USADA Needs to Obey U.S. Constitution: Suspects Are Innocent Until PROVEN Guilty

I've been following the Lance Armstrong story with a growing sense of anger.

To recap, Armstrong dropped his challenges against the U.S. taxpayer-funded USADA (United States Anti-Doping Agency), and the USADA took that to be an admission of guilt and stripped Armstrong of all his Tour de France achievements and recognitions.

That isn't right.

The USADA has to obey the U.S. Constitution, especially since they are U.S. taxpayer-funded, and they've targeted an American citizen.  All suspects are INNOCENT until PROVEN guilty, and they haven't proven anything.  They say they have evidence, but they haven't shown it to a judge.

Armstrong also doesn't have to incriminate himself, according to the Fifth Amendment.  And he hasn't said that he cheated, either.  He said he was tired of being tied up in court, with no end in sight.

If Armstrong had said that he couldn't afford really expensive lawyers to defend himself, would the USADA have said that it was an admission of guilt?  According to them, the answer is YES.  And that's also unconstitutional.

Also, if they had proof that Armstrong was using performance-enhancing drugs since the mid-1990s, why didn't they ban him then?  Why did they wait until after the guy won seven Tours, and retired from cycling to go after him?  That just smells of a political agenda.

Congress needs to reign in the USADA, and cut their funding if they're going to grandstand like this, and abuse their authority.

I'm not much of a cycling fan, but I'm less of a fan of witch hunts, which this definitely is.  Lance Armstrong has done a ton of good with his celebrity status and his Foundation., which the USADA can NEVER strip away.

There need to be some changes made to the way that this agency conducts business.

I don't care if Armstrong is a champion cyclist or not.  But proper procedures MUST be followed.

Politics 2012: Ho Hum

I'm waiting for President Obama and Governor Romney to start acting Presidential, and not like a pair of eighth graders engaged in a name-calling contest.  When they do, I'll start paying attention to their actual messages.  A few notes:

President Obama ran on nothing in 2008, and won, due to the fact that he was not running against John McCain; he was running against the highly unpopular President Bush and the tanking economy.  He's running on nothing in 2012, and since he has nothing constructive to say, he's throwing nothing but  mud in Romney's direction.

And Romney's been so busy dodging Obama's negative accusations that he hasn't gotten his own message out.  The addition of Representative Ryan to the Romney ticket will help Romney get his message out; I think this is good news for the overall Presidential campaign.

The sooner they start talking about issues, the better.