http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff1400/fv01386.htm

and I will claim that any one person or group of persons is thoroughly arrogant to be monolithic. 

It is that difference that, perhaps, caused the topic question to begin. There is a tradition of honor and distinction that the Presidency bestows upon the president. While corruption and scandal are not new to presidents, in almost all cases, the president elected to the Presidency has risen above themselves to make their tenure, if nothing else, an honourable one.  Simply look at the records of presidents (both pre-Presidency and in-Presidency) such as Ulysses S. Grant, William Howard Taft, or either of the Roosevelts as exemplars of this perspective.

Yes, I'm what might be considered an 'overactive' contributor. And I challenge anyone within this forum who have already contributed to say to their friends: "Dig in. We want to have a say in the world. There are already major people who have had some input here. Is it not possible for those here to not only have a contribution in the world but are willing to share it publicly?"

Perhaps I am overestimating the ability for this forum to have a real effect. Perhaps I am waisting time better served to my own work. For some reason, that I don't quite understand, I don't think so.  I suppose part of that *un-understood* reason is the same effect I get when I mentor or advise someone I see of having promise.

And I *do* contribute locally - as either a mentor, a gadfly to my artistic friends, or a personal contributor. I don't live in this forum as a vacuous intellectual misanthrope. All of my contributions here are subsequent to and in accordance with my own philosophical system.

And I am making a rather broad assumption: that the majority of people here are contributing actively within their own particular part of the world at large, and not just showing up to throw a verbal nickel into the internet version of Ellis Island. One can only hope. 

By the time they reach high school, or that age group in AAU organizations, the notion of win at any cost is so ingrained that they start using all kinds of extra substances (including steriods, presumably to increase muscle mass).

Here is where a glaring difference appears between professional baseball in the US, and professional football and basketball. Have you ever noticed how few baseball players come out of college teams? More now than in the previous years of baseball, but still a relative minority. It seems that this is because once a player goes into AAU or other high school level program, if there is even a rumour of them going to college for an education, they would be dropped from the program they were already in. And don't even mention the central and south american recruiting systems that have burgeoned in the past twenty years. Can you say, right now, without looking it up, how many players from college systems were in the 2007 All Star Game (not even mentioning their names)? I can't.

In many of these minds, cheating will get you there. Once you're there, cheating will get you more. And a side question related to that last segment: how many players named in the Mitchell Report came out of college systems? I will not say with certainty, but I will hazard a guess: none.

1. Stop driving everywhere. That effects petroleum consumption, carbon emissions, and one's weight. Walk or bicycle, or at the very least use public transport. Yes, I know that for some it is a humiliation beyond comprehension to ride with "the po' folk". In a lot of cases I think people would find a surprise at who *actually* rides the buses, the Els, and other public conveyances. I certainly had no trouble getting around Manhattan on the subway, other than figuring out the usual point-A-to-point-B issues.
2. Unless one's profession requires living remotely (farming and ranching come to mind), think about why one feels the need to live somewhere that requires more than a couple of miles of driving to obtain daily necessities, or to commute to work. What is truly one's motivation for a home that is far removed from a community, and does not function in any productive fashion?
3. Lose weight. It takes more energy to haul obese people around; it costs more in the medical care to keep obese people at least functional (not to mention the chemical by-products from pharmaceutical manufacturing); it costs more to clothe them, and (rather obviously) to feed them. (see #1).
4. Pay attention not only to what one eats, but whence it comes, and the footprint it takes to produce. As an example: beef cattle are the least efficient in terms of the space required to produce by a fairly wide margin. I don't have the statistics that I read recently right at hand, but I think I'll track them down for the purposes of this discussion. If one needs meat (as I do on occasion), as the commercial says: Eat mor chikin. Or fish. Or rabbit. And, whenever possible, eat local produce (minimal transportation, refrigeration and packaging).
5. Pay attention to packaging. Is it necessary to buy everything in hermetically sealed plastic which will require a couple of centuries at minimum to bio-degrade, or packaged in metal?
6. Stop making babies. Encourage other people to stop making babies. It's environmentally irresponsible (see the first five items, and multiply by the number of children). It is socially irresponsible, since so many of them will be more likely to be part of a problem than part of a solution.
7. Vacations: they're a psychological appendage which for practical purposes is about as useful as wings on a chicken; they are a barbaric leftover from the industrial revolution. There is so much to be done right where one lives - instead of stuffing kith and kin into the minivan or SUV and driving all over the place, find constructive work to do (that is dissociated with one's 'day job') within one's community. "A change of work is the best rest." [Conan Doyle]

Just a few thoughts - anyone with functioning brains can extrapolate from there.

• The Manufacturers are unwilling to participate except to the level of vehicle efficiency mandated by the government. The government is not going to change the efficiency improvement levels that are already in place. And the efficiency improvements do not sufficiently address things like trucks, SUVs, and the like.
• The Consumer is not going to go for such vehicles any time soon. The average consumer is only partly interested in fuel efficiency - size and amenities in a vehicle are also very much in the consumer's mind when a purchase is being considered. Then there are the aftermarket products, such as high-rise modifications to make a truck look as though it stomp a Saturn without going into four wheel drive, or a 500-watt stereo system (which often requires an oversized alternator to power, which, in turn, requires more fuel to power). If you look at the sales ratio of truck/SUV vs. passenger vehicles, and do the math of the comparable fuel ratings based on that ratio, you'll see what I mean. People don't want nice, efficient transportation, they want the ability to intimidate the 'nice' vehicles with something nearly the size of a half-track. They also don't care that those of us who strictly walk, bicycle, or use public transportation have an equal right to the road. I do all three (and don't own a vehicle), and it can get ugly at times. How many people do you know that hop into their hummer to go to the store for a gallon of milk? Bleah.

