Monday, June 18, 2012

The Folly of Over-Reach

Roger Clemens found not-guilty today, but so what? Do you feel that justice was not served? Do you feel particularly endangered when major league athletes are engaged in chemical enhancement? Do you feel that government is not protecting society from evil?

Who cares?

First A Hung Jury, Now Acquittal. It's Your Money!

Has Congress got nothing better to do? Maybe some tax reform or an actual budget?

Professional sports are entertainment. A show for paying crowds to watch. It succeeds when apparent humans do remarkable physical feats. Statistics are kept, records are broken and we thrill when we see the limits exceeded. Cue the orchestra; tra-la-la, la-dee-da, that's entertainment!

Clemens may or may not have juiced, but when he pitched he filled the stands. People were entertained. Businesses made money.

Government thought they could "defend" us from something or other so the prosecuted him and couldn't get a conviction. They didn't think that horse was dead so they rode it again and this time they lost outright. They spent literally millions of taxpayer dollars that the government surely does not have laying around as excess.

The shame, however, is that Roger Clemens had to spend a similar amount to defend himself.

That is not justice.

4 comments:

MagiK said...

The Justice system is not about Justice any longer....the Victims have fewer rights than the predators and perpetrators. Lawyers (and judges) have turned the Justice system into a money machine for themselves with little benefit to the Tax paying public.

an Donalbane said...

On the other side of the ledger, sometimes it's best to keep the Congress-critters occupied with trivial pursuits - if only to keep them from forking up something that actually matters.

Sort of like toddlers in a sandbox.

juvat said...

The Donald,
Agree. Now if we could tie the distraction to a limited time session (ala Texas's 120 day every other year), we could seriously impede their "forking up" ability. Not that we could ever eliminate it, for their ability to "fork" things up far exceeds that of mere mortals to "unfork" them.

Chris said...

I come down on the side of Steve Trachsel who threw the pitch a juiced McGwire smashed to break the 61 homer record in '98. The closer blows the save and Trachsel retires at the end of the season. he probably would have had one or even two more seasons--but not after that. How's that for fairness?

Glad to see the steroids slowly disappearing, which you can see in 2012 pitching stats getting better compared to 92-99, the hitting slowing down and guys like Albert Pujols suddenly getting smaller and coincidentally, forgetting how to play baseball now that he's almost back to normal size.