Under-sight

So much for the House Oversight Committee to do.

Bush and Cheney are clearly guilty of numerous impeachable offenses. They have repeatedly violated the Constitution. They have transgressed national and international law. They have lied to the American people time after time. Their conduct and their barbaric policies have reduced our beloved country to a historic low in the eyes of people around the world. These are truly "high crimes and misdemeanors," to use the constitutional standard.

From the beginning, the Bush-Cheney team's assumption of power was the product of questionable elections that probably should have been officially challenged -- perhaps even by a congressional investigation.

In a more fundamental sense, American democracy has been derailed throughout the Bush-Cheney regime. The dominant commitment of the administration has been a murderous, illegal, nonsensical war against Iraq. That irresponsible venture has killed almost 4,000 Americans, left many times that number mentally or physically crippled, claimed the lives of an estimated 600,000 Iraqis (according to a careful October 2006 study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health) and laid waste their country. The financial cost to the United States is now $250 million a day and is expected to exceed a total of $1 trillion, most of which we have borrowed from the Chinese and others as our national debt has now climbed above $9 trillion -- by far the highest in our national history.

All of this has been done without the declaration of war from Congress that the Constitution clearly requires, in defiance of the U.N. Charter and in violation of international law. This reckless disregard for life and property, as well as constitutional law, has been accompanied by the abuse of prisoners, including systematic torture, in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.

I have not been heavily involved in singing the praises of the Nixon administration. But the case for impeaching Bush and Cheney is far stronger than was the case against Nixon and Vice President Spiro T. Agnew after the 1972 election. The nation would be much more secure and productive under a Nixon presidency than with Bush. Indeed, has any administration in our national history been so damaging as the Bush-Cheney era?

How could a once-admired, great nation fall into such a quagmire of killing, immorality and lawlessness?

But so little time.

The House committee looking into the use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball has postponed a hearing next week that was to feature Roger Clemens and his accuser so that the panel can begin its own investigation into Clemens’s adamant denial that he used such drugs.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the most powerful investigative panel in Congress, pushed the hearing to Feb. 13 from Jan. 16. At the same time, it announced plans to take sworn depositions before Feb. 13 from Clemens; his accuser and former personal trainer, Brian McNamee; the admitted steroids dealer Kirk Radomski; and two former Yankee teammates of Clemens — Andy Pettitte and Chuck Knoblauch — who have also been linked to drug use by McNamee.

The committee also plans to request — and, if necessary, subpoena — a tape of an interview that private investigators for Clemens’s lawyer conducted with McNamee, said a person in Congress familiar with the panel’s investigation. That interview, which lasted four hours, took place a day before George J. Mitchell issued his report on baseball’s “steroids era.”

I think that's answers Senator McGovern's question.

Whatever you think of Roger Clemens, consider this: Congress is using an incomplete and disingenuous Mitchell Report, and based on hearsay, testimony from a single desperate and disturbed individual, and a complete lack of physical evidence to go after a single man (believe me, Andy Pettitte and -- of all people -- Chuck Knoblauch are not in the committee's bullseye). That should terrify anyone.

Meanwhile, our democracy burns.

As an aside, there is one benefit of all this for Clemens. We have been treated in recent days to a barrage of footage of Clemens striking out batter after batter. And you know what? No amount of steroids can account for the vicious bite on what Clemens affectionately called, "Mr. Splitty." It's that split-fingered fastball that prolonged Clemens's career as he made the adjustment from the Red Sox power pitcher to the pitcher he became with the Blue Jays and the Yankees.