Harry Reid: Maybe we can use that disputed Pacquiao fight to get a federal boxing bill passed

Via Mediaite, it’s big news when the U.S. Senate majority leader says he thinks a major fight was fixed and that Congress should spring into action to solve the problem. Or at least, it would be: As you’ll see, he’s actually not saying that he thinks it was fixed. On the contrary, he thinks the outcome was the result of poor judging, not fraud. In which case … why the hell is he using this as an excuse to promote some sort of new federal boxing statute? It’s Rahm Emanuel’s infamous line about not letting a crisis go to waste, but without any actual crisis. Essentially he’s arguing that the perception of a crisis is enough of a pretext to justify a federal power grab. How’s that to make you feel warm and fuzzy about big government this evening? For three years he’s refused to pass a budget, but show him a boxing scorecard that’s in dispute and suddenly he’s ready to haul ass. This, I guess, is the “future” that Carville’s firm has in mind.

Doesn’t Nevada already have regulatory bodies to deal with this, incidentally? The state AG is also reportedly weighing a request to investigate the fight. Makes me wonder if Reid is serious about a federal boxing law or if he was just yammering because someone happened to ask him a question about his good pal Manny.

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