The Clemens steroid hearings
My thoughts on the hearing today, as told by John Cole:
I simply am stunned that our Congress, who has rolled over and played dead and abdicated every opportunity for meaningful oversight of this administration, actually is making a stink about Roger Clemons and steroid use and the NFL tapes.
Stunned. I really don’t know what else to say. The day after rolling over and giving the administration precisely what they wanted, congressmen up with puffed out chests, red-faced, screaming at a pitcher about whether or not someone shot him in the ass with steroids.
It is obscene and beyond absurdity. It has to be a sick fucking joke, but there it is, on the television.
No one involved in these things comes off looking good. No one. Although if I had to pick someone who looked particularly bad I’d pick Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN), David Kurtz reports:
I’ve got the Roger Clemens hearing going in the background, and I swear I just heard Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN) decrying “trial by media” and “circus” hearings in his defense of Clemens.
If you weren’t of age during the Clinton years, then you missed Burton in his trial-by-circus-hearing heyday:
Burton regularly makes headlines with attention-getting stunts. In 1993, he fired a rifle at a “headlike thing” in his backyard in front of a homicide expert to prove his theory that Clinton advisor Vincent Foster did not commit suicide but was murdered and that his body was moved to a Virginia park. In 1995, he wrote Clinton, demanding to know whether taxpayers were footing the cost of stationery and postage for the fan club dedicated to Socks, the first cat. (They were not.)
Interesting in that from what I can tell most Republicans on the committee sided with Clemens. They deserve each other.
Holla at me