Lou Dobbs will announce tonight that he's leaving CNN, sources tell the New York Times. The professional xenophobe's contract isn't up until 2011, but Dobbs reportedly met with Fox News chief Roger Ailes last month. Update: It's official. Video below.

Dobbs would fit much more snugly into the right-wing stable of shouting heads over at Fox than he did at CNN, where he made an awkward lie of the cable network's attempt to position itself as a non-partisan straight-news alternative to MSNBC on the left and Fox News on the right. But Dobbs hasn't exactly been a ratings dynamo: He was recently losing not only to Shep Smith at Fox but Chris Matthews at MSNBC and even Jane Velez Mitchell at CNN's HLN (formerly Headline News). Burn.

Maybe once Dobbs is unshackled from his CNN overlords he can finally make a bright future for himself in a foreign TV land, one that believes in true opportunity for downtrodden and wandering émigrés like himself.

UPDATE: Video of the announcement is above. Dobbs' comments have observers speculating he'll make some kind of political move.

UPDATE: Maybe not; a CNN statement says "Lou has now decided to carry the banner of advocacy journalism elsewhere."