It's the old one-two punch this morning.

Political Groups Paid Two Relatives of House Leader

Philip Shenon | Washington DC | April 6

NYTimes - The wife and daughter of Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, have been paid more than $500,000 since 2001 by Mr. DeLay's political action and campaign committees, according to a detailed review of disclosure statements filed with the Federal Election Commission and separate fund-raising records in Mr. DeLay's home state, Texas.

Most of the payments to his wife, Christine A. DeLay, and his only child, Dani DeLay Ferro, were described in the disclosure forms as "fund-raising fees," "campaign management" or "payroll," with no additional details about how they earned the money. The payments appear to reflect what Mr. DeLay's aides say is the central role played by the majority leader's wife and daughter in his political career.

Mr. DeLay's national political action committee, Americans for a Republican Majority, or Armpac, said in a statement on Tuesday that the two women had provided valuable services to the committee in exchange for the payments: "Mrs. DeLay provides big picture, long-term strategic guidance and helps with personnel decisions. Ms. Ferro is a skilled and experienced professional event planner who assists Armpac in arranging and organizing individual events."

Well that explains it.

A 3rd DeLay Trip Under Scrutiny

R. Jeffrey Smith & James V. Grimaldi | Washington DC | April 6

Washington Post - A six-day trip to Moscow in 1997 by then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) was underwritten by business interests lobbying in support of the Russian government, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the trip arrangements.

DeLay reported that the trip was sponsored by a Washington-based nonprofit organization. But interviews with those involved in planning DeLay's trip say the expenses were covered by a mysterious company registered in the Bahamas that also paid for an intensive $440,000 lobbying campaign.

It is unclear precisely how the money was transferred from the Bahamian-registered company to the nonprofit.

Here's the scorecard.

this guy a bug-killer? One of those Truly Nolen types?

Hat tip Josh Marshall:

DeLay blasts media over report of payments to family

Ted Barrett | Washington DC | April 6

CNN - House Majority Leader Tom DeLay defended his family Wednesday, saying newspaper articles about his wife and daughter and about his trip to Russia were "seedy" efforts by the "liberal media" to humiliate him.

"My wife and daughter have any right, just like any other American, to be employed and be compensated for their employment," DeLay said. "It's pretty disgusting, particularly when my wife and daughter are singled out and others are not, in similar situations in the Senate and as well as the House.

"But it's just another seedy attempt by the liberal media to embarrass me."

Et tu, Bloomberg?

DeLay's Ex-Aides Building Washington Lobbying Empires

Kristin Jensen, Mike Forsythe & Jonathan Salant | Washington DC | April 6

Bloomberg - One of the surest paths to riches in Washington is to have these five words on a resume: "Office of Representative Tom DeLay."

Eleven lobbyists who once worked for the Texas Republican and House majority leader helped bring in at least $45 million in fees for their firms in the past two years. By comparison, former aides of House Speaker Dennis Hastert lobbying during that period helped bring in about $2.1 million.

Along the way, Delay's former assistants have aided clients such as ChevronTexaco Corp., Wyeth and Reynolds American Inc. in achieving legislative victories. They have also given DeLay the kind of Washington-insider clout he once criticized when Democrats were in power.

Like the Democrats of the late 1980s and early 1990s, DeLay is under fire now. Lobbyists with ties to the House majority leader have sparked investigations by two Senate committees.

"This is very damaging for the political system," said Amo Houghton, a Republican who represented a congressional district in upstate New York for 18 years before retiring in January. "It doesn't help the Republican Party. It doesn't help anybody in politics."

Some interesting observations:

BullMoose:

"'Steve Biegun, who was then a senior Russia expert for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and later served as executive secretary to the National Security Council during President Bush's first term, said he deliberately blocked a meeting that Nevskaya sought with Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), then the committee chairman.

'They were a client of the lobbying firm Preston Gates,' said Biegun, who is now a Ford Motor Co. vice president for international governmental affairs. 'I made some calls . . . and got enough warning signs' to ensure that Helms avoided dealing with the firm. Biegun said the information he obtained from his sources was 'nothing that would stand up in court' but he worried that in this period, 'a lot of unsavory figures from Russia were buying their way into meetings and getting their pictures taken, to put on the wall back in Moscow.'

For you Kremlinologists, what is fascinating about the quote is that it is from a highly respected denizen of K Street and a former prominent staffer in both the Bush Administration and Capitol Hill. The Rove fix likely is in."

From Laura Rozen:

"More from the American Foreign Policy Council about the cut out that sponsored DeLay's trip:

'...Russia is sending a second naval spy ship into the Adriatic theater where U.S. carrier groups are deployed against Yugoslavia, TASS reports. A Russian naval official tells TASS that the Kildin, a Moma-class reconnaissance vessel with the Black Sea Fleet, has left its home port of Sevastopol. TASS says the Kildin will relieve another spy ship, the Liman.'

[Editor's note: The Russian oil company that has supplied fuel to the Liman, the Kildin, and the rest of the Black Sea Fleet, has been bankrolling a political influence operation in Washington. Working through a cutout in the Bahamas, NaftaSib is paying a prominent D.C. law and public relations firm, Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds, to influence congressional staff, lawmakers, editorial writers and journalists. A NaftaSib executive involved in the influence effort is tied to GRU military intelligence. Most of the targets are conservative Republicans. In 1995, the same lobbyists were paid to represent the then Milosevic-controlled government of Montenegro, Yugoslavia.] [...]"

Lautenberg issues sharp speech about attacks on judges

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) issued stiff remarks to the Senate in response to another senator's seeming implication that federal judges were responsible for violence against them because they were "unaccountable," RAW STORY has learned. The speech delivered to the Senate follows.

