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February 1, 2008

Time For Specter To Get A Hobby

Arlen Specter wants to get to the bottom of an obstruction of justice that burns to the soul of America. Someone destroyed videotapes that evidenced a crime, and Specter wants an investigation. Was it the CIA who destroyed the videotapes? FBI? BATF? OMB? No -- it was the NFL:

With the Super Bowl fast approaching, a senior Republican senator says he wants the NFL to explain why it destroyed evidence of the New England Patriots cheating scandal.

"I am very concerned about the underlying facts on the taping, the reasons for the judgment on the limited penalties and, most of all, on the inexplicable destruction of the tapes," said Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., in a Thursday letter to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.

Specter, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the matter could put the league's antitrust exemption at risk.

"Their antitrust exemption has been on my mind for a long time," he said in a Capitol Hill news conference.

I can't think of a better example of what happens when people live in the Beltway for too long. Every little annoyance suddenly becomes a federal issue. In this case, we're not even talking about a crime, we're talking about a violation of NFL rules -- which the NFL already addressed.

How does Specter come to the conclusion that this is a federal issue? He relates it to the federal antitrust exemption, claiming it's been on his mind "for a long time". That reflects the mind of Arlen Specter, but not the exemption, which only applies to the aggregation of broadcast rights for the league. The only way the exemption would even play into this story is to use for extortion to strongarm the league into some sort of action.

So what do we have here? We have a senior Senator sticking his nose into a violation of league rules that got resolved months ago, threatening a private business that has committed no violation of the law, just coincidentally two days before their biggest game of the year.

Awwww ... does Arlen miss the spotlight?

I'm no great fan of term limits, but this isn't a bad argument for them.

UPDATE: Corrected all instances of "Spector" to "Specter". My apologies.

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