It's just my opinion, I could be wrong

So I don't know if anyone here read about the Barry Bonds Congressional fiasco; if not, I'll give a brief rundown. In 2003, Congress, apparently not having any national business whatsoever to attend to, decided to get involved in a private sports debate, and forced Barry Bonds to give testimony before a grand jury about steroid use. During that testimony, Bonds said as little as possible (as anyone would under the circumstances), answering only direct questions and not offering additional detail. They then had a trail to try to convict him of lying, which ended with a hung jury. Frustrated in their initial witch-hunt, Congress instead decided to try Bonds for lying to the grand jury, which of course they couldn't prove, because it didn't happen. Instead, they prosecuted him for "being evasive" and "not saying enough to incriminate himself", which would seem like an equally far-fetched theory. Here's the obscene part, though: they convicted him ! ...

I was reading the highlights from Obama's recent address to the nation to push his agenda ( http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/06/politics/obama-speech/?hpt=hp_t1 ), and it nearly hurt to read. Not, of course, because the speech wasn't eloquent; I'm confident Obama's writers crafted something with all the bells and whistles. Also not because it wasn't well-read off a teleprompter; I didn't see the actual speech, but I'm wager Obama did a good job of delivering the carefully-crafted message. No, the hurt was more of a visceral reaction to the dishonesty, the half-truths, the creative spin... all the things which just aggravate those of us who desperately wish the voting populace was more well-informed and intelligent, so we wouldn't ever risk having leaders like Obama. All in all, though, it was just another standard Obama speech... so why does it deserve a blog post? Well, you can think of this as another public service post, to enumerate some of the distortions...