that the guys named in the Mitchell Report have no way to answer the charges. There is no forum for them to prove anything one way or another. By suing Mcnamee for defamation, Clemens is establishing a forum for himself, but others may not be able to do that due to the facts of their unique situations.

Many of the players named were juicing I'm sure, but does that mean they all were? If not, Clemens has a valid point; how do they clear their names? I'm astonished that Kaufman totally elides this point. His interest may be the governance of baseball. Fine. But if you've been named in the report and are innocent of the charges, as Clemens claims he is, where do you go to get your reputation back? That that's not very important to Kaufman is astonishing.

Would passing a lie detector help? No it wouldn't. Why? Because lie detector tests are notoriously unreliable, that's why. That's why they're not admissible in evidence in court. So if Roger takes a polygraph test and passes it, what would all the guilty-until-proven-innocent folks out there say? "Lie detector tests don't prove anything," is what they'd say. Clemens makes a good point.

you can figure that call out. There's a defamation case in progress and a number of potential criminal cases lurking out there. When Clemens calls MacNamee, he has to be VERY careful about witness tampering which itself is a crime. When MacNamee asked "what do you want me to do?" that's a clear, explicit invitation to witness tampering. You know, "what'll you give me if I say this in court?"

Clemens' lawyer unquestionably briefed him on witness tampering before the call. Rusty Hardin's nowhere near enough of a fool not to. Therefore Clemens, who is not an attorney, came off as stilted in the conversation because he was trying to avoid the pitfalls of witness tampering but still get the information he wanted.

King, you're trying to read stuff into that conversation that's not there. Its unnatural tone is due to Clemens taking care to avoid tampering with a witness.

she's a volunteer. Who's not going to participate directly in the presidential effort. That's a "shake-up?"

I'll tell you what a mistake is. A mistake is trading 5 prospects, two of them very good prospects, for an over-the-hill juicer shortstop who may never play another inning of major-league baseball. Tejada may spend the rest of his career in jail for perjury or in the Dominican Republic because he can't get a visa to enter this country. If you're Ed Wade, GM of the Astros, that's a mistake.

I guess it doesn't make much difference to you that Lugo was found not guilty of the DV charge in 2003. A jury heard the evidence and ruled he didn't do it. Why isn't that good enough for you?

It's just like Moss said yesterday, wait until all the facts are in. But of course in Lugo's case they ARE in and you still want to think he's a bad actor.

First. Uh, we've been doing this for the last 6 years. It's called deficit spending. You know, the government keeps employment high but pays for it with debt instruments instead of cash. Sending out checks is a little more direct, but not much. The much-touted Bush economy has always been built on deficit-spending. It ain't complicated; anyone can do it.

Second. We're just now learning that the poor spend marginal dollars and the rich save them? Please. Actually, we've known that for decades. It's the linchpin of the New Deal. Income taxation takes money from the rich, while government spending gives money to the poor and middle class both directly by government hiring and indirectly by government contracting with private companies. In other words, that system redistributes wealth downward. We do this, not because we have a soft spot for the poor, but because they'll spend the money they get whereas if we leave the money in the hands of the rich, they'll just buy bonds with it. Why do we want to increase spending? To buy the goods we've produced and which are languishing in inventories, depressing prices, wages and increasing unemployment. In other words, giving money to the poor and middle class combats recession. That's what FDR tried to do in the 1930s over the howling objections of Republicans. That's what WWII did in fact and guess what? It got us out of the Great Depression.

We've known this for decades Andrew. Learn something.

if Hannaham knows what affirmative action is or not. He seems to share the misconception with so many others who opine on the subject that affirmative action has something to do with quotas in hiring, school acceptance, etc. It doesn't and it never has.

The term "affirmative action" comes from a Supreme Court case. Its historical context was as follows: many employers had for years refused to hire African-Americans. Faced with changing laws, they reversed their hiring policies and dropped their all-white standards. Still, they actually had no black employees because they had no African-American applicants. African-Americans didn't apply because of the firms' well-known history of racial discrimination. When potential black employees sued the firms, the court held that, in the case of companies that had invidiously discriminated against African-Americans in the past, it was not enough to simply change hiring policies, they had to take affirmative action to find qualified black applicants. In other words, they had to go to job fairs at prdominently black high schools, etc. and let African-Americans know that the firms were open to black employees. But they in no way were required to lower standards to accept black applicants or set quotas for black employees.

That's what affirmative action meant and means. It's not clear if Hannaham knows that.