And, in my opinion, television could just deal with it.

Babe Ruth had his beer and dogs; Paul Hornung (self-admittedly) had a near-all-night binge before Super Bowl I; Joe DiMaggio had Marilyn. Scandalous? Hardly. Public faux-pas? Certainly. Damaging to the profession? Not so far as I can tell. Ruth smacked homers. Hornung blew by the Raiders. DiMaggio was, by all accounts, a baseball hero.

Those of us who follow sports in general, I believe, expect a certain level of ethical behaviour from the participants, especially the professionals.  As baseball is arguably the most perfect game, I am hopeful that those in charge step back and take a practical and beneficial view of their responsibility to the players, the organizations, and especially the fans.

A side note on the participation of government in professional sports:
Professsional baseball is a business, first and foremost. Like theatre, it takes butts in seats to make things work, to pay the players, the organization, the light bill, etc. Part of the documentation linked in the previous post includes transcripts of RICO hearings on baseball, which, if I'm not mistaken, are within the purview of government. Since performance enhancers provide a non-level playing field in sports for various reasons, I will suggest (until convinced otherwise, by legal means) that such related hearings are also within the purview of government.

I will agree with other commentators that the tendency for the Clemens hearing to become bipartisanly ineffective made it a strutting contest between Democrats and Republicans. Reps. Waxman and Shays certainly (albeit indirectly) clashed swords interestingly at the end, leaving both Clemens and McNamee rather scathed. Unfortunately Clemens and McNamee (and others in the very near future, I suspect) have set themselves up for it.

• Football as an allegory for war
• Basketball as an allegory for street traffic

I'm going to venture the connection and change it from the original for baseball

• Baseball as an allegory for law and order

In football, there are the two teams (combatants) being overseen by the referees (international courts/governing bodies). 

In basketball, there are also two teams, but also simultaneously ten individuals whose ebb and flow is monitored by traffic cops - the essential rule is 'no harm, no foul'.

In baseball, (in my view, at least) the pre-eminent personages on the field are not the two teams, nor the indivudal players, but the umpires.

In the first two, it is relatively rare to see a player ejected for kicking dirt on the referee's shoes (especially since basketball is played on hardwood). The coach or player may get tossed on an infrequent basis for an overabundance of badinage directed at the ref. Of course, Bob Knight is the pre-eminent exception - a flying chair is a bit more substantial than  a cloud of dirt. Football players almost never get tossed. I can only recall (vaguely) a handful of situations where a player gets the hook, and it's usually for a dangerous play on the field rather than abuse of a referee.

Now there's baseball. Players and managers regularly receive the regulatory finger towards the dugout for disputing plays, pitches (which nowadays is almost automatic), or just raising hell on general principle.

That being said...

All sports have rules a myriad of them that requires players, coaches/managers, and umpires to all have what almost amounts to a law degree. At the professional (and in certain cases, the college level), there are rules about activity and behaviour off the field as well as on. Gambling on games, certain types of public behaviour, and performance enhancing substances all have regulations applied to them.

Baseball, by my allegory, is the ethical touchstone for all the other popular sports in this country. It is still called the National Pastime. So is it any wonder that, given the currently-playing-out aftermath of the Mitchell Report, as well as the Congressional hearings which began three years ago, such a magnifying glass is aimed directly at baseball? Nothing of this magnitude has happened to this pastime since the Black Sox (although the seventies and eighties saw the amphetamine surge which was quashed in fairly short order by the organization).

I watched the first hearings wherein Mark McGuire, Jose Canseco, Bud Selig, and Donald Fehr (among others) 'testified' before a the Government Reform Committee. I will point to Selig and Fehr and suggest that their attitude and overall presence in that hearing was one of the sleaziest attempts at self-serving collusion I have seen since the double-play combination of Ehrlichmann-to-Haldeman-to-Mitchell. It made me sick to hear them.

For the transcripts of this hearing, go to this non-exclusive source. Unfortunately, the transcripts don't give the flavour of the arrogance and demeanor of the participants.

In a tag to the NBA All-Star Game last night, Chris Rock pointed out that competition in sports gives many cultures an affirmative resolution - someone wins, someone loses (with the interesting exception of futbol, and at some levels, hockey; this could provide some discussion all by itself). This provides a satisfaction missing from most people's lives.

Of course, it also has a polarizing, my city/country/province is better than yours, effect, which, I believe, is counter to what the world actually needs to resolve its real problems. Of course, isn't that, in part, why we are in this wonderful, thoughtful forum in the first place?

We'll know it when we see it.

I take art to bee seen in that same spirit. De gustibus non disputandum. [There is no accounting for taste]

And art has (almost) always reveled in that statement. Don't criticise what you don't understand. [Bob Dylan] 

This from www.usconstitution.net:

 [emphasis mine, for purpose of this discussion]

He attacked logic - it's bad theology.

One way to 'justify' faith, would be to read either Chesterton, or Aquinas. Both did a very elegant job, within their individual lights.