More fun with sports and elected officials

"I don't know if it rises to the level of the destruction of the CIA Tapes. Well, of course it does." So said Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) last week. The topic...

Alberto Gonzalez?

Illegal wiretaps?

Torture of detainees?

Squalid living conditions for returning troops at Walter Reed?

Scooter Libby?

Nope. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong.

Try the New England Patriots. Yeah, the football team in the NFL. Apparently, the U.S. Senator from the East Falls section of the city is so fired up following his one-on-one meeting yesterday with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell that there is a strong possibility that Specter could call Congressional Hearings about the matter.

Yes, we're still talking about football here.

You see, Specter, as he told reporters, is a fan of football. In fact, he's been a fan for a really, really long time. Actually, Specter is so much of a fan that he seems to believe that the sovereignty of our union is at stake unless we get to the bottom of why (oh why!) the Patriots, at the order of coach Bill Belichick, secretly taped opponents as they practiced the plays they were going to use in a game in final walkthroughs. Never mind that Specter and his colleagues <i>refused</i> to force members of the executive branch to speak under oath for other investigations, but the thought that the Patriots are getting away with something and the evidentiary tapes were destroyed by the league...

"The commissioner sought to downplay the issue about the utility, but from information we've received, there was opportunity for the signal to be transmitted to the quarterbacks so they could utilize these signals that they taped in violation of NFL rules," Specter told the L.A. Times. "I found a lot of questions unanswerable because of the tapes and notes had been destroyed."

Shudder!

With his writers back in the office, Jon Stewart tackled (hey, a pun) the football controversy on "The Daily Show."

But when it comes down to the nitty-gritty, Specter's delving into the "Spygate[1]" controversy just goes deep into the pile of legacy-making material for the Senator. Think about it - as the assistant counsel for the Warren Commission, Specter authored the "single-bullet theory," thus eliminating the threat of conspiracy from the official record of the Kennedy Assassination.Recently, of course, Specter had been critical of the Bush Adminstration's wiretapping of U.S. citizens without warrants and threatened to hold hearings on the matter. However, when he called then attorney general Alberto Gonzalez to speak to the judiciary committee, he was allowed to do so without taking an oath.

In other words, the investigation was a great, big show. Kind of like what's going on now.

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[1] I really hope that someone trademarked the -gate suffix. Hopefully, a nickel in royalties goes to the remaining members of Richard Nixon's criminal gang, or at least to the general fund of his library in Yorba Linda. But I suspect that if there is a trademark on the -gate suffix that Woodward, Bernstein or Bradlee are raking it in.

I've got nothing...

Happy belated Super Fat Tuesday, folks! Here's hoping everything turned out just the way you wanted ... The Super Bowl is over, the start of spring training is just one week away and there really isn't much else to talk about. Well, there's the weather... it's early February and it's 60 degrees, but the word on the street is that it will be just 10 degrees come Sunday night.

That Mother Nature... she's just so fickle.

Capriciousness aside, there really isn't much to say. The Flyers are in first place, which is cool. However, it seems a little too early in the season for the Stanley Cup chatter to heat up. The Sixers are... well, let's just hope they get the right portion of ping-pong balls.

Since I don't have anything new to write about (pertaining to Philadelphia and its sports teams), I'll just do a little hit-and-run on a few items.

• So trainer Brian McNamee reportedly has physical evidence that Roger Clemens used performance enhancing drugs. What, is this the blue dress of the sporting scene? Did McNamee really save the residue from giving the Rocket a shot in the derriere? Wow.
• Though I'm no football expert, I suspect the Giants' victory in the Super Bowl indicts the Eagles' inability to win the big game in some way. I just don't know what that is.
• How come the Giants can win the Super Bowl and the Eagles can't?
• After Bill Belichick abandoned his team and left his defense on the field so he could go into the locker room and sulk after the loss in the Super Bowl, it's fair to say, "Thank God Bill Belichick is a football coach." After all, the delicate genius that is Bill Belichick could be using all his wisdom and grace to be doing unimportant things like solving poverty, designing programs for world peace or delve into cancer research. But instead - and lucky for us - he's a football coach. We should all knee down and soak in the aura that such men emit.

As Tom Cruise said to Craig T. Nelson in the epic Western Pennsylvania football film, All the Right Moves, "You are just a football coach!" Then he ran away. Fast.

• Aside from not having updated spy films, perhaps the Patriots lost to the Giants because it was the first time they played a good team twice. All of the other teams the Pats played twice were in the AFC East, who combined for a 12-36 record.
• Is Kris Benson a low-risk, high-reward possibility or is he simply a potential annoyance for the Phillies? Oh, it's not Benson who is annoying. By all accounts he's nothing more than a typical baseball player, which means he's just like everyone else only more entitled. The "problem" with Benson is the baggage he brings - that stuff is all fine and dandy when it happens somewhere else like Pittsburgh, New York or Baltimore. We have enough to deal with as it is already.
• I really enjoy eating with chop sticks.
• Now that Sen. Arlen Specter has decided to take on the Patriots' alleged spying in his role as de facto commissioner of the NFL, it's quite interesting how there is quite a bit of bad press. Suddenly, sports media types are indignant and calling upon Congressional leaders to "focus on more important issues." Well, yeah, Congressional involvement is sports seems more than a bit silly. It's silly that leagues have antitrust exemption just as it's ridiculous that government funded agencies can suspend athletes without proper due process.
  But perhaps the biggest reason why sports media/fans don't want Congress involved in the Patriots' alleged spying or steroid use in baseball is because they don't want to know the truth. No, Congress is hardly the beacon of trust or the arbiter of truth and justice, but the fact is they are smart enough to take on cases and issues they know they can't lose. Congress likes sure things and because it looks like they have one with baseball and maybe even the Patriots, maybe some folks are worried that the curtain will be pulled back for everyone to take a good look.