Via TheThirdOption.net:

CBS FILMS AND SIMON & SCHUSTER

IN FILM AND PUBLISHING DEAL

FOR BEST-SELLING AUTHOR VINCE FLYNN

Simon & Schuster’s Atria Books

Acquires Flynn’s Next Four Novels

CBS Films Options Rights To Develop Feature Films

Based On Flynn’s Mitch Rapp Character

(NEW YORK, N.Y. and LOS ANGELES, Calif.) –

CBS Films and Simon & Schuster/ Atria Books – both divisions of CBS Corporation -- have reached film and publishing agreements with best-selling author Vince Flynn for upcoming projects, it was jointly announced by Amy Baer, President & CEO of CBS Films, and Carolyn Reidy, President & CEO of Simon & Schuster.Flynn is the author of nine best-selling novels, eight of which feature the popular character counter-terrorism operative Mitch Rapp. There are over 10 million copies of Flynn’s books in print in the U.S., and with his most recent book, “Protect and Defend,” he joined the ranks of those select few authors who can immediately claim the #1 spot on hardcover bestseller lists in their first week on sale.

CBS Films has optioned the rights for Flynn’s Mitch Rapp character with the intention of creating a character-based, action-thriller movie franchise. Lorenzo di Bonaventura, who produced two of last summer’s hits -- “Transformers” and Stephen King’s “1408” -- and Nick Wechsler (“We Own The Night”) are in negotiations to produce the films.

Flynn’s new agreement with Atria and Simon & Schuster is a four book global publishing deal for all world rights, including translation and audio. The worldwide simultaneous English language publication of the first book in the agreement by Atria and Simon & Schuster companies in the UK, Canada, and Australia will take place in 2010. Flynn will be published under the direction of Atria Executive Vice President and Publisher Judith Curr and Vice President, Executive Editorial Director Emily Bestler, who made the acquisition. “We have always passionately believed in Vince Flynn’s star potential as a bestselling author, and equally that his books deserved the even wider audience and exposure that can be reached through feature films,” said Reidy. “That this comes about through our relationship with CBS Films is even more exciting for us, and we look forward to seeing Mitch Rapp on the screen, and many more Simon & Schuster properties developed in conjunction with CBS.”

“One of my first goals for CBS Films was to find a character-based movie franchise,” said Baer. “With the Mitch Rapp series, Vince Flynn has created a relatable, modern, post 9/11 hero for the action/thriller genre. It is an amazing collection of creative material that offers tremendous potential for a smart, energizing new film franchise with appeal to a wide-range of movie-going audiences. The publishing world has always provided abundant source material for motion pictures, and we’re fortunate that our corporate cousins at Simon & Schuster attract and nurture some of the world’s best literary assets.”

“Vince Flynn’s career has been steadily on the rise since he self-published his first book, ‘Term Limits,’ and together we’ve watched his popularity grow with every successive publication,” said Curr. “Now readers and moviegoers alike can savor more of the thrilling insider insight and verisimilitude that has made him a favorite of average citizens and the national security operatives who protect us.”

“I couldn’t be happier with this deal,” said Flynn. “Signing up for four more books, keeping the movie in the family with CBS Films and getting Lorenzo and Nick to sign on as producers… it’s the outcome I’d always hoped for. Loyalty is a big thing to me. Simon & Schuster, Atria and Pocket Books have stood by me for 10 years and done a magnificent job publishing my novels. Lorenzo and Nick have been trying to bring Mitch Rapp to the big screen since 2004, so there is a level of commitment on their part that is very comforting to me. They understand Mitch Rapp, as does Amy Baer and her team. It is going to be a lot of fun watching CBS Films hit this thing out of the park.”

“Vince has created an unbelievably unique and dynamic character in Mitch Rapp,” said di Bonaventura. “Nick and I can’t wait to bring him to the screen and we feel lucky to be doing this in partnership with CBS.”

Sloan Harris and Ron Bernstein of ICM represented Flynn for the publishing and film agreements.Simon & Schuster, a part of the CBS Corporation, is a global leader in the field of general interest publishing, dedicated to providing the best in fiction and nonfiction for consumers of all ages, across all printed, electronic, and audio formats. Its divisions include Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing, Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing, Simon & Schuster Audio, Simon & Schuster Digital, and international companies in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

For more information, visit our website at http://www.simonsays.com/.CBS Films, established in 2007, plans to develop and produce four to six movies a year spanning all genres, with production budgets up to $50 million per film. The films will be released domestically through a U.S. theatrical distribution unit to be established within CBS Films.

From Deadspin:
Roger Clemens,
Talking Himself Further Down The Hole

All told, as the dust has settled from Roger Clemens' appearance before Congress yesterday, one thing is clear: There is, in fact, a worse stance to take under oath than "I'm not here to talk about this past." And it involves ass bleeding.

As the quite amusing 236.com updates its Dickipedia entry on Clemens, we sit back and wonder why Clemens put himself through all this. He's the one who fought the Mitchell Report charges so vehemently, and those denials are the real reason he was up there yesterday anyway. And yesterday only made him look like more of a liar.

Clemens spoke haltingly, answered evasively, contradicted himself, and whispered with his lawyers when asked to explain these contradictions. Perhaps, like Sammy Sosa in 2005, he would've been better off claiming he didn't speak English.

So where does Clemens go from here? Is there anything he can do? We don't think so; we think this was the final step. What more can the man say about steroids at this point? It's over for him.

This is yet another reason why most baseball players shouldn't talk.

From National Review Online:
Mexico First?
McCain has embraced
a Vicente Fox’s aide as his own.
By Mark Krikorian

“I want the third generation, the seventh generation, I want them all to think ‘Mexico first.’ ” These are the words of Juan Hernandez, John McCain’s “Hispanic outreach director,” on Nightline June 7, 2001.

The blogosphere has been abuzz over the news of Hernandez’s position in the McCain campaign, thanks to the spadework of Michelle Malkin (see here, here, and here) and Jerry Corsi. Thanks also to the power of the Internet, McCain was actually asked about this at an event in Florida Sunday, though he tap-danced his way out of answering directly.

But this potentially explosive story hasn’t gotten any traction in the mainstream press. The first explanation that comes to mind, of course, is that McCain is the media’s preferred Republican, a sense reinforced not only by Thursday’s endorsement of him by the New York Times , but also the Washington Post’s quasi-endorsement on Sunday.

But the more likely explanation is that many people don’t see the news value. After all, whom do you expect McCain would name as his Hispanic outreach director but a fellow supporter of amnesty and accelerated mass immigration? But this is a bigger deal than that.

Contrary to some of the more enthusiastic venting on the web, the problem is not that McCain has a Hispanic outreach director; while the government shouldn’t have anything to do with race or ethnicity, it’s perfectly natural for a political campaign to do outreach to any and every kind of voter. In fact, McCain’s “very close” friend, Hillary Clinton, last spring named Raul Yzaguirre to lead her Hispanic outreach effort. Naturally, Yzaguirre is a big supporter of amnesty and mass immigration — until he retired in 2004, he was president of the National Council of La Raza.

But even Yzaguirre has never been a foreign government official.

After Vicente Fox was elected in 2000, he named the U.S.-born dual citizen Hernandez (a professor at the University of Texas at Dallas) to head the newly created, cabinet-level Presidential Office for Mexicans Abroad (making him, in effect, Fox’s “Hispanic outreach director”). Hernandez’s oath of office was presumably similar to the one taken by his boss:

I swear to follow and uphold the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States and the laws that emanate from it, and to perform the job of President of the Republic which the people have conferred upon me with loyalty and patriotism, in all actions looking after the good and prosperity of the Union; and if I do not fulfill these obligations, the Nation will demand them of me.

“Loyalty,” “patriotism” — it’s a good oath. For a Mexican. Not for an American.

Before Earl Warren started making up emanations and penumbras of the Constitution (in this instance, the case of Afroyim v. Rusk in 1967), Hernandez would have been stripped of his American citizenship for having committed an “expatriating act,” specifically “accepting, serving in, or performing the duties of any office, post, or employment under the government of a foreign state or a political subdivision thereof.” (8 USC 1481)

On the radio Saturday, Hugh Hewitt and Michelle Malkin noted the incongruity of the McCain campaign’s embrace of this former foreign government official:

HH: I know. I’ve got a question for you. If John Kerry had employed as a senior adviser a dual citizen who had served in the French cabinet under any of our many French adversaries/allies, how would the Republicans have treated that Kerry adviser position? Wouldn’t we have raised holy hell about that?

MM: Oh, yeah, it would be worth five Drudge sirens in 100 point, World War IV font.

No kidding.

The contempt for American citizenship that McCain has shown by naming this political bigamist to a post in his campaign isn’t even the whole problem. One might also ask how McCain could even consult with a person of such extreme views, let alone name him Hispanic outreach director. McCain’s support for amnesty and accelerated mass immigration is bad enough, but you can, at least in theory, be for those things and still support firm borders and patriotic assimilation.

But McCain’s Hispanic outreach director is a man who has spent years opposing the very legitimacy of America’s borders and Americanization in the most public way possible. The man has been on every TV-news show in creation rejecting as passé the very idea of sovereign borders and patriotic assimilation into the American mainstream. (Digger’s Realm has compiled a greatest-hits video.)

