From Music City News online:

STEVE WARINER:
WHETHER IN SPOTLIGHT OR OUT, HE’S VERY HAPPY THESE DAYS
By Chuck Dauphin

August 17, 1977 is a date that for Steve Wariner, he will never forget. Of course, the date is significant because it was one day after the tragic death of Elvis Presley. For Steve, as sad as he was, the date also served as a beginning of sorts. It was his very first recording session----at RCA’s studio A. While a different studio than the one in which Elvis recorded his first hits on the label, his producer Chet Atkins was very involved in those early recordings that put Elvis on the map. Needless to say, it was the producer and not the artist that got the lions’ share of attention that day. “I was a young kid, freaked out because Chet Atkins had agreed to take me in and do a record on me,” he recalls. “When I got to the studio and pulled into the parking lot at RCA, all three TV networks were there. It was pandemonium with all the reporters trying to get to Chet. He was doing an impromptu press conference. I was sitting in the corner thinking “I want to make a record today,” says Wariner. He finally got around to cutting tracks, and his first recording for RCA turned out to be “I’m Already Taken.”

Of course, a few years have passed. RCA’s offices have changed a few times since then, Chet Atkins has passed away, and we now have hundreds of networks on our television screens. That first song for the label, turned out to be a huge hit for Steve some two decades later during his stint with Capitol. The native of Noblesville, Indiana is still making great music, with a new release titled THIS REAL LIFE. The third release on his own label, Selectone, Wariner tells MUSIC CITY NEWS that “the process of having our own label is still a learning one.” As successful as he has been, he had no plans to release a new album. “THIS REAL LIFE is my last three years worth of songs that I’ve selfishly hoarded. Quite honestly and frankly, this album came about because of the hardcore fans out there. Their e-mails and letters have been asking for new music,” he admits when asked about the reason for his new project. Between writing, producing, and publishing, he stays very busy, adding that “just when I start to step away from the limelight, I end up back in it.”

One listen to the new disc, and you’ll be glad that he is back with new music. This is the most musically diverse album that he has released in many years. Material like “A Little Daylight (Lovin’ You)” will please fans of his more traditional styles like “Tips Of My Fingers,” while “That’s Just What Happened To Me” brings to mind a Tony Bennett / Frank Sinatra feel. To my ears, it sounds like a song that Chet Atkins might have produced on Jim Reeves circa 1961. When told of that comparison he said “What a great era that was. Anytime I could bring Jim or Don Gibson up, I would. I loved hearing his stories about those days.” For fans of a tropical feel, there’s the upbeat “Real Tough Job.” A classic TV character came to mind after the song was written. “I wrote that with Gordon Kennedy, and while we didn’t get it from “Seinfeld,” it did remind us of an episode where George Costanza is trying to impress a girl, and tells her he’s a marine biologist,” he says of the song. The cut “Reeding Out Loud” is very special to Steve, for it’s dedicated to one of his influences. An instrumental track, he calls it “an ode to one of my heroes, Jerry Reed.” Of the “Alabama Wild Man,” he said “it’s funny because Jerry and I work out together, and he lives not too far from me, and we’re pretty close. We became closer after Chet’s death, and he is one act that has yet to get the credit he’s due.” Because of Reed’s picking style, Steve went on to say that “you hear so many people on radio today who were influenced by Jerry Reed…..whether they know it or not.” It’s a recording that he can’t wait to share, admitting that “he hasn’t heard it yet. I need to take it to him.”

Because of his talent, and all-around great personality, many artists have recorded with Steve over the years. I asked his thoughts on a few:

Nicolette Larson (1986’s “That’s How You Know When Love’s Right)
“I loved her, and we had a big hit together. I remember how much I hated to hear of her untimely death. I was so sick when I heard the news. We were close friends during her time on MCA. She lived in Los Angeles, and we did a few shows together. It just seemed like you turned around one day and she was gone. So young, and such a sweet person, and so fun to be around. I remember recording the track at Emerald, and she was just bouncing off the wall.”

Glen Campbell (1987’s “The Hand That Rocks The Cradle”)
“That song still gets a ton of play, especially on Mother’s Day. I was really thrilled when he called. I remember being at my parents’ house in Kentucky when he called. He said ‘I’ve got a song I want you to record with me.’ I told him I would love to, and asked when. He said ‘tomorrow!” Of course, I was there. He had a cold that day, but didn’t want to record the song separately. There we were in the recording studio, and all the while I was thinking ‘I’m singing with Glen Campbell!’ How cool is that?”

Garth Brooks (“Burnin’ The Roadhouse Down” and “Katie Wants A Fast One”)“I had stepped away from performing and was just concentrating on writing and producing. Garth had recorded “Longneck Bottle,” and we had success with it. We were flying out to the TONIGHT SHOW when he saw me listening to music. He asked what I was listening to, and I told him just some stuff I had written. He asked if I minded if he could hear it, so I said sure. “Holes In The Floor Of Heaven” was the song, and as he put on the headphones, I saw a tear coming down his eye. He asked me what I was going to do with the song, and I told him that I was just going to pitch it around and see what happened with it. He then said ‘You should do this, and come over with us at Capitol.’ He took a copy to Pat Quigley, and a week later, it was out. I wasn’t planning on making records anymore, but Capitol gave me a budget and said to go make music and bring it to us---the first time that’s ever happened. I remember many years ago when Garth was still in college, he would open for us. We would sit on the bus, talk about songs and Nashville.”

