A bit off topic- Professional Athletes Steroids and Congress

[rogercbryan]

This is bothering me. Why does Congress need to be involved in these cases? Everyday I see a new article about Congress wanting to talk to a different professional athlete about steroids. Why? It pisses me off that my tax dollars are being spent to worry about this garbage. Can’t a lower court handle this? What is the reason for this?

Excite - Sports News

Excite - Sports News

[ltressel]

That's funny- my sentiments exactly. I asked the same question since the whole thing started. Wouldn't the commissioner of the sport be the ones to be involved with the investigation?

Maybe someone could shed some light on this?

LT

[hl68]

From what I have read and watched on TV the whole baseball steroid "scandal" is a big mess. I know that steroids are gaining popularity among high school athletes and I agree that this needs to be more of a priority for parents and teachers. Steroids are dangerous as we all know but also those that sell steroids are no doubt involved in other illegal narcotics and/or activities. The rise in steroids leads to more illegal activity and I believe that needs to be stopped.

Where Congress comes in is different. They recognized the above problem and tried to investigate the players in order to crackdown on steroids in professional athletes therefore hoping to stop their usage among high school and college athletes. Congress basically just got a lot of people denying and claiming they never used ( see Rafael Palmeiro).

Now, Congress is basically involved in trying to get professional athletes for perjury because they lied about their steroid usage when testifying in Congress, more or less a witch hunt now because the Congressman didn't like being lied to. After the Mitchell report which named everyone in major league baseball that used steroids, Congress wants to re-interview the people in the report.

To conclude this rambling, the initial actions of Congress were good, but at this point I believe it more personal than anything else ( Like Ken Starr and the billions spent to convict Bill Clinton). I believe that Congress does not need to be so involved at this point and should let the major sports leagues handle their own investigation, and present their findings and instead focus on other more meaningful problems.

[ltressel]

Well-that explains it thoroughly. It will be a political weapon for mud-slinging and a moral issue platform for politicians involved.

Good one hl68!

LT

[rogercbryan]

Good info.. thanks...