Congress Wants You to Know Steroids = Bad

Yesterday, Congress' House Oversight Committee made a very special, patriotic announcement: Roger Clemens, Brian McNamee, and others would be called to testify under oath about the use of steroids in baseball. Besides the obvious benefit of making Roger Clemens swear ("Swear?" "Swear.") under oath that he didn't enjoy the steady rush of Winstrol, it looks unlikely that this latest round of Congressional testimony will do anything to shine light on steroids in baseball. Did you know that steroids are bad? Yeah, me too. We don't need Henry Waxman to hammer the point home.

The whole thing is ruse, designed to raise the profile of a few select House members and gather people who don't know what a caucus is around C-Span for a day. It's a waste of time. Baseball Prospectus' Gary Huckabay eloquently agrees:

All this time, I thought there was a writer's strike. But surely, this has to be fiction, right? Pakistan is teetering on the brink of chaos. The economy's fragile at best, plagued by fear, uncertainty, and doubt, both on the business and consumer side. Oil's at $100 a barrel. We've got nearly 200,000 troops deployed and in harm's way around the world. The federal debt is to the point where it's about to grow by a digit - which would be its 14th.
So, facing these, and lots of other issues that face the citizenry, Henry Waxman and crew have decided to spend their time, their staff's time, and, unfortunately, our time, by grilling a bunch of ballplayers about whether or not they used substances to enhance their play on the field.

[...] This whole issue is bulls–t, and everyone, in their heart of hearts, knows it. The collective societal masturbation on this issue is something out of Ionesco, and the number of whorish sell-outs who should resign in disgrace is climbing faster and more brazenly than Barry Bonds' HR totals ever did.

Well said. Steroids are bad, kids, but regardless of how you feel about the issue it's impossible to justify wasting government dollars, and time, "investigating" the issue. Whatever the urges are that lead us to immolate baseball players publicly, our society should do better. Our elected officials owe us more.