Now Lou Dobbs really is Mr. Independent.

The last of CNN’s original news anchors just announced he is leavingthe network he joined in 1980, and this evening’s episode of “Lou DobbsTonight” will be its final broadcast. He will continue to host hisnational radio program. Dobbs revealed his motives in a straight-forward statement at the program’s opening:

Over the past six months, it’s become increasingly clearthat strong winds of change have begun buffeting this country andaffecting all of us. And some leaders in media, politics and businesshave been urging me to go beyond the role here at CNN and to engage inconstructive problem solving.

He said chief among his concerns would be illegal immigration,America’s foreign policy, and defending “our now weakened capitalisteconomy.” The former host of Moneyline added that he soughtcontractual release to address these issues “in the most honest anddirect language possible,” an opaque admission of what everyone alreadyknew: Dobbs’s views are increasingly out-of-step with CNN’s dominantbias.

Translated into plain English, his statement says:

• President Obama has been far more radical in office than his campaign rhetoric;
• His policies are busting the budget, destabilizing the border, andundermining the fundamental principles of the American economic system;and
• The network I have worked at for 27 of the last 29 years wants me to shut up about all this.

Dobbs concluded he is fielding a number of offers, and “I will let you know when I set my course.” Last month, I noted Dobbs met with Fox News chairman Roger Ailes last month. However, an anonymous Fox spokesman told the New York Times today, “We have not had any discussions with Lou Dobbs for Fox News or Fox Business.”

Wherever he goes, he will be one of the few mainstream broadcastersrevealing the extent of the nation’s compounding illegal immigrationproblem. Just weeks ago, someone fired a shotat his New Jersey home, an action Dobbs said followed “weeks and weeksof threatening phone calls.” The left-wing Talking Points Memo bloghas tried to portray this as nothing more than a “Hunter’s Errant Bullet”! Where is the left-wing outrage over illegal immigrants’s “lack of civility?”

We look forward to learning his next move and hope it will allow him to solve many of the issues he has so long been reporting.

What do you think? Is Lou going to Fox or some other media outlet,moving to a think tank, or will we soon see Lou Dobbs involved inelectoral politics in some capacity?

Addendum: Here is CNN’s bland coverage.

And also this:

CNN to Lou Dobbs: Don’t Let the Door Hit You….

The left-wing media wouldn't know a class act if he anchored for them for 30 years.

Lou Dobbs’s departure from CNNhas turned into a cause for celebration — at CNN. Network presidentJonathan Klein dismissively called Lou’s program “advocacy journalism”in an otherwise respectful tribute. But Politico.com quotes an anonymous network source:

“I think it’s safe to say that he won’t be missed amongthe rank-and-file employees at the network,” said a CNN staffer. “TheDobbs show has existed in its own little universe for the last severalyears, in many ways cut off from the rest of the editorial process atCNN. Most people will be left wondering what this means for theprimetime lineup and whether Klein can now deliver on his ‘down themiddle’ mantra.”

“Down the middle”? Presumably, Anderson Cooper is now free to slander tea party protesters as perverts, while Wolf Blitzer’s team investigates Saturday Night Live skits (wrongly)with no counterpart to the Right. Or the center. CNN viewers will notforget that network allowed (or encouraged?) Susan Roesgen to antagonize tea party protesters on camera, gave Christiane Amanpour six hours to compare Rev. John Hagee to Osama bin Laden, and broadcast Soledad O’Brien askingif President Bush was “slow to respond” to Hurricane Katrina because“pictures of mostly black people were on TV” — among a litany of other,daily left-wing outrages. The bloom was off CNN’s “unbiased” rose longago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dd2tg8gxCDU&feature

Lou deserves better. Here’s hoping he finds a platform worthy of his message.