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Clemens gets a taste of Bush-league justice

Kirk Caraway

The FBI has announced that an investigation will be opened against Major League Baseball star Roger Clemens because he maybe – maybe – didn’t tell the truth in front of Congress.

Wait a minute. Somebody lied to Congress, and the Justice Department actually is going to do something about it? What is the world coming to?

Clemens should have taken some advice from former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. He lied in front of Congress on numerous occasions, big lies about far more important subjects than sticking needles in one’s butt. And when he would get caught in a lie, he’d just show up to tell a few new ones. And is the FBI investigating him? Don’t be silly. He’s now on the lecture circuit making big bucks telling the same lies.



Maybe Clemens could have avoided this whole mess by not showing up to testify before Congress. That’s the strategy that’s working for White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolton and former counsel Harriet Miers, who have ignored subpoenas to testify about the Gonzales-U.S. attorney scandal. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi just sent the Justice Department a letter last week asking them to hold them in contempt for ignoring those subpoenas. Do you think they will investigate? Sure, and the Chicago Cubs are going to win the World Series this year.

Maybe Clemens could have e-mailed his testimony, or at least pretended to and claimed it was lost. Congress repeatedly has asked the White House about their continued violation of the Presidential Records Act in regard to missing e-mails, to no avail. Guess that’s another law the Justice Department is ignoring. But they’ll get right on it, after they finish up that steroids investigation.



Perhaps Clemens could claim the government already has all this information, since the National Security Agency swept up all his phone calls and e-mails as part of its domestic spying activities. Certainly the Justice Department would let him slide on that, since they have no interest in investigating the NSA and the telecommunications companies for so obviously breaking a litany of privacy laws.

Or, if Clemens would do a goodwill tour in Iraq, all could be forgiven. Heaven knows the FBI has no interest in investigating anything over there, from the billions of missing dollars to the gang rape of an American woman working as a private contractor.

What if Clemens quit baseball and went to work for a bank? Looking at the train wreck that is the banking system today, it’s clear that no one in the federal government has been doing any investigating in this sector for a long time.

Maybe Clemens could reveal the secret identity of a CIA agent. He might go on trial, but at least he knows there would be a presidential commutation waiting for him, like there was for Scooter Libby.

Of course, if Clemens really wants to get away with any possible lawbreaking, he needs to ask George W. Bush for a job.

Because the best get-out-of-jail-free card you can get is a White House employee ID. Nobody who works for The Decider goes to jail. Nobody.

For the rest of us, we are all wondering when the Bush administration is going to actually start enforcing the laws of this land; you know, the laws the rest of us have to live by, the laws that are supposed to apply to everybody.

But until the guy at the top decides to obey the law, the Justice Department is left in a quandary about who to go after.

So this month, Roger Clemens, you’re it. Welcome to Bush-league justice.

– Kirk Caraway writes for Swift Communications, Inc. He can be reached through his blog at http://kirkcaraway.com.


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