Priorities

Ours are all fucked up.

A federal grand jury is considering whether baseball superstar Barry Bonds committed perjury during his 2003 testimony in the BALCO steroids case, two people familiar with the proceedings said on Thursday.

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office declined to comment on the investigation, which was first reported earlier in the day on CNN.com.

According to his lawyer, Bonds, the holder of the single-season home-run record, told the BALCO federal grand jury in 2003 that he never knowingly used steroids.

Yet a new book alleges that the San Francisco Giant player actively used steroids for at least five seasons, prompting Major League Baseball to launch a probe headed by former Senator George Mitchell into doping in the American pastime.

Meanwhile, no grand jury is investigating this.

A White House document shows that executives from big oil companies met with Vice President Cheney's energy task force in 2001 -- something long suspected by environmentalists but denied by industry officials testifying before Congress.

The document, obtained by The Washington Post, shows that officials from Exxon Mobil Corp., Conoco (before its merger with Phillips), Shell Oil Co. and BP America Inc. met in the White House complex with the Cheney aides who were developing a national energy policy, parts of which became law and parts of which are still being debated.

In a joint hearing last week of the Senate Energy and Commerce committees, the chief executives of Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips said their firms did not participate in the 2001 task force. The president of Shell Oil said his company did not participate "to my knowledge," and the chief of BP America Inc. said he did not know.

So it appears that we're more interested in investigating the testimony of a baseball player whose alleged actions, while unseemly, have no impact beyond the sport and his own health than we are in investigating the testimony of oil executives, whose greed reverberates throughout our economy and affects everyone in the world, whether they drive or not.

Please spare me the "Bonds' action sends the wrong message to children" crap. What message is sent by investigating Bonds while Big Oil slips by without a second glance? "Kids, if you're going to cheat, make sure the Vice President is in on it." Or perhaps "Kids, you should never lie to a grand jury, but lying to Congress is no problem."