One long item, and Two Quick Hits

1) Roger Clemens' appearance on 60 Minutes last night was not particularly enlightening. Most, if not all, of the relevant details had been leaked beforehand, and made his 13 minutes of denial, befuddlement, anger, and explanation with Mike Wallace anticlimactic. The Common Man, as he's explained before, tends not to get too caught up in just who did steroids, since a) no other sport is held to baseball's high standard (where are congressional hearings into Shawne Merriman?) and b) he assumes that many, many players were doing them and that virtually all of the "clean" players, executives, owners, and commissioners were morally culpable. The had knowledge of what was happening and chose to respect the "clubhouse code" of silence (something which The Common Man has learned about first-hand), which may make them popular, but doesn't make them ethical.

So far, the best take The Common Man has seen on the Clemens interview comes from ESPN.com's Rob Neyer, who writes, "If the Rocket really does want to defend himself, change the minds of a lot of people, it sure would help if he'd learned at some point to come across as something other than a spoiled, petulant millionaire who thinks he did something for baseball. Rather than the other way around." Indeed, at times Clemens does come off as a spoiled child in his interview and seems to be under the impression that for throwing a baseball 90 MPH over 25 years, he has contributed positively to society. And that, perhaps, is the saddest part of this story, that many people will agree that his performance has enhanced their worlds, and that he deserves their awe and respect for it, that he receives the benefit of the doubt, rather than the $121 million plus with which he has been compensated for playing a game.

2) New Hampshire residents make a big deal about making up their own minds and not caring how the Iowa caucuses went. But you could not find a better indication of the disproportionate effect that these states have on the public consciousness than Barak Obama's recent surge in the polling of New Hampshirites. Despite doing nothing over the past week aside from winning the Iowa caucus, Obama jumped to a 10 point lead over Clinton. Seriously, America, if you don't want outliers like Iowans and New Hampshirites determining who your next president is going to be, you need to devise a national primary day a month before the national convention. It's as simple as that.

3) In ironic news, Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf is saying that recently slain former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto is to blame for her own death, saying, "For standing up outside the car, I think it was she to blame alone -- nobody else. Responsibility is hers." There you have it. No assassination. No killers. Also, John Kennedy should not have been in a convertable. How dare Martin Luther King stand on a balcony? And Robert Kennedy had no business being in a kitchen. Ascribing blame to the victim in this case is particularly dastardly, especially since the victim cannot fight back. It's cynical and will undoubtedly undermine Musharraf's international position further (though, being unfamiliar with Pakistani internal politics, The Common Man has no idea how this will play in Rawalpindi). Still, The Common Man wonders whether Musharraf is the only man who can effectively control Pakistan right now, and worries that the elections now scheduled for February could determine the push Western Asia further into chaos for the next several years.