• January 10, 2005 | 10:05 p.m. ET

The Rather Report (Joe Scarborough)

The Rather report is in... and the usual suspects got off without a scratch.

CBS News released its internal report today— blasting Dan Rather's "60 Minutes" story that used forged documents to attack the President's National Guard service.

While the report was scathing in sections, serious questions remain.

The first troubling question is why Dan Rather kept his job... while CBS fired producer Mary Mapes. True, Mapes produced the segment, but just like Howell Raines at the New York Times, Dan Rather was the one who, in the end, published the forged documents for the world to see.

In an interview today, CBS President Les Moonves all but accused Mapes of blindsiding poor old Dan, who was just coming back from covering a hurricane when the 60 minutes story ran.

The second question to ask is why CBS News President Andrew Heyward still has his job?

Heyward shouldn't shoulder all the blame for the false report running... but his greatest offense to CBS News and their viewers was his failure to reign Rather in after it became clear to the world that these documents were forged. Rather denied reality, continued the cover-up, and the President of CBS News acted as an enabler to Rather instead of an independent voice.

Say what you will about the New York Times... but when they had their recent journalistic scandal, the head of that proud publishing dynasty did what had to be done and fired those at the top instead of whacking off the heads of lowly assistant editors.

You know, when the United States Marines go into combat zones, the first to eat are the privates. If there is any food left, the officers will take their turns. But today, at the network of Murrow and Cronkite, it looks like the officers are more willing to eat their own instead of holding the true powers of CBS News accountable for their sins.

What do you think?  E-mail me at

• January 10, 2005 | 10:16 a.m. ET

Why the Ohio vote challenge? (Joe Scarborough)

It was about 10 years ago this week that I was sworn in as a member of Congress, and it was a great source of pride, more often than not.  But from time to time, my former colleagues often embarrassed themselves and the institution I once served. 

Last week, United States Senator Barbara Boxer played the role of Vladimir Putin in the Ukraine by refusing to acknowledge the popular will of the people and accept the voting results that even the most hardened Democratic political pro accepted. 

What does Ms. Boxer and her fellow conspiracy theorists suggest we do every time a candidate is beaten by over 100,000 votes?  Challenge the process, stop the business of the Senate and the House, whatever that is, and grandstand for the most extreme 1 percent of all American Internet users? 

Listen, no respectable politician or journalist has suggested that John Kerry had a chance in hell of winning a challenge in Ohio.  The fact that a United States senator and a handful of congressmen would hold up congressional business says more about Boxer and friends than the freaks they are trying to appease. 

And what can you say of John Conyers, a former fellow Judiciary member with whom I served and personally like? 

Here is a man who was given 50 turkeys over the holidays so his office could distribute them to the poor and needy.  Instead, Conyers and staff reportedly gave a handful of the basted birds to political cronies as flavorful favors.  And they lost count of what happened to the rest of those turkeys. 

Is this really the man to be criticizing the way Ohio election officials count five million votes?  Of course not. 

But, then again, some congressmen and senators never let the facts get in the way of a good press conference. 

Pass the gravy, because this one is too rich even for my taste. 

E-mail me at .

• January 5, 2005 | 6:52 p.m. ET

ScarCo reader

Here's an excerpt from today's Scarborough Country newsletter (If you don't receive it, click here to subscribe.)

• If you can't say anything nice: Remember the U.N. bureaucrat who shot his mouth off about the United States being stingy? Hope he read today's Christian Science Monitor, "... in 2003, the world's major countries gave a total $108.5 billion in foreign aid. Of this, the US contributed $37.8 billion, or 35 percent of the total. The next largest foreign aid contributor was the Netherlands, which gave $12.2 billion, following two years in which it was actually a net recipient of foreign aid." If you have a nutcase uncle who just won't let this story go, here's plenty of ammunition for your next encounter:
• Are Democrats undemocratic? ScarCo favorite Terry Jeffrey of Human Events thinks so. Check out his latest column in the Washington Times:
• Two roos, which one did you lose? If you lost a kangaroo near Dodgeville, Wisconsin, it's been found by a woman who owns a kangaroo. What are the odds?
• Salt-free Tennessee? If you live near Erwin, Tennessee, you'll want to drive carefully. If we can stop you from pondering the odds of there being two kangaroos in Dodgeville, WI, please consider that in Erwin, one traffic accident wrecked all three of the town's salt trucks. (Icy roads were to blame.)
• Pat Buchanan's latest column: Bush rhetoric vs. reality
• Court-mandated compliments for Evel: We'll just paste the whole story as it appeared in the Washington Post right here: "SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) -- Motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel cannot sue a Web site that published a photo of him with two women above a caption reading 'You're never too old to be a pimp,' a U.S. appeals court ruled Tuesday. The term 'pimp' was probably intended as a compliment, the court said."