The unofficial Steve Wariner Fan Club isn’t just limited to his fellow artists. Recently, while in Washington, Steve was contacted by Vice-President Cheney’s office, and asked to perform at a party at his house. Wariner accepted the invitation, and a few minutes later received another call from Cheney’s office, saying that the VP wanted to make two requests—“Holes In The Floor Of Heaven” and “Two Teardrops.” Wariner did them both!
Most of that visit to Washington found Steve taking part in a battle that’s very close to his heart---Juvenile Diabetes. Of his involvement with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation he says that “I work with JDRF and have for years. My step-daughter Holly was diagnosed with Type 1 at age 8, and I’ve seen the effects of diabetes first hand. Every couple years, I go to Congress with Mary Tyler Moore and other celebrities, as Mary speaks about various types of research, including stem-cell,” he confirms. “Obviously, with Holly and my dad being Type 2, it’s a cause that is dear to my heart,” he says with a great deal of emotion. As someone recently diagnosed with diabetes, I don’t think the cause could have a better ambassador!

What lies ahead for Steve? A lot, for sure. In fact, the fall is shaping up very nicely. THIS REAL LIFE has just been released, available at his website, www.stevewariner.com, and also at the Ernest Tubb Record Shop. Radio is already spinning “She Thinks I Am,” which he recently performed on the Grand Ole Opry. The tune brings to mind his great ballads like “The Weekend” or “Some Fools Never Learn.” He’s quite excited with the reception the track is getting, telling us that “I’m as happy and pleased with that one as anything I have done throughout the years, and we’re getting some stations on it. Phoenix is playing it, as well as Gerry House at WSIX.” Could we be seeing another Steve Wariner comeback? Don’t bet against it.

He’s also wearing the producer cap these days, barely containing his glee over a new act he is working with. “While I have produced my own records for the past ten years, I am very excited to be producing a bunch of young guys from Texas. They are from a town called Alvaredo, which is near Fort Worth, and that is what they are going by,” he discloses to us about the group. “It’s two brothers, AJ and Cleve Clark, and their nephew Trey, a 17 year old drummer,” says the producer. While the project is being shopped around and he can’t go into all the details, he did give us a prediction. “Look out for the song “Five Dollar Bill,” which they wrote with Rick Carnes. I’ve had offers to produce before, but because of their harmony and their writing, I was just jumping up and down,” says a very excited Wariner. So….keep an eye out for Steve, whether on the radio, as a producer, or on the highway. It’s the latter that just might cause his temper to appear. While it’s common knowledge, and very true, that he is one of the nicest people in our business, bad driving habits sometimes bring out the worst in Steve. “I guess my pet peeve is people who drive around not following the rules of the road. It drives me crazy….read the manual, people!” Even then, he says it with a smile!

From New York Daily News: Can't wait for this either.

He was born to run,
but grew to do much more
By David Hinckley

Wednesday, October 5th, 2005

When Columbia Records confirmed last week it will release a 30th anniversary CD/DVD package of Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run," it doubtless sparked a familiar cry in some corners of Bruce-land: "Finally! The Real Bruce again!"
It's a sentiment Springsteen has been hearing ever since he followed his anthemic "The River" album and tour with 1982's quiet, reflective "Nebraska."

Some fans who would follow Bruce and the E Street Band off a cliff wouldn't walk across the street to hear him sing the acoustic stuff he's doing on his current "Devils & Dust" tour.

The Real Bruce, the man who can heal the sick and raise the dead, is "Spirit in the Night," "Badlands" and "Jungleland."

The guy on the road now strumming acoustic tunes about mother-son relationships and the desperate dreams of immigrants, well, they don't hate him - they just figure they'll go out for a beer till the Real Bruce returns.

That doesn't mean no one is listening now. Other fans are enjoying this part of his journey. Critics adore the show and praise his decision not to take the easy path to the biggest dollars.

A Bruce ticket is still a sweet thing. These shows just produce less frenzy than the E Street tours, because fewer people want to reflect on the doomed pilgrim of "Matamoros Banks" than want to pump their fists for "Out in the Street."

Does this bother Springsteen? To all appearances, not at all, because he has never wanted his songs reduced to fist-pumping triggers with content as an afterthought.

Yet he obviously approved releasing the "Born to Run" package as he wraps up the present tour - knowing that in some eyes the "BTR" guy will overshadow his current self.

Specifically, the "Born to Run" package will include a remastered copy of the record, a DVD of a previously unreleased 1975 show at London's Hammerstein Odeon, and a 90-minute DVD documentary on the making of "BTR."

It's a holiday feast for fans, and releasing it for gift-buying season makes, as usual with Bruce, perfect marketing sense.

But this set would sell no matter when it was released, and the fact he doesn't mind pitting his latest incarnation against his almost mythic younger self says a lot of things, all good, about his self-assurance as an artist.

