Has the "Straight Talk Express" Jumped the Tracks?

Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist George Will has, in effect, challenged Sen. McCain to a duel. Will's challenge comes in the form of a superb Newsweek column, "Questions For McCain, " in which he asks the putative GOP presidential candidate ten straightforward questions, such as this:

• You say that even if global warming turns out to be no crisis (the World Meteorological Organization says global temperatures have not risen in a decade), even unnecessary measures taken to combat it will be beneficial because "then all we've done is give our kids a cleaner world." But what of the trillions of dollars those measures will cost in direct expenditures and diminished economic growth—hence diminished medical research, cultural investment, etc.? Given that Earth is always warming or cooling, what is its proper temperature, and how do you know?

Among the MSM, Sen. McCain has long been considered to be a straight shooter who gives frank and honest answers to reporters' questions. During his unsuccessful 2000 presidential run, he called his campaign bus, on which a number of his favored journalists got to ride, the "Straight Talk Express."

Since I, along with George Will and a few million other disaffected conservatives, would love to know Sen. McCain's answers to those questions, I'm eagerly looking forward to hearing them. Can we expect the good Senator to answer the questions before we go to the polls? Or has the "Straight Talk Express" been replaced by the "Mealy-Mouthed Milquetoast Milk Train?"