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More regarding White House legalese maneuvers. It is often a matter of getting them to parrot after the fact the action you already took and so it goes in Disney East.(See 1 below.)
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Israel and the disappearing scientists. Perhaps my speaker on Jan. 26, Maj. Elliot Chodoff IDF Ret., will be able to provide some insights.
The last time Elliot spoke for me he was teasingly chided by an attendee that one of his predictions about Iran's nuclear program proved wrong. Elliot responded he hoped all his predictions would prove wrong because it would mean Israel was being successful.(See 2 below.)
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Interesting how programmed inflationary medical costs take place after the presidential election.
Now you do not see it but soon you will feel it. (See 3 below.)
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"PNF/F" May not raise the billion he deems necessary to buy his re-election but, as I noted in an earlier memo, money talks in politics.
Frankly, I find the amount of money we spend on electing politicians to office and the length we spend listening to their prattle obscene. Yes, we do get to know a great deal about the candidates but considering the biased press and our proven ability to elect persons void of competence this suggests a lot of money is spent on minimal revelations.
There must be a better way.
Furthermore, considering the economic plight of our many citizens on food stamps and out of work the amount of money raised and spent to elect a president this has to border on a poke in the eye. It should be a huge turnoff.
After a four year record of achievement, or lack thereof, it seems spending a billion dollars to sway voters is comparable to an act of self indictment. (See 4 below.)
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In its quest to disrupt Iran's nuclear program has Israel overstepped? According to this report it would seem to be the case.Has Israel's Mossad's alleged heavy handedness made a fragile relationship worse? (See 5 below.)
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Like Tebow,' PNF/F' is getting religion but unlike Tebow's, 'PNF/F's' could simply be an election ploy in view of his massive and brazen spending request. (See 6 below.)
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Dick
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1)Contempt for the Constitution
Justice invents a legal rationale for Obama appointments.
Where's John Yoo when President Obama needs him? The famous Bush Administration legal official was much maligned for issuing opinions supporting Presidential power, and he surely would have come up with something better than the junk law issued by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel yesterday.
The 23-page memorandum (dated January 6) by Assistant Attorney General Virginia Seitz is meant to justify Mr. Obama's recess appointments last week of Richard Cordray at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and three new members of the National Labor Relations Board—even though the Senate was not in recess but was holding pro forma sessions. The House also did not consent to the Senate's adjournment, as required by the Constitution's Article I, section 5, clause 4.
Ms. Seitz concedes that "The question is a novel one, and the substantial arguments on each side create some litigation risk for such appointments," and little wonder. Most of the opinion is an off-point digression on the constitutionality of recess appointments between Senate sessions, which no one disputes. But on that "novel" question, Ms. Seitz's legal reasoning is remarkably weak.
She avers that the pro forma sessions aren't technically sessions. As "a practical matter," she writes, in those sessions the Senate isn't capable of receiving and acting on nominations to the executive branch and therefore cannot exercise its advice and consent duties. Ms. Seitz points in particular to a Senate "standing order"—the rules of order it adopts to govern its procedures—that no business would be transacted during the pro forma sessions. If the Senate itself says it can't conduct business, she says, then the President can conclude it isn't really in session.
The problem is that the Senate does most of its work by unanimous consent—meaning without objection from present Members and without a vote or quorum. Even a single Senator alone on the floor (or "as a practical matter" one from each party) can use this process to modify the standing order in a heartbeat and conduct business.
The Senate did exactly that to pass Mr. Obama's payroll tax holiday in December, changing a standing order by unanimous consent to conduct business during an ostensibly pro forma session. Mr. Obama signed that bill. Either that was a real session and therefore his recess appointments are unconstitutional or the bill was invalidly enacted and therefore unconstitutional. Both can't be true.
The practical effect of Ms. Seitz's legal logic is that the President could make a recess appointment when the Senate adjourns for the day, or for lunch. He could also decide that the Senate isn't functioning to his liking—for instance, by dragging its feet on his nominations—and recess appoint nominees even when the Senate is conducting other business.
Last week, White House spokesman Jay Carney claimed Mr. Obama relied on the advice of White House counsel and didn't mention that the Office of Legal Counsel had been consulted beforehand. Now we know why: The Administration's position is a made-to-order legal invention.
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2) Is Israel Behind Iran Killings?
