Among the various fools, lunatics, and decent men presumed to have some aspirations to the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 are three senators: Bill Frist, Rick Santorum, and John McCain.

The first, in his capacity as Senate majority leader, presided over the bizarre intrusion of the federal government into a dispute over whether or not the husband of a dead woman could have her feeding tube removed. The second has stated repeatedly that he does not believe in a constitutional right to privacy. The third doesn’t usually get classed with the first two, but after yesterday’s introduction of the Clean Sports Act of 2005, he should be.

This bill is ridiculous, and should offend every American. This isn’t because athletes have the right to use steroids (they don’t), or because baseball and other sports are adequately addressing the issue of performance-enhancing drugs (they aren’t). It isn’t even because of the ignorance of the issue that went into the making of this contemptible piece of legislation; the bill would be tripe even if it did reflect an understanding of the inadequacies of the international standards it proposes be applied to American sports, a humble appreciation of the enormous difficulties faced by regulatory bodies, and a sensitive awareness of the problems inherent in the draconian policies it proposes.

The problem is far more basic: Senator McCain, along with Reps. Tom Davis and Henry Waxman, has as much business directly intervening in Major League Baseball’s drug policies as Bud Selig and Donald Fehr have intervening in the drug policies of Congress.

This isn’t a baseball issue or a football issue or a basketball issue. It has to be seen in its proper context – that of a supposedly conservative Congress feeling ever more free to intrude ever more crudely into matters in which it has no business whatsoever, completely throwing over the idea of limited government in its zeal to court votes.

How, exactly, does this legislation square with the 14th Amendment? Singling out citizens for invasive drug testing on the basis of their profession when there is no compelling reason to do so (as in the case of soldiers, for instance), doesn’t sound to me like equal protection under the law. How would people react if Congress decided that musicians should be tested for drugs because children admire them?

How does this legislation square with the Fourth, Eighth, and Ninth Amendments? Some senators may be unaware of this, but those deal with the right of citizens to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, and the limited and specific nature of federal power. An athlete forced by law, rather than contract, to make himself available 24 hours a day, year-round, for at least five unannounced, random drug tests that require him to urinate on command might reasonably claim that these amendments are not being applied to him.

More basically, under what authority is this legislation being proposed? Baseball enjoys an exemption from anti-trust law on the dubious legal premise that it is not interstate commerce. Congress, I remember from civics class, regulates commerce among the states, not within them.

And most basic of all, when exactly were senators working on this inane bill? Perhaps the recent crisis over judicial nominees could have been averted if more senatorial staffers had been tending to it rather than brewing up this fetid stew.

Congress has a real and important role to play in the drugs crisis in American sports. It holds enormous leverage over all sports, and over baseball in particular. But if it wants to act in a useful manner, it has several options that make far more sense than the proposed Clean Sports Act.

Congress can close tax loopholes that allow team owners to profit from stadiums built at public expense. It can revoke MLB’s anti-trust exemption. It can use the bully pulpit to pressure the game into meaningful drug policies. Revoking the tax write-off that allows ball clubs to profit from businessmen entertaining clients at games at public subsidy would cost owners tens of millions of dollars. This sort of indirect intervention is infinitely preferable to crude remedies like an ill-conceived piece of possibly unconstitutional legislation.

McCain, who has in the past proposed a variety of legislative remedies to baseball’s ills without actually introducing them on the Senate floor, seems to understand this.

“The introduction of this bill demonstrates the continued seriousness with which Congress views this issue,” he said yesterday. “It should be seen as a renewed invitation to the leagues to clean up their sports on their own without government interference.”

At least McCain doesn’t seem to view government interference as good in its own right. That separates him from several of his colleagues. But the real issue here, not to be forgotten, is that we’ve reached a point where the threat of government interference actually has some credibility to it. That’s infinitely more frightening than the prospect of a game in which nobody is clean.