Welcome to the McCarthy Report.

That sounds strange to you.

You are in the right place.

This is the podcast where Rich Lowry, our fearless leader, usually discusses with

me, Andy McCarthy, legal and national security issues, baseball and other body nage that we

banter about around here. It's summertime, though, and I've been in and out, our fearless leader, Rich is away

today, and I'm going to try something we have never tried in the history of this podcast, which is to

run through a few topics without Rich's help. So we're already behind the April. I get this,

and, you know, I complain a lot about how I'm

getting too old to do this stuff. And sometimes when I re-listen to the podcast, that just only

convinces me that I'm getting too old to do this stuff. But anyway, I'm going to be 67 next year, which that seems old to me.

And I don't feel that old most days.

But a couple of days ago, I guess we're recording this on Wednesday.

So I think it was Monday.

I went down like a good trooper who wants to work forever and did some exercise.

And then feeling really good about myself after doing the exercise, I came bounding up the

stairs. And when I hit the last step, I missed it and went flying backwards. So I didn't show, I'm not sure I showed this to Sarah

before, but I'm here with my wrist brace, which I tried to break my fall with. And it just occurred to

me as I was flying down the stairs. If I can't even manage a staircase by myself, how am I going to

get through this podcast without Rich? But we're going to, look,

we're going to give it a whirl and see how it goes. Again, this is the McCarthy report. I guess I'm

supposed to say, see, Rich does this effortlessly. I have to actually think about it because I snooze

...