President-elect Barack Obama has selected Phil Schiliro as the Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs. Schiliro will play an important role in the Obama-Biden administration as Obama’s top White House Congressional liason. Phil Schiliro was Chief of Staff to Representative Henry Waxman, the chairman for the House Oversight Committee (”Philip Schiliro, Veteran Congressional Aide, Named To Obama’s Staff,” November ).
Phil Schiliro, as Waxman’s Chief of Staff, is given most of the credit for initiating the Congressional hearings on anabolic steroid use in baseball after reading Jose Canseco’s book Juiced. The Congressional grandstanding at the steroid witch-hunt was also known as “Restoring Faith in America’s Pastime: Evaluating Major League Baseball’s Efforts to Eradicate Steroid Use” Read more
Barack Obama made an unintentional attack on Joe Biden, his running mate on the Democratic Presidential ticket, for his long legislative record on anabolic steroids. Joseph Biden has been on an anti-steroid crusade for almost two decades; Biden is responsible for key legislation criminalizing anabolic steroids and diverting significant government resources in a misguided attempt at fighting steroids in sports.
Obama attacked Joseph Biden’s position on anabolic steroids (without specificially attributing it to his vice presidential candidate by name) on ESPN Radio’s “Mike & Mike in the Morning“. Obama suggested that congressional obsession with anabolic steroids was largely a waste of time and that the federal government had far more important things to worry about (”Obama Differs from McCain on Steroids,” October 2).
“I gotta admit that seeing a lot of congressional hearings around steroid use is not probably the best use of congressional time,” Obama said.
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But Obama suggested this morning there were more important things on which the government should focus.
“Kids are watching sports. They’re modeling themselves on athletes,” Obama said. “It’s a serious problem, but it’s one that you want to see the leagues themselves handle in a more appropriate way. We’ve got nuclear weapons and a financial meltdown to worry about. We shouldn’t be worrying about steroids as much as I think sometimes we do.”
Some people think that Barack Obama was criticizing the Republican presidential nominee John McCain which he was most likely attempted to do. But Obama’s campaign disagrees with this interpretation of his comments.
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Advocates of steroid law reform are very disappointed that Democratic presidential candidate Barrack Obama selected Senator Joseph Biden as his vice presidential nominee. Senator Biden was the chief architect of the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 1990 that criminalized the possession of anabolic steroids for non-medical purposes. Biden also wrote the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 2004 which opened the door for significantly harsher penalties for steroid possession and steroid distribution; this has resulted in the increased prosecution of steroid users over the past few years who are treated as dangerous criminals with the worst penalties for the non-medical use of steroids in history. Senator Biden has been on his anti-steroid crusade for almost two decades.
Steroid law expert Rick Collins revealed in testimony to the United States Sentencing Commission that the typical non-medical steroid users has been misrepresented to the public and to legislators.
