dancing with the stars

Tom Delay, former pest exterminator, Republican congressman from Texas, and speaker of the House can now add a new bullet point to his resumé -- convicted felon.

From the New York Times today: AUSTIN - A Texas jury Wednesday found Tom DeLay, the former House majority leader and Texas political powerhouse, guilty in a money-laundering trial involving contributions to political campaigns.

Jurors deliberated for 19 hours before they came back with guilty verdicts against Mr. DeLay on charges of money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

There's a school of thought that says "Justice delayed is justice denied," and this verdict comes very late. But I subscribe to the adage that says "Better late than never," and considering how little justice there is in this country today, I'm grateful this dinosaur of a judicial and legal system produces any at all.

I learned something surprising from that article, namely that Texas has one of best campaign finance laws in the country. Since 1903 state law has prohibited corporations from giving money to political candidates either directly or indirectly.

Delay, a notorious and unapologetic influence pedlar, took money from corporate lobbyists, ran a big chunk of it through the RNC, and then directed the RNC to distribute among seven of Delay's hand-picked Texas congressional candidates. That's what led to the money-laundering charge.

Six of Delay's little Republican soldiers won, creating the first Republican-majority congressional delegation in Texas since the Civil War, consolidating DeLay's power in the House of Reps, and enabling him to gerrymander the state in his famous redistricting scheme which ensured Republican control of the state's politics.

He had everything his way, and assumed he was the law in those parts, like Judge Roy Bean. But he ran roughshod over a lot of people and alienated anybody who didn't want to genuflect before his little throne. So there probably is something to the charge that Democrats brought him down.

But they were able to bring him down because he overreached his power and broke the law a little too openly and blatantly, even by Washington, D.C. standards.