Did you miss last night's hot discussion on the questions the massive tragedy in South Asia is raising about God and religion? Click here for a transcript of that heated debate.

Last night we asked one of the co-authors of the Left Behind series if we're truly living in End Times. We'll put the same question to Pat Robertson tonight, you don't want to miss his answer.

• January 01, 2005 | 10:34 p.m. ET

This year, thank God for our troops (Joe Scarborough)

New Year's Day has long been a time when I set goals for the year which I promptly break three days later.

These goals usually include a better diet, more exercise, and a deeper spiritual life.

Inspired by the opportunity to turn a new page in my life, I set to praying and studying my Bible for at least 30 minutes each morning. I usually practice this routine until the 5th of 6th of January each year.

And when I pray on these early days of January, I pray for big things.

In the past, these prayers have included guidance for hopeless congressional campaigns or assistance in landing a national TV show.

Funny thing about God and my prayers.

He has a knack for answering in the affirmative more times than not.

Don't get me wrong. I don't pray a few days out of the year. I pray every day at one time or another. And as I grow older, those prayers are less about myself and more about others.

I pray for the health and safety of my children. I ask God for help as a father guiding my children to a better spiritual and intellectual life than the one I experienced as a young man.

And when my prayers turn to the subject of what God can do for me, it usually has more to do with making me humble and compassionate rather than rich and famous.

But I was especially struck this morning by the prayer I found myself praying on January 1, 2005.

For once, my New Year's prayers were not overreaching or ambitious. Instead, I prayed a simple prayer of thanksgiving.

Was I thankful for my family and friends? Of course, but that was not the subject of my prayer. Nor was I thinking about the great job opportunities I have been blessed with over the past few years. God knows how grateful I am for those, but such thoughts were not filling my mind today. Nor was I giving thanks for the men and women fighting for our country in Iraq or Afghanistan--though now that I've mentioned it, they will be in my prayers tonight.

Instead, I caught myself off guard by getting on my knees as soon as the sun hit my face. I closed my eyes and simply thanked God for the great thrill of being able to walk

That's right. I was on my knees for the first time in a year to give thanks to God for being able to put one foot in front of the other without being in great pain.

The past three months have been difficult. A brutal travel schedule combined with hurricane coverage in 100 mile per hour winds put me in a hospital bed in early October. It seems all my activities in the early fall exacerbated a back injury I got five years ago.

As a Type A personality who hasn't slowed down since high school, I found myself lying in bed in excruciating pain unable to walk or do the most basic human activities without help from my wife.

The constant, uncontrollable pain combined with the helplessness I felt led to anger, bitterness, moments of depression, and resignation that I would never be able to live a normal life again.

Throughout it all, my doctors and my wife told me to be patient. I was too young to have a second back operation and if I would just take it easy and stay out of hurricane force winds, at some point, I would be able to walk again without a limp.

That day came today and for that I am more grateful than the day I got elected to Congress or signed up for my news show.

It's true that without your health, nothing else matters.

And I've also figured out what that strange, old Bible verse talking about a broken spirit means.

We are told in the New Testament that God loves a broken spirit. Growing up, when I was what you could charitably call self-confident, that verse meant nothing. Why would God want us to be broken?

But as I got older, suffered through the trials of having a child with diabetes, losing a friend to drugs, going through a painful divorce, and enduring pain on an almost daily basis, I slowly began understanding what that verse meant.

Far from looking at my trials as curses, I have learned to embrace them as blessings.

I can empathize with those who lose loved ones at an early age. My child's illness made me sensitive to those who have to endure even greater health challenges with their children. My divorce made me understand what it was like to be judged by the self-righteous. And in some strange way, my bout with back pain keeps me in line every day.

All that being said, I'm ready to lose weight, do my back exercises, and do all the things I should have done after my surgery in 1999 so I can say goodbye to the chronic pain. And being the optimist that I am, I believe that will happen.

But when it does, I pray to God that I will remember what it was like to be trapped in bed dependent on others for food, medicine, and conversation. That way, I can begin to understand just a fraction of what our soldiers and marines are going though at Walter Reed Hospital. Because unlike me, many of those who were injured serving in Iraq and Afghanistan will never walk again. And yet, so many of them have but one regret: that they cannot join their band of brothers back on the front line.

It was these men and women that stopped me from feeling sorry for myself for more than a few minutes.

With them as an example, I can never feel sorry for myself, but I can begin to understand what remarkable Americans they are and the totality of the sacrifice they made for a nation that, too often, does not appreciate just how much they gave for our country.

Happy New Year. And may God bless America and our troops across the world.

