Friday, January 4, 2008

Clemens and Congress

Now whatcha gonna do, Roger?

No one has ever been prosecuted for lying to Mike Wallace, but Congress is another matter. Then again, if my little ju-jitsu analysis from yesterday was right, Clemens was poised to lie under oath in a civil suit filed by McNamee anyway, so maybe he's an in-for-a-penny-in-for-a-pound-kind-of-guy. Not saying he should -- dear God, don't lie under oath, kids -- but I reckon he might given what we know about the thin state of the evidence provided by McNamee to date.

And now that I think about it, if it took the feds several years to indict Barry Bonds for perjury when they had mountains of documentary evidence establishing his PED use against him, how could anyone -- even Congress -- pin a perjury rap on Clemens given what we know now?

Less salient question given that Congress is going to do what it wants to do, but one worth asking anyway: why in the Hell is Congress spending my money on this?

5 comments:

Eric Toms said...

C, that is the $124,000 question and has been all along.

Why, these past handful of years, the feds & Congress decided that PED use / distribution is an important matter.

Jason @ IIATMS said...

I've been wondering the same (about Congress' involvment) for a while now and it boils down to the fact that this gets a heckuvalot more press than most other things they waste their time and our money on.

Facetime = TV = re-election = handsome appearance fees down the road = well-paid lobbying gigs

s1c said...

Because it is a chance to get some face time and bash Selig. As usual, our congress being so caring about our dollars.

Anonymous said...

The situation gets even tricker for Mr. Clemens. If I was Clemens' lawyer, I think I'd sue McNamee THIS week, creating a credible and legal situation where he could turn down the invite. Would this work?

Craig Calcaterra said...

I don't think it would work. There's no privilege that I know of that gets you out of testifying in one context just because you have pending litigation.