Gotta give credit where credit is due. Tim Rutten of the LA Times, generally a journalistic heavy-breather with an unbelievable anti-Fox agenda, has gotten it right this time in this piece about Rathergate.

Of course the bias issue was the "crux" of the entire investigation, and of course CBS has hardly been exonerated.

So let's call the Rathergate report what it was: A good start. But if CBS wouldn't accept, on a serious charge, a simple denial from President Bush, then why should the rest of us accept simple denials about political bias from Rather and Mapes, without further investigation?

Let's ask John Podhoretz. He nails the whole issue of bias, concisely -- as usual.