He wrote the famous Dowd Report in 1989, which laid out the case against Pete Rose for gambling on baseball.

Were it not for the internet, these matters might never have come to light or moved so swiftly.

After so many years of near totalitarian rule, it feels almost like a dream to see these events unfolding.

The gratitude of ordinary citizens, trying to lead honest and decent lives cannot be put in words – for the bloggers such as tpm and your site and others, who have lifted the dung and kept it steaming in the air.

Damn straight! And it steams and steams. And you aint seen nothin yet.

“Dowd says Rose should not be allowed back into baseball under any circumstances. “The issue is protecting the game, not protecting Mr. Rose and his reputation,” Dowd says. “That’s the judgment that’s been made on anyone who’s ever bet on the game and I think we ought to honor that.

“In my judgment, I don’t think there are any circumstances that justify his return to the game… If you let Rose back in, then the message to anyone who gambles and gambles on the game is that if you throw enough of a public relations tantrum and admit that you did it, then you ought to be back in the game.”

Dowd notes that no one who’s been declared permanently ineligible to participate in baseball has ever been readmitted. Commissioner Selig is “coming up against a great deal of powerful history on a rule that has been time and again demonstrated to prevent the corruption of the game.”

The force of the rule is “remarkable,” Dowd says. The best evidence of that is the day that then-Baseball Commissioner Bart Giamatti banned Rose, the commissioner “got calls from ballplayers all over the country” thanking him for “protecting the rule because they obey it. It’s posted right on the clubhouse door and they get reminded every spring what it is because experience has taught us that (gambling) really does undermine the game and it can’t be ignored.”

Mr. Dowd the issue is protecting the country and our system of justice, not protecting Ms. Goodling and her reputation

OT:

Just occurred to me that Bush will NOT veto the war money bill with strings that is going through Congress now.

He will use a signing statement to declare that he can ignore the parts that he claims Congress has no authority on (such as running a war).

He will take the money and ignore the constraints, because a veto would be failure to “support the troops”. And so we will stay fullly engaged in this mess until he is long gone.

I assume this was tongue and cheek; a signing statement is not going to cut any ice in this case.

Bush can veto the bill that comes to his desk.
But what the hell does he do then? Go back to the House with a bill that is minus the withdrawal date and the pork? Pelosi will just say, “You can have the money, Mr. B., but only with the same conditions as before.”

And then what?

And he is having a hell of good time with this case.

You go, Pat!

I was just trying to point out that all 4 of the people cited are all, in some shape or another, admitted liars (I was picking up on my earlier post up thread) While Ollie indeed got away with what he did, it still does not mean that he didn’t do it. File it under the chapter of OJ, Karl Rove re: Plame, etc.

BTW Mr. Mod: the links to “Readers at TPM” and “Josh” in the post still point to the wrong place.

rayne at 102

“I so hope to hear Leahy say into a camera, “There is no Constitutional right to avoid testimony, only a right to self-incrimination.”

I think that Leahy would say that it would be a right against self-incrimination.

I smell Freud here :)

At least the 1st Amendment guarantees they retain the right to self-recrimination.

GSD @ 95

If you see a battalion of blonde haired, blue eyed soldiers wearing blue helmuts coming your way, batten down the hatches, the coup has begun.

I, for one, welcome my studly Nordic overlords.

Somehow I can only imagine an army in rows and columns marching toward me like Barbie dolls, all wearing silk pajamas like Abba used to do, wearing blue UN-like helmets and just beautiful. Maybe they’d be a Stepford-Army and dangerous, but you’d be helpless to oppose them as your instinct wouldn’t be to hit them.

Hey, let’s get Valerie Plame on this. She’s beautiful and blonde and could psychologically oppose an army of cloned Barbie dolls! Heh.

Only in this surreal time would this idea ever enter the political discussion. It’s the bizzaro world of Georgie Boy.