Springsteen mixes up his music to some extent because he can. His success bought him that freedom. But it's also clear he wouldn't play just one style of music any more than he'd eat just one kind of food.

Like Dylan, Johnny Cash, Marvin Gaye and Duke Ellington, he draws from the whole musical well, and anyone who thinks "Born to Run" and "Darkness on the Edge of Town" aren't related to "Johnny 99" and "Tom Joad" just isn't listening.

The Real Bruce is all of the above.

From Church of the Masses: I can't wait.

Narnia: Deep Magic
By Barbara Nicolosi

I am going to go on a brief hiatus from my hiatus here because I had the great privilege yesterday of seeing the highly anticipated The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe from Disney/Walden. I haven't been so eager to see a film since The Passion of the Christ, nor felt the same sense of relief and joy!

The movie is lovely. The print we saw had some special effects still in stages, but it didn't detract from the stunning vision the movie radiates off the screen. England is musty and dreary. Narnia is a wonderland. Tke kids are going to love it. They are going to want to walk through that wardrobe with Lucy time after time.

But best of all, contrary to Peter Jackson's agenda-aversion manhandling of Tolkien's classic, here, the tone of LW&W is as close to the book as probably could have been achieved. All the lines the Christians are worrying about are in there. All the scenes you want to see are here and lovingly rendered. So everybody can relax and get ready to enjoy, and we can all take the Wonderful World of Disney back into our hearts -- and save the studio for 2005! Truly, our forgiveness is completely saving...

People particularly want to know if Aslan comes off as a Christ-figure, or just some warm and fuzzy magic lion. Well, I personally cried every moment Aslan was on the screen. But then, I walked in with my character development done by my Jesus thing. I so wanted to be Lucy and Susan, with their heads resting on his body on the stone table. I wonder if people who don't love Jesus will feel the same? So, I am going to say that Aslan is absolutely discernible as a figure of Jesus -- for those who have eyes to see.

Which is a way of saying that this movie may have a little of The Passion problem. Madeleine L'Engle says in her book on writing, Walking on Water, that we Christians should live in such a way that our lives wouldn't make sense if our Faith wasn't true. We tell our Act One students that they should write that way too. Their stories shouldn't make sense unless they begin from Christian presuppositions. C.S. Lewis' Narnia books are very much like that. So, this adaptation of his books on the big screen - in being true to their source material - will be tremendously, heart-fillingly comprehensible to those of us who love Jesus. And probably a bit strange to those who don't. But whereas The Passion was disturbingly incomprehensible to non-believers, this film will be fascinatingly so. I want to be clear, there is plenty of stuff to love and enjoy here for non-Christians. But they aren't going to get why we Christians are going to be in ecstasy here , any more than the pagans got why we cried copious tears at The Passion.

But I have to return to the look of the film here. Whereas Jackson's Middle Earth was mostly dark and dripping, with the battle scenes looking like collisions of filthy, toothless Viking corpses, this movie is much lighter and prettier. The battle scenes here are not gory and disgusting. They look like a dream of Medieval Knights with red flags flapping and silver armor shining...and, you know, charging unicorns and fawns and things.

There was a discussion afterward as to what ages of children could see the film. People were saying 8 year olds could handle it fine. I agree. But I also think littler kids should go. I never buy into this idiocy that we are supposed to protect kids from our own faith story. I remember folks saying that about Prince of Egypt - that the scenes of the Israelites in slavery were too impressive for young kids. To borrow from Anne Lamott, I think this kind of weak-kneed semsitivity makes "Jesus want to go lap gin out of the cat bowl." The vision of Aslan getting shaved and killed is no harder to take than Jesus being scourged and crucified. A generation of children protected from these things breeds a generation of little unmotivated narcissists.

Bring your kids to see The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe! Bring them again! On opening weekend! This movie is deep magic.

From washingtonpost.com:

The State of the Union Between the Right and the White House Turns Frosty
By Dana Milbank

Friday, October 7, 2005

Yesterday's tribute by President Bush to William F. Buckley and National Review was arranged in happier times, when the Republican president and the right wing were still in a state of connubial bliss.

But the nomination Monday of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court turned yesterday's gathering at the White House of the conservative intelligentsia into a special presidential edition of "Can This Marriage Be Saved?"

In the front row for Bush's speech to the conservatives sat George Will, who the day before wrote that Bush "has forfeited his right to be trusted as a custodian of the Constitution." In the back row sat William Kristol, who wrote earlier in the week that the nomination of Miers had the look of "a combination of cronyism and capitulation on the part of the president."

Filling the other seats were the contributors to a magazine which, in the past 100 hours, has, on its Web site, called Miers "a petty bureaucrat," described the White House as "overly insular, increasingly off-key," and accused Bush of a "lack of conviction" and a "disservice" to the country.

The president, facing his jilted base, acted as if nothing had changed in the relationship. He entered the room beaming, joined by the 79-year-old Buckley, who stood to the side, hands in coat pockets, smiling a crooked grin. With Buckley (Yale '50) as his straight guy, Bush (Yale '68) reprised the amiable-dunce routine he used to great effect at a Yale graduation a few years ago.

