Baseball great, 48 year old Roger Clemens, faces the equivalent of a death sentence with the threat of a 30 year prison term after being indicted for making false statements, obstruction and felony perjury.   The indictment follows an inquiry into Mr. Clemen’s alleged use of steroids, during which Mr. Clemens flatly denied ever using steroids or human growth hormone.

Federal prosecutors, miffed by Mr. Clemens audacity to make allegedly “false statements under oath”, announced the indictment today and seem prepared to vigorously prosecute Mr. Clemens.  US Attorney Ronald Machen, said in a statement that “The Department of Justice takes referrals from congressional committees very seriously”.

Mr. Clemens continues to maintain his innocence, stating on Twitter that, “I never took HGH or steroids.  And I did not lie to Congress. I look forward to challenging the government’s accusations, and hope people will keep an open mind until trial. I appreciate all the support I have been getting. I am happy to finally have my day in court.”

The ironic part of this human tragedy is that Roger Clemens was man enough to state his innocence, forgoing his Fifth Amendment rights and agreeing to testify before Congress.  According to sports writer Jeff Passan,

Clemens wasn’t in trouble when baseball released George Mitchell’s report on steroid use. Sure, it disintegrated the purity of everything he spent 24 seasons building, but Clemens was no felon. Just a guy who chose the wrong drug dealer. Only when he went on the warpath to prove his innocence did Clemens tiptoe near a law that people in power are interested in prosecuting.

The indictment, 19 pages long and rich with information, highlights 15 utterances the government deemed false leading to an obstruction of justice charge. Testimony regarding steroids, HGH and vitamin B12 comprise three false statement charges and two more perjury charges, each of which could carry five years prison time.

On page 10 is the statement most horrifying to Clemens, the rubbing alcohol in his gaping wound: “The Committee did not issue CLEMENS a subpoena, and CLEMENS was under no obligation to testify. CLEMENS retained his right under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution to refuse to answer any questions that might tend to incriminate him.”

He could’ve taken the Mark McGwire tack, treating the Fifth like his best friend. He could’ve done what so many other accused steroid users did: not say a thing and let the allegations fade into the ether, a black mark, sure, but not one that torpedoes a life. He could’ve done what his friend Andy Pettitte did: admit use, apologize for it and move on.

There remains the possibility, of course, that Clemens never did use steroids,…

Still, it’s harrowing to see another all-time great baseball player, steroids or not, paraded in front of the country as an example that thou best not trifle with the feds.

Does the country really want to see Roger Clemens put in jail, made an example of, by over zealous prosecutors seeking to exhibit the Federal Government’s stern authority over its citizens?  Readers of this column are already aware of the fact that the United States incarcerates more of its citizens than any country on earth -see How The US Justice System Turns Jaywalkers Into Violent Criminals.

The United States currently has in prison 762 people per 100,000.   The incarceration rate in France is 96 people per 100,000.   Is the United States a land full of criminals or do we have a justice system run amok??  People lie everyday, including those who lead our country.   Doesn’t the Justice Department have better things to do?

Deluged by the arrival of nonstop illegal immigrants, Arizona recently passed legislation to deal with the problem.   Arizona was forced to take action after efforts by the Federal government to address illegal immigration were perceived as ineffective and indifferent.

Arizona’s new law quickly became controversial.   The Obama administration immediately condemned Arizona and acted swiftly to block the new law, a move that left many average Americans scratching their heads.  Why would the Federal government be outraged by a State seeking to identify illegal aliens residing within their borders?

According to the Gallup Daily Tracking poll, Washington’s posture diverges widely from the views of a majority of Americans.  The Gallup poll reveals that the U.S. Justice Department lawsuit against the new Arizona immigration law are opposed by Americans by a 50% to 33% margin.

Feelings are running even higher in the State of Arizona as residents consider the Obama administration’s opposition to the new law as an infringement on State’s rights.  As reported by CNS News, many view the Federal Government’s position as counterproductive and in direct opposition to common sense.

