Giuliani: "The effort to try and make marijuana available for medical uses is really a way to legalize it."

He takes a tough position:

"You can accomplish everything you want to accomplish with things other than marijuana, probably better. There are pain medications much superior to marijuana," he said.

"We'd be much better off telling people the truth. Marijuana adds nothing to the array of legal medications and prescription medications that are available for pain relief."

I think he's right. But perhaps marijuana should be legalized, not just for people who can portray themselves as sick enough, but for any adult. Of course, he can hardly say that.

And he's got this on health care:

"If you try to do socialized medicine, a la Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Barack Obama or Michael Moore, you're going to end up with a disaster," he said.

He urged voters to press other candidates for specifics and to move beyond lofty language.

"We tried that before. We tried that with the `War on Poverty' and we tried that with welfare. Look what happened. We tried a simplistic solution and look what happened. We locked people into poverty. It was a tragedy."

I do enjoy the straight talk.