By Eli Lake
Six weeks ago in Washington, on the sidelines of a major U.S.-Israeli meeting known as the “strategic dialogue,” Israeli Mossadofficers were quietly and obliquely bragging about the string of explosions in Iran. “They would say things like, ‘It’s not the best time to be working on Iranian missile design,’” one U.S. intelligence official at the December parley told The Daily Beast.
Those comments were a reference to a string of explosions at a missile-testing site outside Tehran on November 12. The explosions killed Maj. Gen. Hassan Moqqadam, the head of the country’s missile program. But the manner in which the message was delivered—informally and on the sidelines of an official discussion—also speaks to how Israel appears to seek to create the impression of responsibility for acts of violence and sabotage inside Iranwithout quite taking formal responsibility.
These kinds of actions even have their own Israeli euphemism, “events that happen unnaturally,” to quote the Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Benny Gantz, from his remarks before the Knesset on Tuesday. In his testimony, Gantz promised more such unnatural events in 2012 aimed at thwarting Iran’s nuclear program.
All told, five Iranian scientists or engineers affiliated with the nuclear program have been killed since 2007, the latest beingMostafa Ahmadi Roshan, who Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency says was responsible for procurement at the Natanz enrichment facility. A sixth, Fereydoon Abbasi, survived an assassination attempt in 2010 and is now the head of Iran’s atomic energy agency.
William Tobey, a former deputy administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration and a National Security Council specialist on nuclear issues, said five of the six attacks on the scientists since 2007 used magnetic limpet bombs that would be attached to a vehicle carrying the target.
Tobey, who just published a paper on the assassinations for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, would not speculate on the country responsible for the attacks, but Patrick Clawson, the director of research at the Washington Institute for Near Policy, said the signs point to Israel.
“This sophisticated technique is uncharacteristic of the Iranian armed opposition and the Iranian government, it is characteristic of the Mossad,” he said. “I am unaware of episodes when Americans and Europeans have done this kind of assassination. Of course, the Americans are involved in assassinations using predators, but not this kind of operation with agents on the ground, the natural suspect is the Mossad.”
A former Mossad officer now living in Canada who goes by the pseudonym Michael Ross said the attacks bore the hallmarks of an Israeli operation. “This tactic is not a new one for the Mossad, and worked very effectively against Egypt’s rocket program in the 1960s. During that period, the scientists involved in that project were assassinated and the program suffered immensely.”
The United States and Israel have cooperated on intelligence-gathering in Iran as well as, in some cases, sabotage operations such as the 2009 Stuxnet cyber attack that stymied the logic board that controlled the spinning centrifuges at the Natanz enrichment facility. Much of this kind of cooperation intensified in George W. Bush’s second term.
One document that hints to this cooperation is a diplomatic cable from Aug. 17, 2007 disclosed first by WikiLeaks that details a conversation between then Mossad chief Meir Dagan and then undersecretary of state for political affairs, Nicholas Burns.
The cable says there are five pillars to Israel’s approach to Iran: “Political Approach,” “Covert Measure,” “Counter-proliferation,” “Sanctions,” and “Force Regime Change.” Under the section of the memo that deals with “covert action,” there is this tantalizing sentence: “Dagan and the Under Secretary agreed not to discuss this approach in the larger group setting.”
While covert action can cover a range of activities, it’s highly unlikely the United States would participate in the assassinations of scientists.
On Wednesday, for example, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton categorically denied U.S. involvement in the murder, and condemned the act of violence and expressed sympathy to Roshan’s family. “With respect to the assassinations in Iran, I think you can take to the bank Secretary Clinton’s statement that the United States had nothing to do with it,” Tobey said.
One of the potential problems with assassinating scientists and engineers is that little is known about many of the new people in the Iranian nuclear program.
“We really don’t know the roles of all of these guys; some of them are fairly young,” said Olli Heinonen, a former deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency. “We don’t know exactly what their jobs are.”
Heinonen and Tobey are now both senior fellows at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. Heinonen also said the Iranians have built “redundancy into the system,” meaning there are other scientists and engineers ready to take the place of those that are killed. “It disturbs the process, it doesn’t solve the problem,” Heinonen said.
Tobey also said there were problems with using assassinations as a means of counter-proliferation. “I think it has real drawbacks,” he said. “It can slow a nuclear program, but it can’t stop it, in all likelihood. Any country that has a large enough scientific base to sustain a nuclear weapons program probably is not vulnerable to crippling the programs in killing a small number of individuals. It’s very difficult to know who is key to the program, and that changes over time.”
