Jim Geraghty sits where old media meets new, and the result is a string of emerging facts that suggest a possible suspect in the forging of CBS's news material. Between a Kinko's account, mistakes with terminology and a favorite phrase, disgruntled partisan Bill Burkett's culpability makes a little more sense. Geraghty adds:

This isn't proof, but it is odd that this particular phrase [and other circumstantial evidence] would show up like this. By the way, note that Rather and Mapes say they spent five years working on this story, and the blogosphere is picking this apart like piranha on a cow within a matter of hours.

Yes. Of course, it's much more fun to imagine Dan Rather, a stack of military manuals on his Evening News office desk, typing furtively on Microsoft Word at 3:15 in the morning — thanking his lucky stars he remembered to switch "full justification" back off, whew. Times New Roman looks typewriter-y. The lingo's period. Who in the world would ever check to find out otherwise?

On a serious note, CBS's reluctance to offer up the phony documents' source is telling, and only compounds this story's public importance. An operational conspiracy is much less likely than a surprisingly large number of parties on the left who knew the props existed and made gentleman's bets on whether they'd fly.

FROM THE FENCE: James Lileks, via IP, makes an excellent point on CBS's "fake but accurate" denial. If the evidence supporting a claim is fraudulent, what's left? Nothing. It's believed that Grecian tales of the Cyclops were more or less inspired by the misidentification of an elephant skull. So while Homer's Odyssey is still read, spoken and enjoyed, we know it as myth.

And then there's the parallel of heroes putting the intransigent monster's eye out...