Tom DeLay: Guilty

From the Houston Chronicle: A Travis County jury today convicted former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, on two charges dealing with political money laundering. He faces the possibility of long prison sentences on both convictions.

DeLay helped orchestrate the Republican takeover of the Texas House of Representatives in the 2002 election. From the Houston Chronicle story:

“DeLay and two political aides were accused of arranging to trade $190,000 in corporate money with the Republican National Committee in 2002 in exchange for a like amount of money raised from individual donations that the RNC gave to seven specified Texas candidates. Texas law bars the use of corporate contributions in candidate elections.”

The next year the newly established Republican majority elected Tom Craddick, R-Midland, as Speaker. Then Republican lawmakers in Austin threw out a congressional redistricting map put in place just two years earlier and drew new district boundaries that were substantially more favorable to GOP candidates. The Craddick-run House spent the next six years pushing through as much of the religious right’s political agenda as it could.

8 thoughts on “Tom DeLay: Guilty

  1. I’m not saying he’s innocent, but do you think the fact that the presiding judge jammed the jury with the ultimatum to either come to a verdict or face the prospect of being sequestered on Thanksgiving just MIGHT have affected the outcome?

  2. I wouldn’t worry about that too much Mark.

    Did you hear what he said after the verdict? He said that political behavior should not be criminalized. This is a perfect example of my long-held assertion that wingnut fundamentalist Christians define “freedom” as being able to do whatever they want, whenever they want, however they want, and wherever they want—no matter who gets hurt. DeLay is saying that natural selection, the law of the jungle, and survival of the fittest should have free and unimpinged reign in American politics. Funny, these guys claim that there is no such thing as evolution, but they choose to live their lives according to its principles.

    I still recall what my conservative, Christian fundamentalist uncle said when his hero Richard Nixon resigned from the presidency. Here is the quote, “A man should have the right to do whatever he needs to do to protect himself from his political enemies.” With Nixon, burglary was okay as long as it was done in the name of politics. What next? Murder?

    If the verdict against DeLay stands, I would think that 20 years in prison would be sufficient for the hammer. Being a person who supposedly reads his Bible, he should realize that sowing a political record of viciousness and callousness towards other people would result in a harvest of the same for himself.