If you love good baseball stories told by a master craftsman, then grab a copy of The Machine, a new book by Joe Posnanski (twice named the best sports columnist in America by his peers, the Associated Press Sports Editors).

The book focuses on the 1975 World Series champion Cincinnati Reds and the colorful personalities of guys like Pete Rose, Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan, and Sparky Anderson.

More than just baseball though, Posnanski weaves U.S. cultural history from 1975 — movies, music, politics — right into the story, giving the reader a vivid picture of the times.

The players cussed like sailors, chased skirts, and hit the cover off the ball on their way to 108 wins and a twenty game lead over the second place Dodgers. Posnanski covers it all.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, today attempted to strengthen pro-life language in the Senate Finance Committee’s healthcare bill, but failed. He tried to make sure the restrictions in the bill would be law, “so we don’t have to go through it every year.” Congress prohibits federal funding for abortions only through annual spending bills, and Hatch’s proposal would have done away with the need for those votes.

Abortion proponents said the Hatch proposal would have increased restrictions and could deny abortion coverage for working women receiving coverage through private plans. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said the proposal would have been a “poison pill . . . if it is hung on this legislation.”

ADDENDUM: Hatch also offered another amendment that would have protected medical workers who don’t want to participate in or refer for abortions. It failed as well.

The news broke of the release date of Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue just night before last and it won’t be available for another 48 days, but right now it’s already the No. 2 bestseller at Amazon.com (behind Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol and in front of Glenn Beck’s Arguing With Idiots) and is No. 1 at Barnes & Noble’s site.

UPDATE: As of 5 p.m. ET, Palin has now overtaken Brown for the No. 1 spot at Amazon.com.

UPDATE II: Politico reports tonight:

A publishing industry source told POLITICO that they “cannot remember a non-fiction book taking off like this in the pre-order market. It became number one only a couple of hours after nothing more than a date announcement. It is truly unprecedented.”

In case you missed it last night, media critic Bernie Goldberg had an extremely interesting discussion with Bill O’Reilly about the way Fox News commentators like Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck tend to blur the lines between commentary and journalism in their effort to cover the news. No matter what you think about Goldberg’s analysis, you have to give Fox News credit for airing it on the network’s highest-rated show. I can’t imagine some other news networks offering up such a self-examination of their perceived biases in prime time.

During a recent visit to The King’s College in New York, Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., didn’t apologize for the firestorm he created in the national debate on healthcare. In fact, he came close to apologizing for the “gentle nudging” that had been his style in the past.

His comment—“If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will become his Waterloo”—has become a battle cry for conservatives opposed to the president’s plan. And DeMint’s words match his growing fear that America “is on the edge of a cliff.” That’s why, DeMint said, he has resorted to high profile, inflammatory comments—even if they land him in the bull’s-eye of liberal media pundits.

Much of DeMint’s rhetorical firepower has been directed at Obama, who DeMint said continues to increase federal power. The senator added that we have witnessed a “bait and switch in the White House.” According to DeMint, Americans are now finding out how destructive the Obama administration will be if left unchecked. He predicted a difficult road ahead for his Republican colleagues, calling Obama’s healthcare plan “the fight of our lives.”

DeMint said, however, that Republicans share much of the blame for setting the nation’s current trajectory. In his early years as a senator, DeMint politely asked Republicans to remember that they were elected to rid Washington of corruption and wasteful excess. Enticed by power and popularity, however, Republicans who campaigned on ideals of limited government abandoned their principles for earmarks.

In his new book, Saving Freedom: We Can Stop America’s Slide into Socialism, DeMint sounds the alarm on the increasing influence of the federal government. Citing a long history of government encroachment, he warns that socialism is growing stronger as Americans trade freedom for security. Ultimately, DeMint said freedom would only survive if Americans turn from the path of cradle-to-grave statism and embrace the principles that made the country prosperous and free.

Matthias Clock is a student at The King’s College in New York City.

When pro-choicers argue against pro-life amendments to the healthcare reform bill, should they actually be arguing against the bill itself? On Slate, William Saletan makes an interesting point.The pro-life amendments are making sure federally subsidized healthcare plans don’t cover abortion, and Planned Parenthood and other pro-abortion organizations are arguing that this will lead to  women losing abortion coverage altogether. Saletan notes:

The argument these groups make is perfectly logical: If you standardize health insurance through federal subsidies and coverage requirements, people might lose benefits they used to enjoy in the private sector. But that’s more than an argument against excluding abortion. It’s an argument against health care reform altogether. …

Saletan goes on to say, “The left’s argument against abortion exclusion is the right’s argument against socialization.” In each case, it’s the government coming between the patient and dictating what’s covered and what’s not.

One presidential campaign no president wants to relive is Jimmy Carter’s in 1980 – when he won only six states, the lowest number of a sitting president in majority power since 1964. But Florida Gov. Charlie Crist made the prediction this week on more than one occasion that President Obama could be handed a similar defeat. Carter was elected in 1976 on the message of change, just like Obama was this year, Crist said on CNN.

“What change we got may not necessarily be the change that America wants,” Crist continued. “What I mean by that is that every day you get up and the government has taken over some other industry, auto industry or banks or whatever it might be. I think that the change that’s coming about is a little too fast, little too furious.”

Crist’s comments came as a surprise after he embraced the president during his Florida visit to promote the stimulus. The Florida governor was one of the few Republican supporters of the stimulus bill. He explained to MSNBC,

“I’m a civil human being. I believe that when the president of your country comes to your state for the first time, it’s only appropriate to welcome him. So I was happy to do so. Do I agree with everything he does? Obviously not.”

