Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

Waxman “Regrets” Clemens Hearing

From the NY Times:

A day after a dramatic, nationally televised hearing that pitted Roger Clemens against his former personal trainer and Democrats against Republicans, the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said Thursday that he regretted holding the hearing in the first place.

The chairman, Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, said the four-hour hearing unnecessarily embarrassed Clemens, who he thought did not tell the truth, as well as the trainer, Brian McNamee, who he thought was unfairly attacked by committee Republicans.

“I think Clemens and McNamee both came out quite sullied, and I didn’t think it was a hearing that needed to be held in order to get the facts out about the Mitchell report,” Waxman said.

“I’m sorry we had the hearing. I regret that we had the hearing. And the only reason we had the hearing was because Roger Clemens and his lawyers insisted on it.”

Nonsense. Since when has Henry Waxman let the subject of a hearing dictate to him? To the contrary, using his powers as a committee chairman to bully people is how Waxman gets his groove on.

Indeed, the TImes continues:

Waxman’s regrets, and his assertion that Clemens’s side was responsible for the hearing taking place, was assailed last night by Clemens’s lead attorney, Rusty Hardin, who said Waxman’s statements were “unbelievable, disingenuous and outrageous.”

“He is the one who created this circus in the first place,” Hardin said of Waxman, contending that Clemens and his lawyers had asked several weeks ago for the hearing to be called off, only to be rebuffed by Waxman’s staff.

Presumably, the repeated commentary that Congress shouldn’t be wasting its time with this silliness is what prompts Waxman’s regret, assuming he actually has any.

Update Roger Simon opines:

… at first glance I was relieved that Waxman is, as I said, finally ceasing and desisting from wasting our time and money. But then I remembered the things he normally does - setting up non-stop investigations of his opposition, which are simultaneously malicious and meretricious. This is the kind of phony nonsense during a time of war that caused me to leave the Democratic Party. [Do you know anybody who has left the Republican Party for similar reasons?-ed. Not recently, no.] On second thought, it’s probably better to have Waxman spending his time on baseball.

That’ll leave a mark.

Update: James Joyner has a long and typically thoughtful post on the general issue of Congressional investigations of sports scandals, which moves effortlessly from the steroids nonsense to the even more absurd investigation of Spygate, and concludes:

I actually agree with Specter that Goodell’s decision to destroy the tapes is suspicious and think the Patriots cheating scandal is more severe than the League has made it out to be. But it’s not Congress’ business.