Pardon Barry Bonds

Baseball writers and political analysts have speculated that George W. Bush might pardon Roger Clemens for lying to Congress before leaving office.

That would be a mistake; Clemens asked for the Congressional hearing so if he lied at it he has nobody to blame but himself.

Instead, Bush should pardon Barry Bonds. By doing so, Bush would be correcting his own mistake as President.

The ongoing prosecution of Bonds has been a costly witch hunt at taxpayer expense, and it all came because the Bush administration made steroids in baseball one of its issues with which to divert the American people's attention from more serious problems.

The Bonds case has dragged on for more than five years. The real villains in the Balco case -- the people who ran the company and provided steroids to athletes -- are done with their sentences.

Greg Anderson, Bonds' personal trainer, spent more time in prison -- more than a year -- for refusing to testify against Bonds than Victor Conte, founder of the company, did for all of his crimes. Conte was sentenced to four months in prison and four months of house arrest.

Here's what Bonds is charged with: lying to a grand jury about using steroids. He was subpoenaed to appear to testify in private, along with a mere handful of other players.

From what we now know, if every player in MLB had been required to appear, we would have learned of hundreds of steroids users. But Bonds was the big fish for the Bush administration -- the arrogant, media-hating asshole who was about to break the home-run record.

Last year -- more than four years after his alleged false testimony -- Bonds was a free agent, but with the indictment hanging over his head he got not one contract offer. Considering his success as a hitter, it seems clear that some team would have wanted him for the minimum salary -- $400,000. Maybe Tampa Bay would have won the World Series with Bonds instead of Cliff Floyd.

Anyway, the indictment has already cost Bonds at least $400,000, not counting incentive clauses, playoff money, a contract this year, etc. Is that worse than the 4-month prison sentence Victor Conte got? Ask yourself: Would you rather spend 4 months in prison or pay a $400,000 fine? Keep in mind that their offenses are not at all equal: Conte founded a company to create designer drugs for athletes and mask them from detection. Bonds was a client of that company.

The indictment was so poorly written that it had to be refiled. This case has already cost US taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars, and taken investigators and prosecutors away from more serious crimes.

Bush has always been responsible for this. With one stroke of his pen he can end it.

I am NOT arguing that Barry Bonds is a good guy. But for what he's accused of doing, he has been punished enough. So have the American people.