Rep. Tom “Any Time, Any Matter Jurisdiction” Davis and his fellow Republicans are threatening Major League Baseball with repercussions should it allow George Soros to become a co-owner of the Washington Nationals.

“I think Major League Baseball understands the stakes,” said Government Reform Chairman Tom Davis (R), the Northern Virginia lawmaker who recently convened high-profile steroid hearings. “I don’t think they want to get involved in a political fight.”

Davis, whose panel also oversees District of Columbia issues, said that if a Soros sale went through, “I don’t think it’s the Nats that get hurt. I think it’s Major League Baseball that gets hurt. They enjoy all sorts of exemptions” from anti-trust laws.

Let’s not mince words, here. This is absolutely unacceptable behavior from a public official. Perhaps it’s to be expected from a guy like Davis. But it’s despicable. Davis is making a public threat to sanction a private industry for doing business with a political opponent.

The funny thing is, this apparently is legal. But if a few friends and I want to chip in to buy a television commercial to criticize Davis for such a bald abuse of his power in the last days of his next reelection campaign, the law says we aren’t allowed.

Frankly, I think he ought to be stripped of his chairmanship.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 27th, 2005 at 12:42 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.