JUST PLAY BALL

Brian McNamee, the former trainer of Roger Clemens, has submitted sworn statements by a federal prosecutor to back up his claim that he was coerced into naming the pitcher as a steroid user in a 2007 baseball investigation. McNamee may be granted immunity in a defamation suit Clemens has lodged against him if his evidence convinces a judge that federal agents threatened to prosecute him unless he told a panel led by former Senator George Mitchell what he’d already told prosecutors about Clemens.

In papers filed in Houston federal court today, Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Parrella, who is investigating the use of banned substances by professional athletes, said he told McNamee that the trainer may become a target if he didn’t cooperate. Parrella said McNamee was given immunity for anything he said during the investigation.

Parrella said in the document that McNamee could have faced criminal charges if he refused to talk to Mitchell. "As part of the Northern District of California's criminal investigation, I requested that McNamee speak to the Mitchell Commission," Parrella wrote. "I told McNamee that speaking to the Mitchell Commission was part of his cooperation with the investigation."

"Why was the federal government there?" Hollingsworth asked. "Why do they care if McNamee talked to Sen. Mitchell? Mr. Mitchell was a private individual doing a private investigation for a private client. Without law enforcement having a purpose, to extend privilege is unheard of in the law. It is a very dangerous precedent to set."

Yeah, yeah, yeah... Clemens is an asshole and steroids are destroying America's youth. That said - why was our federal government threatening anyone with prosecution unless they cooperated with baseball's internal witch hunt/coverup? Because this is Bush's America, of course, which ironically, Clemens once supported so strongly, until it came back to bite him in ass - literally.