DeLay Indicted in Campaign Finance Probe — Expect a pardon.
A Texas grand jury on Wednesday charged Rep. Tom DeLay and two political associates with conspiracy in a campaign finance scheme, forcing the House majority leader to temporarily relinquish his post.
DeLay attorney Steve Brittain said DeLay was accused of a criminal conspiracy along with two associates, John Colyandro, former executive director of a Texas political action committee formed by DeLay, and Jim Ellis, who heads DeLay’s national political committee.
This is awesome.. Too bad it won’t affect anything..
I LOVE it.
Bush lost too much political capitol with La. to be able to pardon DeLay. Which is good, DeLay deserves some jail time. And disenfranchisement.
Typical left-of-center reasoning. Do any of you actually KNOW anything about what DeLay is accused of? Do you even CARE? Is just being a Republican and in a position of power enough for you to convict him in the court of public opinion?
If you answered “yes” to the last two questions, you’re not intelligent enough to form a worth-while opinion on anything political.
This same prosecutor got an indictment against Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison years ago, and nothing came of that either.
President Bush can’t pardon DeLay for a Texas offense:
http://www.usdoj.gov/pardon/pardon_instructions.htm
David,
I believe he is being indicted for conspiracy because his Texas PAC collected money from corporate interests from out of state, which I believe is against Texas law.
I personally would like to get him for abuse of power when he used the homeland security office to find some Texas State Reps (Democratic) who were staying away from a meeting of the Texas state legislature in protest to a DeLay sponsored re-districting.
BTW – did you know that you “man” DeLay avoided the Vietnam War by claiming he was working in a war vital job? Would you like to know what that job was? He sold insecticide. Why are all the neocons so pro war yet all have avoided service in Vam? (Bush, Limbaugh, Wolfawitz, Cheney, DeLay etc.). I personally don’t like DeLay because he is corrupt and a coward. I would still despise him regardless of what he was or is. Its never come up, but I group Kennedy in with DeLay and would personally throw a party if he got nailed.
From Slate:
“What did Tom DeLay do during the Vietnam war? “I don’t know. I think he was in college,” his daughter Dani told Chatterbox when he asked her last Friday. DeLay spokesman Mike Scanlon was similarly stumped when Chatterbox asked him Monday. A story by reporter (and Vietnam vet) Guy Gugliotta in today’s Washington Post, however, brings the news that DeLay “received student draft deferments during the Vietnam era and avoided military service through the 1969 lottery,” which presumably means he drew a high number. Apparently DeLay, who was something of a prankster in his early college days, was able to keep his student deferment after he was asked by the dean to sit out a semester at Baylor University, which he attended from 1965 to 1967. Instead of taking the time off, DeLay got married and enrolled at the University of Houston, where he graduated in 1970.
What’s DeLay’s line about sitting out the war? That he was needed for the war at home against earwigs and cockroaches? (Instead of going into the military, he became an exterminator.) DeLay flack Scanlon said he’d get back to Chatterbox, but never did. Specifically, Chatterbox wanted to know if there was any truth to a report in the Houston Press, a rather emphatically anti-DeLay alternative newspaper, about what DeLay said on this subject at the 1988 Republican convention in New Orleans, when vice-presidential nominee Dan Quayle was under attack for having avoided Vietnam service in the National Guard. (The story was repeated in a Molly Ivins profile of DeLay in the May issue of Playboy.) Here’s what the Houston Press reported:
He and Quayle, DeLay explained to the assembled media in New Orleans, were victims of an unusual phenomenon back in the days of the undeclared Southeast Asian war. So many minority youths had volunteered for the well-paying military positions to escape poverty and the ghetto that there was literally no room for patriotic folks like himself. Satisfied with the pronouncement, which dumbfounded more than a few of his listeners who had lived the sixties, DeLay marched off to the convention.
Chatterbox has heard many draft-dodger alibis in his time, but he has never heard anyone plead reverse discrimination.”
Also thanks from the bottom of my heart for your insults. I always consider the source.
Now its time for you to go clean out the fryolator at what ever DQ you work at. Watch something other than FOX too.
I fear you’re right Mike. Its unfortunate because what ‘s happened here is political corruption at its basic form.
Love him or hate him, Rep. DeLay can raise the cash.
I’m sure he’ll have a huge legal defense fund and may just raise more cash than he did before. Then there is the PR operation and all the other stuff which makes a big political machine operate. These people are going to protect their investment. I doubt DeLay is very worried. With the kind of money involved, people will do just about anything, including doing nothing but doing it very well. Thank God the average American doesn’t need to count on these people for survival or getting a roof repaired, a pipe fixed or something important.
TOM DELAY (R-TX)
Top Contributors
Center for Responsive Politics
1 DCI Group $28,000
2 Goldman Sachs $17,000
3 Lyondell Chemical $16,000
4 National Assn of Realtors $15,000
4 Pfizer Inc $15,000
6 Lockheed Martin $13,500
7 Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America $13,000
8 SBC Communications $12,500
8 Koch Industries $12,500
10 Baker Botts LLP $12,000
10 Boeing Co $12,000
10 Clear Channel Communications $12,000
10 Comcast Corp $12,000
10 Credit Union National Assn $12,000
10 JP Morgan Chase & Co $12,000
16 New York Life Insurance $11,750
17 New York Life $11,000
17 Option 1 Realty Group $11,000
17 American Financial Group $11,000
20 American Medical Assn $10,500
Delay is also in trouble in his own district. There is the real possibility that he may be defeated next election anyway.
Uh, Sounds, isn’t a better example of “pollitical corruption at its basic form” taking bribes from a hostile, foreign government? As in, $100,000 from China? Or would that be “pollitical corruption at its advanced form?”
More proof of how irrelevant and ineffective the left is. They got no traction on Roberts, little on the hurricanes, and they’ll get nothing on DeLay.
The worst that can come of this is that DeLay gets removed from office. So what? How does that impact anything? Answer: It doesn’t.
At best, this is a “delay” until the next court fight starts. Get it? Delay?
The left in the United States has been going through a slow motion car wreck for 25 years. When will it end?
The indictment doesn’t even say what it is Delay did, and even the crim of the other ‘conspirators’ is questionable. The indirect contributions would have been legal if made directly, and it’s not even clear that there were any indirect contributions. This sounds like a repeat of indicting Hutchison before the election, then dropping the prosecution at trial.
Put the hammer in the slammer!
Smith,
No I would call getting contributions from China advanced corruption. -One of many reasons Clinton will never be a “great” president in future history. That and he counld keep Mr. Winky holstered.
I mean if you had a chance to be Pres and go down in history as a notable great – wouldn’t you keeep it holstered for 8 years? I would – heck I’ve had dry spells lasting that long. Well it seemed like that long.
Politics sucks. There was a time when it was fun. Now it’s just funny in a sad funny sort of way. Everybody in politics is tearing off everybody elses head for the hell of it. It’s at the point now that it’s just a big turn off. It’s like watching a train crash or something like that.
Filming of “‘The Hammer’ gets nailed”:
http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york200509291814.asp
It’s pretty obvious that Ronnie Earle has a political axe to grind. And the best thing is he gets a film crew to immortalize his crowning achievement in bringing down Delay. Maybe he’ll have better luck in persecu… er prosecuting this case then he did against Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison.