us, this was a good day."

The fraud charge contends the network's trickery cost Rather millions by scapegoating him for a flawed report on President Bush's Vietnam era military service, and then keeping him off the air - torpedoing the chance for a $4 million a year gig at CNN or another cable channel.

He now makes an average of $1.5 million a year at HDNet, the papers say.

Rather's contentions that the fix was in when CBS hired a panel to investigate the story also got a boost when Gammerman ruled he could have access to thousands of pages of documents that were being suppressed by a law firm that did work for the panel.

The judge also ordered CBS to turn over copies of "silence agreements" that banned 11 former employees from discussing anything about the Bush story and the panel's investigation.

Rather said he was hopeful the collection of documents would show "what really went on" at CBS "as opposed to what we were told went on."

Rather should have long ago slithered off into obscurity (then again, he is on HDNet), yet his supersized ego will never allow him to admit he perpetrated a fraud. How ironic he's pursuing a fraud claim against CBS.