The Real McCain Record: Obstacles in the way of conservative support.

McCain-Feingold — the most brazen frontal assault on political speech since Buckley v. Valeo.

McCain-Kennedy — the most far-reaching amnesty program in American history.

McCain-Lieberman — the most onerous and intrusive attack on American industry — through reporting, regulating, and taxing authority of greenhouse gases — in American history.

McCain-Kennedy-Edwards — the biggest boon to the trial bar since the tobacco settlement, under the rubric of a patients’ bill of rights.

McCain-Reimportantion of Drugs — a significant blow to pharmaceutical research and development, not to mention consumer safety (hey Rudy, pay attention, see link).
And McCain’s stated opposition to the Bush 2001 and 2003 tax cuts was largely based on socialist, class-warfare rhetoric — tax cuts for the rich, not for the middle class. The public record is full of these statements. Today, he recalls only his insistence on accompanying spending cuts.

As chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, McCain was consistently hostile to American enterprise, from media and pharmaceutical companies to technology and energy companies.

McCain also led the Gang of 14, which prevented the Republican leadership in the Senate from mounting a rule change that would have ended the systematic use (actual and threatened) of the filibuster to prevent majority approval of judicial nominees.

And then there’s the McCain defense record.

His supporters point to essentially one policy strength, McCain’s early support for a surge and counterinsurgency. It has now evolved into McCain taking credit for forcing the president to adopt General David Petreaus’s strategy. Where’s the evidence to support such a claim?

Moreover, Iraq is an important battle in our war against the Islamo-fascist threat. But the war is a global war, and it most certainly includes the continental United States, which, after all, was struck on 9/11. How does McCain fare in that regard?

McCain-ACLU — the unprecedented granting of due-process rights to unlawful enemy combatants (terrorists).

McCain has repeatedly called for the immediate closing of Guantanamo Bay and the introduction of al-Qaeda terrorists into our own prisons — despite the legal rights they would immediately gain and the burdens of managing such a dangerous population.

While McCain proudly and repeatedly points to his battles with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who had to rebuild the U.S. military and fight a complex war, where was McCain in the lead-up to the war — when the military was being dangerously downsized by the Clinton administration and McCain’s friend, former Secretary of Defense Bill Cohen? Where was McCain when the CIA was in desperate need of attention? Also, McCain was apparently in the dark about al-Qaeda like most of Washington, despite a decade of warnings.
While McCain proudly and repeatedly points to his battles with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who had to rebuild the U.S. military and fight a complex war, where was McCain in the lead-up to the war — when the military was being dangerously downsized by the Clinton administration and McCain’s friend, former Secretary of Defense Bill Cohen? Where was McCain when the CIA was in desperate need of attention? Also, McCain was apparently in the dark about al-Qaeda like most of Washington, despite a decade of warnings.

Countdown

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'Exhilarating new heights'

'U23D' 'amazes when the concert feels most alive,' reports Variety Magazine. 'Bono reaching out into the crowd, a girl on some guy's shoulders almost blocking your view, the crowd bouncing around us...' Premiere at Sundance in two weeks, first reviews appearing.


"U23D," which sticks to performances and crowds, boasts a remarkable human element. Shots that place the viewer next to the Edge, Bono or bassist Adam Clayton pull them off the pedestal that acts have to climb when addressing 50,000 fans at once.

Read the whole Variety review here


"U2 3D," takes the well-traveled concert film to exhilarating new heights.' adds the Hollywood Reporter. This 'feature-length feast for the eyes and ears (thanks to the all-enveloping 5.1 Surround Sound), re-creates the U2 live experience without interruptions ... (it) ... serves up prime U2 in a startlingly rendered, state-of-the-art arena that truly raises the bar for headache-free 3-D technology....
'...blending together performances from Vertigo Tour stops in Buenos Aires and Sao Paulo as well as Mexico City and Santiago, the filmmakers succeed in ripping down that wall between and stage and the audience, and, in the process, create a team atmosphere that's perfectly in keeping with the band's "we're all in this together" philosophy.'