"You probably think this is the Yale Scholars Association meeting," Bush cracked.

Recalling Buckley's view that National Review "stands athwart history, yelling 'Stop,' " the president deadpanned: "That's the approach I took to most of my classes."

And back in '55, when Buckley started National Review, "I was more interested in Willie Mays than I was in you," Bush confessed.

The laughter, polite and appreciative, turned more genuine when Bush struggled with the pronunciation of "eclectic," then added: "That's a Yale word."

It wasn't a bad routine, but it did not bring back that loving feeling. "It was really Katrina that set it off," diagnosed Jonah Goldberg, a National Review writer at the Buckley tribute. Conservatives were angry about the White House's unfettered spending after the storm -- and then came Hurricane Harriet.

"It's the nature of all relationships, really: The straw that breaks the camel's back is rarely the most obvious thing," said Goldberg, who opined on the magazine's Web site that Miers "meets the dictionary definition of a crony."

And while the president tiptoed around the Miers quarrel, the conservatives, in their White House hallway murmurs, did not. "All the private conversation was pretty much about Miers, and pretty one-sided," Kristol reported. So can the marriage be saved? "The easiest way to save it would be if Ms. Miers decided to withdraw her nomination," Kristol said.

Will, who delivered one of the tributes to Buckley before Bush joined the party, was not sure that it was safe to take his assigned seat in the front row. "Well, we're going to find out," he said. But the columnist suffered no retribution for his criticism of the president, perhaps because he is also a baseball enthusiast. "He gave me a knowing wink when he mentioned Willie Mays," Will recounted.

It was impossible to know if Bush was being rueful when he noted the "abundance of conservative columnists and radio hosts and television shows and think tanks" inspired by Buckley. "I guess in an intellectual sense, you could say these are all Bill's children. And like children, they grow up and go their own way."

They certainly do. Yesterday morning, National Review writer David Frum -- a former Bush speechwriter, no less -- complained in his blog that "there is scarcely a single knowledgeable legal conservative in Washington who supports this nomination." Miers, Frum wrote, "is being chosen for her next job in exactly the same way and for the same reasons that Michael Brown was chosen for FEMA."

It's not surprising that, after White House advisers branded Miers's critics as Northeastern, Ivy League elitists, the accused elites became even more angry. Kathryn Jean Lopez, writing on National Review's Web site, asked if Republican talking points "are usually this lame," and said the White House's defense of Miers was "patronizingly sexist."

On the National Review Web site yesterday, Buckley proteges were pleased with the presidential tribute to their founder -- but not enough to let up on Miers. Not long after Bush's speech, and before Bush and Buckley had a chance to digest their celebratory lunch, National Review posted another swipe at the conservatives' estranged mate.

"[I]t's an insult to all conservatives who care about the courts for the sake of law based on right reason," said the posting, by Mobile Register columnist Quin Hillyer. Miers "remains a crony, in the very sense warned against by Hamilton. Senators should have no compunction about opposing her."

Bush, on the other hand, may have some compunctions about inviting his friends to the White House again.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

Sweet. Mr Clutch comes through again. Hey Roger, they can't all be meaningless.
from washingtonpost.com

Braves Knock Off Clemens
McCann's Homer Helps Even Series: Braves 7, Astros 1

By Jorge Arangure Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 7, 2005

ATLANTA, Oct. 6 -- In the same year a heralded pitching prospect with a powerful right arm made his major league debut with the Boston Red Sox, a little boy was born in Athens, Ga. The son of a baseball coach, Brian McCann had the sport in his blood and flourished with a bat and a catcher's mitt. This season, less than four months after his 21st birthday, he made his big league debut for the Atlanta Braves.

McCann performed well in his rookie season and when Atlanta Manager Bobby Cox made out his starting lineup for Game 2 of the National League Division Series, McCann's name was on it. In the second inning Thursday night, with two men on base for his first postseason at-bat, McCann looked out to the mound to see Roger Clemens, that same prospect whose big league debut came a few months after McCann was born.

"The history behind him is greater than any pitcher I've faced," said McCann after powering the Braves to a 7-1 victory Thursday night. "You don't expect to hit a home run against a guy like that."

On an 0-2 pitch, McCann shattered his expectations, launching a line drive over the right field wall for a three-run home run, the decisive blow in the Braves' win that evened this series at a game apiece. Game 3 is Saturday in Houston.

It was a mismatch for sure, a rookie against a future Hall of Famer, a part-time catcher against perhaps the best pitcher in the history of the game.

"It's Roger Clemens against a 21-year-old kid he never saw before," Braves third baseman Chipper Jones said. "Logic says Roger has the upper hand in that matchup."

The rookie rushed around the bases, a moment he does not remember anymore, and then celebrated with his teammates at home plate. After the game, while the Braves congratulated each other, McCann told Jones, "I blacked out from the second inning on."

The Turner Field crowd of 46,181 was in full-throated roar following the homer. They demanded a curtain call. The rookie obliged. "I wanted that to last forever," McCann said.

