8/09/2005 12:04:00 AM|W|P|Chris Woods|W|P|Sorry, folks, but this site is shutting down, with this being our 1555th post. To go to a bigger and better site! Check out the new Political Forecast on our own domain! Same old stuff, great new place. Make sure you update your bookmarks accordingly. And if you want the new RSS feed, click here. Enjoy the new site! Tags: blogs|W|P|112287265565607523|W|P|The big news you've all been waiting for...|W|P|christopherdwoods@gmail.com8/08/2005 11:48:00 PM|W|P|Drake Dems|W|P|Peter Jennings, host of ABC's World News Tonight, died last night at the age of 67. A long time smoker, he announced in April he had lung cancer. My mom always watches World News Tonight. Though I can't say I was there for a lot of it, Peter Jennings was a familiar character to me. It just seemed to me that if there was a man born to be a news anchor, it was him. As I was doing laundry today, I heard the somber tones of people talking fondly of someone named Peter, and to my sadness, it was indeed Peter Jennings. It is a curious job to be a news anchor like that, to travel to far and distant places as well as ones we know well and report on often tragic events as they unfold. My memory places Jennings in Iraq during the first war there and during Sept. 11th. The anchor can truly bring a sense of sanity in an otherwise crazy world, and Peter Jennings was the master of conveying such a feeling. With that, there is emptyness in the tumultous world that is national network television news. With Dan Rather taking the bullet for a mistake by his producers (I still cannot understand why a forged document on a news magazine TV show got more publicity and more people mad than forged documents that helped lead the US to war other than conservative anger and bullying) there is a lack of a recognizable voice on TV in the news these days. Peter Jennings will, above all, be greatly missed. As for other stuff I'm writing, expect more in the next week. Tags: ?|W|P|112356290119054058|W|P|Remembering a Great|W|P|DrakeDemocrats@gmail.com