Thoughts? E-mail me at

• December 31, 2004 | 8:24 p.m. ET

My wish for the new year (Joe Scarborough)

Tonight, we show heartbreaking images of the disaster in Southeast Asia and hear the remarkable stories of those who somehow managed to survive the onslaught of the tsunami tital waves that rocked their world Christmas morning.

Across the world, many have found new and interesting ways to blame the United States of America for the death and destruction. As one of Australia's newspapers wrote this morning, in the Dark Ages these horrendous acts of nature were blamed on God's wrath.

Now the blame falls on America.

President Bush also faced laughable charges by the New York Times that he was missing in action in the first days after the tsunami.

It's interesting that the same newspaper praised the corrupt leader of the United Nations— Kofi Annan— for standing ready to provide relief. And yet Annan stayed away on vacation even longer than Bush.

Earth to Bill Keller: a lot of us yahoos in Middle America and rooting for you and hoping you will bring credibility and balance back to the New York Times. Here's hoping that Mr. Keller will realize that the Times is no longer a newspaper for residents of Gotham, but rather the paper of record for America and the world.

My wish for the Times in 2005 is to stop worrying about what a small subset of New York elites think about his paper and instead use the remarkable writers and staff he has to produce a paper that is progressive on its editorial page, but content-neutral throughout the rest of the paper.

I know that will never happen at any paper, but it seems the Times should at least strive toward that goal in the New Year.

Happy New Year!

• December 29, 2004 | 10:38 p.m. ET

So where does the shifting political landscape leave Democrats?  (Joe Scarborough)

I learned a long time ago that when it came to the world of politics, whom the gods would destroy, they first curse with power.

Think Bill Clinton and the Democratic Congress of 1992. 

The Democrats’ unchecked dominance led to tax hikes and Hillary healthcare, which ushered in the era of Newt Gingrich and my freshman class of 1994, whose arrogance and over-reaching resurrected Clinton in 1996, which led to Impeachment in 1998, which led to Bush in 2000.

But oddly enough, after Election 2000 that old Blood, Sweat and Tears line “what goes up must come down” stopped applying to modern American politics.

Bush and Republicans dominated  Washington in 2000, made surprising gains in 2002, and stunned the political world in 2004 by gaining seats in the House and Senate, while their President did what most believed couldn’t be done:  He got re-elected.

Now the Democratic Party seems more suited to guest star in the new ABC drama “Lost” than to regain power anytime soon.

As the New Republic’s Peter Beinhardt noted tonight on our show and in one of the most important essays of 2004, Democrats refuse to engage in a meaningful way in the war on terror despite the fact we Americans finds itself trapped in the middle that war.

But national defense is far from the only issue dividing the Democrats. Yesterday’s “New York Times” was filled with letters to the editor from Democrats debating the party’s future as it related to abortion.

As Newsweek’s Howard Fineman pointed out on our show last night, few Democratic leaders have figured out that diversity of opinion on abortion could help their party pick up seats in Red State America.

That approach absolutely scares the hell out of GOP strategists.  But fortunately for Republicans, it also terrifies the abortion-on-demand extremists that always pull the Democratic Party too far left.

With viability and 3D technology changing the abortion debate in ways never conceived by Justice Harry Blackman and the Roe v. Wade court in 1973, and with apologies to Gary Wills and the Dark Ages crowd, abortion is one issue where science and technology is on the side of Republicans.

Then there’s gun control-once an issue that made Republicans scurry for cover and apologize for their $5,000 donations from the NRA. 

But no longer. 

I remember sitting in Congress watching a gun debate in 1998 where you could see the political earth shifting beneath the Democrats feet.

Republicans went into the proceedings with their usual dread, but halfway thru the debate, Democratic heavyweights Jack Murtha (D-PA) and John Dingell (D-MI) rose to mock and rebuke their own party.

A few years later, Al Gore would refuse to broach the subject out of fear of losing rural voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

John Kerry was similarly tongue-tied in 2004— even donning cammos to prove that he too was man enough to shoot animals and birds dead.

So where does the shifting political landscape leave Democrats?  Should they elect pro-life, pro-gun, pro-war presidential candidates?  Not necessarily.

But they may consider doing something radical: supporting candidates in Middle America that represent the viewpoints of... well, Middle America. 

Zell Miller is right. The Democratic Party is a national party no more.

But give Ed Gilliespie, Ken Mehlman or myself the keys of the DNC for four years and we could once again put Democrats in power in the House and Senate.  That’s because Republicans understand middle America-national Democrats don’t.

Maybe if the Party of FDR listened more Peter Beinhardt or Bill Clinton, and less to Michael Moore and Moveon.org, they would once again find themselves chairing committees and planning Inaugural Balls.

But as it is now, they are out of luck, out of touch, and out of power.

Keep those e-mails coming to .

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