"It's the greatest moment I've had on a baseball field. Everything just felt right."

McCann's heroics in no small part forced the spotlight away from what had been expected to be one of this postseason's best pitching matchups: Clemens vs. Braves ace John Smoltz. Both pitchers are among the best of their generation. But Thursday night, only one lived up to his billing, and he was pitching for the home team.

Thursday was Smoltz's first postseason start since October 27, 1999 when he was bested by Clemens and the New York Yankees in Game 4 of the World Series. That victory earned Clemens his first World Series ring.

Smoltz missed the next season after having reconstructive elbow surgery during spring training. The Braves decided it was best for Smoltz to become the team's new closer the following season to work his elbow back into shape. He had done well at that task, but deep inside Smoltz ached to be a starter again and more so ached to start a postseason game. His chance finally came on Thursday.

"I'm certainly proud," Smoltz said. "For tonight it sure feels good. I had some rough pitches but some good pitches."

Smoltz allowed a run in the first inning, on a single by Jason Lane, but was virtually untouchable after that. Only one Houston runner reached second base after the first inning and Smoltz had five strikeouts in his seven innings to earn his record 15th win in the postseason.

"When Brian threw that home run, boy it changed the whole game," Smoltz said. "That home run was pretty much the adrenaline boost I need to get through the game."

Clemens was taken out after just five innings and 92 pitches, perhaps none bigger than the one McCann hit for a home run.

"The home run is what killed us," Clemens said. "You can't afford to make that mistake there. A fastball down and away that cut back over the zone. It's a very hittable pitch. The pitcher is on deck. Guys on this level, whether he's 21 or 41, are going to hit that. He took advantage of it."

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

Miers is the wrong pick
By George Will

Oct 4, 2005

WASHINGTON -- Senators beginning what ought to be a protracted and exacting scrutiny of Harriet Miers should be guided by three rules. First, it is not important that she be confirmed. Second, it might be very important that she not be. Third, the presumption -- perhaps rebuttable but certainly in need of rebutting -- should be that her nomination is not a defensible exercise of presidential discretion to which senatorial deference is due.

     It is not important that she be confirmed because there is no evidence that she is among the leading lights of American jurisprudence, or that she possesses talents commensurate with the Supreme Court's tasks. The president's ``argument'' for her amounts to: Trust me. There is no reason to, for several reasons.

     He has neither the inclination nor the ability to make sophisticated judgments about competing approaches to construing the Constitution. Few presidents acquire such abilities in the course of their prepresidential careers, and this president, particularly, is not disposed to such reflections.

     Furthermore, there is no reason to believe that Miers' nomination resulted from the president's careful consultation with people capable of such judgments. If 100 such people had been asked to list 100 individuals who have given evidence of the reflectiveness and excellence requisite in a justice, Miers' name probably would not have appeared in any of the 10,000 places on those lists.

     In addition, the president has forfeited his right to be trusted as a custodian of the Constitution. The forfeiture occurred March 27, 2002, when, in a private act betokening an uneasy conscience, he signed the McCain-Feingold law expanding government regulation of the timing, quantity and content of political speech. The day before the 2000 Iowa caucuses he was asked -- to insure a considered response from him, he had been told in advance he would be asked -- whether McCain-Feingold's core purposes are unconstitutional. He unhesitatingly said, ``I agree.'' Asked if he thought presidents have a duty, pursuant to their oath to defend the Constitution, to make an independent judgment about the constitutionality of bills and to veto those he thinks unconstitutional, he briskly said, ``I do.''

     It is important that Miers not be confirmed unless, in her 61st year, she suddenly and unexpectedly is found to have hitherto undisclosed interests and talents pertinent to the court's role. Otherwise the sound principle of substantial deference to a president's choice of judicial nominees will dissolve into a rationalization for senatorial abdication of the duty to hold presidents to some standards of seriousness that will prevent them from reducing the Supreme Court to a private plaything useful for fulfilling whims on behalf of friends.

     The wisdom of presumptive opposition to Miers' confirmation flows from the fact that constitutional reasoning is a talent -- a skill acquired, as intellectual skills are, by years of practice sustained by intense interest. It is not usually acquired in the normal course of even a fine lawyer's career. The burden is on Miers to demonstrate such talents, and on senators to compel such a demonstration or reject the nomination.

     Under the rubric of ``diversity'' -- nowadays, the first refuge of intellectually disreputable impulses -- the president announced, surely without fathoming the implications, his belief in identity politics and its tawdry corollary, the idea of categorical representation. Identity politics holds that one's essential attributes are genetic, biological, ethnic or chromosomal -- that one's nature and understanding are decisively shaped by race, ethnicity or gender. Categorical representation holds that the interests of a group can only be understood, empathized with and represented by a member of that group.

     The crowning absurdity of the president's wallowing in such nonsense is the obvious assumption that the Supreme Court is, like a legislature, an institution of representation. This from a president who, introducing Miers, deplored judges who ``legislate from the bench.''

     Minutes after the president announced the nomination of his friend from Texas, another Texas friend, Robert Jordan, former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, was on Fox News proclaiming what he and, no doubt, the White House that probably enlisted him for advocacy, considered glad and relevant tidings: Miers, said Jordan, has been a victim. She has been, he said contentedly, ``discriminated against'' because of her gender.

