Dishes best served cold

Rep. William Jefferson may very well have committed a crime in connection with the plastic-wrapped bundles of $100-dollar bills in his freezer, but at least it suggests a motive that doesn't make your flesh crawl.

Can't say the same, really, for the pee fetishists who kept Lance Armstrong's urine sample in a freezer for six years, hoping . . . hoping . . . hoping . . .

Armstrong's vindication came today:

An independent investigation has cleared seven-times Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong of doping during the 1999 race and accused anti-doping authorities of violating testing rules.

Last August the French sports daily L'Equipe said Armstrong, who had overcome life-threatening cancer, had used the blood-boosting drug erythropoietin (EPO) in 1999.

"The report exonerates Lance Armstrong completely with respect to alleged use of doping in the 1999 Tour de France," said Scholten, the Dutch law firm assigned by the International Cycling Union (UCI) to investigate the allegations and the handling of Armstrong's 1999 Tour de France samples.

Armstrong's statement was blunt, but probably more even-handed than I'd be if it were my body fluids that that they'd been hoarding all this time, waiting to play "gotcha:"

"The report confirms my innocence, but also finds that (WADA president) Mr (Dick) Pound along with the French lab and the French ministry have ignored the rules and broken the law," the American said in a statement.

"They have also refused to cooperate with the investigation in an effort to conceal the full scope of their wrongdoing.

"I have now retired, but for the sake of all athletes still competing who deserve a level playing field and a fair system of drug testing, the time has come to take action against these kinds of attacks before they destroy the credibility of WADA and, in turn, the international anti-doping system."

Tip of the helmet to Peter LaPorte, who'll probably be blogging about this himself before the day's out, for the heads-up.