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3) For those of you who are on Medicare, read the following. It's short, but important and you probably haven't heard about it in the Mainstream News:
"The per person Medicare Insurance Premium will increase from the present Monthly Fee of $96.40, rising to:
$104.20 in 2012
$120.20 in 2013
And
$247.00 in 2014."
These are Provisions incorporated in the Obama care Legislation, purposely delayed so as not to confuse the 2012 Re-Election Campaigns.
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4) Obama, DNC amass $240 million campaign war chest
Foreign Policy exposé claims that Israeli intelligence officials have been impersonating US agents to recruit against Iran; US officials reportedly "infuriated", scale back joint operations.
President Obama and the Democratic Party have raised more than $240 million for his re-election, swamping his rivals' fundraising as the president races to build a war chest to defend against the eventual Republican nominee and deep-pocketedGOP "super PACS."
By Haraz N. Ghanbari, AP
President Obama waves as he boards Air Force One on Wednesday at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.
Obama collected more than $42 million during the closing three months of the year, his campaign announced Thursday, while more than $24 million went to theDemocratic National Committee, to help build a national campaign infrastructure ahead of the November election.
The fundraising puts Obama roughly on par with the amounts raised by President George W. Bush at this point in his 2004 re-election effort. But this year's contest is markedly different.
Aggressive new super PACs, empowered by 2010 federal court rulings, now can unleash unlimited amounts of corporate and union money to denounce or defend politicians as long as they operate independently of candidates. So far, Republican-leaning super PACs have outraised Democratic independent groups, threatening to undercut the president's financial advantage. These groups are already shaking up the early GOP primary contests with millions of dollars in attack ads.
Obama "will need every penny" to deal with the Republican onslaught, said Jack Pitney, a political scientist atClaremont McKenna College. "He's facing a very long general-election fight."
In a video and e-mail to supporters early Thursday morning, Obama campaign manager Jim Messina called the fundraising a "pretty good start" and said more than half a million people had contributed during the October-to-December fundraising quarter.
Obama collected a record $745 million to win the presidency in 2008, raising expectations that his re-election effort could exceed $1 billion. Thursday, Messina rejected that number as "completely untrue" and said it had hampered fundraising.
He implored supporters to give more. "There's no cavalry," he wrote. "There's only you."
Republican National Committee spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski said the fundraising activity shows Obama is "more interested in campaigning" than in creating jobs.
Mitt Romney, with back-to-back victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, is the top GOP fundraiser, collecting $56 million in 2011. Experts, such as Pitney, predict huge campaign sums for Romney and GOP independent groups if he wins the nomination.
A pro-Romney PAC, Restore Our Future, already is the biggest spender among candidate-specific super PACs, pumping $6 million into the early contests, federal records show.
American Crossroads, another Republican super PAC, and an affiliated group, Crossroads GPS, spent about $20 million last year to slam Democrats during the debt-ceiling debate, and plan to unleash anti-Obama ads in Florida, Iowa and Ohio once a GOP nominee emerges. Their fundraising goal: $240 million, spokesman Jonathan Collegio said.
Democratic consultant Steve McMahon said the attacks by GOP rivals on Romney's record only help Obama if Romney emerges as the nominee.
"Bain is a cancer on Romney's candidacy," he said. "It may go into remission for a while, but it will come back in the fall."
Tad Devine, a strategist who worked on Democrat John Kerry's 2004 unsuccessful presidential bid, said Obama campaign aides must be prepared to hit his Republican opponent with television ads as early as March.
"They need to make sure this campaign is debated on a terrain of their choosing," he said. "They are raising the kind of of money to do it."
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5)Mossad agents have been posing as CIA'
By JPOST.COM STAFF 5)Mossad agents have been posing as CIA'
Foreign Policy exposé claims that Israeli intelligence officials have been impersonating US agents to recruit against Iran; US officials reportedly "infuriated", scale back joint operations.
Mossad officers have been posing as CIA officials to recruit operatives against Iran's nuclear program, according to a Foreign Policy exposé published on Friday.
The operations have infuriated senior US officials, who have since scaled back joint US-Israeli intelligence operations.
The exposé cites six US intelligence officers as sources of information- four of whom are retired and two whom are currently serving. None of the Mossad, CIA, White House commented on the report.
The exposé described how Israeli Mossad officers recruited operatives by impersonating US CIA agents. The Mossad officers are equipped with US passports and dollars, and recruitment activities occur "under the nose of US intelligence officers", including in London.
