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.

The Mitchell Report

Tomorrow's the big unveiling. ESPN's Howard Bryant has been following the investigation for the past several months. His conclusion:

Some of the cracks in the Mitchell investigation's foundation -- Mitchell's inability to compel players to cooperate, for example -- were unavoidable, insiders say. Others were not, including the investigators' lack of familiarity with baseball's locker room and insider culture, and Mitchell's own apparent conflicts of interest.

Over the past 20 months, the investigation has exposed a raw nerve in an already-fractured industry. Now, in the days before its release, the contents of Mitchell's final report remain shrouded in mystery. The question is whether Mitchell's findings will heal or further harden baseball.

"I don't think any good came out of it, because it's all going to damage the game," said one American League trainer about the investigation. "Part of me thinks, OK, they blame the trainers. Then what? Or they blame the GMs. Then what? Or they name players. Then what?

"But the one thing it did is solidify the testing program and make everyone aware. I thought this all should have been done in-house, but it has made everybody accept it more, that there's no going back. Nobody at any level can say they don't know anymore. This is the world, and there's no going back."

The story is at times hilarious and depressing, and its hard to figure out what Mitchell will conclude and what he'll use for evidence. Interviews with trainers? The 2003 drug testing results, which the Players Union thought were confidential? What Curt Schilling might have let slip while next to Mitchell in the Red Sox Executive Bathroom? David Pinto summarizes and adds:

The Sports Network interviewed the people Mitchell interviewed to find out how the investigation was carried out. A quick summary:

• A number of people think Mitchell has a huge conflict of interest due to his relationship with the Red Sox.
• Various groups (GMs, trainers, strength coaches) feel they will be unjustly blamed in the report because their jobs have no protection (no union, no ownership).
• There was a sense that the investigators didn't know the right questions to ask. They also wanted speculation when facts were not available.

Here is one example of a complaint:

"The problem was, what did they want us to say?" said a team trainer who was interviewed by Mitchell's investigators in 2006. "They wanted us to speculate. And I wouldn't do that. They wanted me to say who I thought was using steroids. And when I said, 'I don't know,' they would say, 'Well, you work most closely with these guys. You work on their bodies every day. You weren't the least bit suspicious when you saw their bodies change?'

"This was the kind of stuff I was most afraid of, because they didn't ask me about specific people with specific information that they had. They asked me to guess. I said my guess was no guess at all, because what would happen to me if I said a guy was using steroids who wasn't? What if I guessed wrong? Then my name is out there, I get fired, and I'm easily replaceable."

There's good reason not to speculate. Bob Tufts, a player from 1981 to 1983 with San Francisco and Kansas City wrote me over the weekend to complain raise issue with the Mitchell investigation. He suffered from having his name associated with drugs:

The only issue with me was the cocaine stuff in SF and KC in my days there. As I told Murray Chass, I was told by a former club official and also a current federal judge that I was not able to get a job in 84 due to my name being associated with Blue, Aikens, Wilson and Martin. Due to this, it is best to tell the papers suing for names in the Radmomski files to shut up before you possibly damage another career.

In truth, I see very little good coming of the Mitchell Report. If names are named, a lot of reputations would be damaged, but it won't affect a player's career (though Hall of Fame entry may be affected for any stars named) or money. If names aren't named, the "fans" will think it's a white wash, and may think so anyway if team ownership isn't part of those named as culpable. And even if names are named, the good players will continue to be dogged by suspicion.