Did anyone bother to read the Mitchell Report?

Its been an interesting two months since former Senator George Mitchell released the "Report to the Commissioner of Baseball of an Independent Investigation into the Illegal Use of Steroids and Other Performance Enhancing Substances by Players in Major League Baseball". Much has been said about the credibility of witnesses, the fact that the "accused are innocent until proven guilty", and that Sen. Mitchell is himself a deceptive individual who cant be trusted. Let me refute these incredibly asinine arguments.

1. The major sources for the information in the Mitchell report were Kirk Radomski and Brian McNamee. Thier cooperation with Sen. Mitchell was secured by allowing them to plead to lesser charges in thier respective cases on distribution of illegal substances(drugs, to the lay person). Now, some have said that makes them untrustworthy. Which is a logical argument, if you want to destroy our entire criminal justice system. For those of you who have never; talked to a lawyer, gotten arrested with your buddies, watched "Law & Order", watched "The Wire", watched any cop show ever, trading information for a lightened sentence is pretty much how criminal prosecutions work. It rewards the defendents who come clean early, and punishes those who continue to lie to investigators. So if that is an illegitimate concept, then you can go ahead and free probably 85-90% of the people in prison. I expect all you people calling McNamee and Radomski liars to be down at City Hall protesting for this tomorrow morning.

2. This was my favorite anti-Mitchell arguement of them all. Oh, these poor, upstanding baseball players, with thier names splashed across the front pages of newspapers across the country. THE HUMANITY!!! Poor guys, where can they hide their "innocent until proven guilty" faces? But hold on-what does that phrase actually mean? Lets go to the video tape-er-wikipedia. "The presumption of innocence — being innocent until proven guilty — is a legal right that the accused in criminal trials has in many modern nations." Now, I may be terribly mistaken, but I believe Sen. Mitchell was not bringing people up on charges. His report is addressed to the Commissioner of Baseball, not the local hanging judge. You see, the presumption of innocence is the basis of our trial system so that prosecutors have to convince a jury of your peers that you are guilty BEFORE THEY SEND YOU TO PRISON. This concept is to keep innocent people out of jail, not off the front pages. To protect against defaming statements(slander and libel), people are allowed to sue the person who made the defaming statements. Strangely, not one person named in the Mitchell Report has done this. In fact, the only responses from the individuals named have been confirmations of the accusations, non-denial denials and Roger Clemens's fascinating self-immolation on Capitol Hill. Lets not forget that Mitchell has NOTHING to do with the Congressional hearings, and that any perjury case against Clemens will stem from his own stratospherically egotistical decision to demand a public hearing in front of Congress, not from anything George Mitchell did.

3. This is the most ridiculous anti-Mitchell statement of them all. First, lets look at this guy's resume:

George John Mitchell, (born August 20, 1933) is a former Democratic Party politician and United States Senator who currently serves as chairman of the worldwide law firm DLA Piper and also as the Chancellor of the Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He was the U.S. Senate Majority Leader from 1989 to 1995 and chairman of The Walt Disney Company from March 2004 until January 2007. He served as co-chairman (with Newt Gingrich) of the Congressionally mandated Task Force on the United Nations, which released its findings and recommendations on June 15, 2005. In 2007, he became a visiting Professor in Leeds Metropolitan University's School of Applied Global Ethics and the University is developing a new Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution bearing his name. Since 1995, he has been active in the Northern Ireland peace process as U.S. Special Envoy to Northern Ireland. Mitchell first led a commission that established the principles on non-violence to which all parties in Northern Ireland had to adhere and subsequently chaired the all-party peace negotiations, which led to the Belfast Peace Agreement signed on Good Friday 1998 (known since as the Good Friday Agreement).

Now, after looking at that, you realize that the Mitchell Report is probably the least important thing this guy has ever done. This is a guy who has bigger fish to fry than weasely little Hank Steinbrenner and the yahoos in the Yankees front office. Hear this loud and clear Yankee (and Red Sox) fans: Not everything in the world is about the Boston-New York sports rivalry. George Mitchell is a "Director" of the Red Sox because hes a former Senator from Maine, not because he swore a blood oath to fabricate evidence to embarass the Yankees. They named a bunch of Yankees and Mets because they were getting info from guys who-thats right-WORKED FOR/WITH THE YANKEES AND METS!!! I know that this may be too logical for some of you out there, but Mitchell didnt want to mention players about whom he had no evidence. But what of Sen. Mitchells ultimate intentions? Surely they are the eventual uncovering of all the steroid users on the Yankees and thier prosecution and imprisonment, right? Lets see his conclusion on that: "An exhaustive investigation attempting to identify every player that has used illegal substances would not be beneficial." He said, there is gonna be no way to definitively prove or disprove whether each individual player juiced, so lets test everyone from here on out and let bygones be bygones. Seems pretty reasonable to me. Maybe we should all follow his advice.