Your current position regarding Clemens and Roids

Discussion in 'Baseball Forum' started by Yisman, Feb 13, 2008.

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Did Clemens do steroids and/or other banned substances?

  1. Yes, I'm convinced he did steroids

    51.9%
  2. Yes, I think he did them

    36.5%
  3. I don't think he did them

    3.8%
  4. Not sure/other

    7.7%
  1. Pam

    Pam TGG.com Friendliest Poster Fourpeat!!

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    Interesting, long, but still interesting. Politics as usual. :rolleyes:
    ______________________________________________________
    Congressman 'Sorry' for Steroids Hearing
    By DUFF WILSON and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT,The New York Times
    Posted: 2008-02-15 13:18:56
    Filed Under: Sports News

    WASHINGTON (Feb. 15) ? A day after a dramatic, nationally televised hearing that pitted Roger Clemens against his former personal trainer and Democrats against Republicans, the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said Thursday that he regretted holding the hearing in the first place.

    The chairman, Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, said the four-hour hearing unnecessarily embarrassed Clemens, who he thought did not tell the truth, as well as the trainer, Brian McNamee, who he thought was unfairly attacked by committee Republicans.

    ?I think Clemens and McNamee both came out quite sullied, and I didn?t think it was a hearing that needed to be held in order to get the facts out about the Mitchell report,? Waxman said.

    ?I?m sorry we had the hearing. I regret that we had the hearing. And the only reason we had the hearing was because Roger Clemens and his lawyers insisted on it.?

    The decision to hold the hearing had been made in early January, as Clemens was publicly challenging the veracity of the Mitchell report. But Waxman said he and Tom Davis of Virginia, the ranking Republican and former chairman of the committee, decided by last Friday that they did not need to conduct the hearing as scheduled because depositions taken last week from Clemens, McNamee, Andy Pettitte and others were thorough, as was the committee staff?s own investigation, and that a hearing would not provide a great deal more insight.

    ?Roger Clemens?s lawyers told us he wanted the opportunity to make his case in public,? Waxman said. ?He had his opportunity.? Now, Waxman added, 90 percent of the people being asked their opinion of the hearing were stating that they did not believe Clemens.

    Waxman?s regrets, and his assertion that Clemens?s side was responsible for the hearing taking place, was assailed last night by Clemens?s lead attorney, Rusty Hardin, who said Waxman?s statements were ?unbelievable, disingenuous and outrageous.?

    ?He is the one who created this circus in the first place,? Hardin said of Waxman, contending that Clemens and his lawyers had asked several weeks ago for the hearing to be called off, only to be rebuffed by Waxman?s staff.

    ?We didn?t think any good would come out of having a food fight with the accuser,? Hardin said in reference to McNamee. But once the depositions were taken last week, he said, the Clemens side felt it had no choice but to proceed, fearing that the committee would use the depositions to produce a hostile written report. ?We wanted this out in the open,? Hardin said.

    And it was out in the open that it became Democrat against Republican. Waxman said he was shocked at the partisan nature of the hearing, with Democrats, for the most part, grilling Clemens, while Republicans lambasted McNamee. ?I was disappointed to see that kind of partisanship, and I can?t understand it,? Waxman said.

    Waxman said Davis and Mark Souder of Indiana were the only Republicans on the committee who actually read through the depositions that were filed last week. Souder was also one of the few committee members who refused Clemens?s request for a private meeting before the hearing. And it was Souder who stood out from his Republican colleagues by stating during the hearing that the depositions were ?fairly devastating? against Clemens.

    ?I don?t think, quite frankly, that they anticipated quite the solid wall on the Republican side, the defense of Clemens,? Souder said Wednesday of the Democratic members of the panel. Speaking of Clemens, he added, ?It wasn?t an accident that word got to me that he?s a Republican, or he said that President Bush called him.?

    Meanwhile, Waxman said he had not made a decision as to whether Clemens would be referred to the Department of Justice for investigation into possible perjury charges.

    However, the Justice Department could start an investigation on its own. The F.B.I. in Washington confirmed Thursday that it had several agents at the hearing, in addition to the I.R.S. and F.B.I. agents from California who have been involved in investigating steroid use in sports and were present as well.

    One lawyer directly involved in the case suggested Wednesday that the Justice Department would lead an investigation of Clemens from its Washington headquarters and convene a grand jury in Washington, with the California agents, including the I.R.S. agent Jeff Novitzky, who has become the face of the various steroid investigations, also taking part. The lawyer was granted anonymity because he did not want to speak publicly about possible Justice Department strategy.

    Still, for the moment, it was Wednesday?s partisan rumblings that continued to echo. Richard Emery, who is one of McNamee?s lawyers, even predicted Thursday ? somewhat sarcastically ? that Clemens would be pardoned by President Bush before the possibility of a perjury charge even emerges, which is legally possible.

    Clemens, like President Bush and his father, George H. W. Bush, lives in Texas. In his testimony Wednesday, Clemens told the committee that the former president Bush had reached out to him after the Mitchell report was released and told him ?to stay strong and hold your head up high.?

    ?It would be the easiest thing for George W. Bush,? to do, Emery said, ?to say Roger Clemens is an American hero, Roger Clemens helped children.?

    The White House deputy press secretary Tony Fratto told The Associated Press, ?I?m not aware of Mr. Clemens having been charged with anything.?


    A Republican staff member of the committee, who was granted anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the hearings, said the partisanship arose Wednesday more because of Waxman than because of Republican support for Clemens. Waxman is a tough Democrat who can take on a prosecutorial tone, he said, and some of the Republicans reflexively did not want to help him.

    Some Republicans also thought it was good for them to argue that the Democratic-controlled Congress was wasting time with baseball. That was a theme on Fox TV news coverage Wednesday, even as the news channel broadcast hours of coverage of the hearing.

    ?Only Congress could take a Clemens-McNamee controversy and turn it into a political controversy,? Earl Ward, a lawyer for McNamee, said after the hearing.

    The Republican staff member said that party leaders on the committee instructed members not to attack Waxman, partly because that could also be viewed as an attack on Davis, who chaired the 2005 baseball hearing that featured Mark McGwire?s denials and who has worked closely with Waxman over the years. ?Criticisms of the chairman were not fair game,? the staff member said.

    So the Republicans held back from attacking Waxman in the committee room and attacked McNamee as a proxy, the staff member said. And a day later, Waxman was unhappy with the whole thing.
     

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