The Thorn in His Side, Part II
George Bush signed John McCain's campaign-finance-reform bill with as little fanfare as he could last week--he even had an aide phone the Arizona Senator with the news instead of inviting him to a signing ceremony. Bush hopes enactment of the bill, which McCain has pushed for seven years, finally shifts the spotlight away from his nemesis in the 2000 Republican presidential primary. G.O.P. Senators would also like a breather from McCain's legislative reforms.

Don't bet on it. In an interview with TIME, McCain says he wants to capitalize on the campaign-reform bill's success by following it with other initiatives, such as getting states to adopt campaign-reform laws and giving the Federal Elections Commission greater enforcement power.

McCain also wants to halt a practice Congress holds dear--"earmarking" federal funds in budgets for pork-barrel projects back home. The appropriations bills for 2002 have more than 7,800 earmarks. The waste "has become outrageous and obscene," says McCain. Earmarks in the 2002 defense bill, which he calls "war profiteering," would cost $3.6 billion.

McCain plans to mobilize the grass-roots activists enlisted for the campaign-reform bill and his presidential bid to push these causes. But many members of Congress, re-elected on how much bacon they bring home, will fight to keep earmarking even more fiercely than they did soft money. Says a senior Senate G.O.P. aide: "McCain will be able to make his points on 20/20, but it's highly unlikely he'll get legislation passed." BY DOUGLAS WALLER

53 Years Ago in TIME
When MILTON BERLE turned to television in the fall of 1948, he took America with him. He had people watching and buying sets as never before. Eight months after his debut, his show was No. 1 by a wide margin, and he was on the cover of TIME.

As the clock nears 8 along the Eastern Seaboard on Tuesday night, a strange new phenomenon takes place in U.S. urban life. Business falls off in many a nightclub, theater-ticket sales are light, neighborhood movie audiences thin. Some late-hour shopkeepers close up for the night. In Manhattan, diners at Lindy's gulp their after-dinner coffee and call for their checks. On big-city bar rails, there is hardly room for another foot. For the next hour, wherever a signal from an NBC transmitter can be picked out of the air, a large part of the population has its eyes fixed on a TV screen.

The center of all this to-do is Milton Berle, a jack-of-all-turns vaudeville comic who has gone into television...His show is a weekly catchall of the things the 40-year-old comic has learned in 35 hard-working years in show business. Berle uses not only his brash, strongbow-shaped mouth to get off his loud, fast, uneven volley of one-line gags; with expert timing and tireless bounce, he also hurls his whole 6 feet and 191 dieted pounds into every act of his show. His motto is still "anything for a laugh"--and practically anything he does gets one.

--TIME, May 16, 1949

At Hand: A New Puppet Regime
In the '80s, Alf was the star of his own TV sitcom. these days he's making a comeback as the star of TV ads for MCI. But Alf isn't the only puppet for adults that is garnering attention. Triumph the Insult Comic Dog performs this week at New York City's Irving Plaza--a prelude to a comedy album of "dirty doggie songs." Next up: Crank Yankers, a raunchy puppet show from Comedy Central. The appeal? "Puppets can get away with a lot of nonsense live actors can't," says Triumph creator Robert Smigel. A few to watch for:

--ALF His comeback is not limited to TV ads. Producer Paul Fusco is pitching the gruff furball as host of a late-night talk show.

--TRIUMPH The put-down pup of Late Night with Conan O'Brien fame finds plenty to insult in his musical debut album, due this fall.

--SPECIAL ED AND SKINNY BLACK GUY With the help of guest comedians, these trash-talking marionettes will make real-life prank phone calls as part of the cast of Comedy Central's new TV show Crank Yankers.

--GREG THE BUNNY Humans and puppets coexist on the Fox show, which features Seth Green as the pal of a slacker rabbit fond of taking baths.

