Sports Illustrated will come down hard on Armstrong
 

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/201...ong/index.html

Why should Armstrong be held up as a paragon of virtue, and triumph of the will, while his competitors derides as cheats IF IN FACT Armstrong was ALSO CHEATING?

Yet, he defenders would have us believe that all the top guys in cycling were cheating, except for him, and somehow he managed to top them all.

OK.

It's interesting to see what the power of subpoena and and threat of perjury does.

or the prospects of being on the lecture tour?

I don't fault his competitors for cheating if that is the standard within the industry. I fault a waste of government funds investigating this.

You would think they would have something better to do with their time and our money.

Remember how you thought Armstrong's run was a fairytale? Yes, indeed, it was.

I think history will be especially unkind to those athletes that lied up to the very moment that final nail was hammered down.

Roger Clemens comes to mind.

I know you're a cynic about all things good. And in most of your endeavors of cynicism I am your older brother. But in this, Armstrong has stood the test of time and I hope the US government has egg on its face and that Armstrong nets a 100 Million Dollar award against the government for malicious prosecution.

Do I think it would be great if Lance was clean? Yes.

I just happen to not believe it. There is so much smoke here, that if there isn't any fire, then we may have to rethink what fire and smoke are.

So what's the further defense of Lance? That he is a nice guy? By all accounts, he is not. He is a prick. Rumors abound that he cheated on his wife, and thus left his kids to be raised in a single-parent home, just like.....hmmmmm....his despised father. Was he nice to his fellow athletes? No. Was he petty and vindictive? Yes.

But he raised money for cancer! Yes, he has. I'm sure Judas did a fair number of nice things too. Back in the day.

Let the truth come out, whatever it is.

And the truth is this: just about every remarkable cycling peformance in the Tour, in recent history, has been due to PEDs. You know, that moment, when a guy bursts away from the others at an ungodly speed? Guy gets busted, and the next year he is #70 in the pack. The sport has no credibility. And the guy who was on top, over it all, is slightly suspect. Justly slightly.

ESPN with some in-depth legal analysis:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/otl/n...ory?id=6054645

Frankly, this could be the sports trial of the century.

Here's the major deal.

The other culprits ended up testing positive. Lance never has.

And so I see others being all too happy to bring him down. Let's not have anybody clean, none at all, because you lament, they're all dirty so let's destroy the last one.

First, I don't care if they use enhancing drugs or not. They should play by the rules in place.

Second, there are de jure rules and de facto rules. The de jure rules say, "don't use enhancing drugs."

The de facto rules say, "don't get caught using enhancing rules."

Lance didn't get caught. So bribing or threatening others to apply new standards after the fact bother me.

He won according the rules in place.

He was an ass. Some competitors are that way. I doubt Judas did anything similar. I'm surprised you didn't pull a Nazi or Stalinistic example.

We should not use our money to glorify some asshole prosecutor. This is not the transit of harmful illegal drugs. This is not murder. This is not vote rigging. This is not stock manipulation, mortgage fraud. This is about racing.

I find it outrageous the US government endorses this. I hope the prosecutor dies of brain cancer.

Lance Armstrong, should he have cheated, has made how many tens of millions (hundreds?) off of that fraud?

He talks about running for office.....do we want that too?

Sorry, I don't buy the "it's ok because he didn't get caught, that was the rules of the game." That makes you the cynical one, not me. You want lies to prosper--THAT is cynicism.

Lies do prosper. Case in point, Obama. They always will.

In the field of sport, he was more honest than the next guy. I see it more like hooking your guy in basketball, whatever the guys get away with is the de facto rule. This is not a question of moral ethos, positive law but rather normative law.