Blogs: All Sports   Baseball   Football   Basketball   Hockey   Golf  

Roger Clemens: Why is Congress Involved? Posted by Jeff Erickson at 2/12/2008 2:55:00 PM View more posts by this author

I still fail to see why Congress has to be involved with the Roger Clemens story. What can they possibly accomplish any better than a civil court? It's so bizarre to see all the involved parties traipsing all over Capitol Hill and holding press conferences left and right. For the Congresscritters, I suppose it's a perfect "no downside" issue in terms of grandstanding in front of the cameras. The same holds true for "Spygate" and Arlen Specter - I don't see how this is a matter of national security that requires governmental intervention.

Comments....

A civil court would do better, Jeff, as there the discovery process (a fancy word for investigation for you non-lawyers) would be more thorough. What's the point of doing it before Congress if you're not going to require Pettite to testify? Is anything really going to be proven by having Clemens tell his version and his former trainer tell his? That's like having the plaintiff testify that the traffic light was red and the defendant testify the light was green without subpoenaing independent witnesses who can corroborate one side or the other! Foolishness. To me, that's what makes it look like such a joke - like something for the tabloids. Posted by MPStopa at 2/12/2008 4:00:00 PM

Is it just me or are there more than one Rotowire-paid folks here with a law degree? :-) This whole thing is a joke. I just wish I understood the purpose here. Wasn't it to rid the game of PEDs and show the youth of America that these things were harmful? Guess hot. Instead, it's pretty much a witch hunt. Posted by vtadave at 2/12/2008 8:24:00 PM

didn't congress make (certain) PEDs illegal (in certain circumstances)? shouldn't that be the extent of thier involvement? once they make the laws the executive branch should be enforcing them. if congress wants to use the anit-trust exemption to get MLB to do something, then do it and top with the grandstanding. we don't need a clemens-mcnamee cat fight to know there is abuse of PEDs in MLB. and even if it isn't widespread, if you think that MLB needs to test (and, as a fan, i don't really care one way or the other; it's not hurting me; fringe players who missed out on MLB paychecks because their competition was using PEDs should be the ones that are upset, but they don't seem to be; i'd rather see congressional investigations into bill bavasi's terrible trades) then it shouldn't matter how many players are doing it or how big thier names are. what a disaster. all this fuss, and bud selig and the MLB union still get to both avoid blame and weasel out of actually implementing independent drug testing and when you talk of a civil court, are you talking defamation suits by clemens and mcnamee? Posted by claskowski at 2/13/2008 7:54:00 AM

Does this really matter? Nothing wil come from it wil it? Jack Memphis Posted by Pentaxxxx at 2/13/2008 4:50:00 PM

You must be logged in to post a comment. Click here to log in or register with RotoWire.com.