Read the whole Hollywood Reporter review here

Top 25 Greatest Individual Seasons in Sports History

O-H-N-O

John David Mercer/US Presswire

Here's the game plan for 2008:

We need border patrols along Interstate 10, from Jacksonville to Pensacola. A Coast Guard blockade at Biscayne Bay. And the FAA should redirect all inbound flights to South Florida from Ohio.

If you see a silver helmet and a sweater vest coming, contact authorities.

... If you've ever seen lions maul a water buffalo, you've seen the last two title games.

When the program's bowl record is 0-9 against the SEC, the evidence is overwhelming. Buckeyes fans are fond of breaking into impromptu group spelling bees, shouting out "O-H-I-O." When an SEC team shows up on the other sideline it should be "O-H-N-O." They're also fond of calling their school The Ohio State University. It might also now be called The Overmatched State University of the BCS.

...Ohio State, meanwhile, now symbolizes the pigskin Peter Principle. The Buckeyes have achieved just enough the past two seasons to rise to a level where they're incompetent.

It's a tough thing, putting together an overachieving season and seeing it end in embarrassing fashion. Especially since the Buckeyes know what this means -- another year of "S-E-C" chants and barbs about flopping on the big stage.

"If you struggle to take criticism, then you need not be at Ohio State or not be playing the game of football."

Well, good. At least Tressel knows what he's in for.

And he should know not to bring that weak Big Ten stuff back to the BCS National Championship Game again next year.

Grace, Race, and Catholicity

At a time when churches are divided along ethnic, political, socio-economic, and generational lines, the question is as urgent for us today as it was for the apostolic church: Will we be defined by Christ and his victory, or by the rival catholicities of this passing age?


"When the Word creates community, the result is a church and not a special interest group or market niche. A new community is formed by the Spirit as an imperfect yet nevertheless real oasis in a world of strife."

The Ohio State...Bills?

The gospel of money

China Bolsters One-Child Policy

Bush of Arabia: This U.S. president is the most consequential the Middle East has ever seen.

Grace & politics

If I could see a way forward in Pakistan, I'd be delighted to point towards it, but everything I can see, at least from this distance, of a country with which I am more familiar than most, suggests that every mistake ever made by Pakistan's army and political class has come home to roost, and it is now between God and the Devil.

If I could see a way forward from mob rule in Kenya, etc. Ditto Lebanon. Ditto Georgia, another “emerging democracy” that does not look like it is going to emerge from the current election in a governable state.

Ditto Iowa, incidentally, whose caucuses declared the leading U.S. presidential candidates this week. A remarkably grim field of candidates for both American parties, and the winners -- Mike Huckabee for the Republicans, Barack Obama for the Democrats -- are neither of them remotely presidential material. Both persist in making childish and ignorant statements on foreign policy; neither has shown an inclination to rise from the condition of being a pathetic, inexperienced novice.

It is worse than that, for they are both petty characters, riding on a style, and will thus prove incorrigible. Both shallowly promise unspecified “change” when what is most needed is consistency and continuity at the Presidential level: an America that does not abandon her commitments and shift like a weathercock in every breeze. Voters should have a deep allergy to any candidate promising “change,” who cannot spell out for them what change, and why.

Wand-waving rhetoric is an unambiguous indication that character is wanting. Character is not some optional quality in a job that carries huge responsibilities, and in a democracy where the people are in more need of instruction than humouring. Whatever the flaws that have been attributed to him, George W. Bush has shown a sober appreciation of how much is at stake in every decision he makes, and right or wrong, has consistently avoided easy ways out.

To my view, the Republicans' Rudy Giuliani, whom I incidentally find repugnant for several reasons, is the least of the available evils, but it appears the social conservatives won't have him, largely because they are fools, who can only see that Giuliani is no social conservative. They do not understand that a President has very limited power over domestic social policies -- even Reagan changed nothing except the tone of the discussion.

Instead, the President acts as Protector of American interests, and by legitimate extension (through formal alliances) most Western interests, in a very frightening world. Voters would be wise to consider a candidate's credentials in that field alone.

