Word: reformer
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Mark McGwire, a balding, svelter version of his former 70-home-run self, sauntered into a congressional hearing room on St. Patrick's Day wearing a light green tie. But there were no eyes, Irish or otherwise, smiling on him from the dais. Before members of the House Government Reform Committee and millions of fans watching on television, McGwire swore to tell nothing but the truth. Instead, he told nothing. After a moving opening statement in which he cried while ruing the deaths of young steroid users, the cameras clicked in wild anticipation. Was Big Mac ready to admit that...
During 11 hours of testimony, the House reform committee further embarrassed the game by making baseball answer for its weak steroid policy. Baseball officials told skeptical committee members that the current policy represents progress, since the sport inexplicably had no policy until 2002. But baseball still falls woefully short compared with other sports. In the NFL, players are tested randomly in and out of season, and first-time abusers miss a quarter of a season. Baseball players miss 10 days, or about 5% of the season--and the legislators were incensed to learn about language that allowed a fine instead...
...government has the power to rewrite baseball's drug laws, and Congress's patience with the sport is clearly low. Says Indiana's Mark Souder, who sits on the reform committee: "With the current policy, I don't think they'll make it through the current season [without intervention]." But Congress probably won't act too fast--it rarely does--so expect more hearings, say House reform-committee members. Some members want to call more players and perhaps baseball trainers to prove that baseball has long known about the steroid use. Rather than single out baseball, the House might...
...reform is on the national agenda again. Yet no one is doing anything about the most dreaded levy of them all: the alternative minimum tax. You have probably heard about the AMT and may have to pay it soon enough if you aren't already doing so. Join the club. Here's a primer on the most reviled tax since the Boston Tea Party...
...that the bureaucratic pieces have fallen her way, what does Rice plan to do with them? She has led the push in the Administration for reform in the Middle East, canceling a trip to Egypt after Cairo jailed a leading political activist (the next day, Hosni Mubarak stunned the Egyptian public with a call for multiparty presidential elections). Rice executed a course correction on Lebanon, cooling U.S. denunciations of the militant group Hizballah, aware that the organization will almost certainly increase its clout in the May elections. And Rice quietly prevailed two weeks ago, when the U.S. backed European efforts...