Roger Clemens Testifies, HGH Talk, And More Politics (Wednesday's Show)

Hi everybody. I know I'm way late with this, but better late than never, right? We're kicking things off tonight with a little testimony going down on Capitol Hill. Oooh, perhaps some issues on Iraq or maybe climate change? Nope. Apparently those things don't draw a crowd. But baseball player Roger Clemens being questioned about using steroids? Now we're talking. Okay, long story short, Brian McNamee, former friend and trainer to Clemens says he injected the player. Clemens says nuh uh. "No doubt about it. Someone's lying," says Anderson Cooper.

Watching the testimony all go down was 360's resident baseball lover Gary Tuchman, and he now joins us live. Gary tells us that former teammate Andy Pettitte testifed that in 1999 or 2000 Clemens told him he used HGH. There's pretty much no reason for Pettitte to lie, but for his part, Clemens claims the other player misheard or something. Right. Gary also tells us that the hearing was weirdly partisan. Hm, I wonder why that might be. Apparently everything is political nowadays. Gary tried to ask why Clemens didn't call a doctor when his wife felt bad after taking HGH, but he didn't really get anywhere. That's right, his wife took the drug. I think the liar in this little he said/he said is fairly easy to pick out.

Next up, we've got Jeffrey Toobin in studio for the legal side of things. Basically? Both men could face perjury. And, uh, nothing's probably going to come of these hearing. Well then. It's always nice to waste everyone's time. Moving on to Erica Hill in studio. Woo hoo! Welcome, Erica! She's got her own little section. Interesting. Anyway, Erica is here to tackle the topic of why the heck Congress is wasting their time on this anyway. She reads some blog comments and pulls some newspaper quotes and it's all very eye rolly against Congress. But you know, I have to say, no one put a gun to the media's head and made them turn this into a circus.

Congress is doing other things, one of which has involved the very important FISA legislation, which Bush says we have to have or we'll all die, while at the same time he refuses to sign anything that doesn't provide immunity to the telecom companies. That's right, the president is essentially saying he choses the phone companies over your safety. But 360's metaphoric eye rolling is perfectly warranted because they've been all over the FISA story. Oh, wait. No they haven't. Sorry kids, I'm going to have to go with Congress on this one.

On now to Sanjay Gupta here live to talk about HGH. Hey Sanjay, it's been a while. Remember when Sanjay used to pop up after every story that contained anything every remotely medical? It was kind of hilarious. Perhaps that's part of why they stopped doing that. Anyway, I'm just going to skip right to the money shot of this interview. Anderson has an interesting question to ask Sanjay: "The other thing I have heard about steroids is it makes your bits and pieces smaller. Is that true?" Bits and pieces? He is so 12. This of course makes Sanjay crack up and try to get him to ask again. But then Sanjay (sort of) gets serious: "If you're giving the testosterone, the testes will say, look, we don't have to produce it anymore. We're getting it somewhere else. So, they will actually shrink. It's true." I love that in Sanjay's explanation, the testes talk.

After Sanjay, Erica and Anderson do a little bantering and then Erica has the headlines, which include the news that the writers strike is over! Woo hoo! Now I don't have to feel guilty about watching online content and Jon Stewart doesn't look so distressed. And then there's the whole tv shows going back into production thing. "I was worried about my '30 Rock.' I was worried about my 'Law & Order: SVU' -- or SUV, or SVU. I always get that confused," says Anderson. Well, unless it's Law & Order: Sports Utility Vehicle (you know it's coming!), I think you had it right the first time. Erica is all about "Lost" and I'm going to have to give her a virtual high-five on that. We then move on to "What Were They Thinking?" which is of a paraplegic man that was dumped on the ground by a deputy at a Florida jail because she didn't buy his whole not being able to walk thing. Nice. Erica then shows us a cop melting down on a skateboard-holding kid. I guess that was our bonus edition. Then Anderson cruelly pressures Erica to live-blog. Aw, on her first day and everything.

Transitioning now to a Candy Crowley piece on the latest between Obama and Clinton. I don't know if I'm going to be able to take this crap all the way to the convention. But anyway, Obama is hitting Clinton on NAFTA, the war, and the bankruptcy bill. She's then hitting him back, saying he doesn't have solutions to economic challenges. And Obama's also apparently looking ahead because he's slamming McCain on tax cuts. On we go. Next up, John King returns to his map board and depresses me by saying that unless one of the candidates has a blow out in future races, no one is going to clench this thing. Sigh.

For discussion, we're joined by Joe Johns, Amy Holmes, and political consultant Hank Sheinkopf. They talk about Obama's momentum and in regards to Clinton, the general consensus is she needs to win Texas and Ohio. Amy brings up Clinton's almost-crying moment and notes that seemed to help her, but I think that's crap. Or maybe I'm just wishing that were crap. Hank then says that if Obama is the nominee and superdelegates take that from him it could cause an explosion in the democratic party that gives McCain the presidency. Okay, that's scary. But I can't help but think that a lot of this is hype. C'mon, you know the media is all about pushing the drama.

Next up, we have a Joe Johns piece on brokered conventions. The last time this happened was 1972 and it wasn't pretty. But the country and party survived and the rest of this piece isn't really anything new, so moving on to a David Mattingly piece on celebs and HGH, which is pretty much the same piece they ran last month.

From here we have some Erica and Anderson banter over the naked cowboy (who has made the headlines for a lawsuit) and then Anderson notes that some people on the blog are not fond of the cheesy "Beat 360" music. "They don't get it. It's ironic," says Anderson. Well, judging by the blog comments, I'd say it's pretty clear irony is lost on some of his viewers. The Shot tonight is a beagle named Uno winning the Westminster Dog Show and then they whip out the "Dramatic Animal Video!" for the winner of the ugliest dog in the world. Aw.

The show was okay. I think the baseball testimony was definitely a legitimate story to cover, but the fact that they went all out on that and didn't touch the FISA stuff is fairly mind boggling. But hey, they cleaned up in the ratings (pizza party!), so there's that. As for the addition of Erica, I kind of thought she was going to be a correspondent like Gary Tuchman or Randi Kaye. Perhaps she is and they're just easing her in, so I'm just going to hold off a little bit on commenting on all that. Finally, it's a bit off topic, but I think everyone should read this heartfelt and moving Cal Perry blog post about Iraq. The show gets a C+