Wall Street Journal Turns on DeLay

[ailsagirl]

I got this off of dailykos. As Kos writes, "Wow. This doesn't happen every day"

By now you have surely read about House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's ethics troubles. Probably, too, you aren't entirely clear as to what those troubles are--something to do with questionable junkets, Indian casino money, funny business on the House Ethics Committee, stuff down in Texas. In Beltway-speak, what this means is that Mr. DeLay has an "odor": nothing too incriminating, nothing actually criminal, just an unsavory whiff that could have GOP loyalists reaching for the political Glade if it gets any worse.

The Beltway wisdom is right. Mr. DeLay does have odor issues. Increasingly, he smells just like the Beltway itself <...>

Taken separately, and on present evidence, none of the latest charges directly touch Mr. DeLay; at worst, they paint a picture of a man who makes enemies by playing political hardball and loses admirers by resorting to politics-as-usual.

The problem, rather, is that Mr. DeLay, who rode to power in 1994 on a wave of revulsion at the everyday ways of big government, has become the living exemplar of some of its worst habits. Mr. DeLay's ties to Mr. Abramoff might be innocent, in a strictly legal sense, but it strains credulity to believe that Mr. DeLay found nothing strange with being included in Mr. Abramoff's lavish junkets.

For rest of article:

http://www.dailykos.com/

[napi21]

1. Add the hypocracy of pulling the plug on his own father, and

filing a law suit against the mfg. of the bearings used on the tram his father was injured on, and we've got outselves a real scandle her folks! It's really hot and humid in Houston, but I suspect ole Tommy just might find he "needs to spend more time with his family" real soon!

[ailsagirl]

2. He doesn't get along with his family!!!!

Granted, that's the spurious excuse these creeps always use but
DeLay might have trouble using it because he doesn't get along
with his family!!! For a "family values" guy, he's pretty pathetic.

For all of Tom DeLay's public espousal of Christian values, particularly his deep commitment to family, he privately has nursed a terrible estrangement from his own mother and three siblings. After the 1988 death of his father and the rise of his career in Washington, DeLay cut off contact with all three siblings, and seven years ago he stopped attending DeLay family gatherings. He has not seen or talked to his mother, Maxine, in two years, even though she lives about 10 miles away from Sugar Land; nor did he invite any of them to his daughter's 1999 wedding or even mention his mother in the published wedding announcement.

All through his roomy home are many photographs of his wife, his daughter and his in-laws -- but not a single one of the DeLays. Throughout our conversations, this rift is the only subject that he adamantly will not discuss.

http://www.buzzflash.com/analysis/05/03/ana05006.html

Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide!!!!

[Nothing Without Hope]

3. The definitive recent article on DeLay is the one by Molly Ivins

Molly really knows her Texas pols, and she's got DeLay's number BIG TIME:

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=18735

Molly Ivins
Creators Syndicate
03.17.05

The stench of rotting ethics

Only Tom DeLay's removal can freshen our nation's capitol

AUSTIN, Texas -- The John Wesley Hardin Died for You Society has a theme song that goes: "He wasn't really bad. He was just a victim of his times." I sometimes find this useful in trying to explain Texas political ethics to outsiders.

My theory is that few Texas pols are actual crooks, they just have an overdeveloped sense of the extenuating circumstance. Woodrow Wilson Bean once warned himself that he was skatin' close to the thin edge of ethics. After a moment, he concluded, "Woodrow Wilson Bean, ethics is for young lawyers."

(snip)

I grant you a certain resemblance to some of our more notorious standards: "Everybody does it" and "They did it first" are actually considered excuses here. But I categorically reject cultural responsibility for Tom DeLay. Real Texas politicians are neither hypocritical nor sanctimonious. A pol does what he must -- fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly -- but no pol of the Old School, when DeLay served in the Lege, would add self-righteousness to shady dealing.

(snip)

Another quality that makes DeLay an un-Texas pol is that he's mean. By and large, Texas pols are an agreeable set of less-than-perfect humans and quite often well-intentioned. As Carl Parker of Port Arthur used to observe, if you took all the fools out of the Lege, it would not be a representative body any longer. The old sense of collegiality was strong, and vindictive behavior -- punishing pols for partisan reasons -- was simply not done. But those are Tom DeLay's specialties, his trademarks. The Hammer is not only genuinely feared in Washington, he is, I'm sorry to say, hated.

(snip - much more at link)

[ailsagirl]

4. Glad I haven't eaten dinner yet... better read this first

Thanks for passing this on

[Lindacooks]

5. Hmmm, political 'Glade or...

political 'Raid'??!?!

hee hee

[MADem]

6. Here's another rather TELLING editorial on BUG BOY!

It points out the lengths the GOP will go to cover up corruption...
~~~~~~
...Now that Republicans have stripped the U.S. House ethics committee of its chairman, its staff and its investigative punch, The Hammer is chewing nails again. Tom DeLay, the ethically challenged House majority leader from Texas, says he's eager to appear before the committee and address the "fiction and innuendo" about his latest travel capers.

One small problem. The committee, at this point, exists only on paper.

...These latest reports only add to the DeLay legend, and a Texas grand jury may trump them all. Three of DeLay's associates already have been indicted in what prosecutors claim was a political money laundering scheme that funneled corporate money into Texas campaigns, in direct violation of state law. How has DeLay responded? By collecting $1-million from special interest groups, and two new members of the House ethics committee, to seed his own legal defense fund.

DeLay, who is in his 11th term in office, responds to every new finding by blaming Democrats, as though they helped him tee up his ball at St. Andrews. Missed in his shrill partisan attacks is the fact that Republicans are now the ones who are suffering. To cover up his deeds, the House now has rendered its own ethics committee mute. No wonder he's thumping his chest again.

http://www.sptimes.com/2005/03/28/Opinion/Hammering_away_at_Hou.shtml

[Jack Rabbit]

7. Is anybody else here old enough to remember Adam Clayton Powell?

When Mr. Powell was being investigated for his misdeeds in Congress, he objected that there wasn't anything he did some other Congressmen was not also doing.

"True," said one of Powell's critics. "But he's the only one doing them all."