Roger Clemens is about to be tried, again, for perjury.  It is really quite simple.  Clemens denies ever using performance-enhancing drugs.  There is a fair amount of evidence that he is lying:

http://www.search.yahoo.com/?fr=w3i&type=W3i_SP,204,0_0,StartPage,20120102,16898,0,8,0

The last time the government tried this, the judge declared a mistrial.  The problem is that Andy Pettitte told congressional investigations that Clemens confessed in 1999 (or 2000) that he used human growth hormones.  Apparently, Pettitte told his wife Laura about the conversation.  The judge ruled that her testimony was inadmissible because she didn’t hear Roger Clemens directly.  The prosecutors showed a video of Representative Elijah Cummings, D-MD, questioning Clemens where he referred to Pettitte’s conversation with his wife.  That ended the trial because the jury was exposed to inadmissible evidence:

http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/6768625/roger-clemens-trial-judge-declares-mistrial

Frankly, this whole thing seems like a gigantic waste of time.  Why did congress need to get involved at all?  Only a naïve fool didn’t realize that baseball players were using steroids.  This was hardly limited to Roger Clemens or Barry Bonds.  This should have been dealt with by Major League Baseball.  There was a problem, but the involvement of the government accomplished nothing.  The government indicted Barry Bonds for perjury.  They convicted him only of giving an evasive answer.  They couldn’t convict Bonds of lying.  He was sentenced to 30 days house arrest and he is even appealing that conviction.  Now the DOJ is back, trying to salvage its pride by getting a conviction of Roger Clemens.  What this would accomplish is beyond me.  I suspect that Roger Clemens, like a lot of other baseball players at the time, was using human growth hormones or steroids.  His denials do not pass the smell test.  But neither does the decision to waste valuable time and money prosecuting him.  Both Eric Holder and Janet Napolitano appear to have also committed perjury, with regard to a far more serious subject

In 2000, the Independent Counsel investigating the White House Post Office scandal (Travelgate) stated there is “substantial evidence” first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton lied under oath in denying that she played a role in the 1993 White House travel-office firing:

http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20000623&slug=4028256

The media yawned, apparently because it was hardly a surprise to learn that Hillary Clinton told a lie.  If Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder or Janet Napolitano happen to say something, under oath,  “inconsistent with the facts” that is not perjury, that is politics.  But if Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens say they didn’t use performance-enhancing drugs, and someone disagrees, that is perjury.

I think it is extremely unlikely that Roger Clemens will go to jail.  Regardless of the facts, I wouldn’t be surprised by an acquittal.  But in the meantime, the DOJ will have spent a fortune prosecuting this case, and they will probably succeed in causing great financial hardship to Roger Clemens.

Senator Ted Stevens was convicted of failing to properly report gifts.  He was convicted on October 27, 2008.  He was convicted of “making false statements.”  As a result, he was defeated in the election by Mark Begich.  Mark Begich arrived in the Senate just in time to cast the deciding vote for Obamacare.  I should point out that this was in addition to the Louisiana Purchase, the Cornhusker Kickback and the re-writing of Massachusetts law to allow the Governor to appoint a Democrat to replace Ted Kennedy.   By April of 2009, it was so obvious that the conviction was improper that Eric Holder directed the justice department to “Set Aside the Verdict and Dismiss the Indictment with Prejudice.”

At what point, even to the lame stream media, does it become obvious that there’s a serious disconnect here?

TDM