(CNSNews.com) – Pinal County (Ariz.) Sheriff Paul Babeu is hopping mad at the federal government.

Babeu told CNSNews.com that rather than help law enforcement in Arizona stop the hundreds of thousands of people who come into the United States illegally, the federal government is targeting the state and its law enforcement personnel.

“Our own government has become our enemy and is taking us to court at a time when we need help,” Babeu said.

“If the president would do his job and secure the border; send 3,000 armed soldiers to the Arizona border and stop the illegal immigration and the drug smuggling and the violence, we wouldn’t even be in this position where we’re forced to take matters into our own hands,” Babeu said.

Given the Government’s strident opposition to identifying illegal aliens in Arizona, one might expect that the national effort by the Feds to capture and deport illegal aliens would be muted or nonexistent, yet the opposite appears to be the case.  Consider the increase in the number of deported illegal immigrants as reported by the Wall Street Journal:

A record number of criminal aliens have been deported so far this year, reflecting a shift in emphasis by the Obama administration, according to an independent analysis released Monday.

In the first nine months of fiscal year 2010, 137,000 illegal immigrants designated as criminal aliens were deported, according to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, 60% more than in a comparable period of the Bush administration’s last year and about one-third more than in a comparable period in the Obama administration’s first year.

The numbers reflect ICE’s implementation of a policy that targets illegal immigrants the government describes as criminal aliens who have been convicted of offenses since coming to the U.S. ranging from murder and sexual assault to property damage and traffic violations…

About 11 million illegal immigrants reside in the U.S., according to the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE.

A surge in deportations between fiscal years 2005 and 2009 was accomplished largely by “catching noncitizens who had not committed any crimes” other than sneaking across the border or entering the U.S. legally and overstaying their visas, the TRAC report said.

Despite the new emphasis, fewer than half of those removed, or 49%, were criminal aliens, compared with 51% who were not.

One may certainly wonder what the strategy of the U.S. government is when it comes to dealing with the issue of illegal immigrants.  While attempting to crush the State of Arizona for asserting its right to deal with illegal aliens, the Feds are simultaneously deporting record numbers of illegal aliens.  This Bizarro World strategy of “let them in so we can catch them” is nonsensical.   It is difficult to discern a clear fundamental strategy by the President who daily seems more distant from the mainstream beliefs and values of average Americans.  It is no wonder that Obama’s approval ratings are plunging.

The White House Council of Economic Advisers today proudly praised the $787 billion stimulus program, claiming that it had created or saved 2.5 to 3.6 million jobs.   Without bothering to debate how the Council arrived at its estimate of jobs saved or created, lets take the average of their estimated jobs (3.05 million) and divide by the cost of the stimulus program of $787 billion.

The government cost the taxpayers $262,333 to “save or create” each job.  Putting aside the obvious nonsense that the government can “create” jobs, if the government continues to “create” jobs in this manner, the country will soon be bankrupt.

Based on the Council of Economic Advisers’ math, we could recover the 8 million jobs lost over the past 3 years at a cost of only $2.1 trillion dollars!

Some more fun facts:

The $787 billion “stimulus” program cost each of the estimated 105 million households in the US $7,495.

The average median household income in 2008 was $52,029.

One certainty is that the average American household would have spend the $7,495 much more wisely than government bureaucrats.   The other certainty is that the government’s public relations effort praising the stimulus plan is just another waste of taxpayer time and money.  According to the New York Times:

The latest CBS News poll found that almost three-quarters of Americans said the stimulus had not improved the economy. Unemployment remains stubbornly high, at 9.5 percent, with few signs of improving in the short term. The reluctance of businesses to add jobs has weighed on other parts of the economy and there are signs that growth has begun to slow.

Aside from wasting $787 billion of the taxpayers money, the next most tragic part of this story is that the government continues to ignore the wisdom of the American people, and continues to insist that the program was a success.  Joe Biden, regarded by many as the biggest buffoon in Washington, had this to say - “I am absolutely confident we are moving in the right direction, absolutely confident”.   This statement should be more than enough to terrify most clear thinking Americans.

