I found this essay wonderfully ambiguous. I'm still not sure where Ms. Sey comes down on the subject of "performance enhancers." Seems like she's still working that one out.

After thinking about this for many years (not that it matters, my opinion with 5 bucks'll get you a machiatto at Starbucks..) I've come to the reluctant conclusion that there should be no rules at all about what athletes put into their bodies.

Since it is obvious that:

A) Athletes have been juicing since pre-history, and

B) it's virtually impossible to figure out where the line is between a substance you can take and one you can't--this essay made that pretty clear..and

C) it's virtually impossible to STOP athletes from taking performance enhancers, and

D) it's virtually impossible to catch all the violators...

let's just call it a day, and let athletes do whatever they want to their bodies. Competition will be fair, since anyone can use whatever they want. You don't want to use anything? That's cool. You may not ever win anything, but that's the deal.

If an athlete wants to shorten their life and die in misery from using chemicals they shouldn't, I say, let them. We haven't outlawed cigarettes and alchohol, and I really fail to see the difference between those substances and anything else you care to name. It's merely a matter of degree.

Plus, it'd really be entertaining to watch people compete totally wired up on amphetamines and steroids and EPO and god-knows-what-all. The competition would be as much about who could withstand the most "enhancement" as about who actually wins. I kinda like that. And imagine the records that would be broken. No more asterisks either. If a baseball slugger wants to turn himself into the Hulk with steroids and guzzle amphetamines just before a game, and hit balls into the parking lot all day, that's entertainment!

I mean, hell, if cyclist Tommy Simpson had had better genetics he might have won that stage, high on the speed and booze he swallowed, instead of dying on Mont Ventoux. Before EPO, speed and booze were the "performance enhancers" of choice in the professional peleton.

And baseball players have been snacking on speed for as long as anyone can remember.

No more rules. No more testing. No more nothing. All is fair. Think about the delicious, complex schadenfreude we could all indulge, watching athletes do literally superhuman things, knowing they were killing themselves in the process. A little like watching a re-run of the Mancini-Kim fight, knowing Kim was doomed. Sick? Yes. Pretty typical of the human animal? Absolutely.

As it is in all other human temptation: you can NEVER stop a human being from doing shit that's bad for them. Never. Ever. It's a fool's game.

Joan and Mary Elizabeth captured my feelings exactly. Edwards was never very authentic as a politician, he just seemed to stand for the progressive side better than anyone recently, so I voted for him, although at the time I was equally ok with Clinton and Obama.

Seems to me he'd have been smarter to make the admission on a smaller stage, in an interview with a regional newspaper, say, release a written statement, then disappear from view.

It seems obvious he's trying to keep his political career, but after that performance, as Joan notes, he's toast.

The fact that he could do this, while planning to run for president, after Bill Clinton's abject lesson, shows such a stunning lack of judgement...boggles the mind.

Still, the really appalling thing about all this is that our media make a big deal about Edwards and his private life when he's not even *in* politics at this point, while, for the most part, studiously ignoring Ron Suskind's book detailing how Cheney and Bush lied us into war, killed untold thousands of Iraqis and made millions homeless, killed over 4000 american soldiers and maimed thousands more, all for their own political benefit, and no other particularly compelling reason.

Now, THAT's the crime. Where's our media on that?

in this country, you can sue for anything at all, if you can find a lawyer to file the paperwork..or you can even do it yourself, I believe. Never looked into that part.

But you can sue for anything. No doubt some lawyer figured the airlines had deep pockets and so was willing to go to bat for Osteen. Strikes me as a sign of a sick society when you can sue someone for anything. Some stuff should just be thrown out before they cost the defendant anything..

If you missed Dave Davies interview with Suskind today on Fresh Air, go listen to it on the Fresh Air site.

Suskind establishes an absolutely damning case against Cheney and Bush and Tenet. There is no question now in my mind that there is clear, smoking-gun proof here of impeachable crimes against the United States.

Nancy Pelosi? Are you listening? Where are the impeachment hearings? Cheney and Bush should go to jail, and Suskind has just written a thorough and complete brief for the prosecution.

--personally, I've thought for awhile that Pelosi got the Speaker job after a clear promise to Steny Hoyer and his crew of quisling democrats that there would be no impeachment hearings-- That true Nancy? If so, how in HELL do you look yourself in the mirror in the morning?

Hoyer is just a corrupt hack. No conscience and no principles. But you, Nancy. Surely you were better, once.

jesus christ man. You are better at ignoring the elephant in the room than any troll I've ever read.

Did you, by chance, actually READ the article in Harper's by Frank? If you did, and you can actually say with a straight face that there is no "culture of corruption" in the GOP, then you really are in need of professional help, and some serious medication, because you are in a denial so profound I doubt there's any way to correct it.