Jumping To Conclusions

Hoping to cash in on the recent publicity, a jackassCalifornia state senator plans to introduce a bill which would mandate that Major League Baseball test its players for steroids.

"We will use the powers of the state to notify any professional sport -- we're not singling out baseball -- that they must have policy and they must show evidence that their athletes are tested once a year," Perata said.

Teams would be required to file a steroid-testing plan with the state Athletics Commission. Athletes would be tested for the presence of steroids, which are illegal without a doctor's prescription.

The Athletics Commission was founded in 1924 to look out for the welfare of boxers and has expanded to include martial arts but has no role over baseball.

The bill states that professional athletic associations could not hold events in the state without an approved steroid plan, but details on how that provision would be enforced are still be developed.

Words fail me. California has a huge deficit, the legislature has screwed up energy regulation beyond repair, and their governor is corrupt. And yet this moron, who has apparently never worked in private industry in his life, feels the need to "solve" MLB's "problems."

Aside from the sheer stupidity, it seems to me that there's a constitutional problem here; if the state can't drug test people without probable cause -- and in general, that's the case under the fourth amendment -- then can they mandate that it be done by a sports league? This is framed as a regulation of an industry, but I don't know that the state should be able to circumvent the constitution by so doing.

I don't generally go in for promoting specific action on this site, but in this case, I'll make an exception. Go to this moron's website and fill in his feedback form to tell him what you think of him and his idea (which you can track here).

And since I'm being critical, I suppose I ought to give kudos where they're appropriate:

Sen. Rico Oller, R-San Andreas, called the idea "clearly bad public policy."

"I would go for it if also all public officials -- including the Legislature, the attorney general and the governor -- were required to submit to drug testing," Oller said. "This is a tremendous overreach. These people are not even California citizens. There is a certain arrogance to not only regulate every aspect of California citizens' lives, but also to regulate those who are not citizens of the state."

Wow, a legislator who actually sounds sane.