Bush, Blair and the "Eurowimps"
The way some in the Bush administration describe British Prime Minister Tony Blair, he should feel right at home in straight-talkin' Texas during his visit to the President's Crawford Ranch this week. "Blair's not a Eurowimp," says a senior White House aide. "He's not ponderous or hand wringing. He gets to the bottom line, and that's [George] Bush's cup of tea." That's high praise from an Administration that puts such value on straight shooting. It's also a setup. As Bush contemplates military action against Iraq, he hopes he will be able to count on support from his good friend, who has been such a solid ally during the war in Afghanistan.

But while Blair will publicly back Bush, he comes to the three-day visit far more tentative about replacing Saddam Hussein than he was about the Taliban; polling shows his domestic audience is even more nervous. Instead, Blair and European leaders who hope he will talk some sense into the warlike Bush want to work through the U.N. to reinsert weapons inspectors kicked out in 1998. But unless they get untrammeled access, which is unlikely, Washington will almost certainly veto the deal as a dangerous charade. If the Europeans don't go along with whatever military action the U.S. takes, too bad, says the White House. "The way to win international acceptance is to win," a senior White House aide says bluntly. "That's called diplomacy: winning." That is the kind of cowboy chatter that makes U.S. allies so itchy, but some on Blair's team have grown used to Bush's bark being worse than his bite. "The great thing about the United States is that it always does the right thing in the end," deadpans a Blair adviser. "It's a little too bad that it sometimes takes until the end." BY JOHN F. DICKERSON AND J.F.O. MCALLISTER

Mr. Quarantine, Meet Miss Liberty
In the wake of Sept.11 and the anthrax mailings, the Centers for Disease Control recommended that states adopt a model law creating sweeping new powers to deal with public-health emergencies. State officials could order citizens to be vaccinated, quarantine those suspected of having a contagious disease, take over hospitals and physicians' offices and seize and destroy property deemed a threat to public health. Since January at least 30 states have considered adopting all or part of the model law, but they've run headfirst into a motley coalition of civil liberties groups, religious conservatives, free-marketeers and gay-rights activists. As a result, many states have begun to decide they don't want that much power after all. So far only Utah has passed a version of the law, according to the American Legislative Exchange Council, and in the past month several other states have stripped away all but the most essential provisions.

The backlash started when gun advocates realized that the model law gave health officials the power to restrict the sale of firearms in an emergency; the CDC quickly dropped the word firearms from its list of materials the government could control. Then religious and pro-family groups rebelled against forced treatment and vaccination; so several states considering the legislation took out provisions making refusal to be vaccinated a misdemeanor. Gay activists feared that the bill might permit states to quarantine people who have HIV or AIDS. The CDC responded by narrowing its definition of a public-health emergency. But the most crucial aspect of the bill--the ability to quarantine citizens who may pose a health threat to others--is the one that has become the most contentious, pitting public-health officials in a state-by-state battle with civil libertarians. Existing law typically forces state authorities to get a court order before putting someone in quarantine. The CDC's model law gives health officials the power to isolate a citizen immediately so long as they file for a court order within 10 days. Several states considering the bill have reduced the waiting time to 72 hours, but that's still too long for some critics. Says Twila Brase, president of the Citizens' Council on Health Care: "You'll inevitably sweep up healthy people. And what happens when they refuse to be held? You're going to have Kent State all over again." The alternative, though, may be just as grim. In Maine, warns deputy attorney general Linda Pistner, there's nothing to stop someone with smallpox from walking out of the hospital. "Without this tool," she asks, "how else can we minimize the loss of life?" BY ANDREW GOLDSTEIN

A Nation in Need of April Showers

Those sunny, shirt-sleeve days in January may have won global warming a few fans, but last winter was the dryest on record in New Jersey, Maryland and South Dakota. And precipitation dropped significantly below average in 27 other states, leading to drought conditions across 20% of the contiguous U.S. Low reservoirs, early wildfires and devastated crops are the first hints of the dry spell's effects. Experts say that even heavy spring rains won't make up for all the damage.

