The New York Times and all of the usual mainstream media outlets were blaring out the news that the Obama Department of “Justice” had indicted former perennial all-star pitcher Roger Clemens on charges of “lying to Congress.” Indeed, with the DOJ actively pursuing cycling legend Lance Armstrong allegedly for using steroids (although Armstrong, who has been randomly tested often, never failed a drug test), it seems that the government is ramping up its efforts to imprison as many prominent athletes as possible.
Clemens’ indictment, I believe, is a new low, especially since the “evidence” that the government has is based upon conflicts in testimony given by Clemens and his former trainer, Brian McNamee, and another statement by a former Clemens friend who says that Clemens told him that he took human growth hormone about 10 years ago. In other words, we have a “criminal” case based entirely upon hearsay.
Keep in mind that Major League Baseball at the time had not banned any of the products that Clemens is alleged to have taken, and, furthermore, MLB is a private organization, and breaking the rules of private organizations should not be a crime, period. Last year, Candice E. Jackson and I had this article in which we examine the tactics that the federal government has used to criminalize actions that might not even be violations of private rules, much less infractions of criminal law.
Why Congress (and Sen. John McCain’s messy fingerprints were all over this inquisition) even drags athletes before its committees to ask them McCarthy-like questions of “have you ever used steroids or other drugs” is a legitimate question. Al Gore, who friends claim used all sorts of illegal drugs when in college, never has had to answer such questions under oath, and rightly so. However, one would hope that Congress would not seek to become the Second Coming of Torquemada, but maybe that it too much to ask of the members of the Ruling Class who already have imposed thousands of open-ended “criminal laws” upon us.
However, in this article, I wish to point out something else, and that is the fact that “lying to Congress” is one of those political “crimes” in which the “fact” of whether or not an actual lie has been told is determined by the politics of the situation, not by any appeal to the Rule of Law (which no longer exists in the USA, anyway). Unfortunately, Clemens did not have the same “insurance policy” against “making false statements to Congress” that former DOJ official Paul J. McNulty enjoyed.
Reposted from LewRockwell.com