On the 12th of December, an entry at TheHill.com led with this paragraph:

Lobbyists and congressional aides are bracing for former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell’s (D-Maine) report into steroids abuse by Major League Baseball (MLB) players, which is expected to lead to hearings and perhaps legislation on Capitol Hill early next year.

Well, today's the day. Andy Pettitte spent two and a half hours this morning giving a deposition to Congressional investigators about his former teammate Roger Clemens’s challenge to the Mitchell report on performance-enhancing drugs in baseball.

Um.

Would somebody for G-d's sake please point out to me precisely where in the Constitution the U.S. House of Representatives is empowered to investigate the perfectly legal use of perfectly legal substances by private citizens?

I have no idea how many tax dollars have been spent on this issue, but I'd be astonished if the total didn't run into the many tens of millions, at least. That's obscene. I mean actually, obnoxiously obscene. I don't care whether you're a liberal or a conservative, surely you must be able to conceive of a better use for your hard-earned pay than this.

Personally, as a taxpayer who doesn't give a rip about baseball, the guys who play it, or what they inject, imbibe, insert, infuse, or otherwise employ to transform their bodies, I'd like a friggin' refund.