Good news/bad news for Tom Delay:
A judge dismissed the conspiracy charges Monday against Rep. Tom DeLay but refused to throw out the money-laundering counts, dashing the Texas congressman's hopes for now of reclaiming his post as House majority leader. Judge Pat Priest, who is presiding over the case against the Republican, issued the ruling after a hearing late last month in which DeLay's attorney argued that the indictment was fatally flawed.
Conspiracy charges are usually meaningless; they're what the DA nails you with when he doesn't have anything else. But the money-laundering charge stuck, and that's a "real" charge. So Delay could be in real trouble.
And that troubles me about as much as Trent Lott's troubles from three years ago.
Well ya know I used to consider myself a nice middle of the road, independent/semi-libertarian/quasi moderate.
That is, until I started hanging out over at the Moderate Voice. There, I found out I am actually a right wing, talking point spewing, Bush apologist. Or something like that.
Whatever, IMO, the sooner Delay is gone, the better for the country.
eh... the money laundering stuff is probably not even illegal; what he "laundered" is only illegal under a highly convienient reading of Campaign Finance Reform - and every other dem and repub is doing the same thing ten times a day.
I really have no opinion on Delay... but a lot of representatives could be convicted under the same rules.
In a way, yeah, I'd like to see 'em all go down.
Given just how much a partisan hack D.A. Earle is, I suspect that DeLay will do fine so long as the Repubs cn resist the urge to throw him under the bus...
Oops. Sorry about not closing the tag properly.
Whether you like Delay or not, prosecutions based on politics is wrong.
If/when the judge slaps down Earle, watch all the papers in the country tell us about that.
Yeah right.
The "money laundering" charge is one that Earle couldn't get the first Grand Jury (the one that spent months looking at everything, and finally came back with the charge that was thrown out because it was based ona law that didn't even exist when the actions took place) to indict on. He couldn't get a second Grand Jury to indict on it. He finally got a third Grand jury to indict, on its first day in existence (IOW, they spend essentially zero time looking into the charges).
The chance that it's a real charge is somewhere between slim and none.
I won't miss om "no pork here" Delay, but the charges are BS. I just hope he manages to take Earle down.
