The H(GH) is O

It's the biggest shocker since this morning's sunrise:

About two hours after former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell released his findings [about steroids in baseball], two congressmen at the forefront of Capitol Hill's involvement in the steroids issue asked Mitchell, baseball commissioner Bud Selig and union head Donald Fehr to testify at a House committee hearing next week. […]

California Democrat Henry Waxman and Virginia Republican Tom Davis […] want to know "whether the Mitchell report's recommendations will be adopted and whether additional measures are needed," they said. The legislators called for a House Oversight and Government Reform hearing on Tuesday.

Because nothing says "government reform" like, uh, making sure a private professional sporting league enacts no-warning year-round drug tests on its athletes? Meanwhile, Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) thinks the proper role of government is to pressure baseball commissioner Bud Selig to resign:

"Certainly, a lack of leadership and oversight in MLB enabled these abuses to continue," Stearns said Thursday. "After 15 years of slow action, a new commissioner is needed to guide the league out of this era of drug abuse."

So what does nanny-boo John McCain say?

"It's now time for Major League players to step forward and accept both meaningful restrictions as well as punishments if any of them are guilty of using these enhancing substances," McCain said about the players listed in the report.

"So it's time now for the players union to step forward and say 'ok, we'll save the game and the reputation of the game and cooperate with meaningful and tough punishment and testing procedures, so we can prevent this from ever happening again.'"

I wonder if John McCain has ever used a legal drug (like, I dunno, Vicodin) illegally (i.e., without a legitimate prescription) during his eight decades on the planet? That is, after all, the legal extent to which the vast majority of players named in the Mitchell Report would be potentially culpable, if the collection of hearsay evidence, signed checks and occasionally damning eyewitness testimony Mitchell gathered is to be believed.

In any case, we now know beyond a shadow of a doubt that if you give a former Senate Majority Leader $2 million a month for more than a year and half, force clubhouse lackeys to testify under threat of $100,000 fine, and have federal prosecutors grant vastly reduced sentences to drug convicts in exchange for cooperating with Mitchell's private investigation, you can indeed produce circumstantial evidence that Nook Logan (career home runs: 2) and nearly four score others may have taken legal supplements without a prescription to help them recover more quickly after working out, many during a time when such supplements were perfectly acceptable according to Major League Baseball's own rules. And as a direct result, your teenage daughter might eventually face drug testing if she plays sports, once Congress goes through another thrilling round of reforming government.

One of the named players says WTF? here. Some of reason's past steroids coverage here.