Before teaming up with McCain, Hernandez became (he still is) a senior fellow at the Reform Institute, the think tank McCain set up after his unsuccessful 2000 presidential campaign — Brian Anderson of City Journal described it as “the 2008 McCain-for-President campaign-in-waiting.”

And Hernandez’s job there is to run — what else? — the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Initiative. If any more evidence of the institute’s leanings were needed, note that last year it sponsored an online contest to “Design Your Portion of the Border Fence” and gave top honors to a design that explicitly compared border fencing to the Berlin Wall. (See all the entries here.)

This is much worse than the similar controversy over Ron Paul’s ghost-written newsletters; it’s obvious McCain and his people knew perfectly well what Hernandez was about, and they didn’t see anything wrong with it. That tells us all we need to know about the sincerity of McCain’s newfound support for secure borders.

— Mark Krikorian is executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies and an NRO contributor.

From The Washington Post:
Untruth Be Told
By Mike Wise

Thursday, February 14, 2008

It wasn't just that he almost certainly lied on Capitol Hill; it was the enormity of Roger Clemens's untruth, the Texas-size audaciousness to think that his stature in society was big enough to get away with committing perjury.

It's the greatest pitcher of his generation believing, down deep, that regular people were too in awe of him to warrant prosecution for taking performance-enhancing drugs -- the sickness of believing his own myth.

As the contradictions kept coming yesterday in the Rayburn House Office Building, Clemens came across as a megalomaniac, a habitual liar and a barrel-chested fraud. The people who believe him now seem to be either paid by Clemens, married to him or in worse denial than the Rocket himself.

He came to Capitol Hill not to swear, under oath, his innocence of being a drug cheat; Clemens came here to show America that the arrogance of the elite athlete has moved beyond our ball fields, universities and clubhouses straight into a witness chair at a congressional hearing.

Brian McNamee is no paragon of virtue; at best, he's a drug-runner for his celebrity baseball clients, one link in a chain that tells us, emphatically, we can't believe what we see anymore from our athletic uberhumans.

But next to the contradictory statements and flat-out whoppers told by Clemens, the former New York City cop turned shot-doctor looked and sounded like an evidence-based detective who relied on the facts as he knew them. Dispassionate, calm, maybe a little too quiet, McNamee refused to get caught up in the morality play of the baseball icon who sat a few feet from him.

The one witness before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform whose credibility no one impugned was Andy Pettitte, Clemens's good friend and teammate. In a deposition given before members of the committee, Pettitte admitted McNamee injected him with human growth hormone and testified Clemens told him he had used the drug too.

Clemens said Pettitte "misremembered" their conversation. Think about that. A player who has no ax to grind, who admitted he cheated the game as well, spilling the beans on the man he used to idolize.

If Clemens is to be believed, his wife, Debbie, and McNamee, at the time his personal trainer, covertly set up an appointment to administer an HGH injection to Debbie in order to help her look like a total babe for a Sports Illustrated photo shoot with her husband.

Clemens said he had no knowledge of the injection -- which he, his wife and McNamee agreed happened -- until after the shot was administered and Debbie began to complain of circulatory problems.

Then there was the nadir of Nannygate, in which the au pair for Clemens's children, who had not seen the family since 2001, was summoned to his home after the committee wanted her number and whereabouts. Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) implied with his questioning that Clemens and his snake-oil people appeared to have interfered with a witness, and Clemens's inability to answer his questions directly -- and his lawyers' meltdown behind him -- ended up hurting Clemens and bolstering McNamee.

The more you heard them spin and backpedal, the more it became clear these people don't have a bottom. When confronted by Waxman, Clemens glared, grimaced and, later, grew almost emotional when talking of his upbringing, as if the congressmen not already politically in the tank for him would be moved to tears. The size of the man's ego is just astounding.

The entire hearing was high drama, and it was unfortunately taken over by partisan politics. The Red Staters, with perhaps one exception, went after McNamee as hard as they could, trying to paint the guy from a liberal state as a desperate liar who wanted to get back at his former employer. The Democrats pounded the athlete from Texas, hitting hard at all the core values Clemens will probably profess on his deathbed.

"It's hard to believe you, sir," said Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) to Clemens in probably the most honest assessment of the day's events. "I hate to say that. You're one of my heroes, but it's hard to believe you."

The most ridiculous of grandstanders was Clemens backer Dan Burton (R-Ind.), who treated McNamee worse than the Clintons during his Whitewater questioning.

But the congressman was right about one thing, when he referred to Clemens as "a titan."

Years ago, Clemens gave his essence away on, of all shows, "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous." He couldn't just renew his vows to his Debbie in a small civil ceremony before their children; no, Clemens had to co-opt Robin Leach and do it up big and right, at a resort in Hawaii.

Clemens's largesse has always defined the mercurial person and the burly pitcher who no longer belongs in the Hall of Fame. From his incendiary temper to his gaudy statistics, the Rocket does nothing small.

Under oath, on Capitol Hill, he cemented his legend yesterday. Roger Clemens, who won't believe the ugly truth about his career, is now a titan of deceit.

From USA TODAY:
Before Congress, Clemens knocks self out of box
By Christine Brennan

WASHINGTON — Roger Clemens says he has suffered many tumultuous and unsettling days since the Mitchell Report fingered him two months ago, but none could have been worse than Wednesday.

His appearance in front of a congressional committee was a disaster. He stumbled and groped for words, he couldn't explain obvious inconsistencies in his testimony and he was reprimanded several times by members of Congress who said they had a hard time believing him.

He looked not like a hero, not like an icon, not like a legend, but instead like a guy who would say anything to try to save his reputation. Then he proved he was just that guy when he said that it wasn't he who took human growth hormone; it was his wife.

Who ever would have thought we would see the great Roger Clemens throw his wife under the bus?

It was an absolute nightmare for Clemens. He was turned in as a cheater and a liar by his close friend Andy Pettitte, whose testimony under oath showed up even though he did not. That's a shame, because had Pettitte been there, painfully telling the cameras that Clemens admitted to him that he took HGH, it's doubtful that Clemens could have dismissed such significant testimony with his already-legendary "misremembered" and "misheard" comments. Not that many people believed him when he said that anyway.

If Clemens thought this was going to be another back-patting and autograph-signing session like those embarrassing congressional office drop-ins, he soon realized it was not. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, started off the proceedings with these welcoming words:

"… We have found conflicts and inconsistencies in Mr. Clemens' account. During his deposition, he made statements that we know are untrue. … In other areas, his statements are contradicted by other credible witnesses or are simply implausible."

Soon came Congress' leadoff man, Elijah Cummings, who got to the pitcher right away by ominously reminding Clemens several times that he was "under oath" and once even roughed him up by saying bluntly, "Keep your voice up."

Cummings was more than ready for this battle, methodically dragging Clemens through the very unpleasant exercise of having him praise Pettitte's honesty as he then recited Pettitte's testimony about Clemens' use of HGH. It was painful to watch Clemens fumble for words to try to explain that.

It was also during this questioning that Clemens said he was shocked — shocked! — to hear that Pettitte used HGH. But Pettitte came clean about HGH not in his testimony for this hearing, but in December, right after he was outed in the Mitchell Report. Like quite a few other things Clemens said, that didn't make any sense at all.

Perhaps worst of all for Clemens, the greatest pitcher of this era was reduced to engaging in a messy game of "he said, he said" with a man who has admitted to shooting up athletes with illegal substances, lying about it for years and keeping some of the needles as souvenirs.

This is not the place a seven-time Cy Young Award winner wants to be, wrestling around in the mud with Brian McNamee. For as despicable as McNamee appears to be, the sad fact for Clemens is that this is all about his plummeting veracity and uncertain future. Both Pettitte and Chuck Knoblauch have said McNamee told the truth about them. But we're to believe he made up everything about Clemens? And that Pettitte "misheard" Clemens say he took HGH? And that Clemens didn't talk to McNamee about HGH — except that he then did, but only after his wife took it? And that, when his wife started having problems with her circulation after the shot, he wasn't worried enough to call a doctor?

You get the idea.

One wonders if there is anyone on Team Clemens who is wishing the Rocket had the last two months to do over again. Here's a scenario: Come clean, apologize profusely, start a steroid-prevention foundation for kids, be more beloved than ever.

That, of course, is working on the assumption that Clemens took illegal substances, which certainly was a plausible conclusion to reach after watching the battering he took Wednesday on the Hill.

"No matter what we discuss here today," Clemens said angrily, "I'm never going to have my name restored."

No one disputed that.

From The Boston Globe:
Clemens hearing fallout: Somebody's lying
By Dan Shaughnessy, Globe Columnist

February 13, 2008

Dirt flew in the halls of Congress today, and when the last mud was slung, everyone was smudged.

Roger Clemens delivered his side of the story and again insisted he never used steroids or human growth hormone. The Rocket's accuser, Brian McNamee, explained his version of events, which were disclosed in the Mitchell Report. One of the two men perjured himself.

It's all over now except for potential criminal charges, possible jail time, and Clemens's standing when he becomes eligible for the Hall of Fame.

So, whom do you believe? The seven-time Cy Young Award winner or the weasly, disgraced trainer? Both men have been caught in numerous lies.

It was pretty clear that most of the congressmen and women came to the hearing with their minds made up. Clemens last week visited more than 20 representatives -- an outrageous parade that compromised the hearing and painted numerous elected officials as fanboy/sycophants. Listening to the questions today, you could pretty much tell which reps got autographed baseballs and signed photos for their office walls.

