The case against Lance Armstrong's accusers

So how do you really feel Michael Hiltzik? The LA Times business columnist says Lance Armstrong's refusal to fight any further against the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency is "the right moment to be appalled at the travesty in sports this case represents....the anti-doping system claiming its highest-profile quarry ever is the most thoroughly one-sided and dishonest legal regime anywhere in the world this side of Beijing."

Athletes' defense attorneys harbored some hope that by picking a fight with Lance Armstrong, the anti-doping system might have sowed the seeds for its own reform. Finally, it was thought, here was an athlete with the money and motivation to expose the legal sophistry, the pseudoscience, the sheer sloppiness that underlies sports anti-doping prosecutions all over the world.

Instead, the outcome shows that the system is so relentlessly rigged that even Lance Armstrong doesn't see a point in fighting it...

It shouldn't matter if you believe Armstrong doped in winning his titles. You should still be appalled, even frightened, by the character of the prosecution.

He makes a good case, and it's directly in opposition to the one Los Angeles journalist Alan Abrahamson made last week calling the anti-doping process beyond legitimate.