US Persecution of Barry Bonds Like Online Gambling Disgrace

Operators of online gambling sites have been victims for years of this kind of underhanded and horrifying strategy, using strongarm techniques and extortion methods.

Federal agents raided the home of Barry Bond's trainer's mother-in-law this week, in a disgusting and unethical attempt to pressure the trainer to testify against the baseball star in court. The slimy tactic cannot help but be reminiscent to members of the online casino industry, who have seen US law enforcement pervert the concept of justice to achieve its goal.

Operators of online gambling sites have been victims for years of this kind of underhanded and horrifying strategy, using strongarm techniques and extortion methods organized crime never imagined to pressure witnesses to testify and defendants to plea. The practice of striking at loved ones to coerce cooperation seems straight from Nazi Germany, not the freedom loving USA.

Greg Anderson, Bonds' personal trainer and friend, has thus far refused to cooperate with the ridiculously expensive and spiteful witch hunt the feds have unleashed against Bonds. Anderson spent a year in prison for contempt of court rather than help railroad his friend.

The day Anderson was released, his wife was informed she was the target of a tax investigation. Now twenty armed agents have burst into her mother's house to make sure these two women criminal masterminds are not destroying society as we know it.

The abuse of power by the US Department of Justice has gone on long enough. Regardless of whether Bonds took steroids, the worst crimes in this case are being committed by investigators and prosecutors. Like Internet gambling, the methods used to pursue the case are both a horrible waste of taxpayer money and far more criminal than the offenses being investigated.

In the Bonds case, the leaking of grand jury testimony by prosecutors is a major federal crime, designed to prevent a trial by media without the due process of a real trial, exactly as Bonds has suffered. Now the use of discretionary powers to intimidate families makes one nauseated.

Anderson's attorney, Mark Geragos, noted, "Even the mafia spares the women and children."

After Ruby Ridge, Waco, Elian Gonzalez, Golden Palace, Partygaming and Anurak Dikshit, and Barry Bonds, it can only be hoped that the Obama administration will end the slippery slide of the last twenty years toward a police state hat acts as if it is above the law it supposedly enforces.