Tonight was Dan Rather's last time to ever host the CBS Evening News. I wasn't a religious viewer of his, but he is a very respectable man that led a long and successful career. Certain people and groups are celebrating his signing off because of recent controversy about memos concerning President Bush's Texas Air National Guard service or lack thereof during the Vietnam War, but the insults have grown childish and are purely mean-spirited. "He is a first-class reporter and an aggressive interviewer," Marvin Kalb said today. The problem that people have is that he is not afraid to ask the questions... people have thought him a poster child of an arrogant press ever since he faced down Richard Nixon. I think that takes, to use one of Mr. Rather's favorite words, courage. Though he'll never see this, I offer this as my simple gift of gratitude to a man that shaped the media for so many years with his authoritative reporting and his twenty-four years of doing his best to make a difference.