"He must have had a good reason why he didn't take that physical and lost his flyer's license," the Harlem Democrat mused. "We have the same problem with baseball - guys have to take a urine test, you know. They've got very important reasons why they shouldn't take that test."

With his comments on Saturday, Rangel becomes the first congressional Democrat to publicly invoke the drug allegations against Bush that had been largely confined to the lunatic fringe.

In the 2000 presidential campaign, the media exhaustively investigated rumors that Bush had used cocaine in the 1970s, but failed to find a single witness who could corroborate the ugly speculation.

Editor's note: