There’s No Congress in Baseball!

RUSH: Andy in El Paso, you’re next on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Well, yeah, Rush, this is Andy in El Paso and I’d like to give you University of Missouri-Rolla class of ’83 dittos.

RUSH: Thank you very much, sir.

CALLER: What I plan on doing in the Texas open primary is voting for Obama because I’d like to return the favor to the Democrats for giving us John McCain by voting in our open primaries, and I have four reasons that I plan on supporting Obama in the open primary.

RUSH: Wait, wait, wait, wait, hold it. I want to understand, I’m not sure I got it. You want to return the favor to the Democrats for giving us McCain by voting in open primaries. What’s the favor you’re returning? Oh, I see. Democrats have nominated McCain is your theory, in the Republican primaries, independents, and so you want to have a role in what the Democrat primary is in Texas?

CALLER: Absolutely.

RUSH: All right.

CALLER: It’s like the Republican primary is essentially over. There’s no reason for me as a lifelong Republican to vote for McCain. Well, I wouldn’t have voted for McCain —

RUSH: You know, that happened in Virginia yesterday. This is anecdotal, but e-mails from people said, ‘Look, there’s no reason to vote on the Republican side, it’s been decided. I voted for Obama.’

CALLER: Absolutely. And I have four reasons why I want to do that.

RUSH: Why?

CALLER: The first is it will make the Clintons furious slash crazy that the right-wing conspiracy is hard at work against them again. The second is that if I do have to have a Democratic president, I prefer someone whose primary principal accomplishment as a politician is to vote present. I don’t think Obama has nearly the skill to accomplish his or Hillary’s agendas, which are essentially the same. Hillary is much more capable of causing that agenda to be accomplished. My third reason is that a President Hillary Clinton will make J. Edgar Hoover look like an amateur. The stack of FBI files that she had to use against people during her time as first lady will be nothing compared to what she’ll be able to try to do to the conservative movement and what she’ll do to advance her agenda.

RUSH: Yeah, yeah.

CALLER: And you were singled out for selective prosecution, you can imagine how miserable the government can make our lives when they’re hard at work against us.

RUSH: You know, speaking of that. I’ve got a little audio coming up on this. This is eerie to sit here and watch a congressional committee go after a private citizen, Roger Clemens and this trainer up there, Brian McNamee. Now, I followed this. I understand what this is all about, but to paraphrase Bill Clinton, no hearing on steroids in baseball ever fed a hungry child. I don’t know what Clemens is doing there. Has he lied to Congress before his deposition this week or did they call him up there because of the Mitchell Report and he went public and said The Mitchell Report’s not true so then Congress said we want to get in the act? So I think that may be Congress’ reason for wanting to get involved in this. Look, nobody recommends people take HGH or steroids, athletes, kids being influenced by it and all that, but it’s sort of like Congress wanting to get involved in the New England Patriots spying on opposing teams. The league’s supposed to handle this kind of stuff. It’s really up to the league. They can hold over the anti-trust exemption over baseball. We’re going to remove it, we’re not going to give you that exemption anymore so baseball has to cooperate, go out and do this dog and pony show. The sad thing is when you watch this, and I watched a lot of it before it started, but the meat of it got going about 10:30.

Henry ‘Nostrilitis’ Waxman is the committee chairman, and he gave a long opening statement. Clemens gave his statement, started answering questions, same thing with McNamee, about 10:30 a.m. So I watched a little bit of it for an hour-and-a-half while doing show prep here, getting ready for today’s excursion into broadcast excellence. And one of these two guys is lying, and they’re both under oath. Somebody’s life today has just been destroyed, and I don’t know who. I haven’t the slightest idea who to believe. I haven’t the slightest clue. I don’t know what’s happened since the program started today at noon Eastern, but before that it seemed to me that the Democrats on the committee were sort of siding with the trainer, McNamee, and really sticking it to Clemens. You go to the Republicans, and they seem to be sticking it to the trainer and defending Clemens, and I got two sound bites here. Dan Burton is on this committee, Republican, and in his session here, Dan Burton leads the trainer, Brian McNamee, down a list of his previous lies. Burton says, ‘Mr. McNamee, I’m going to read to you a series of prior statements attributed to you regarding steroid use or the lack thereof by Mr. Clemens or Mr. Pettitte. ‘I never gave Clemens or Pettitte steroids. They never asked me for steroids. The only thing they asked me for were vitamins.’ That was William Sherman and T. J. Quinn. [A story headlined] Andy Totes Baggage to Bronx in the New York Daily News, December 10th, 2006. Did you say that Andy Pettitte and Roger Clemens, you never gave them steroids, did you say all that is?’

MCNAMEE: Yes, I did.

BURTON: Is that a lie?

MCNAMEE: Yes, it is.

BURTON: Oh, it’s another one. Okay. ‘I told federal investigators twice that Roger and Andy had nothing to do with it.’ Is that right?

MCNAMEE: Yes, sir.

BURTON: Is that a lie?

MCNAMEE: Yes, sir.

BURTON: Mr. McNamee, I’m going to read you a series of statements attributed to you regarding your involvement with steroids. ‘I don’t have any dealings with steroids or amphetamines. I don’t buy it, sell it, condone it, or recommend it. I don’t make money from it. It’s not part of my livelihood and not part of my business.’ Did you say that?

MCNAMEE: Yep.

BURTON: That’s a lie, right?

MCNAMEE: Partial.

BURTON: Partial?

MCNAMEE: Partial lie.

BURTON: (laughing) ‘McNamee pleads guilty to knowing the ins and outs of steroids but says I have no involvement as far as supplying it, getting it, selling it, telling them to use it. Jon Heyman, The Sixth Man, Clemen’s trainer, denies link to Grimsley — is that a lie?’

MCNAMEE: Yes.

RUSH: Then Burton unloaded.

BURTON: This is really disgusting. You’re here as a sworn witness. You’re here to tell the truth. You’re here under oath, and yet we have lie after lie after lie after lie where you told this committee and the people of this country that Roger Clemens did things — I don’t know what to believe. I know one thing I don’t believe, and that’s you. Roger Clemens is a titan in baseball, and you with all these lies, if they’re not true, are destroying him and his reputation. Now, how does he get his reputation back if this is not true? And how can we believe you, because you’ve lied and lied and lied and lied? If he’s done something wrong, he ought to be indicted, he ought to be prosecuted, and he ought to be punished for it. But I don’t see any evidence of that so far. And, with that, I’ll stop.

RUSH: And at that point, ‘Nostrilitis’ Waxman banged the gavel and said, ‘The gentleman’s time has expired.’ But that was Burton unloading, and the Republicans generally have been unloading — at least before noon, on the trainer McNamee, and the Democrats have been unloading on Clemens. But I don’t know, might be to some of you people watching it out there, but I don’t know who’s telling the truth here. McNamee has been confirmed to be telling the truth about two other people, Andy Pettitte, he said, ‘Yeah, they told the truth about me in the Mitchell report,’ and I forget who the other was. Some people are saying, ‘Why would he lie about Clemens? Why would he make it up?’ He cooperated with the Mitchell Report, with federal FBI agents, prosecutors, US attorneys all over the place, ‘You lie to us, pal, and it’s behind bars for you.’ His life is over anyway. He’s got a very ill child. These guys, I’ve seen so many of them, they’ll do anything to hang around athletes. They will do anything to hang around jocks and sports. It can destroy people, the groupie aspect of it all, the celebrity attraction of it all. I don’t know if that’s McNamee or not. But one of these two guys is lying under oath, brazenly. I don’t know how this ends good.