Representative Dan Burton, Republican of Indiana, was buffoon of the day (did you notice the Lone Star cuff links?), bashing the media, reminding us that Roger is a "titan" in baseball, and invoking the old Ray Donovan question -- "Where do I get my reputation back?" Burton was shocked, shocked, that McNamee lied to reporters when asked about steroids back in the pre-Mitchell days.

There was plenty more jock-sniffing. Representative Danny K. Davis, Democrat of Illinois, told Roger, "It was a pleasure meeting you last week." Representative William Lacy Clay, Democrat of Missouri, asked Roger what uniform he plans to wear into the Hall of Fame. Representative Virginia Foxx, Republican of North Carolina, produced four photographs of Clemens, a progression dating to his Red Sox days, and insisted, "You appear to be the same size."

Good observation, Ginny. That's like saying Michael Jackson's features haven't changed since he posed for the cover of "Thriller."

Hope they all have their autographed Rocket jerseys. Too bad they didn't bother to read Andy Pettitte's deposition.

Clearly, committee chairman Henry A. Waxman believes Clemens is lying. In his closing statement, Waxman apologized to McNamee for some of the comments from the yahoo reps (one called him a drug dealer and another said, "Shame on you"). Clemens tried to interrupt the congressman's closing remarks and Waxman effectively told the Rocket to shut up.

Waxman was not alone in siding with McNamee and the Mitchell Report. Late in the day, Representative Elijah E. Cummings, Democrat of Maryland, said, "The person I believe most is Mr. Pettitte." Representative Mark Souder, Republican of Indiana, said the same thing to ESPN ("I find Clemens almost as believable as Rafael Palmeiro").

Bingo. Pettitte is the smoking gun. It's established that McNamee gave true testimony about administering steroids and/or HGH to Pettitte and Chuck Knoblauch. Both players corroborated McNamee's statements. And we are supposed to believe that McNamee invented this whopper about Clemens and only Clemens?

Pettitte's deposition shreds Clemens's story. Under oath, Pettitte told Congress that Clemens admitted using HGH. Twice. Pettitte said he relayed the conversations to his wife. Mrs. Pettitte recalls the conversations and said so in her affidavit.

Clemens was unable to explain this, other than to insist Pettitte "misremembered."

"You're one of my heroes, sir, but it's hard to believe you," said Cummings.

McNamee is a lousy witness. If the government wants to lay a perjury rap on Clemens, McNamee's credibility can be easily destroyed. But Pettitte remains a problem. He's believable. He's already fessed up to HGH. His wife is believable. Like McNamee, they have nothing to gain by lying. Unlike McNamee, they are credible. Too bad so many fawning reps chose to ignore the most important new testimony.

Clemens looked bad in a couple of other areas. He continues to insist that he did not know Mitchell was looking for him and that he did not know what was going to be in the report (he even managed to throw the Hendricks brothers under the bus by claiming they didn't tell him Mitchell was looking for him). More lies. Clemens has been contradicted on both issues several times.

Oh, and then we have the smoking nanny. Waxman stunned Clemens and got his lawyers (Lanny Breuer and Rusty "P.T." Hardin) to stand and object when he revealed the committee's knowledge that Clemens might have tampered with a witness. Knowing that the committee wanted to speak to the nameless nanny to shed some light on Clemens's appearance (or non-appearance) at a Jose Canseco party in 1998, Clemens invited the nanny to his house last weekend, even though he hadn't seen her in seven years. After speaking with her, he finally turned her name over to the committee. Her story contradicts the stories of Clemens and Canseco -- who surely goes on the Mount Rushmore of Liars.

We still have no idea where the physical evidence (McNamee's bag of medical waste, a.k.a. "the blue dress") will lead. But it can't be good for the Rocket.

Clemens wanted this audience. He insisted on his moment in front of Congress. He wanted the chance to stand up under oath and tell all of America he never used steroids or HGH. The committee chairman told us all we could use the testimony to make up our minds about who is telling the truth.

It worked for me. I think Clemens is lying. He may never face a perjury charge and he may yet sail into the Hall of Fame on the first ballot. But when the mud stopped flying today, Clemens was the one who looked dirty.

THERE'S A DEMOCRAT BEHIND
DOOR NO. 1, 2 AND 3
by Ann Coulter

February 13, 2008

A few more primary wins and B. Hussein Obama will be able to light up a cigarette during a televised speech and still get the nomination. It looks like the only thing that can stop him now is an endorsement from Al Gore.

Gore is always lunging into a movement just as it has passed its prime -- the Internet, Howard Dean, global warming, trying to talk black when he campaigns at a black church. He probably bought a big house a few months ago. Gore is such a supremely unlikable human being, he even subverted the mainstream media's affection for liberalism during the 2000 election.

And my brave little Hillary needs a bold move after the Potomac primaries this week. If she can't trick Gore into endorsing Obama, she may have to divorce Bill.

Hillary is, shockingly enough, the most conservative candidate among the top three presidential candidates.

The Rev. Jerry Falwell once remarked that his people would rather vote for Beelzebub than Hillary Clinton.

He didn't mention John McCain.

Pat Buchanan says if McCain is the nominee, the Republican Party will lose its soul. I'm more worried about the Republican Party losing its mind.

Republicans are doing what the Democrats tried in 2004 with John Kerry. In a state of despair, Democrats dumped the legitimate leader of their party, Howard Dean, for a candidate they deemed "electable." Kerry served in Vietnam! Republicans: Conniving has never been our strong suit. Honor is our strong suit.

Sen. John McCain's claim to being a Republican comes down to two factors:

(1) He was a POW -- I know that because he mentions it more often than John Kerry told us that he served in Vietnam.
And (2) he has a relatively conservative voting record compared to, say, Maxine Waters.

I note that there were hundreds of POWS in Vietnam. We can't make them all president. If we're just going to pick one, how about one who doesn't want to shut down Guantanamo and give amnesty to 20 million illegal immigrants? Hey, didn't Duncan Hunter serve in Vietnam? Why, yes, I believe he did!

Moreover, it's crazy to imagine that military service makes one qualified to be president. Everyone knows the true test of presidential leadership is an ability to cry on cue. Another point for my Hillary.

To be sure, McCain has a relatively conservative voting record -- but only relative to Republicans who have to get elected in places like Vermont. Relative to Republicans from conservative Arizona, McCain's voting record is abominable.

We keep hearing about McCain's "lifetime" rating from the American Conservative Union being 82.3 percent. But McCain has been a member of Congress for approximately 400 years, so that includes his votes on the Spanish-American War. His more current ratings are not so hot.

In 2006 -- the most recent year for which ratings are available -- McCain's ACU rating was 65. That year, the ACU rating for the other senator from Arizona, Jon Kyl, was 97. Even Chuck Hagel's ACU rating was 75, and Lindsey Graham's was 83.

Since 1998, only four Republican senators have had worse ACU scores than John McCain -- and none were from Goldwater country: Lincoln Chafee, Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe and Arlen Specter. The last time McCain ranked this far down in his class, he was at the Naval Academy.

In fact, McCain and Romney are mirror opposites: As Romney had to tailor his conservative views to the liberal voters of Massachusetts, McCain has had to tailor his liberal views to the conservative voters of Arizona. While Romney's record in a liberal bastion is as bad as it will ever be, McCain's record from a conservative bastion is as good as it will ever be. Which isn't very good.

In the immortal words of -- well, me, actually: Always choose a strong conservative from a blue state over a lukewarm conservative from a red state.

Bob Dole from Kansas had a pretty good voting record, too. But no one fully believed he believed it. Another feather in his cap was that he didn't burden voters with a "Straight Talk Express," a means of conveyance even more useless and idiotic than an electric car.

Even McCain's supporters on the Spaghetti-Spined Express know he can't be trusted on social issues like abortion. I notice how everyone seems to agree that of course Rudy Giuliani's voters would go to McCain.

Why would that be? On the two seminal issues of our time other than abortion -- taxes and the war on terrorism -- the two could not be more different.

Rudy cut taxes in New York City and, as a presidential candidate, proposed the biggest tax cut in U.S. history.

McCain voted against Bush's tax cuts twice.

Rudy supports torturing terrorists -- or using "enhanced interrogation techniques," as they say, announcing in one of the debates: "I would tell the people who had to do the interrogation to use every method they could think of."

McCain is hysterical about pouring water down terrorists' noses and campaigns to shut down Guantanamo.

He demands that no terrorist interrogation be "degrading" -- perhaps recalling how not degrading it was for people in the upper floors of the Twin Towers to have to leap to their deaths rather than be burned alive on Sept. 11.

So why is it obvious to everyone that Rudy would endorse McCain?

Because everyone knows he'll take the liberal position on social issues like abortion -- and everything else -- as soon as he doesn't need the voters of Arizona anymore.

COPYRIGHT 2008 ANN COULTER

From The News & Observer:
Still have great memories of listening to Currie on the radio and keeping score
in the long ago days before all Carolina games were televised.
He was the best.
Bill Currie dies at 83
UNC play-by-play man during 1960s
Caulton Tudor, Staff Writer

Bill Currie, known as the "Mouth of the South" during his days as a popular radio and television personality in North Carolina, died "a Tar Heel fan to the core," his daughter said Tuesday.

Margaret Currie Granger said her father, 83, died at 11:40 p.m. Pacific time Monday in an Olympia, Wash., hospital as the result of a brain hemorrhage.