Of course, I do not write as an American, but as Pierre Trudeau once fairly observed, a Canadian mouse in bed with that elephant whose every twist and grunt has ramifications for us. American voters have their own priorities, and do not generally listen to foreign advice, however well-intended. Democracy is always “democracy in one country” and the ramifications become simply a fact of life. Disaster can be a fact of life.

Charles Krauthammer, reviewing a slightly different list of failing democracies from the one I began above, wrote yesterday: “The Roman Church learned that spreading the creed required tolerance for the incorporation of certain pre-Christian practices as a way of strengthening the new faith and giving it local roots. For the spread of democracy today, we need to practice our own brand of syncretism and learn not to abandon the field when forced to settle for regional adaptations that fall short of the Jeffersonian ideal.”

He was looking to the future of the American mission as the evangelist of democracy, in a world still largely governed by durable tribal loyalties which preclude that “Jeffersonian ideal” -- which is itself fueled by the unreasonable desire to be freed from history. The confusion of worldly with spiritual ideals only compounds our worldly problems: for there is no perfect universal social order, only the kaleidoscope of give and take.

America is not needed to tell anyone how to live. But, America is desperately needed in her role as world policeman, not merely flying to crises on her own, but directing all cooperative efforts. She is stuck with this role, as the pre-eminent superpower; she is stuck with the demand for acts not words.

The world is a mess -- always a mess, but especially bad now. The intoxicant of democracy does not offer solutions. We can seek paths forward only country by country, and pray that, despite democracy, and the unworthiness of all electorates, good and able leaders emerge.

Hey, Rocket, try to top these alibis

• The bar of creativity and shamelessness, after all, is higher than Ross Rebagliati's old associates. And who, pray tell, is Rebagliati? He's a Canadian snowboarder whom the International Olympic Committee stripped of a gold medal in 1998 for testing positive for marijuana. Rebagliati explained that he hadn't smoked the forbidden weed since the previous April, but he had been exposed to some second-hand smoke during a New Year's Eve party with friends in Whistler, British Columbia. An appeal board actually ruled in Rebagliati's favor, making the unofficial tune of the Nagano Games O' Cannabis.
• Earlier this year, Italian soccer player Marco Borriello blamed a positive drug test on an ointment he had rubbed on a, ahem, private part because his Argentine model girlfriend had passed on an infection. Borriello's ultimately unsuccessful spin was the inevitable variation on a defense Olympian Dennis Mitchell used nearly a decade earlier.
• Mitchell explained illegal levels of testosterone in his body on drinking several bottles of beer and having sex with his wife at least four times the night before the 1998 test. At his disciplinary hearing, Mitchell reportedly told the panel, "It was the lady's birthday; she deserved a treat," which may help explain why USA Track and Field accepted his defense. The International Association of Athletics Federations didn't buy it, though, banning him for two years.
• Cyclist Tyler Hamilton countered a positive test for blood doping with an evil-twin defense. With a straight face, Hamilton explained that a "vanishing twin" died in his mother's womb, leaving with him the incriminating-looking foreign blood. His defense will live on long after anybody remembers any of his cycling accomplishments.
• Spanish discus thrower David Martinez didn't have an evil twin — real or imagined — to blame for a positive test for anabolic steroids, so he tried the old infected pig-meat defense. Tennis player Petr Korda tried passing off a positive drug test after he won the 1998 Australian Open on eating too much veal, only to have medical science laugh in his face. Chinese track coach Ma Junren blamed three of his record-setting runners testing positive for EPO on a supplement containing dried caterpillars and turtle blood.
• German runner Dieter Baumann claimed a failed steroid test was the result of someone injecting his toothpaste with the forbidden enhancers. High jumper Javier Sotomayor blamed a positive cocaine test on the CIA or an anti-Cuban mafia spiking his food. Uzbekistan track coach Sergei Voynov explained he had a stockpile of growth hormone to treat baldness.
• British bobsledder Lenny Paul's excuse for a failed doping test? Tainted spaghetti Bolognese. Not to be outdone, British shotputter Paul Edwards blamed a positive steroids test on drinking shampoo. Please, people, read the instructions: Rinse. Repeat. But do not drink.
• When the world was a much more innocent place, Zambian tennis player Lighton Ndefwayl offered a litany of excuses for losing a match to Musumba Bwayla. Calling Bwayla "a stupid man and a hopeless player," Ndefwayl said he lost "because my jock strap was too tight" and because his opponent's incessant flatulence while serving caused concentration lapses.
• Soccer player Darren Barnard was explaining he'd have to sit out five months because he slipped on puppy pee? When Brazilian soccer player Ramalho was explaining how he spent three days sick in bed because he swallowed a suppository intended to treat a dental condition? When outfielder Marty Cordova had to miss nearly a week because of a severe sunburn suffered when he fell asleep at a tanning salon?

