Eric Holder: Perjury for me -- but not for thee, Roger

Legendary Major League Baseball pitcher Roger Clemens faces a retrial for perjury for allegedly lying to Congress during a hearing. The U.S. Department of Justice and Congress spared no expense to try to put him into prison after he testified that he had not used steroids. (During his first trial, the federal prosecutor brought in hearsay "evidence" that the judge already had ruled inadmissible, which led to a mistrial.)

Fast forward to this year. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who ultimately is responsible for the Clemens prosecution, told Congress last May that he only had heard of the infamous "Operation Fast and Furious" just a few weeks before. However, as this article demonstrates, Holder had been briefed about this program on a number of occasions during the summer of 2010.

So, assuming that both Clemens and Holder have lied under oath, which action was worst? If Clemens lied, it was about something he had ingested into his body that may have let him throw a baseball longer (and faster) than otherwise may have been the case. Operation Fast and Furious, on the other hand, resulted in scores of people being murdered, shot down with weapons that the government purposely made sure got into the hands of Mexican drug gangs.

From what I can tell, however, the government thinks that what Clemens allegedly did was much worse. Eric Holder will not face a second of scrutiny, as I am sure that the White House and the New York Times will come to his aid. In fact, the NYT recently had an article that tried to whitewash the whole thing, claiming that only Republicans were making any noise about the memos. Holder will not have to worry about being indicted (especially since prosecutors are not in the habit of indicting themselves). There are "two Americas," but they are not rich and poor; they are the Ruling Political Classes -- and everyone else.