"But until the final few days of his life, he was alert and as feisty as ever," Granger said. "He never lost that famous spirit of his, and he certainly never lost that deep love for Carolina football and basketball."

Born in High Point, Currie attended Catawba College.

Witty and irreverent, he did the radio play-by-play for UNC football and basketball during much of the 1960s. He left in 1971 to take a job with KDKA television in Pittsburgh, where he remained into the 1980s.

"He was one of those one-in-a-million characters," former UNC football coach Bill Dooley said.

"I would bet that Bill probably had more funny stories and jokes than almost anybody in the world. You couldn't print any of them, though. They weren't exactly meant for mixed company."

One of Currie's more memorable lines occurred during his broadcast of N.C. State's 12-10 win over Duke during the semifinals of the 1968 ACC basketball tournament in Charlotte. In the days before the shot clock in college ball, neither team forced the action. The halftime score was Duke 4, State 2.

Currie advised listeners that the action was about as exciting as "artificial insemination."

"That line may not have been in good taste, but it was one that a lot of people still talk about," said Woody Durham, who took over UNC broadcasts the following season.

"As a humorist, Bill had very few rivals, if any. You never knew exactly what he might say, but he definitely had a way of keeping your interest."

Bob Lamey, now the voice of the Indianapolis Colts, was Currie's color analyst in those days.

"People thought it was all just Bill's act, but that was just who he was," Lamey said. "When he was working at WSOC in Charlotte, he kept a casket in his office. I'm not kidding. Almost every afternoon, he'd get in that casket, lie down and take a nap. ... He'd actually go to sleep. Talking about freaking folks out."

But there was another side to Currie, according to Lamey. That was the Currie who "remained true to his roots and had interests beyond fun and jokes."

"There were nights when he would say he was too tired to do the late sports segment on WSOC and would ask me to fill in for him," Lamey said. "He did it for one reason: He knew how much I needed the money."

Granger said her father, in declining health, moved near her home in Yelm, Wash., about eight years ago and spent much of his time pursuing his musical interests.

"He bought an organ and really enjoyed learning to play it," she said. "He loved to play the guitar, too. He had all of his creature comforts. He'd get on his computer and keep up with the Tar Heels and what was going on back in North Carolina and the Pittsburgh area.

"He never lost that edge or his ability to relate to people. There was a fire in his apartment building about a year or so ago. Everyone had to be evacuated and wait outside. By the end of the night, Dad had every fireman there in stitches telling them stories and jokes."

Granger said plans for a memorial service are incomplete.

"We'll do something, but I'm just not certain at the moment when or where," she said. "Dad had donated his body to research. It was sent to the University of Washington medical school not long after he died. But I was there with him along with my husband [Kelly] when he went. It was very peaceful. He didn't suffer at the end. He had a long, happy life, and he made a lot of people laugh along the way."

Currie is also survived by another daughter, Susan Smith of Hickory, and a son, Bob Currie of Wimberley, Texas.

From The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
Obituary: Bill Currie
Mouth of the South' sports commentator here in 1970s
Died Feb. 11, 2008

By Robert Dvorchak

Dressed in sports jackets as loud as a Three Rivers Stadium crowd with ties as wide as the Ohio River, Bill Currie would pin a boutonniere into his lapel and, in a voice that dripped corn pone, mix Scripture with Shakespeare in sports commentaries that were folksy, rambling, irreverent and laced with color and the off-color, all at the same time.

"He was eclectic," said Margaret Currie Granger, the youngest of his three children. "He made sports interesting for people who didn't follow sports. He was a nut. He was crazy. He was outrageous. He always was a character and was a character until the day he died. He had a very full life, and I'm going to miss him very much."

Mr. Currie had suffered a series of strokes in recent years. He died of a brain hemorrhage late Monday at St. Peter's Hospital in Yelm, Wash., where he had lived with his daughter. He was 85.

A journalist and a sports announcer, he was a staple at KDKA-TV during the sports glory days of the 1970s after he was the play-by-play announcer for University of North Carolina sports.

To those who loved his idiosyncrasies, he was Sweet Ol' Bill. To those who despised him in the way fans loathed Howard Cosell, he was simply known by the initials, S.O.B. But he had a Technicolor personality and rather enjoyed getting a rise out of people, which helps explain why his office was once adorned with a poster-size photo of him lying in a coffin.

"He didn't care if people talked about him in a good way or a bad way, as long as they were talking and kept tuning in," said his daughter. "He didn't start out doing sports. He just happened to be good at it."

In Pittsburgh, where Frenchy Fuqua of the Steelers wore outrageous platform shoes and Dock Ellis of the Pirates wore hair curlers under his baseball cap, Mr. Currie found his niche. Some viewers tuned in just to see what combination of plaid jackets and polka dot ties he had donned.

"The thing I remember most about him was that he was a lot of fun," said Joe Gordon, the Steelers' longtime public relations man. "He kept sports in perspective. He kept it in the toy department and never thought of it as World War III. He was creative, entertaining and obviously very unique. He was one of a kind."

A native of High Point, N.C., Mr. Currie began his career as a reporter for The High Point Enterprise and later at the Salisbury Post. He later went into broadcasting and developed a what-will-he-say-next style that earned him the nickname "Mouth of the South." But he wasn't all schtick. He was also named North Carolina Sportscaster of the Year eight times.

Frank Deford wrote about him in Sports Illustrated twice. One North Carolina columnist dubbed him "The Reverend" because "he could preach you a hellfire and damnation sermon or sing you a hymn with an angelic look on his face, a tremor in his voice and a drink in his hand."

Around 1976, Mr. Currie left -- briefly -- for a stint in the Philadelphia market, and he was essentially run out of town by irate viewers who chafed at his style.

"That was a disaster," said his daughter. "The greatest time of his life was in Pittsburgh."

Mr. Currie returned here and continued sports commentary until 1990, mixing in talk about his divorce, face lifts, his hairpiece and his experiences with psychotherapy. He also ran a broadcast school from 1981 to 1988.

In addition to Margaret, he is survived by a son, Robert, of Wimberley, Texas; a daughter, Susan of North Carolina; and four grandchildren.

Mr. Currie donated his body to science at the University of Washington. The family is planning a memorial service to celebrate his life.

Robert Dvorchak can be reached at bdvorchak@post-gazette.com

From Newsday.com:
Clemens dug a hole and Pettitte can't help him
Johnette Howard

9:48 PM EST, February 12, 2008

If the leaks about Andy Pettitte's deposition are correct, Roger Clemens will sit in a congressional hearing room today on Capitol Hill and continue a crash to Earth of his own making. The narrative about whether Clemens cheated to become the greatest pitcher of his generation will sharpen into more detail. And Clemens' crossover from icon to con man could be near complete.

Once Clemens decided to fight the accusations about him in the Mitchell Report, he set up his pal Pettitte, his longtime teammate and former training partner, as the tiebreaker in this tale about whether Brian McNamee helped both of them use performance-enhancing drugs. But Clemens should have known Pettitte would peel away from him if forced to, rather than risk criminal prosecution.

Pettitte may not be the innocent we thought before he confirmed McNamee did inject him twice with HGH, as McNamee claims. But all those stories about Pettitte being a family man first aren't made up. He's got a 13-year-old son back home who was involved in an all-terrain vehicle crash last month that required the boy to be airlifted by helicopter to a San Antonio hospital with two broken limbs and a severe head injury from which the boy still is recovering. For Pettitte, being present for something as important as that trumps any clubhouse code of silence or Mitchell Report embarrassment.

"It really makes you take inventory," Pettitte recently told a friend.

The other point to remember is Clemens was in no legal jeopardy when the Mitchell Report came out. Today's hearing -- and Pettitte's subsequent desposition -- never would've happened if Clemens hadn't pushed this fight.

But once Clemens did, he did Pettitte no favors. Pettitte also was invited by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that will call in Clemens and McNamee for a dramatic faceoff, and Pettitte was left with two gut-wrenching choices: Side with Clemens in some bullheaded fight to the finish against McNamee. Or tell the truth about himself and pray the questions stopped there. Which they didn't.

Pushing this fight could be the worst of the many miscalculations Clemens and his team have made during a damage-control effort that keeps backfiring on them.

The "60 Minutes" interview didn't cement public opinion for Clemens. The secretly recorded phone conversation with a frazzled McNamee that Clemens played at a Jan. 7 news conference on national TV surprised and enraged McNamee so much, he angrily called his law enforcement handlers the next day and turned over what McNamee says are 7-year-old syringes and bloody gauze pads that he used on Clemens.

That exquisitely timed syringe bombshell (with photos to boot) wasn't released by McNamee's lawyers until last Wednesday -- or one day after Clemens made his sworn deposition to the committee.

A new ripple of uncertainty had to slither down Clemens' spine when another PR tactic -- schmoozing with about two dozen members of the committee -- didn't prevent the committee from granting Pet.titte's request to be excused from facing Clemens today. Portions of Pettitte's sworn statement are expected to be read instead. Meaning if a bomb does drop, Pettitte will be miles away.

But don't fault Pettitte. He isn't some snitch as much as a clear-eyed realist who was forced into this. Like Jason Giambi, Pettitte preferred to take his chances on telling the truth and asking the public for forgiveness rather than gambling on some leniency from the feds if he lied about anything. He tried to choose containment. But Clemens' defense strategy made containment impossible.

