Dan Rather's very good day in court

Gunga Dan's not looking so nutty now, is he?

Dan Rather scored a major triumph against his former employer yesterday as a state supreme court judge reinstated his fraud claim against CBS and ordered the network to turn over thousands of documents it was hoping to keep private.

I'll be the first to admit that when Rather first filed his $70 million case against CBS, it looked, to me at least, like the action of a deluded man desperate to salvage his reputation from the wreckage of his 60 Minutes II report on George Bush's National Guard service record. In painting a shadowy conspiracy on the part of his corporate masters, the once-respected anchor seemed to be dodging all responsibility for his own role in the flawed report, even though he had already publicly apologized for it.