     Her victimization was not so severe that it prevented her from becoming the first female president of a Texas law firm as large as hers, president of the State Bar of Texas and a senior White House official. Still, playing the victim card clarified, as much as anything has so far done, her credentials, which are her chromosomes and their supposedly painful consequences. For this we need a conservative president?

Good article here accurately capturing the bittersweet tone of Cynthia Lennon's book.

And She Loved Him
Cynthia Lennon Pens A Memoir of Her Beatle
By Glenn Frankel

Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, October 3, 2005

LIVERPOOL, England -- As a wistful dusk descends, the car ferrying Cynthia Lennon to her hotel passes the old registry office on Mount Street where she and an aspiring singer-guitarist named John Lennon were married 43 years ago. The witnesses that day included Paul McCartney and George Harrison, John's main partners in a pop band then hovering on the brink of unimaginable success.

Now the car's up to Hope Street, around the corner from the art college where in 1958 she first met the impossibly wild, angry, infuriating, talented, cruel, funny, magnetic young rebel who would love and torment her and eventually cast her aside; and Ye Cracke, the scruffy pub where they used to hang out, play music and dream crazy dreams. Even the corner shop where they would buy sweets and potato chips is still there, catering to a new generation of nutritionally challenged students.

"It's like Memory Lane up here," says Lennon, with a rueful, knowing smile but not, she insists, an unhappy one. "I'm having lovely thoughts seeing all of this."

She is here, in the place where the Beatles were born, to promote her new book, a memoir of him and her and those hyper-intense years when she was the girlfriend, and then the wife, in the background as four blue-collar kids from this bruised northwest England seaport clawed their way to the top. The title is simply "John," and the book is Cynthia's attempt, at 66, to come to terms with the life, death and aftermath of one of the 20th century's most iconic musical figures. In the United States it will be published by Crown this week, the same week John would have turned 65.

In the standard accounts of the Beatles' rise, she's usually written off as the impressionable and clueless young thing who ensnared John in marriage after getting pregnant. Her own version is very different: They were young and madly in love and good for each other until fame, drugs and a bizarro performance artist named Yoko Ono swept him away. In person she has survivor's radar and a sweet, knowing demeanor that seems anything but clueless.

She's been married four times -- her current husband, Noel Charles, a former nightclub owner, hovers protectively -- and she's had her share of ups and downs. Her divorce settlement with Lennon left her far from wealthy, and she has worked as a restaurateur, bed-and-breakfast owner and TV personality. She sold her old drawings and Lennon's love letters (Paul McCartney once bought one, framed it and sent it to her as a gift), and wrote a thinner, halfhearted account in the late 1970s that succeeded mostly at enraging John and Yoko.

She's written this new book, she says, in part because everyone else has written theirs and she often didn't recognize reality in the other versions and wanted to set out her own.

"It's like when you whisper one word at the beginning, and by the time it gets around to the end it becomes a totally different word," she says. "This is my book, my experience, and if it's not the same as somebody else's, that's fair game. I have to speak from my point of view and my feelings about the whole story."

There's not much new here, truth be told, but it's Cynthia Lennon's eyewitness testimony that vividly captures the time and place and the characters. She casts a new and harsher light on John's autocratic Aunt Mimi, who provided him with a stable home after his mother gave him up, but who treated him with bitter disdain, mocked his ambitions and drained him of self-confidence.

Cynthia's depiction of those early Beatles days -- when the boys were the closest of friends, loyally supporting each other and sharing the adventure of becoming famous -- is fresh and all the more poignant because we know that eventually the friendship imploded as the Beatles fell out and fell apart.

Her portrait of John is loving but candid. There are some fond moments: the scene of the boys dressed in black suits, like undertakers, at the wedding is hilarious, and John's joy at seeing his baby son Julian for the first time is heartwarming. But he could be vindictive, controlling, cynical and egocentric, she says. He insisted that she dye her hair blond to look like Brigitte Bardot and became furious when she cut it too short. Later on he bullied her into taking LSD even though it made her sick.

Then, as the madness of Beatlemania overtook him, he shut her out altogether. He hit her only once, she says, in a jealous rage early on after she danced with his best friend, Stuart Sutcliffe. It took him three months to apologize, and it never happened again. But the verbal abuse, the mocking and the demands never ceased, she says, although she confesses that she was far too passive and forgiving, inevitably shying away from confrontation for fear of losing him.

She lost him anyway, and the scene in 1968 of her coming home from a trip to find Yoko sitting in Cynthia's own bathrobe on the floor across from John is painful and shocking, even though it's been told elsewhere before. After that, she says, everyone in the Beatles' tightknit social circle cut her off for fear of angering John, with the exception of McCartney, who came to see her soon after the break and even wrote a song of healing for Julian that became "Hey Jude."