Crist is running for Senate in 2010, and is fighting off a more robust primary challenger than many expected in the more conservative Marco Rubio.

Most Americans have bought into the propaganda that we need milk for strong bones and teeth. I don’t believe it anymore. Higher levels of calcium are found in many green vegetables per serving than one would find in a glass of milk. Moreover, the connection between strong bones and cow milk simply does not hold up to science and history. In America we have all been conditioned to believe that milk contributes to strong bones throughout a child’s life. In the end, could this rhetoric be nothing more than the dairy lobby taking advantage of government intrusion into the world of business?

According to a New York Times article, the dairy industry is struggling. Dairy farmers are now using a technique to discard sperm with Y-chromosomes to produce more female cows for milk production. The problem today, however, is that demand is low and diary farmers are being paid to discard milk they produce as well as being compensated to send cows for slaughter. I am wondering, however, if demand is down in part because American families are “wising-up” to the fact that children and adults don’t need to drink milk to stay healthy. Maybe it’s time that we say “good-bye” to the government-supported dairy industry.

The dogs I’ve owned over the years had strong bones and they didn’t drink cow’s milk. Lions have strong bones and they don’t drink cow’s milk. Gorillas have strong bones and they don’t drink cow’s milk. Grizzly bears have strong bones and they don’t need milk cow’s milk. I am not saying it is forbidden as a beverage, but I’m not convinced that anyone ever needs to drink milk from a cow—ever.

Walter Veith, former professor and chair of the Department of Zoology at the University of Western Cape, South Africa, has this to say:

Mother’s milk is essential for infants, but then infants are specially designed to cope with this growth-promoting food. Prior to weaning, the necessary enzyme systems needed for the digestion and assimilation of milk components are active, but they are progressively deactivated with age. The milk of other mammals also differs in composition from human milk, and this, together with the potential danger from ingested antigens, makes cow’s milk unsuitable for human consumption.

If we don’t need a cow’s milk then why is it in the government food pyramid? An interesting study published a few years ago in the medical journal Pediatrics titled “Adult Female Hip Bone Density Reflects Teenage Sports-Exercise Patterns but Not Teenage Calcium Intake” demonstrates that, for women, bone density has more to do with early exercise than calcium intake.

It’s pretty well-known that many vegetables have higher levels of calcium than milk: for example, according to The George Mateljan Foundation, dark green leafy vegetables like spinach, Swiss chard, mustard greens, and collard greens. Shredded cabbage, also common in many salad bars, is also a good source of calcium. If parents want to make sure their children intake good amounts of calcium perhaps it’s better to stick with old saying, “Honey, eat your vegetables.”

Lisa Snyder of Irving Township, Mich., was trying to be neighborly, helping out other moms on the block by inviting their kids into her home for about an hour until the school bus arrived. Harmless, right? Not according to the Michigan Department of Human Services, which sent Snyder a letter warning her that if she continued her neighborly ways she’d be in violation of the law, a law that says no one may care for unrelated children in their home for more than four weeks each year unless they are licensed day-care providers.

Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm has instructed the state agency’s director, Ismael Ahmed, to work with the state legislature to change the law. Granholm spokeswoman Liz Boyd said although the agency was following standard procedure, the law was getting in the way of common sense: “We want to protect kids, but the law needs to be reasonable. When the governor learned of this, she acted quickly and called the director personally to ask him to intervene.”

“The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.”

Like a kid who comes at his parent with the secret weapon of all secret weapons—“You SAID!”—so I come to God several times a day with this verse, my favorite verse of this Psalm. A better man would perhaps favor another of the 22 pericopes, one which is more about His glory, disinterestedly separate from any benefit to man.

But as I now scroll through the verses of Psalm 103, it is remarkable that there is no such verse here. Everywhere the attributes of God are considered in relationship to man and God’s benefits to man. How marvelously condescending is our God, that He should allow a song of praise about himself to be “contaminated,” as it were, by mentions of us in every single verse—like a series of photos of Buckingham Palace in which some cheeky tourist has managed to stick his head or a toe into every frame.

Amazingly, God describes His very essence in terms of His relationship to us. He is “merciful.” Surely there is no need of mercy within the Trinity, for the Father, Son, and Spirit never do anything condemnable that one should need to exercise mercy. He is “gracious,” “slow to anger.” These qualities of God are only necessary in connection with creatures needing graciousness and slowness to anger and steadfastness, lest they die.

This self-description of God is so important to Him that He restates it in other parts of the Bible so that we’ll “get” it. My favorite is in Jonah 4:2, because it is such a backhanded compliment from a ticked-off prophet who would be happier if just for once God were not such a loving and merciful and gracious God, not when it comes to the heathen, at least:

“I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live” (vv.2-3).

The mercy and graciousness of God also slice through any preconceived, hard-and-fast notions about what God can and cannot do in our New Testament age. He can do whatever He pleases. Therefore I will ask whatever I please, unhindered by man-made theologies that put God in a box. If my hair is falling out like mad (which it is), I will ask for him to arrest it. On what basis? Mercy. Graciousness. God will answer as He pleases. But there is no harm in asking, and no one will steal my hope. No one—no matter how fancy his theological proofs and paradigms—will hinder me from asking anything of a God who describes himself as the source of all “mercy” and “graciousness.”

To hear commentaries by Andrée Seu, click here.