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Doping

By the standards of International Cycling, Barry Bonds wouldn’t be playing.

The scandal is massive. Bonnie DeSimone who used to write for the Trib, is covering the Tour for the Boston Globe again and gives the full story here.

I’ve never thought I was naive about doping in cycling. While I see no evidence Lance used performancing enhancing drugs after cancer, I’ve always said I wouldn’t be surpised if he did before cancer. Some recent stories suggest this may be the case, especially since Frankie Andreu corroborated his wife’s position–and Frankie can only get hurt by saying so.

The Inspector Javitz like French pursuit of him always seemed strange to me given since cancer he has been the most tested athlete on the planet and it’s now been disclosed, he was paying for the anti-doping program.

Instead of attacking Lance (and notice so far, no current members of Discovery are listed) the French press should have been going after the other teams.

Progressive States

Michael Madigan is a regular whipping boy for progressives, but he also illustrates important points about how to win and pass progressive policies.

Madigan doesn’t run large, loud campaigns to win as many seats as he can. He runs campaigns that keeps Democrats in the Majority and insulates them as much as possible from waves by localizing elections. That means not every District gets a strong challenger, but it does mean that other than 1994 the Illinois House has been Democratic since before I started voting.

Madigan is very much an institutionalist that people like to deride, but the reason for that is if you control the institution, you control the outcomes. When he was dealing with Republican Governors and/or Republican Governor it meant he could fund the programs he felt necessary and stop raids on social services where needed. But when freed of Pate Philip and a Republican Governor, we’ve seen a great deal of progressive legislation pass. Nathan Newman pointed out the success this winter.

I often make fun of Madigan for speaking rarely and smiling perhaps even less. But that’s the point, yelling loudly about policy isn’t governing. Sometimes you have to crash the gate. Other times, you just need to get to work. Many progressives claim to be more progressive than thou by how loudly the promote themselves instead of what they accomplished. I’ll take Mike Madigan over them anyday.

But fix the fricken web site people.