The Foreign Policy report focused on Jundallah, or Soldiers of God - a Sunni terrorist group based in Pakistan. The organization has admitted to carrying out suicide bombings against Shiites, notably in Iran. Israeli officials had been recruiting them to strike against Iran's nuclear program, an activity which could be ongoing, according to the US intelligence sources.
News of what are called "false flag" operations carried out by Israel have reached the highest echelons of US government, angering them and causing tension between the two allies. According to the exposé, former US president George Bush "went absolutely ballistic" when he was briefed about one such operation that resulted in the assassinationof an Iranian nuclear scientist.
The report claimed that upon entering office, US President Barack Obama "drastically scaled back joint US-Israel intelligence programs targeting Iran", citing multiple serving and retired officers. Israel regularly proposes joint Israeli-US covert operations against the Iranian nuclear program, including proposals for assassinations, but US officials routinely reject them, according to the report.
The exposé was critical of the Mossad's methods, calling the organization "brazen" and saying that Israel's activities "jeopardized the [Bush] administration's fragile relationship with Pakistan." It also claimed that the Mossad's actions "invited attacks in kind on US personnel."
Expounding upon the increasing US anger towards Israel, the report cited one intelligence officials as saying that "Israel is supposed to be working with us, not against us. If they want to shed blood, it would help a lot if it was their blood and not ours. You know, they're supposed to be a strategic asset. Well, guess what? There are a lot of people now, important people, who just don't think that's true."
The operations have infuriated senior US officials, who have since scaled back joint US-Israeli intelligence operations.
The exposé cites six US intelligence officers as sources of information- four of whom are retired and two whom are currently serving. None of the Mossad, CIA, White House commented on the report.
The exposé described how Israeli Mossad officers recruited operatives by impersonating US CIA agents. The Mossad officers are equipped with US passports and dollars, and recruitment activities occur "under the nose of US intelligence officers", including in London.
The Foreign Policy report focused on Jundallah, or Soldiers of God - a Sunni terrorist group based in Pakistan. The organization has admitted to carrying out suicide bombings against Shiites, notably in Iran. Israeli officials had been recruiting them to strike against Iran's nuclear program, an activity which could be ongoing, according to the US intelligence sources.
News of what are called "false flag" operations carried out by Israel have reached the highest echelons of US government, angering them and causing tension between the two allies. According to the exposé, former US president George Bush "went absolutely ballistic" when he was briefed about one such operation that resulted in the assassinationof an Iranian nuclear scientist.
The report claimed that upon entering office, US President Barack Obama "drastically scaled back joint US-Israel intelligence programs targeting Iran", citing multiple serving and retired officers. Israel regularly proposes joint Israeli-US covert operations against the Iranian nuclear program, including proposals for assassinations, but US officials routinely reject them, according to the report.
The exposé was critical of the Mossad's methods, calling the organization "brazen" and saying that Israel's activities "jeopardized the [Bush] administration's fragile relationship with Pakistan." It also claimed that the Mossad's actions "invited attacks in kind on US personnel."
Expounding upon the increasing US anger towards Israel, the report cited one intelligence officials as saying that "Israel is supposed to be working with us, not against us. If they want to shed blood, it would help a lot if it was their blood and not ours. You know, they're supposed to be a strategic asset. Well, guess what? There are a lot of people now, important people, who just don't think that's true."
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6)The Reorganization Man
Obama now says he wants to reform government.
The Washington rap on President Obama is that he's humorless, but that's unfair. He may not be Jay Leno funny, but his bit Friday on reforming and reducing government was great.
There he was in the East Room, explaining that "the government we have is not the government we need." That's for sure, and Mr. Obama even added the Gingrichian theme that "We live in a 21st-century economy, but we've still got a government organized for the 20th century. Our economy has fundamentally changed—as has the world—but our government, our agencies, has not."
Bloomberg
President Obama delivers remarks on reforming the size of the federal government at the White House on Friday.
Alas, the President wasn't talking about modernizing Medicare or the entitlement state. He merely wants Congress to give him more power to reorganize the government. He says he wants his team to scrub down the executive branch looking for waste, duplication and bureaucratic complexity, and then to fast-track their proposals to Congress for an up-or-down vote within 90 days.