Statements made by an absolutely confident Herbert Hoover on the eve of the Depression:

August 11, 1928 - “Unemployment in the sense of distress is widely disappearing. . . . We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land. The poor-house is vanishing from among us. We have not yet reached the goal, but given a change to go forward with the policies of the last eight years, and we shall soon with he help of God be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation.

November 1929 - “Any lack of confidence in the economic future or the basic strength of business in the United States is foolish.”

January 21, 1930 - “Definite signs that business and industry have turned the corner from the he temporary period of emergency that followed deflation of the speculative market were seen today by President Hoover. The President said the reports to the Cabinet showed that the tide of employment had changed in the right direction.”

Government Thwarts Oil Cleanup - Incompetence or Calculated Political Decision?

It has been over two months since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and sank in the Gulf of Mexico on April 22, 2010.  Estimates of the amount of crude oil gushing into the Gulf range from 60,000 to 100,000 barrels a day causing an ecological disaster along the entire gulf coast.   As residents fume about the slow and nonchalant government cleanup efforts, logical minds are beginning to wonder why the government does not take some common sense efforts to facilitate the cleanup.

DEEPWATER HORIZON

A Government intent on facilitating the cleanup and mitigating the huge environmental damage of the oil spill would address the following:

1. Rather than rejecting offers of foreign government help, this assistance should have been immediately accepted.
2. Suspend EPA rules on the amount of oil allowed in discharge from skimmer boats which is preventing large amounts of oil from being recovered.  Blindly following bureaucratic rules when they do not make sense creates a general sense of incompetence.
3. Large amounts of skimmer boats are not being allowed to participate in the cleanup efforts since by law they must be stationed elsewhere.  Exactly where else would you want the skimmer boats to be when they are urgently needed today in the Gulf?
4. Federal authorities have hampered and restricted local efforts to contain and cleanup the oil spill based on mindless reams of regulations which make no sense under emergency conditions.

Speculation on why the government has reacted at a snail’s pace in addressing the Gulf oil disaster center on basic incompetence and at worst, a calculated political decision.   Consider the following from the Wall Street Journal:

As the government fails to implement such simple and straightforward remedies, one must ask why.

One possibility is sheer incompetence. Many critics of the president are fond of pointing out that he had no administrative or executive experience before taking office. But the government is full of competent people, and the military and Coast Guard can accomplish an assigned mission. In any case, several remedies require nothing more than getting out of the way.

Another possibility is that the administration places a higher priority on interests other than the fate of the Gulf, such as placating organized labor, which vigorously defends the Jones Act.

Finally there is the most pessimistic explanation—that the oil spill may be viewed as an opportunity, the way White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said back in February 2009, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” Many administration supporters are opposed to offshore oil drilling and are already employing the spill as a tool for achieving other goals. The websites of the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, for example, all feature the oil spill as an argument for forbidding any further offshore drilling or for any use of fossil fuels at all. None mention the Jones Act.

To these organizations and perhaps to some in the administration, the oil spill may be a strategic justification in a larger battle. President Obama has already tried to severely limit drilling in the Gulf, using his Oval Office address on June 16 to demand that we “embrace a clean energy future.” In the meantime, how about a cleaner Gulf?

Thomas Jefferson, primary writer of the Declaration Of Independence, explains why the American Colonies viewed separation from England was inevitable:

Courtesy: wikipedia.org

Thomas Jefferson argued that:

Parliament was a foreign legislature that was unconstitutionally trying to extend its sovereignty into the colonies.

With American public dissatisfaction and revulsion for Congress at all time highs, would Thomas Jefferson view today’s imperially elite rulers in Washington to be the modern day equivalents of King George?

The Declaration of Independence

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,^[71] that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such disolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

July 4, 1776

List of signers

Fifty-six delegates eventually signed the Declaration:

Happy Fourth of July, 2010!