They haven't forgotten her in Liverpool. There's a line at noon stretching to the sidewalk outside Waterstones, the downtown bookstore where she signs for an hour, and another in the afternoon in a warehouse-size Costco. Jean Catharell, who revived the Beatles Liverpool fan club in the early 1990s, is there, and so is Brenda Powell, an old friend from art school who says she once dated Sutcliffe. One young man asks for a kiss -- he gets a peck on the cheek -- and others ask her to write "All You Need Is Love" alongside her name on the title page.

In the evening it's off to a small party at the Cavern, the subterranean nightclub where the Beatles played 274 times in the early 1960s. There are more old friends on hand, including May Pang, a New York artist and jewelry designer who had an 18-month affair with John in the early 1970s after Yoko kicked him out for a spell.

May says she and Cynthia became friends after May encouraged John to spend time with Julian. She's in town on business and came to the Cavern to honor Cynthia -- "She's a good person and a good friend." They're charter members of the John and Yoko Survivors Support Group.

The book's real love story is Cynthia's fierce commitment to Julian -- "my best friend and the love of my life," as she puts it in her introduction. Julian, now 42, has written the book's foreword, thanking her for finally telling the story of the father "who let me down in so many ways." There's a photo on the back cover of him and his mother, with Julian looking hauntingly like his late father.

One living person who won't care for Cynthia's account is Yoko, who comes across as manipulative and vindictive or just plain oblivious. The book will confirm every Beatles fanatic's worst image of the woman many still blame for breaking up the world's favorite band.

Yoko changed John, made him fragile and precious and needy, cut him off from family and friends, according to Cynthia's version. "He was a different man when he was with me -- much more gregarious and all encompassing. John was never really precious when I knew him, never fragile."

John's murder by a psychotic assassin in December 1980, just as he was reemerging on the music scene, also killed Cynthia's hopes for a reconciliation between father and son. Yoko's allegedly cruel treatment of Julian after John's death -- she issued a public statement on her own behalf and that of her son Sean but omits any mention of Julian -- is one of the saddest moments of the book.

But not as sad as the last sentence, where Cynthia concludes that if she'd known as a teenager where falling in love with John would lead, she never would have taken the plunge.

"I didn't really mean it as so final as that," she says. "It's such a double-edged feeling. When I say that if I'd known what was ahead of me I'd have walked the other way -- well, obviously I couldn't and wouldn't and didn't. I didn't take the easy path."

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

The answer to the below article from Opinion Journal is Yes. In spite of a typical establishment conservative reflex to defend "free trade" (ha), this is a pretty good article about the losers that are causing the decay of the Republican party.

The GOP Could Lose in '06
Have congressional Republicans lost their way?
By John Fund

Monday, October 3, 2005

With Rep. Tom DeLay's forced departure as majority leader, Newt Gingrich says, the Republican Party stands at a crossroads as important as any it has faced since nominating Ronald Reagan for president in 1980. "It must decide if it is going to be a party that fundamentally reforms government or one that merely presides over existing institutions and spends more money," he says. Which path the GOP now takes may determine not only how much damage it suffers in next year's elections but also whether it can hold the White House in 2008.

Mr. Gingrich knows something about dramatic intersections. He helped lead the 1994 GOP takeover of Congress from a Democratic majority that had associated itself with tax increases and a government takeover of health care. In 1996, the Democrats partly recovered when his party let President Clinton seize the moral high ground during a government shutdown. Two years after that, a Republican Congress preoccupied itself with the Monica Lewinsky scandal and adjourned just before the midterm elections by passing a budget-busting spending bill. Demoralized GOP voters stayed home, allowing the Democrats to pick up more seats. Mr. Gingrich stepped down shortly after that, turning over the Speaker's gavel to Dennis Hastert.

Since then Mr. Hastert and his fellow GOP leaders have skillfully used their narrow majority to win an amazing number of close votes without having to negotiate much with Democrats. But gradually the fear of losing their majority has also begun leading them to behave more and more like the big-spending Democrats they unseated. "Holding the majority used to be viewed as a means to an end--the end being promoting freedom and limited government," laments Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona. "Now, holding the majority seems to be an end in itself--holding onto power for the sake of holding onto power."

The loudest warning was sounded in November, 2003. At the behest of the White House, Mr. Hastert and then-Majority Leader DeLay held a floor vote open for three hours early one morning while they browbeat GOP members to pass a prescription drug benefit that was the largest expansion of an entitlement program since LBJ's Great Society. "It was a watershed event, the moment when Republicans who stood for limited government realized they were the enemy of their own leadership," Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma told me.

Since then the GOP's love affair with big government has intensified. This summer Congress passed a $286 billion highway bill stuffed with 6,373 pork-barrel projects inserted by individual members, many so marginal they have drawn national ridicule. All this was abetted or even led by a Bush White House that has yet to veto a single bill and whose officials have apparently adapted the old New Deal slogan "tax and tax, and spend and spend, and elect and elect" into merely "spend and spend."

The ouster of Tom DeLay last week came over a dubious Texas indictment on campaign finance violations. But he was in hot water with the conservative base before that for a series of bizarre statements opposing budget cuts to pay for the costs of Hurricane Katrina relief.

