Steroids dealer to name names, according to cnnsi.com

Yeah, or you just don't want to be somebody he thinks is dealing steroids or he'll ruin your life.
Be careful what you wish for, Ragu. That's how Mike Nifongs happen.

 

Inspector Javert has his eye on both of you.



"The face of Javert petrified them."

 

Zut alors!
I thought it was flaxseed oil!

 

I have an ingrained suspicion of any cop or prosecutor who tries his case in the press, or leaks as much as I believe Nowitzky has. I believe that is contrary to the oath they both take, and I believe that encouraging them to believe that those activities are part of good law enforcement is the way Nifongs happen. I'm willing to bet that Nifong won some cases before the Duke case happened, and that his MO didn't differ then from the one he employed against the lacrosse players. If he hadn't tried it against defendants who were a) innocent, b) media-savvy, and c) capable of affording genuine lawyers, it might've worked this time, too.

 

Those are fair points. At least you're only suspiciuos of Novitzky, not throwing around unfounded allegations like other people. But Fenian, in this case you do seem to have a lot of sympathy for multi-millionaire athletes who can hire high-priced lawyers, never mind their powerful union. Against Novitzky, I say this is an even fight.

 

And in related news, the Mets, figuring they needed more guys with steroidal pasts connected to the organization, acquired Luis Matos from the Pirates.

Imagine the shitstorm if the Yankees had HALF as many kids busted for steroids as the Mets. It pays for the bumbling PR guy to be nice to the writers and it pays for the owner to fashion himself as a kindly grandfatherian alternative to George, even though the truth is something else entirely.

I'm already popping popcorn in anticipation of the Radomski fallout. that's going to have a lot of intolerable people scrambling.

 

I don't know how you manage to deduce that - and I would pointout that poor widdle Jeff Nowitzky happens to have a rather large institution called THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT behind what he does. It's not a question of sympathy. It's more my distrust -- dating back to the beginnings of the most recent "drug war" in the 1980's and continuing through the years of Clinton, who was the worst president for the Bill of Rights in my lifetime until the current fool -- of the prosecutor-friendly laws and prosecutor-friendly media coverage thereof. Amendments Four through Six have taken a rather bad beatdown in those years, and they're the things for which I have the most sympathy.

 

That's fine to think that, and I sympathize with your cynicism. But the point I was trying to make is that baseball players vs. Novitzky/U.S. govt. isn't just like poor guy down the block and his public defender vs. Big Bad Prosecutor.

It's a pretty fair matchup where hopefully the evidence and scale of the crime will prevail.

 

There is absolutely nothing pretty fair about a matchup between anyone and their lawyer, no matter how costly and no matter how good, vs. the combined might of the US government. There is only mismatch and egregious mismatch. Please see the recent obits of Helmsley, Leona for details. And I don't see how watching out for civil liberties -- even the civil liberties of rich and unpopular athletes -- makes me a cynic.

 

Sure. But if Jeff Novitzky and the govt. are as hell-bent on getting Bonds and other steroids users as you and others are saying, and as powerful as you say they are, why hasn't Bonds been prosecuted yet? (It may yet happen, but still.) If they wanted him that badly, couldn't they have put their full resources to use by now to railroad him? Or is the govt. just building its case, waiting for Greg Anderson to break, etc.?

I'm curious what you mean by the "combined weight of the U.S. government." The juries are still 12 peers. The evidence must still reach a certain standard to convict. Isn't it just a teeny bit possible the feds have a 92 percent conviction rate because they're really, really good and don't prosecute unless they've got rock-solid evidence? Isn't it possible that the bad men really are guilty most of the time?

 

I mean, the Department of Justice, the FBI, the IRS, the Border Patrol, the Customs Service, the Secret Service, the RICO statute, combined investigative powers of the enforcement divisions of the other departments. Since 2002, I mean the rest of the intelligence community.
That weight.
I have made no argument that anyone is being railroaded, only that Nowtizky is a publicity hound and that that, in a man with the resources he has at hand, is a dangerous thing.