More than Clemens' place in history is in the balance. The feds don't give a damn about that. It's about who is telling the truth, and it's about how whoever is lying may have to pay.

A Yankees source said last night that Pettitte is not expected at spring training tomorrow when other pitchers and catchers report. But whenever Pet.titte gets to Tampa and clears the air by talking to the media for the first time since the Mitchell Report's release, the sun may never feel warmer. Trouble may be only beginning for Clemens or McNamee, but it seems on the wane for him.

Said Pettitte's friend: "He's looking forward to [explaining himself], I can tell you that."

Four million Dutch describe themselves
as Roman Catholics

From The Telegraph UK:
If you think Rowan Williams is insane, get a load of this...
Lent fast re-branded as 'Christian Ramadan'
By Bruno Waterfield

Last Updated: 2:23am GMT 12/02/2008

Dutch Catholics have re-branded the Lent fast as the "Christian Ramadan" in an attempt to appeal to young people who are more likely to know about Islam than Christianity.

The Catholic charity Vastenaktie, which collects for the Third World across the Netherlands during the Lent period, is concerned that the Christian festival has become less important for the Dutch over the last generation.

"The image of the Catholic Lent must be polished. The fact that we use a Muslim term is related to the fact that Ramadan is a better-known concept among young people than Lent," said Vastenaktie Director, Martin Van der Kuil.

Three decades ago the Catholic Church was as strict as many Muslims are about Ramadan with a total ban on meat and alcohol during the 40-day Lenten period between Ash Wednesday and Easter.

Most Dutch Catholics now focus on charitable work after the Vatican loosened fasting strictures for all but the first and last days of Lent back in 1967.

Four million Dutch describe themselves as Roman Catholics and 400,000 people attend Mass every week but only a few tens of thousands still mark Lent by fasting, said Mr Van der Kuil

Vastenaktie organisers hope that by linking the festival to Ramadan they can remind Christians who may be less observant than Muslims of the "spirituality and sobriety" of Lent.

"The agreements are more striking than the differences. Both for Muslims and Catholic faithful the values of frugality and spirituality play a central role in this tradition," said Mr Van der Kuil.

Roger Clemens and his lawyer Rusty Hardin
visited Congress last week in advance of Wednesday's hearing.

Jonathan Ernst/Getty Images News

From SI.com:

Clemens' celebrity won't save him if he lies
By Jon Heyman

About the only thing Roger Clemens may have going for him these days is his celebrity, which is why I don't entirely blame him for his Campaign Across Congress, a tour meant to lobby for his no-steroid story with the aid of autographs and pictures.

My source in Congress said he couldn't swear that the signatures and pictures went to actual congressmen, not just secretaries and other office workers. But you get the idea.

A lawyer friend of mine called Clemens' meet-and-greet sessions "unseemly.'' I call it America, the land of two types of people: the celebrities and the celebrity crazed.

But when Clemens gets to the long-awaited hearing on Wednesday, he better have more than signatures and photo ops for the folks connected to the committee. Because in the end, truth will rule the day.

Brian McNamee has a story of injecting Clemens 16 times with steroids and HGH that former Sen. George Mitchell found compelling. People who have spoken to McNamee say he wrote an opening draft for a statement that will pull no punches, and that McNamee has told friends he wants to be seated next to Clemens.

Clemens is used to all sorts of folks rolling over for him. But that won't happen here, no matter how many autographs he signed on his meet-and-greet session.

Clemens has been interviewed hundreds of times in his career. But McNamee is a former New York City cop. So Clemens shouldn't count on McNamee choking on his words, either.

It is true that Clemens' meet-and-greet tour already did produce one Lance Ito moment, which is what occurs when a person in authority is thoroughly snowed by celebrity. Following Clemens' fleshing-pressing session, Rep. Edolphus Towns, (D-NY) came away sounding like a fawning Yankees fan in the New York Times, declaring what a swell guy Clemens is, and that McNamee himself better be on the lookout for perjury charges.

But my guess is that these were just the sentiments of one star-struck congressmen. Committee chair Henry Waxman (D-CA) has struck me as a serious person, not some fawning fan. The same goes for Tom Davis (R-VA) and the rest of the other 40 who aren't Towns.

If he thinks he can get a majority of congressmen to roll over for him, he should think hard about that. They already showed they are willing to play hardball with a star when they recommended the Justice Department investigate Miguel Tejada, who told them back in 2005 he never took performance-enhancing drugs and didn't know of anyone who did, for possible perjury.

In the end, the question isn't whether Clemens can act like a groovy guy in a meet and greet, or sign a few baseballs; it's whether an American hero perjured himself, which is serious business.

Which means Clemens has got a lot to overcome here. Because, as lawyers say, he's got a bad set of facts.

Here is part of what Clemens has to overcome ...

1. McNamee had no good reason to make up his very specific story of 16 injections for Clemens from 1998-2001, and plenty of reason to tell the truth. Mitchell himself called McNamee's explanations "compelling." McNamee always had denied steroid usage by Clemens, right up until the point the feds told him he could become a target if he didn't start telling the truth. It makes little sense for McNamee to have switched his story to a lie at exactly that precise moment when the feds warned him he better tell the truth.

2. McNamee had nothing to gain by fabricating a story of Clemens' steroid use. It certainly doesn't put him in a good light; it diminishes the work he'd done with Clemens in helping turn him into a superhero and closes the door on any future MLB-related jobs. Which is precisely why he denied it for years.

3. The House committee reveres Mitchell, treating him with such reverence during his testimony last month that at least one of them worried aloud about whether his questioning might cause Mitchell to miss a train out of town.

4. The Mitchell Report is standing up well so far. It contained 89 names, including 60-plus new names, and the only full denials so far came from Lenny Dykstra, who no one believes, plus David Justice and Clemens.

5. Clemens' own taped "evidence'' backfired on him. His secretly-recorded 17-minute tape proved exactly nothing. It certainly didn't incriminate McNamee. However, it did raise one major question for Clemens to answer: Why, if Clemens finally has his chance to confront his former employee and the man who supposedly fabricated a story about his steroid usage, didn't he call him out? Why didn't he say, in 17 long minutes, something like, "Why did you make this stuff up? Why are you trying to ruin me?'' The most likely reason is that he wouldn't have liked the answer.

6. The claim by Clemens' lawyers that McNamee made up a meeting between Clemens and Jose Canseco at a party relies on Canseco, who himself suggested probable steroid use by Clemens in Canseco's best-selling book Juiced. McNamee recalled a conversation between Clemens and Canseco at Canseco's house party that preceded Clemens asking McNamee about steroids, a story that is recounted in Mitchell's report. Clemens' lawyers claim that their client wasn't even at the party. But if Canseco is the best they got, that could be a bad sign. Even if Canseco doesn't recall Clemens being at this particular party, Canseco himself revealed frank discussions with Clemens about steroids in Juiced -- "... I've never seen Roger Clemens do steroids, and he never told me that he did. But we've talked about what steroids could do for you, in different combinations ...'' and all but speculated that Clemens was a user. And Clemens never came after Canseco hard, by the way.

7. Clemens' lawyers have been trying to paint McNamee as a liar in part because of an incident involving McNamee and several other Yankees employees that occurred at the pool of the Yankees' St. Petersburg, Fla., hotel in 2001. While those investigators believed McNamee wasn't completely truthful with them, that investigation went nowhere and no charges were filed against anyone. Beyond that, Clemens continued to think highly enough of McNamee that he employed him right up until the release of Mitchell's report.

8. Clemens' claim on 60 Minutes that McNamee shot him in the butt not with steroids but with B-12 and lidocaine is being treated skeptically by experts. Canseco revealed in his book that "B-12'' was code for steroids, especially among pitchers (including Clemens, according to Canseco) and medical experts have said that lidocaine wouldn't typically be administered in the butt.

9. Andy Pettitte confirmed McNamee's story of HGH usage about him, and is expected to do the same at the hearing. Plus, Chuck Knoblauch also will be called, and is also seen as likely to confirm McNamee's account. Assuming that's the case, it'll be hard to explain why McNamee would tell the exact truth about them but make up a story about Clemens. Pettitte has switched away from Clemens' lawyer and reports have surfaced that they aren't as close as previously believed. Though Pettitte obviously looked up to Clemens, working out with him and McNamee, I don't believe the two pitchers are best friends. It's possible Pettitte could take some middle ground, perhaps recalling conversations with McNamee about Clemens' alleged steroid usage but no such conversations with Clemens. But that's probably the best Clemens can hope for.

10. McNamee produced syringes, vials and gauze pads from his alleged injections into Clemens, instruments that could prove to the smoking gun if Clemens' DNA and steroid remnants are found together. Sounding like he expects the worst, Clemens' lawyer Rusty Hardin called this "fabricated evidence.'' Towns called McNamee's revelation "weird.'' And that may be so. But McNamee was a police detective who saw himself as the vulnerable little guy in this affair. For whatever reason, McNamee never seemed to trust Clemens. Some may see it as weird. But most will see it as prudent if it contains what McNamee said it contains.

11. Clemens' agents' statistical claim that Clemens' career path was not extraordinary isn't fooling anyone. The reality is, his career path showed an unexpected, unreal spike just at the time most pitchers begin to diminish. His ERA the last four seasons in Boston when he was age 30-33, when most pitchers are in their late prime, was 3.77. Yet, he would pitch another 11 seasons to a 3.39 ERA and win another four Cy Young awards.