He first claimed with a straight face that the GOP Congress had "pared [federal spending] down pretty good; I am ready to declare ongoing victory." He then dismissed calls for delaying the start of the prescription drug benefit for a year by claiming it was designed to save money in the long run. "Postponing a reform that is going to implement fiscal restraint doesn't make a whole lot of sense," he lectured fellow members. Finally, he reacted to news that Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi would give up some specific transportation projects in her San Francisco district to help pay for Katrina by defending the projects in his own district. "The highway bill is an important part of building our economy," he told reporters. Mr. DeLay seemed to be channeling Richard Nixon, another big spender, who once foolishly claimed, "We are all Keynesians now."

Talk like that has demoralized much of the Republican base. With nearly all Democrats and two-thirds of independents reacting negatively to the Bush presidency, Republicans need to keep GOP voters in the fold. But only 78% of Republicans express approval of Mr. Bush, down from well over 90% at the time of his re-election. With only 32% of Americans believing that the country is headed in the right direction and only 33% approving of the job Congress is doing, the GOP has reason to worry. "By an eight-point margin, voters are now more likely to call themselves Democrats than Republicans; there was no gap in self-identification a year ago," notes political handicapper Charlie Cook.

Some Republicans, viewing the rise of voter discontent with alarm, are making panicked calls for the party to back off on making the Bush tax cuts permanent and also supporting grandiose Katrina rebuilding programs. They are ignoring one of the great principles of economics: many of the consequences of a decision are not always immediately obvious. As the 19th-century French economist Frederic Bastiat put it, "There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: The bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen."

Take the minimum wage. Raising it boosts the income of some low-skilled workers, but it also puts others out of work if their skills don't justify the higher pay. A similar effect occurs with free trade. The economic dislocation it causes is identifiable and "seen," less so its benefits and the new jobs it creates.

There is a political corollary to Bastiat's "seen and unseen" principle. Elected officials tend to focus on the visible benefits of government spending, not how the money might be better spent if left in the private sector. Similarly, they pay far more attention to the highly visible opposition that develops against any move to cut government spending or reform programs. They tend not to notice often cynical "silent majorities" that could be assembled to back reforms if convinced they would really happen. In his book "Demosclerosis," Jonathan Rauch describes "government's progressive loss of the ability to adapt" as concern about the general public interest recedes and special interests became more visible and able to engage in gridlock.

There is real "unseen" political fallout from the failure of leaders to tackle genuine problems, especially if they are members of a party that claims to be skeptical of big government. The easiest thing for people to do in these cynical times is not to vote; even in last year's intensely fought presidential election over 40% of eligible adults stayed away from the polls. "The Bush-Kerry race showed that it's now far more important to motivate people on your side to get to the polls than it is to sway a shrinking group of often indifferent undecided voters," says Michael Barone, a co-author of the Almanac of American Politics.

GOP-leaning voters are often not highly visible or "seen" in the fray of political combat. They tend to be too busy to write letters to the editor or show up at protests. They are more focused on what they regard as the serious business of living: family, jobs, faith. They are often an "unseen" majority, making their presence felt only on Election Day, if they believe their vote will make a difference. If they think there is little real difference between what the two parties will do such voters can easily stay home--and do.

Republican congressional leaders are still engaging in happy talk, claiming there is no danger of losing either house of Congress next year. Rep. Tom Reynolds, chairman of the GOP's House campaign committee, notes that elections are held in individual districts and that the latest Pew Research poll found that voters still approved of the job their individual congressman was doing by 57% to 25%. But what if many of those who "approve" do so only mildly, and their failure to vote is outweighed by angry Democrats turning out in higher numbers? It's happened before in midterm elections--in 1998, when disillusioned Republicans stayed home, and in 1994, when Democrats were upset at the incompetence of their party.

All this leaves a vacuum for straight-talking leadership in the GOP. It's safe to say that for the 2008 presidential race the shaky record of Washington Republicans enhances the stature of non-Beltway Republicans such as Rudy Giuliani and Massachusetts' Gov. Mitt Romney. Virginia's Sen. George Allen, a former governor who has been increasingly critical of his party's congressional leadership, is now appealing to voters as an outsider.

But, ironically, the candidate who may benefit the most from the current discontent among Republicans is Sen. John McCain, a Beltway media darling who has often been unpopular among conservatives for his apostate views. But since Mr. McCain doesn't depend on the Bush White House or his party's leadership for favors, he is liberated to blast away at their abandonment of principle.

At a dinner last month with editors of The American Spectator, he called for revisiting the bloated highway bill and for outright repeal of the prescription drug bill--"a program that no voter understands and will usually oppose once they do." It's a sign of the failures of Republican leaders to follow conservative principles that Mr. McCain is becoming the most visible opponent of business-as-usual in Washington right now.

Matthew Continetti, a writer at the Weekly Standard who is writing a book on the modern Republican Party, worries that a decade in political power might have "exhausted conservatism's fighting spirit, lowered the movement's intellectual standards and replaced a healthy independence with partisan water-carrying." That sounds an awful lot like a description of what the last period of one-party rule did to liberals in 1993 and 1994. Back then they ignored the "unseen" political consequences of their actions and thereby convinced the electorate they no longer deserved that power.