Mr. Obama's first targets for such "consolidation authority" are the six agencies related to business and the world economy, from the Commerce Department to the Export-Import Bank to the U.S. Trade Representative. Maybe the White House chose to start there because, with an eye on the GOP campaign, Rick Perry wants to eliminate Commerce and a few other cabinet departments he can't remember.
Another way of putting it is that this new emphasis on streamlining the bureaucracy is Mr. Obama's version of the Texas Governor's "Oops." Having presided over the largest expansion of government since LBJ—health care, financial reregulation, spending 24% of GDP, the surge of industrial policy—Mr. Obama's pollsters must be saying that voters have the jimmy-legs about bigger government and that he thus can't run only as a Great Society man.
But let's go to the videotape. One measure of government size is the federal work force, measured by the White House budget office as civilian full-time equivalent employees, excluding the military and Post Office. The executive branch had about 1.875 million workers in 2008 when the financial crisis hit, a number that held relatively constant throughout the post-9/11 Bush Administration. That number climbed to 2.128 million two years later under the 111th Congress—or growth of 13.5%. That's the largest government since 1992, when the Clinton Administration began to slash defense spending.
This jobs boom is projected to decline slightly this year, to 2.116 million public employees, and the Administration says the Commerce unwind will take it down by another 1,000 or so. Yet even that would come through attrition, which usually means the competent people leave when they've had it with the lifers.
Proposals for government reorganization are the elevator music of politics, always present but never leaving much of an impression. Newt Gingrich says he's running in part to apply Lean Six Sigma best practices to the bureaucracy. Al Gore famously drew up a scheme for "reinventing government" in the late 1990s. He abandoned it after the airline unions revolted amid his attempt to reinvent the Federal Aviation Administration.
Joe Rago on President Obama's proposal to merge agencies within the Commerce Department.
Reshuffling agencies rarely works because what's important in government isn't where the bureaucrats sit but their mindset. The incentives are for inertia, turf protection and blame-shifting—unless change is imposed from the top. Mr. Obama has made it clear with his priorities over three years that his preference is for the government status quo, only more of it.
But Mr. Obama is now at least bowing to the principle of smaller government, and our advice to Congress is to weigh his proposals and extract some concessions to see if the President means what he says.
A major concern is the office of the U.S. trade rep, which Mr. Obama wants to subsume within the Commerce monolith. But the trade rep office is one of the best in government precisely because it is small, reports to the White House, and is focused on the single mission of trade expansion. As part of Commerce it may be drowned out by protectionist voices.
Another priority ought to be reforming the 47 separate job retraining programs, all but three of which overlap. The Government Accountability Office calls this wasteful with "no measurable benefit," but the White House has rebuffed any meaningful change.
This is a President who last year promised a review of all regulations while riding the greatest rule-making wave in American history. Now he's calling for leaner government without mentioning ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank, which create so many new boards and commissions that government auditors (literally) can't even count them. We suspect many in the White House were laughing themselves when they came up with this one.
6a)The Secrets of Tebow Hatred
ByMichaelMedved
Hoping that the hero stumbles in terms of personal integrity seems cruel, but it's more acceptable to expect onfield performance that gives evidence of mortality.
The NFL is generously stocked with forgiven felons, including millionaire wife beaters and dog killers. So how did a clean-living quarterback with deep commitments to charitable service and miraculous last-minute victories become the most controversial player in the league?
Fran Tarkenton on Denver quarterback Tim Tebow and whether God helps teams win.
It's easy to see why legions of loyalists lavish love on 24-year-old Tim Tebow, who leads his underdog Denver Broncos in a crucial playoff game against the New England Patriots on Saturday night. Yet other fiercely focused fans feel no hesitation at expressing their contempt and loathing for a remarkable athlete whose behavior on field and off exemplifies the values of hard work, fearlessness and concern for the downtrodden.
A popular website called TebowHaters.com serves as a clearinghouse for denunciations, while Jeff Darlington of NFL.com got a big response for a survey on what offended fans most about the Broncos quarterback. An Orlando, Fla., radio station (WJRR) used crude language promoting a public campaign to terminate Mr. Tebow's well-advertised virginity and to break his pledge to save himself for marriage. Bill Maher, acerbic tribune of "Real Time" on HBO, got into the holiday spirit last month by celebrating a Denver loss and tweeting: "Wow. Jesus just f---- #TimTebow bad! And on Xmas Eve!" Novelist and blogger Drew Magary proudly declares on the sports website Deadspin.com: "Not only is it OK to root against Tim Tebow, it's practically your duty as cynical Americans."