Clemens' ego is bigger than all of Texas, built though years of adoration of those near and far. In the end, that could be his downfall.

Now that the fawning is over,
Roger Clemens may not enjoy Capitol Hill as much.
(Evan Vucci / Associated Press)

From FoxSports.com:
Questions good enough to launch a rocket
by Ken Rosenthal

Schmooze time is over, not that it ever should have started. The proper response from Congressmen when Roger Clemens came knocking should have been a polite, "See you at the hearing."

True to pathetic form, several Congressmen couldn't resist fawning over such an important celebrity, but take comfort: Clemens' lobbying efforts are likely to get him nowhere.

Starting Wednesday morning, it's game on. And when the television lights go on and the witnesses are sworn in, the government figures to take the side of Clemens' former trainer, Brian McNamee.

Former Sen. George Mitchell, in his 311-page report on steroids in baseball, included McNamee's testimony not just about Clemens, but also Andy Pettitte and Chuck Knoblauch.

If McNamee is discredited, then Mitchell is discredited. Rest assured, the good members of Congress do not want that to happen.

Commissioner Bud Selig got a free pass in his recent appearance before Congress in part because he hired Mitchell as his lead investigator. The love-in on Capitol Hill made it clear why the report was necessary, no matter how ugly the fallout — necessary for Selig, anyway.

Mitchell, though, isn't the only government insider under attack from Team Rocket. Clemens' attorney, Rusty Hardin, practically threatened IRS Special Agent Jeff Novitzky, the lead prosecutor in the BALCO drug cases, telling the New York Times, "If he ever messes with Roger, Roger will eat his lunch."

Rep. Henry Waxman, the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, responded by rebuking Hardin before the attorney even set foot in the hearing room.

Hardin, duly chastened, admitted to the New York Daily News that there was "a very strong likelihood" that Clemens could face a Justice Department investigation for perjury.

Perhaps Hardin has finally figured out that the government is not messing around.

Not in an election year.

Rather than look weak, Republicans and Democrats might take turns attacking Clemens during the hearing. Picking on a miscreant such as McNamee isn't going to make any of them a star. McNamee was obligated to tell the truth to Mitchell, wasn't he?

Now that the fawning is over, Roger Clemens may not enjoy Capitol Hill as much. (Evan Vucci / Associated Press)

Yes, and any reasonably intelligent fan could pick out the inconsistencies in Clemens' recent public statements. But just in case any members of the committee have been paying attention to matters of actual national significance, here's a list of questions they should ask "The Rocket."

# You've raised doubts about McNamee's credibility. Yet, you continued employing him for nearly six years after he was questioned in a rape case and dismissed by the Yankees. Why?

If Clemens demurs, his interrogator can remind him of a comment he was reported to have made in October 2006: "I'll continue to use Mac to train me. He's one of a kind."

# Your former teammate, Andy Pettitte, acknowledged using human growth hormone for two days in 2002, confirming McNamee's account to Mitchell that he injected Pettitte on two to four occasions. Why would McNamee tell the truth about Pettitte but lie about you?

Clemens, in his appearance on "60 Minutes" told Mike Wallace, "Andy's case is totally separate." Not true. Pettitte and Clemens were former teammates and former training partners. They used McNamee and used the same agents.

A pointed follow-up to Wallace's initial query is in order — and the questioning should be even more meaningful now that the committee has agreed to honor Pettitte's request not to testify publicly.

# Why did you deny knowledge of McNamee's allegations to Wallace? Your attorney, Rusty Hardin, said that you were told of the Mitchell Report's general allegations against you four days before its release and given more specifics after McNamee met with Hardin's investigators the day before its release.

Clemens told Wallace, "If I would have known what this man, Brian McNamee, had said in the report, I would have been down there in a heartbeat to take care of it."

Clemens knew, but evidently goes a long time between heartbeats.

# Why did you decline to meet with Mitchell's investigators yet authorize your own investigators to tape an interview with McNamee the day before the release of the Mitchell report?

In fairness, Clemens wasn't alone in his refusal to meet with Mitchell; almost all of the active players contacted by the former senator declined to speak with him or his staff.

Still, McNamee was more cooperative with Clemens' investigators than Clemens was with Mitchell's. According to Earl Ward, one of McNamee's attorneys, McNamee refused to recant what he told Mitchell.

# Your defamation lawsuit against McNamee says that, "according to McNamee," he originally made his allegations to federal authorities after being threatened with criminal prosecution if he did not implicate you. That is an allegation of coercion. Why do you consider McNamee trustworthy on this point but not on others?

The claim in the lawsuit is another example of Clemens and his attorneys challenging the government's conduct, in this case with a statement they attribute to McNamee.

# What were your financial arrangements with McNamee? Can you produce a record of your payments?

If Clemens could demonstrate that he paid McNamee a set amount for training, he could show that the payment schedule did not include additional money for performance-enhancing drugs.

Conversely, McNamee could strengthen his position if he were able to produce canceled checks of Clemens' payments for PEDs. McNamee did not provide any such documentation to Mitchell.

# What was the purpose of secretly recording your phone conversation with McNamee and then replaying it for reporters?

McNamee, clearly distraught, was unaware that he was being taped, yet never told Clemens during their 17-minute conversation that he lied to Mitchell or federal investigators.

Clemens, meanwhile, never called McNamee a liar — mindful, Hardin explained, of refraining from any statements that could be construed as intimidating to a witness.

The tape reveals little, other than to show that even under duress, McNamee stuck to his story.

# Why did you allow McNamee to inject you with lidocaine and B-12?

Clemens conceded to Wallace that he received injections from McNamee, but only for lidocaine, a painkiller, and B-12, a vitamin.

For an elite professional athlete, a doctor would have been a safer choice to administer injections.

Make no mistake, McNamee deserves equal scrutiny from Congress, but he is in an entirely different position than Clemens.

McNamee cooperated with the government. Clemens is challenging a report by one of the government's former stars, and his attorney made incendiary comments about one of the government's top investigators.

Schmooze time is over. See you at the hearing.

From The New York Post:
Report: Pettitte backed McNamee's story
by BRIAN COSTELLO New York Post

Andy Pettitte was excused yesterday from testifying against his friend Roger Clemens at a congressional hearing — but it appears Pettitte already has done plenty of damage to Clemens' contention that he never used steroids or human growth hormone.

Rep. Tom Davis, the ranking Republican on the congressional committee investigating steroid use in baseball, told Newsday that Pettitte, in his deposition last week, backed up the account of Brian McNamee, the former trainer of Clemens and Pettitte.

McNamee has said Clemens used steroids and human growth hormone.

Davis told the newspaper that Pettitte's testimony matches McNamee's in most details, but that Clemens, in his deposition last week, said both of them are mistaken.

Pettitte asked to be excused from tomorrow's congressional hearing so that he would not have to testify against Clemens, and the committee's leaders granted him his request. They also excused Kirk Radomski and Chuck Knoblauch from the hearing, and Radomski from giving a deposition Tuesday.

That leaves Clemens and his accuser, McNamee, in a showdown tomorrow. They will be joined by one new witness, a member of former Senator George Mitchell's staff, Charlie Scheeler.

The move to excuse Pettitte, Knoblauch and Radomski came last night after discussions between the leadership of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

A source indicated to The New York Post that Pettitte verified a story McNamee told in his deposition about training at Clemens' home in 2002 with both Clemens and Pettitte. McNamee said that during a break, Pettitte said to him something like, "How come you don't give me the same stuff you give Roger?" indicating Clemens told Pettitte about his human growth hormone use.

Newsday reported that Clemens said in his affidavit that he spoke with Pettitte about medications, but not steroids or HGH.

One of Pettitte's lawyers declined comment when reached last night.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the committee, and Davis (R-Va.) put out a joint statement announcing the removal of the three witnesses.

"Mr. Knoblauch and Mr. Pettitte answered all the Committee's questions and their testimony at the hearing is not needed," the statement read. "Mr. Clemens and Mr. McNamee have also cooperated with the Committee in its investigation."

Pettitte gave a deposition to the committee under oath on Feb. 4 that lasted for two and a half hours.

Clemens' lawyers said their client will stick to his denial that he ever used steroids or HGH.

"I think Andy Pettitte should do whatever is in Andy's best interest and whatever he thinks is best," said Lanny Breuer, one of Clemens' lawyers. "Roger Clemens is going to testify on Wednesday. He'll answer everything truthfully and forthrightly as he's done since the very beginning."

The committee can use Pettitte's deposition during the hearing and ask Clemens or McNamee about anything in Pettitte's testimony. It also will be part of the public record of the hearing.

Sparing him a trip to Capitol Hill appears to be a sign committee members believe Pettitte cooperated fully with their investigation, and that they do not need any more testimony from him. A source also said Pettitte was not a great witness in that his answers sometimes contradicted each other, and there was some fear of putting him in front of the committee with a national television audience watching.

Photo by Herald file

From www.bostonherald.com:
Rocket crashes in D.C.
No chance to avoid his fall from grace
By Gerry Callahan

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Roger Clemens, who has spent the past few months trying to deny alleged steroid and HGH use, gets to tell it to Congress tomorrow.

The goal from the beginning was fairly simple for Roger, Rusty and the rest of the Texas Con Men:

Don’t let them turn our guy into Barry Bonds.

