A Muddy Smear

@#$@#$!!!

CNN almost fooled me today. I visited the site to check baseball scores from last night, and blazing across the top of the screen I saw the ominous headline: “DeLay Resigns”.

The sub-title stated that Congressman DeLay had resigned his leadership position after being indicted by a Grand Jury. It sounded serious, enough so that I wondered how someone as politically adroit as DeLay could have gotten into that kind of trouble. Then I looked into the details, and the odor most commonly associated with dead vermin and CBS Anchormen wafted into sense. The short version of the DeLay indictment can be summed up in four points:

* The indictment was drawn up not in Sugarland, where DeLay lives and has an office, nor in Washington D.C., where he works, but in liberal-controlled Austin, where Delay may have had a lunch once or twice, or caught a UT game.

* The person pursuing the indictment was none other than Austin DA Ronnie Earle, most famous in recent months for trying to indict Senator Kay Bailey Hitchison, which effort was no more effective than the 2004 Dean For President campaign, which may have had its hand in Mr. Earle’s more than slightly hysterical efforts to slander Congressman DeLay. Mr. Earle has previously appeared on the CBS sitcom “60 Minutes”, where he regaled the audience with Munchhausen-like credibility in his accusations of malfeasance by the Congressman. That attempt in 2004 failed to impress a Grand Jury; the accusation now leveled in Earle’s first indictment in four tries against Republicans; it is noteworthy that Earle, a likelong Democrat, has never spoken ill of a single Democrat anywhere, anytime, much less pursued an indictment against an elected Democrat.

* The indictment has no specifics of any alleged criminal act by Congressman DeLay. The allegations are so vague as to be frivolous on their face. The closest approxmation to a charge, is the claim that DeLay violated the ‘60-day window’ law in Campaign Finance laws. However, the law cited prohibits only “corporations” from making donations during the 60-day window; it in no way prohibits PACs from spending and allocating funds already received prior to that window, which is the case here.

* The action that DeLay’s Political Action Committee is alleged to have performed in violation of law, is identical to actions taken by PACs of Democrats running for office at the same time. If indeed a violation has occurred, one wonders why Mr. Earle believes that an action taken by a Republican is illegal, while the same action taken by a Democrat would be legal.

In summary then, a rabid Democrat in a solid-blue state, with no legal basis but more than the normal amount of Leftist paranoia, has mounted a smear campaign which he knows will fail any sane scrutiny. Why? Well seriously, what else do the Democrats have left? They rejected honor and serious examination of the issues, and have become a party of vicious lemmings. They hope to smear one of the most effective members of Congress, and a leading Republican from Texas in the bargain, to bolster what pallid hopes they still carry of grabbing votes from the gullible in 2006.