--Not in drought
--Abnormally dry
--Moderate drought
--Severe drought
--Extreme drought

Source: U.S. Drought Monitor, USDA

Tracking the Anthrax Attacks
At one point last week, it began to look as if the anthrax mailings might have an al-Qaeda connection after all. For one thing, military sources confirmed that anthrax traces had been found in several al-Qaeda training facilities. Around the same time, word leaked that Christos Tsonas, a Florida doctor who had treated Ahmed Ibrahim A. Al Haznawi, one of the Sept. 11 hijackers, for a skin lesion, had changed his diagnosis to anthrax after the attacks.

But authorities continue to believe the anthrax killer is a domestic terrorist who operated under cover of the Sept. 11 hysteria. The anthrax traces in Afghanistan could be environmental, according to the military. Troops have found 50 to 60 sites in the country where it seemed al-Qaeda was studying or trying to make and weaponize anthrax; the most advanced was near Kandahar. But they found no evidence of the bioterrorism agent itself. "It was more like a science-fair project than a weapons lab," a Pentagon official says.

As for the Florida physician, the FBI simply doesn't trust his after-the-fact diagnosis, even though a team of experts from Johns Hopkins who recently reviewed the case agreed that anthrax probably caused the lesion. An FBI source says the doctor "had no cultures, no blood tests. His analysis was made from his handwritten notes and memory." More important, the source notes, authorities have combed cars, houses and anywhere else the hijackers were known to have lived or spent time and found no traces of anthrax. "We vacuumed everywhere they had been for residue." FBI officials remain convinced the anthrax came from a U.S. lab. BY VIVECA NOVAK AND MARK THOMPSON

Violence And Viewing
Teens and young adults who watch more than an hour a day of TELEVISION are four times as likely to engage in AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOR as those who watch less, according to a study published in the journal Science. The report, which followed 707 individuals over 17 years, is the first to link TV viewing in adolescence to ADULT aggression. Researchers found that 29% of 14-year-olds who watched TV for more than three hours a day went on to commit violent acts in their late teens and early 20s. Still unclear is whether TV causes the behavior or whether other factors linked with heavy TV viewing, such as unemployment, play a role.

When It Comes to DVDs, It's Not Over Till It's Over
There are still some old-school holdouts--Woody Allen, for one--but much of the rest of digital-age hollywood is eagerly embracing alternate endings in feature films released on dvd. Basically, it's a way to get you to rewatch a film you've already seen. But which new climaxes are worth your while? We rate the new endings of five dvds.

Training Day
ALTERNATE ENDING
The original version ends in a hail of gunfire. In the new ending, young cop Jake Hoyt (Ethan Hawke) confronts a couple of baddies associated with his evil partner, Alonzo Harris (Denzel Washington), and gets to speak his piece.

RATING: 2 DISCS
The new finish doesn't add much to the plot or character development.

Swordfish
ALTERNATE ENDING
In the original finish, villains--we won't say which ones--go on to commit more crimes. The two alternate versions offer twists--the bad guys are foiled entirely in one ending, and in the other they carry on more peaceably.

RATING: 4 DISCS
Both new endings allow Halle Berry and John Travolta to shine.

K-Pax
ALTERNATE ENDING
In the original, the alien (he may be just a mental patient) played by Kevin Spacey meets his fate, prompting his doctor friend (Jeff Bridges) to reunite with his son. The alternate is more cryptic, leaving Bridges staring in wonder at the night sky.

RATING: 2 DISCS
This finale is a surprise, but it would be a stretch to call it interesting.

Bandits
ALTERNATE ENDING
In the original movie, bank robbers Joe (Bruce Willis) and Terry (Billy Bob Thornton) and their co-conspirators try to pull off a daring heist. The alternate ending gives a glimpse of each of their lives after the spectacular caper.

RATING: 3 DISCS
The new conclusion is cute, quaint and refreshingly open-ended.

Joy Ride
ALTERNATE ENDING
In the original, three young adults on a road trip anger a trucker, who then seeks revenge. The four additional climaxes feature new action scenes; one ending showcases the heroine taking a more active role.

RATING: 5 DISCS
Good, suspenseful endings that bring something extra.