The Qualifications of Hillary W. Clinton: A dynasty in decline.

The Natural and His Wife: Bill Clinton's partner - in life and politics - has yet to repeat his success.

Two Dallas Van Halen Tickets for Sale

7 p.m. CT, Saturday, Jan. 26, 2008

Section: 105

Row: M
Seats: 13, 14
Click Here To Purchase

Wallace should throw high and tight with Clemens interview

Odds, and history, don't bode well for Clemens' denials

In the fiercest of defenses, David Justice appeared on ESPN Radio to express his anger that he was named in the report. Justice claimed he never met steroid dealer Kirk Radomski and wasn't given the opportunity by Mitchell investigators to respond to allegations that he had purchased growth hormone from Radomski. Justice might not have ever used growth hormone, but in his animated public defense, he left out his verbal commitment to speak to Mitchell about the Radomski-McNamee allegations that appear on pages 181 and 182 in the report, along with the several phone calls Mitchell's investigators made to him to reschedule and the certified letter sent to his Poway, Calif., home. Justice signed for that letter; Mitchell's investigators provided ESPN.com with a copy of its receipt that contains Justice's signature.

Why didn't Pettitte or Roberts or Vina or Justice or anyone else simply tell Mitchell what each has told the public since the report was released?

GOP, R.I.P.? The Reagan coalition is down, but not out.

Mike Huckabee's New Deal - More God, more government.

Alice Cooper: The shock rock pioneer speaks about his Christian faith

"As a Christian, I don't declare myself as a 'Christian rock star'. I'm a rock performer who's a Christian. Alice Cooper is the guy who wants to entertain the audience - it happens that he's a Christian. Alice (the character I play on stage) began life as a villain and he remains one. There's a villain and a hero in every Shakespeare play. Alice is no more dangerous than a villain in a cartoon or a Disney film. We have fun with him. He snarls and wears make up. He's punished for his crime and he comes back on the stage in white top and tails. We put on a good show. I've always put limits on Alice because I believe there's a certain amount of Alice that's a gentleman. He'd slit your throat, but he'd never swear at you. And there's always a punchline; he may kill you, but he'll slip on a banana peel. I get right-wing Christians down on me and I always ask them the question: 'If I was doing Macbeth, would it be OK?' And they always say that's Shakespeare so of course. I say that's about four times more violent than anything I do on stage."

In his conversation, he is clear that he has no pretensions. He doesn't see himself as the world's greatest theologian or think he is ever going to be. He is concerned that his listener understands that the God he is seeking to serve is the "classic" one of the Christian Scriptures and creeds and not some modern amended version. The constant use of "classic" to describe his view of God, Jesus, Satan and the Bible may sound a little too much of the Coca-Cola wars to the listener who isn't used to the terminology but his point is well made. This isn't Alice Cooper's version of God or some celebrity-invented religion or anything of that kind. He goes to Bible study regularly when he is not on tour because he wants to understand God better and because he wants to know more about what God has to say to his life. He isn't interested in being a "celebrity-for-Christ". He wants to be a typical church-going Christian who is learning to love God and love his neighbour. It just so happens that he is Alice Cooper and this brings an interesting twist to the whole process.