Roger Clemens had wrapped up a spectacular 24-year career and was arguably the greatest pitcher ever, and he had almost made a clean getaway when this creep McNamee tried to tattoo an asterisk on the middle of Clemens’ forehead. At that point, Roger made a risky, life-changing decision, surely against all sound legal advice. He wasn’t going to let McNamee win. He was going to do what he had always done when he was challenged: Throw high and tight and knock someone down.

Clemens was in no legal trouble when the Mitchell Report first hit the street; he could have confessed to dabbling in steroids or HGH and then disappeared for a few months. He could have said he was just trying to come back from an injury or to keep pace with all the juiced-up hitters. In other words, he could have done what his pal Andy Pettitte did, and he would have survived the storm. Probably would have been playing Pebble Beach last week instead of slithering around the hallways of Capitol Hill like another Jack Abramoff.

But Roger couldn’t do it, couldn’t handle the damage to his reputation, couldn’t let this punk McNamee beat him. McNamee was a personal trainer, a go-fer, a nobody. He looked up to Roger the way Monica idolized Bill - and kept creepy souvenirs, too!

Clemens had won 354 games, seven Cy Youngs and two World Series rings. He wasn’t going to let this slippery little towel boy bring him down.

So he dug in his heels, foolishly, stubbornly, dangerously, and lawyer Rusty Hardin and the rest of the rubes dug in with him. Clemens always had a lot of pride, and we’ve seen every bit of it go before his fall. He couldn’t do what Pettitte did, just as Barry Bonds couldn’t do what Jason Giambi did.

And now the transition is almost complete. Tomorrow Clemens goes before Congress, where he will raise his famous right hand, swear to tell the truth and, presumably, lie his needle-marked rear end off. What choice does he have at this point? In less than two months, he will have morphed from an iconic baseball war horse, a modern-day Walter Johnson, into another Bonds, a self-absorbed phony who was consumed by arrogance and greed. He couldn’t just be a great ballplayer. He had to be the best, by whatever means necessary.

Ask yourself this next time you hear Clemens weave his tangled web: Do you think he had some kind of moral objection to steroids or HGH? Because we know his personal trainer had an intimate knowledge of performance-enhancing drugs. We know McNamee used them on other players, and we know Clemens was not afraid of needles. So there had to be a time when the subject of steroids came up, and Clemens would like us to believe that he said, “No, Mac, that would be wrong.”

We know lots of hitters were using. We know some pitchers were using. And we know Roger’s good friend, Jose Canseco, was the poster boy for these drugs. But Roger refused to cross that ethical line? Maybe Mike Wallace is buying that. Maybe Koby and the rest of the K kids are on board. No one else can be that gullible.

Rusty and Roger have made a lot of moves since the Mitchell Report was released. By my count, every single one of them has backfired. From the “60 Minutes” interview to the secretly recorded telephone conversation with McNamee to the 45-page report that was supposed to convince everyone that it was the splitter - not the steroids - that led to the 1.87 ERA at age 43, nothing has succeeded in winning a day for Roger. All the knockdown pitches have missed their mark. The last person who worked this frantically to clear her name was Marion Jones. She’s headed to jail.

Could Clemens be next? Over the weekend, Richard Emery, one of McNamee’s lawyers, predicted criminal charges for Clemens.

“I think there will be a criminal prosecution after Wednesday, and that means there will be grand jury proceedings,” Emery told the Associated Press. “I don’t see there’s any possibility that Brian has any jeopardy. I only see the possibility of Clemens getting investigated by Justice, whether or not Congress refers it.”

Now the best Clemens can hope for is a clear path into obscurity, the same road that was traveled by Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro after their disastrous performances before Congress three years ago. He can point a finger and lie into the camera or he can refuse to talk about the past, but either way it’s all over for him tomorrow. He’s just not slick or articulate enough to talk his way out of this one.

There will be no more cute cell phone commercials or invitations to Pebble Beach or appearances at the Country Music Awards. Those were the things that Roger loved about being Roger, but that life likely is over for the Texas Con Man, the name Will McDonough hung on Clemens years ago. Ask Bonds or McGwire about all their endorsement deals. Clemens is no different now.

The fall of the legend is almost complete. He’s become Bonds. The only thing left is the lying under oath. That is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. tomorrow in Room 2154 of the Rayburn Building. ESPN will carry it live.

From FOXSports.com:
Clemens fighting to save his butt ... kissers
By Jason Whitlock

Updated: February 11, 2008, 1:18 PM EST

If Roger Clemens is lying — which I tend to believe he is — then his major crime is being unable to imagine a life worth living without constant, pervasive fan adulation.

Seriously, if the guy isn't telling the truth, all he's really fighting for is the right to show up in any restaurant in America and get a table without waiting, a round of drinks on the house and some groupie telling him he's the greatest.

He's a crackhead, a celebrity addicted to human lips resting on the crack of his/her rear end.

And, as we know, crackheads do dumb stuff, like spend a week in the nation's capital whining and dining lying politicians, begging them to believe that the game's greatest pitcher took B-12 shots in the butt, not steroids.

No one, and I mean no one, lies more frequently and boldly than a crackhead in search of his next hit/kiss of the rear.

It took video evidence to get former Washington, D.C., mayor Marion Barry to admit he hit the pipe and 14,000 text messages for Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to acknowledge he hit his fine-ass chief of staff. And you think Roger "Pookie" Clemens is going to crack because Brian McNamee has a couple of pictures, a few dirty syringes and blood-stained gauze? Hell, Monica Lewinsky had the president's happy ending splattered on her favorite Sunday dress and Clinton never copped.

No, Roger is not going to give up his life of self- and fan-worship without an ugly, desperate fight.

Say what you want about Barry Bonds, but if he turned to the needle, he did it solely to dominate the game, keep pace with McGwire and Sosa and help the Giants win games. Bonds couldn't care less what anybody outside his immediate circle thinks about him.

Roger, it appears, is consumed with image. He's worried about what guys like Bob Costas think. Roger wants to give Costas, Lupica and all the other baseball-is-America keepers of the faith a reason to believe Roger is better than Barry.

Costas sold that line of garbage on Bill Maher's HBO talk show last week. Somehow Costas argued that Brian McNamee's sworn statements about rear-ending Roger and his wife with HGH was less compelling evidence than the gossipy book "Game of Shadows." Maher, even more incredibly, bought Costas' line of (spit) and argued that jealousy motivated McNamee's testimony.

And you thought Johnnie Cochran was a slick lawyer. Clemens has his own Dream Team of attorneys and media groupies.

Why would any sane, rational, free-of-bias person believe McNamee is lying? He told the truth about Andy Pettitte. Why risk incarceration and lie on Clemens and his wife?

On Thursday, Clemens' attorneys compared McNamee and his allegations to Duke lacrosse. Well, we know why the Duke hooker lied. She was drunk, high, embarrassed and, according to what we learned later, prone toward making up rape allegations when the mood struck her.

McNamee, as far as we know, was prone toward helping athletes cut corners to get big and strong and under threat of indictment when he fingered Pettitte and Clemens to the feds. The only way McNamee could win an all-expenses-paid trip to the Big House was by, for instance, falsely accusing the greatest pitcher in baseball of using human growth hormone and other drugs.

McNamee had no incentive to exaggerate or lie. And I don't care that he might have gotten a detail wrong about seeing Clemens at a Jose Canseco party. There's a huge difference between remembering who was at a party and recalling puncturing Debbie Clemens' firm booty. Grown men don't lie on their needles.

The former cop (the absolute last person who would want to go to jail) had every incentive to tell the whole truth. Let's say McNamee had simply squealed on Pettitte and left Clemens' name out of the Mitchell Report. McNamee would've opened himself up to Pettitte alleging that McNamee protected Clemens and wasn't completely forthright with investigators.

McNamee lying makes no sense. Pookie twisting the truth makes perfect sense.

Clemens doesn't want his life to change. He's addicted to being the most important and celebrated man in Texas. A steroids conviction in the court of public opinion would sentence him to a life outside the spotlight, a life Mark McGwire intelligently chose.

I guess, in Clemens' mind, McGwire might as well be O.J. Simpson.

Clemens is wrong. White folks can't wait to forgive Clemens. All he needed to do was offer the same kind of half-hearted apology Jason Giambi gave. A momentary show of contrition and the steroid witch hunters would've returned to their primary mission of tar and feathering Barry Bonds.

Right now, the masses are upset with Clemens because he's turned attention away from Bonds by claiming innocence and glad-handing congressmen. The witch hunters never wanted to burn Clemens at a stake.

You never heard them talk about Clemens' hat size, muscle growth, physique change and career resurrection with the kind of passion and righteous indignation they discussed Bonds. No, Clemens and McNamee were celebrated for their work ethic. For years we've been shown pictures of a 21-year-old Bonds juxtaposed against the 40-year-old Bonds. This is supposed to be undeniable proof that Barry did steroids. I've never seen one ESPN show do a similar picture graphic of Clemens.

Roger has screwed this whole thing up, turned a Giambi situation into a Pete Rose situation. Clemens should've said he tried it a few times, regrets doing it and wants to be forgiven. Yeah, he would've had to wait a few years to enter the Hall of Fame and wait a few minutes to get a table at a couple of restaurants, but eventually all lips would've returned to his rear end.

