I have little use for Roger Clemens. It’s bad enough that he pitched for the Yankees and Red Sox, and tormented the Tigers in the process. If he also used performance-enhancing drugs, then as far as I’m concerned he can attempt to do what Dick Cheney told Patrick Leahy to do.

But about this whole business of indicting him for “lying to Congress”: OK, I guess that’s a serious, serious crime because Congress is big and important and official and more highly esteemed than even the commissioner of baseball or something. So that’s why lying to Congress is right up there with failing to pay Social Security taxes on your nanny. It’s the kind of evil that sends chills down the spine!

Con a con man.

Or so the honorables would have us believe.

The first person I personally remember getting in trouble for lying to Congress was Oliver North, who had sold weapons to Iran behind Congress’s back and diverted the money into the hands of the anti-communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua. This was in 1987, and the Democratic majority in those days was not unlike the one we have today, particularly in its disdain for any effort America might make on behalf of freedom around the globe.

The arms-to-Iran part I did not like. The money-to-the-Contras part was freaking awesome. And it was that second part that bothered the luminaries who dragged Ollie up to Capitol Hill, not so much because they gave a rip about him, but because they were hoping this was their chance to bring down the presidency of Ronald Reagan. When Ollie made them look like utter fools in his nationally televised testimony (this was before everything that ever happens anywhere was nationally televised; it was kind of a big deal), they retaliated by charging him with “lying to Congress.”

Ooh! That did sound serious.

But here’s what I would like to know: If lying to Congress is such a serious crime, because Congress is so very very very very important, should you be exempt from this oh-so-righteous law if you lie to Congress as part of your duties as a member of Congress?

Because if that’s the case, don’t they need to charge Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters with this same crime for claiming they never did anything wrong? Don’t they need to charge every Democrat who voted for ObamaCare, because they all claimed in the floor debates that it would reduce the deficit, even though they knew they were using cooked numbers?

Don’t they need to indict any one of them who claims to be concerned about the rising national debt, or about what his or her constituents have to say, only to turn around and support more worthless deficit spending while ducking in-district town halls that might give their constituents a chance to actually be heard?

No one lies to Congress more than members of Congress themselves, and in the course of doing so, they are also lying to the American people about matters far more important than whether Roger Clemens juiced before facing the Mariners on a Tuesday night in June.

I don’t want to minimize Clemens’s drug use, lying or cheating, all of which I find detestable. It’s just hard to get worked up over someone lying to the biggest bunch of douchebags on the face of the Earth.

What is the recommended sentence for lying to the people who elected you? I guess it’s not being elected anymore. That doesn’t seem sufficient to me, considering what they do to people who lie to them. But I guess I’ll just have to take solace in the growing certainty that, sufficient or not, it’s coming.

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