By Wade Keller, PWTorch editor

Politico.com features a story today about Congress's investigation into WWE. The following are key excerpts:

--The WWE finds itself in the cross hairs of California Rep. Henry A. Waxman's House Oversight Committee and Illinois Rep. Bobby L. Rush's Energy and Commerce subcommittee, with Rush planning to hold a hearing this fall. The developments are a reality smackdown for a company that sells comic book story lines to millions of fans each week. But the WWE has the advantage of studying baseball's legislative film.

--Alleged steroid use among baseball players, and now wrestlers, shifted the debate from finance to public health. Lawmakers are concerned that kids may begin to use steroids and other performance enhancing drugs because the ballplayers and wrestlers they idolize are thought to do so. "Illegal steroid use in professional sports has gained plenty of attention, but the record suggests that the problem is most pervasive and deadly in pro wrestling, an unregulated form of entertainment that is watched on TV and in arenas by an estimated 20 million fans a week, including children," Rush and Rep. Cliff Stearns (Fla.), the subcommittee's ranking Republican, wrote to WWE Chairman Vincent K. McMahon. (The panel also sent the letter, which requested drug testing information, to two lesser-known professional wrestling organizations.) The lawmakers included a USA Today article that said wrestlers "are about 20 times more likely to die before 45 than are pro football players, another profession that's exceptionally hard on the body.

--The congressional oversight power is extremely powerful, very broad, and I don't think people get very far trying to slow down or stonewall a committee," she said. "It's not something that can be easily dismissed." It's a lesson the WWE says it has heeded. The company has responded to both committees' requests and is treating the panels "with the utmost respect," said WWE spokesman Gary Davis. What the organization will do next is anybody's guess, since the company would not discuss its strategy.

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