What a waste of money! We are in two wars and we decide to spend our taxpayer dollars on this! It is a witch hunt! These are just a few lines you may have heard recently regarding the Barry Bonds perjury trial, especially here in Northern California where Bonds was a juiced-out, homerun hitting, seat-filling machine. But they miss the point.

Barry Bonds was on trial for lying to a Federal grand jury, in which he allegedly told the grand jury that he did not knowingly take performance-enhancing drugs, even though every other athlete connected to BALCO admitted to knowing such information.

Bonds knew what he was doing. If you’re a professional athlete and your sole purpose is to be in shape, you don’t just land on a pointy needle containing HGH or steroids.

Targeting athletes for performance-enhancing drugs was a waste of time, but trying Bonds for perjury was not.

Bonds did not tell the truth. The government cannot draw the line on when and where people can lie in court. Allowing popular professional athletes to get away with lies sends a bad message to the people who look up to them. We have to hold people to standards and not give preferential treatment to some, even if it seems like a waste of taxpayer dollars.

According to Sports Illustrated, the trial for Bonds cost an estimated $6 million. That’s a lot of money and could serve a lot of people, but it wouldn’t pay for the paint on a jet fighter. It’s a drop in the bucket. But the integrity of our court system depends on the truth being told, so in a weird way it was well spent.

Bonds will most likely appeal his conviction, but sometimes you have to make a point and the point is don’t lie, at least not to a Federal grand jury.