What Next for Conservatives?
by Laura Ingraham

Now that Mitt Romney has stepped aside in the GOP presidential race, many conservatives are trying to figure out where to go from here. John McCain will be the Republican presidential nominee. Conservatives are dispirited because on many issues they don't consider him one of them. And it's true -- he is a moderate who considered leaving the GOP in 2001 ... he did think about joining John Kerry's ticket in 2004 ... and he did side with liberals over conservatives on everything from immigration to closing Gitmo.

But we have no time to be dejected and have to keep things in perspective. Remember, between 1932 and 1980, there weren't any conservative presidents. Even when they were in the wilderness, conservatives were hard at work. In 1951, William F. Buckley wrote "God & Man at Yale" and later started National Review magazine. We saw the rise of Barry Goldwater. Phyllis Schlafly and others defeated the Equal Rights Amendment. Ronald Reagan challenged the Republican establishment from the right and eventually became the party's standard-bearer.

So despite the wishful thinking on the part of liberals everywhere, conservatives are not about to give up and go away. In fact, this could be a moment of liberation. Many prominent conservatives think that the movement has become too closely aligned with the GOP anyway.

Whether a year from now we have President Clinton, Obama or McCain in the White House, the challenges facing America are going to be huge. Beyond the war and the economy, there will be a push for new climate change and immigration laws that conservatives are not going to like. And traditional marriage and our successful anti-terror policies will face renewed attacks in federal courts. So this is no time for conservatives to sit on the sidelines.

On the state and local level, we can recruit and support solid, traditional conservatives for everything from the school board to the state house. We can be active conservatives in our neighborhoods and churches by working with others to highlight what is good -- and defeat what is bad about today's popular culture. We can join organizations that do great grassroots work on the issues we care about. We can show how much we support the troops and their mission by helping returning vets and their families.

We are a movement that believes in personal responsibility, so it's time to take some. There are consequences to losing. Now is the time to rebuild and re-group, not whine or complain or sulk. Reagan lost many political battles along the way but never lost hope in the enduring nature of basic conservative principles. Neither should we.

From National Journal.com:
The University Has No Clothes
By Stuart Taylor Jr., National Journal

Monday, Feb. 11, 2008

When a mentally deluded stripper accused three Duke University lacrosse players of a brutal gang rape at a March 2006 off-campus team party during spring break, dozens of activist Duke professors were not content merely to give great credence to the rape charge, even as evidence of its probable fraudulence poured into the public record. They also treated the lacrosse players as pariahs for having hired strippers at all. So, too, did Duke President Richard Brodhead, Board Chairman Robert Steel, other campus administrators, many in the media, and others.

	On Super Bowl Sunday, Duke University played host to a group of strippers, prostitutes, phone-sex operators, and others in a "Sex Workers Art Show."

Never mind that hiring strippers violated no law or university rule. Never mind that nobody had made a fuss about the 20-plus stripper parties that other Duke athletic teams, fraternities, and sororities held that year. Brodhead and other officials and professors continued to express horror long after the supposedly "privileged" lacrosse players had abjectly apologized. To underscore its horror, the university adopted a new rule: "Strippers may not be invited or paid to perform at events sponsored by individual students, residential living groups, or cohesive units."

So, some might be surprised to learn that on this year's Super Bowl Sunday, Duke University played host to a group of strippers, prostitutes, phone-sex operators, and others in a "Sex Workers Art Show" to display their "creativity and genius." The university spent $3,500 from student fees and various programs to pay the performers and cover expenses.

One account of the February 3 show in the on-campus Reynolds Theater -- from which I have redacted the more repulsive particulars -- was posted on the Internet by Jay Schalin, of the conservative-leaning John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy.

"The performers did not just take their clothes off -- and the actual nudity part of the show was rather tame. But mere nudity could hardly compare with a show that began with the Art Show's founder and director, Annie Oakley, imploring the audience to stand up and shout 'I take it up the butt!'...

"A transvestite, naked except for some strategically placed tape, with the words 'F___ Bush' painted on his chest, kneeled on all fours and lit a sparkler protruding out of his rectum with 'America the Beautiful' playing...

"A stripper, in the guise of a U.S. flag-draped Lady Justice, ... yanked a string of dollar bills out of her posterior as the sound system played Dolly Parton's version of 'God Bless the U.S.A.' She ended her act by saluting and holding up her middle finger to the crowd. The announcer referred to the performance as her 'Infamous Patriot Act.' Her most private area was kept covered by a small American flag...

"A dominatrix donned a large 'strap-on' male sex organ, and pretended to masturbate while the crowd was urged to shout 'faster, faster,' in Chinese."

The Chronicle, Duke's student newspaper, reported that the show "riveted a crowd of students and community members," with "rowdy cheers and awkward silences."

This event was sponsored by a student group called Healthy Devils, with co-sponsors including Duke's Women's Center, the Program for the Study of Sexualities, the Student Health Center, Students for Choice, the Campus Council, and Sexual Assault Support Services. The show has toured or will tour other campuses including Harvard University, the College of William & Mary, the University of Michigan, Wesleyan University, and the University of California (Davis).

Duke Provost Peter Lange, responding to my e-mailed questions, explained that the sponsors had followed normal procedures to get university funds and facilities. Duke "routinely hosts shows and speakers that some people find controversial or even objectionable," he wrote, as part of its "strong commitment to free speech and academic freedom." He added that the university takes no position on the views expressed.

Fair enough. But how can the Duke administration reconcile its solicitude for the right of some groups to pay strippers to perform with its disdain for lacrosse players who did the same?

"There is an obvious difference," Lange responded, "between strippers performing at a private party and a group of artists touring university campuses across the country to present a show with political discussion, musical theater, and displays of sexuality."

So people who take off their clothes and dance for money while others watch are not mere strippers, but rather "artists," if they go on tour, call it "musical theater," and toss in scatological and vulgar political effusions?

Another way of looking at it, Schalin's article suggests, is that "inviting strippers to perform does not appear to be a problem as long as the intent is not to titillate men, but to shock a mixed audience with vulgarity and disparage mainstream American values."

Kenneth Larrey, a senior who founded Duke Students for an Ethical Duke to promote fair treatment of students by the university that had so savaged its own lacrosse players, skipped the Super Bowl to document the university's hypocrisy. The show was, he says, "far, far more grotesque than we could have imagined."

To be sure, Annie Oakley did voice one coherent political message: Women are driven into the "sex industry" because the "only other option is working a minimum-wage job or less." But this theme was undercut by one performer's admission that she had left a regular job to make more money for "my extravagant partying lifestyle" and by others who described choosing sex work after college.

While the show portrayed "sex workers" as both artistic "geniuses" and victims of society, males who pay strippers to perform had better have politically correct motives. The Sex Workers Art Show passed the political correctness test because, in the words of its website, it not only "entertains, arouses, and amazes" but also offers "scathing and insightful commentary on notions of class, race, gender, labor, and sexuality."

As if the nation's campuses were not sufficiently steeped in such stuff already.

The lacrosse players, on the other hand, had no pretensions beyond titillation and male bonding. For this they were likened to slave masters of the Old South by many a professor and columnist. Professor Mark Anthony Neal, for one -- a practitioner of what he calls " 'gangster' scholarship" and "intellectual thuggery" -- accused the players of "hoping to consume something that they felt a black woman uniquely possessed." Never mind that the booking agency had told the players that one stripper would be white and one would be Hispanic.

Brodhead told the Durham Chamber of Commerce on April 20, 2006, "If our students did what is alleged, it is appalling to the worst degree. If they didn't do it, whatever they did is bad enough." (Emphasis added.)

This was a dagger aimed straight at the hearts of sophomores Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty, who had been arrested on rape charges two days before. In his eagerness to trash two young men in their time of direst peril for having attended a stripper party organized by their captains, Brodhead ignored the strong, by-then-public evidence that both were entirely innocent of rape.

Such smears have so far cost Duke well over $10 million to settle a threatened lawsuit by the three wrongly accused players. (The third was indicted after Brodhead's "bad enough" gibe.) Three other players have filed a lawsuit and 30-some others are threatening to sue.

But no Duke administrator or professor has been disciplined in any way. Indeed, the only one fired at Duke as a result of the bogus rape charge was Mike Pressler, the university's lacrosse coach for 16 years and the 2005 NCAA Coach of the Year. Brodhead fired him in April 2006 while misleadingly suggesting that his players were a bunch of racists. This at a time when rogue District Attorney Mike Nifong, who has since been disbarred, was winning an election by spreading similar smears to Durham voters and potential jurors.

Less than a month later, a faculty committee that Brodhead appointed to investigate the coach's leadership and the players' characters found that Pressler had been blameless. It also found that the players -- although far too prone to the alcohol abuse, noisy parties, and related petty misconduct that are endemic on campus -- were otherwise an admirable group of student-athletes with no history of racist talk or behavior.

Despite all of this, Steel -- who is also an undersecretary of the Treasury -- and Duke's board have strongly supported Brodhead's handling of the lacrosse case. In December 2007 a board committee voiced what its chair, and board vice chair, Daniel Blue, called "overwhelming support for the leadership that the president is providing."

Brodhead and the board understand how the p.c. game is played. If only the lacrosse players had understood that, they could have lined up university funding to hire a better class of strippers: college-educated white people spouting vacuous political bromides and sporting dollar bills and sparklers in the right places.

-- Stuart Taylor Jr. is a senior writer and columnist for National Journal magazine, where "Opening Argument" appears. His e-mail address is staylor@nationaljournal.com.