Of course, much of the resentment centers on the young star's outspoken association with evangelical Christianity. He's the home-schooled son of Baptist missionaries, and his well-advertised habit of dropping to one knee and lowering his head in prayer has given rise to a convenient new word in the national vocabulary—"tebowing."
In response, "Saturday Night Live" featured a Dec. 18 skit with Jesus himself (played by Jason Sudeikis) urging Mr. Tebow to "take it down a notch." And certainly some of his admirers have run out of bounds with their messianic enthusiasms.
For example, when Mr. Tebow beat mighty Pittsburgh with an 80-yard toss on the first play of last weekend's overtime playoff game, statistics showed he'd gained a total of 316 passing yards in the game. Among his fans this evoked John 3:16, the favorite Biblical verse—"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son"—that Mr. Tebow inscribed in the black paint under his eyes when he played quarterback at the University of Florida.
Moreover, emails made the rounds among Orthodox Jews connecting Mr. Tebow's heavenly achievement to their own tradition: Since Hebrew scans from right to left, the passing number he achieved should have read 613, not 316—and 613, an important figure in Judaism, marks the precise number of commandments in the Torah.
Related Video
A high-profile matchup between the Denver Broncos and New England Patriots highlights the NFL's divisional playoffs. WSJ sports reporter Reed Albergotti stops by Mean Street to preview this weekend's games. Photo: AP.
While skeptics and secularists groan at such conflations of faith and football, Tim Tebow hardly counts as the only top athlete who regularly thanks God for touchdowns or home runs. Kurt Warner, who led the St. Louis Rams to Super Bowl victory in 2000, inevitably praised Jesus as part of his post-game interviews. And Texas Rangers outfielder Josh Hamilton, the American League's Most Valuable Player in 2010, visits churches weekly to preach the gospel.
Moreover, three great Jewish baseball players—Hank Greenberg in 1931, Sandy Koufax in 1965 and Shawn Green in 2001—drew mostly admiring comments when they refused to participate in crucial games that fell on Yom Kippur. Concerning Greenberg, the poet Edgar A. Guest wrote: "We shall miss him in the infield and shall miss him at the bat/But he's true to his religion—and I honor him for that."
So why should Tim Tebow draw more resentment than other religious athletes?
In part, it stems from the fact that he's too apparently flawless to evoke much sympathy from the uninitiated. Other candidates for the Super Bowl of Saintliness overcame hardships or cite humanizing failings: Mr. Warner initially failed at football and stocked supermarket shelves before his astonishing comeback, and Mr. Hamilton derailed his career with drug addiction before Jesus redeemed him. As to the Jewish players, no one in the United States fears imposition of theocracy by a traditionally persecuted minority amounting to 2% of the population.
WSJ's Reed Albergotti joins the News Hub to discuss the overtime victory engineered by Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow over the Pittsburgh Steelers in NFL playoff action on Sunday. Photo by Jeff Gross/Getty Images
Mr. Tebow, on the other hand, not only reminds the public of the conversionary ambitions of most evangelicals but also displays the intimidating perfection of what might be termed the "Mitt Romney Syndrome." On New Hampshire primary night, the beaming appearance of the Romney clan made one of my friends physically ill: "All those handsome, perfectly controlled, wealthy, teetotalers with their gorgeous wives—I wanted to vomit. There was something unearthly about it. Like some weird superior race on the planet Krypton."
In the same sense, most males look at Mr. Tebow and see a virtuous rebuke to our own limitations and imperfections. If we were 24, single, supremely athletic, enormously wealthy and adored by millions of young women, how many could still wear Tim Tebow's "purity ring?"
Do you Tebow? Do you know what Tebowing is? WSJ sports reporter Reed Albergotti takes a seat on Mean Street to discuss this season's football phenomenon: Tim Tebow of the NFL's Denver Broncos. AP Photo.
Hoping that the hero stumbles in terms of personal integrity might seem churlish and cruel, but it's more acceptable to root for onfield performance that gives evidence of mere mortality. Tebow hatred may recede significantly if that hard-lovin' ladies man Tom Brady and his New England Patriots manage to corral the Apostle Timothy and his blessed Broncos on Saturday. This means that even if the final numbers work against him in the game, Tim Tebow might actually come out ahead in scoring with the public.
Mr. Medved hosts a daily, nationally syndicated radio show and is the author of "The 5 Big Lies About American Business" (Crown Forum, 2009)
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