It's Their Pig Trough And You Can't Have Any Slop

Sports are not of any great interest to me, and I've barely noticed all the doping scandals because I don't read those pages. But I had to admire the attitude of GOP Rep. Davis of Virginia who had the chair of the House Committee on Government Reform, with oversight of the steroid use in baseball. He was using that position to declare that a group including George Soros shouldn't be allowed to purchase the "Nats" from Major League Baseball.

Moreover, Davis dID have a favorite, just happening to be a big Republican fundraiser - Fred Malek. Such reasoned arguments as that Soros is a supporter of legalization of marijuana and so shouldn't be involved with sports, or that Soros has partisan intentions in use of his earnings, kind of pale when you see what the real basis of these efforts had to be. His buddy wanted him to use his influence to be a spoiler of an otherwise aboveboard purchase attempt.

Some Republican lawmakers don't think George Soros should be permitted to
purchase a Major League Baseball team because he's too liberal and he has some
wacky notions. I must have been napping, and that's why I missed the part where
we became a country in which Democrats are no longer allowed to buy things. If lawmakers start banning people from owning ballclubs just because of their politics or because they have a few woo-woo ideas, there are going to be a lot of shuttered ballparks. Anybody who tries to say that MLB owners should meet a certain standard of political correctness will get knocked back on their butts every time by two simple words: Marge Schott.
(snip)
I don't much care about George Soros, and I don't care at all which rich guy gets the privilege of spending $400 million in heavy sugar on the Nats. But I do care when members of a ruling party start pushing people around, because next, it could be me. This is supposed to be the party that doesn't believe in government telling business or private citizens what to do.
(snip)
Davis doesn't bother to hide his agenda. He says straight out that baseball needs to cultivate some good will on Capitol Hill at the moment, given the steroid investigations, and that selling the team to billionaire Soros, a critic of President Bush and a massive financial supporter of liberal causes, would anger him.

"They could use some friends on the Hill right now, and this is not the way to make them," Davis said yesterday.

The outright thuggery of the Republics is getting to be more offensive every day. When the pig's trough they made out of the government which they refuse to serve is defended against all comers except their buddies, this is gang warfare instead of politics.

These thugs must be pursued with charges, with subpoenas, with investigations, and then with indictments. Using public positions to limit opportunities to your buds isn't public service, it's theft by deception.