"The Clear" Talk Express

John McCain is one of my favorite politicians. He understands that his job is governing a nation, not creating personal power. Had he not been slandered by Karl Rove back in the winter of 2000, he’s be sitting in the Oval Office right now. I wish he was.

Well, he’s decided to chime in on the steroid issue in baseball. McCain, who is chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, said he would introduce legislation calling for stricter drug-testing unless the sport's players and owners act first. McCain also says that baseball's anti-trust exemption and interstate commerce laws give Congress a key "role to play" in overseeing the sport.

Well, that’s crap. The only reason baseball has an anti-trust exemption is that the Supreme Court created one for them out of whole cloth.

In 1922, the Supreme Court held in Federal Baseball Club of Baltimore v. National League that (in the opinion of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes for the majority), "personal effort, not related to production, is not a subject of commerce" and that baseball therefore wasn't subject to federal regulation via the commerce clause of the constitution.

In 1953, the Supreme Court revisited the case and decided that, "that if there are evils in this field which now warrant application of it to the antitrust laws, it should be by legislation." That means that Congress should create legislation codifying baseball as a commercial enterprise. That would revoke the anti-trust exemption.

Besides. This country is in dire need of oversight, allright. Of its own government! Oversight that is sorely lacking from congress. They want to deal with issues? Fine. Deal with a deficit, a war, jobs. A million things. But baseball? Come on, Senator. We Americans need you to do some work. Not save us from a bunch of millionaire entertainers who have decided that death at age 50 is a decent exchange for incomes above the GDP of Miyanmar.

What’s next? Ban Zoloft because people are too happy?