The former Oakland A's star will join a number of other past and present MLB players before a congressional committee investigating steroids in baseball.  On Wednesday, Canseco's request for immunity from prosecution was denied.  According to a spokesman for committee chairman Tom Davis, no witnesses have been or will be granted immunity.

This statement from Congressman Davis' camp begs the question: Why bother to subpoena past and present MLB stars if they will predictably invoke their Fifth Amendment rights?  To what purpose does this serve?

The answer is simple.  Congress is not particularly interested in the juicy details of who injected whom with what; they can pick up a copy of Canseco's book for that information.  What Congress can accomplish today is to force multi-millionaire athletes to invoke their Fifth Amendment rights before the world and thus behave like common criminals.  Because no matter how much Americans claim they honor and revere the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the simple fact is that most people conclude that if a person invokes the Fifth Amendment, he must have something to hide.

If Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, Curt Schilling, and others refuse to answer any of the committee's questions, then Congress has won the first battle toward forcing Major League Baseball to adopt a drug testing policy with teeth.