<snip>

Today there is an orchestrated effort to smear the reputation of the judiciary, especially federal judges.

This effort is being waged by Republicans in Congress, as a prelude to an attempt to change the rules for confirming judicial appointments.

In order to justify the "nuclear option," they are trying to paint judges as "activists" and "out of control."

In reality, it is the leadership of this Congress that is out of control and endangering the future of a fair court system.

<snip>

Our colleague then went on to say:

"I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters, on some occasions, where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public ... that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in, engage in violence."

These remarks are almost unbelievable.

Yet they echo the words last week of the House Majority Leader.

Speaking of the judges in the Schiavo case, the House Majority Leader said, "The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior."

These are inflammatory words.

They ignore the fact that our Founding Fathers wanted judges to be insulated from political pressure.

And they are words that could easily incite violence against judges.

On Sunday, a columnist in the House Majority Leader's hometown newspaper, the Houston Chronicle, wrote "It is time for him to stop sputtering ill-tempered threats, not only at the judiciary but also at the U.S. Constitution, which he repeatedly has sworn to uphold."

<snip>

I vow to fight this nuclear option as well as these irresponsible threatening statements.

<snip>

In this country, any attempt to intimidate judges not only threatens our courts, but our fundamental democracy as well.

I call on every member of this Senate to repudiate these attacks against the federal judiciary and the United States Constitution.

http://rawstory.com/exclusives/byrne/lautenberg_judges_406.htm

DeLay's Lavish Island Getaway

Brian Ross | April 6

ABC - A Washington lobbyist under federal investigation for his lobbying activities arranged a lavish overseas trip to the island of Saipan for House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, over the New Year's holiday in 1997.

DeLay, his wife and daughter, and several aides, stayed for free at a beachfront resort.

The DeLay trip to the South Pacific island, originally reported by a "20/20" investigation, was part of an effort by former aide Jack Abramoff to stop legislation aimed at cracking down on sweatshops and sex shops in the American territory, which is known as the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI).

Abramoff, who was working for the law firm Preston Gates Ellis and Rouvelas Meeds LLP at the time, was paid $l.36 million by Saipan officials and wrote in a memo obtained by ABC News that such congressional trips were "one of the most effective ways to build permanent friends on the Hill."

Hat tip AmericaBlog.

for the umpteenth time. Is clear to me though, this is defense, not offense, as 'the liberal media' line only works with the Rushsteppers and the diehard Fox viewers--that means, they are afraid of losing some of them over DeLay. Mho, the one smart tactical comment is Blunt's, about the Dems having nothing to offer--is hard to counter when you're such a small minority.

Keep in mind, this is the House GOP, that which the Senate GOP very much has found quite troublesome in the past. (I was just thinking: that the zany radicals are the leaders there actually makes it tough for the old style GOP to get things done that they sometimes agree with Bush on, there are always these distracting circuses, where James Dobson's talking points are being picked up...yes it happens in the Senate, too, but much less often)

At a closed meeting of House Republicans in the morning, the majority leader, who is the subject of a campaign fund-raising inquiry in Texas and faces questions in Washington about overseas travel sponsored by outside groups, received a "thunderous ovation," lawmakers and senior party officials said. They were reacting in part to the article in The Times and another, focusing on a trip to Russia, that appeared on Wednesday in The Washington Post. They were the latest in a number of published accounts about Mr. DeLay's conduct and political operations.

"I think the members are very much in the mode that this piling on is being done because there are no competing policy ideas that Democrats have to make," said Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri, the No. 3 House Republican. "The things that Tom has been criticized about in one way or another every member of Congress could be criticized about."

During the private meeting, Representative Dave Weldon, Republican of Florida, and others offered what were described as spirited testimonials to Mr. DeLay's leadership while expressing outrage at what they viewed as concerted media assaults on him.

"There are certain liberal newspapers, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, that are out to get Tom DeLay," Mr. Weldon said....

"I can't comment on this," said Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader. "A, I didn't read about them and, B, the specifics of any ethical behavior I think are the proper responsibility of the House Ethics Committee."

House Democrats are blocking the reorganization of the ethics panel, saying that rules changes forced through by Republicans this year have neutralized the panel. "I don't think the Democrats should participate in a hoax," she told reporters....

MORE @

NYT

DeLay Denounces Report on Payments to His Family

By CARL HULSE and PHILIP SHENON

Published: April 7, 2005

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/07/politics/07delay.html?ei=5094&en=a0c10728f5285f2b&hp=&
ex=1112932800&partner=homepage&pagewanted=all&position=

Tom "the Hammer" DeLay's attempts to distract the public from his own scandals are becoming the stuff of legend.  What won't this guy say to get our minds off his crimes?

Of course, we can't really blame DeLay for assuming that such crude tactics will work; after all, George Bush and Dick Cheney concocted their WMD story and started two wars to deflect attention from how Republicans rigged the 2000 election.  Their bogus 9-11 commission convinced only the most determined fools.

Still, it's no longer a sure bet that constant lying will continue to work.  Even die-hard Reps are beginning to groan under the strain of keeping track of all those hastily woven yarns.  That's the problem of bullshitting your way through two administrations--sooner or later, your stories start getting mixed up, and the whole web of lies starts to unravel.

Eventually, even us dim-bulb Americans will start to notice that we're being robbed by these Republican hustlers.  Hopefully, Tom DeLay will be the first domino of many to fall.

DeLay Says Federal Judiciary Has 'Run Amok,' Adding Congress Is Partly to Blame

Carl Hulse & David D. Kirkpatrick | Washington DC | April 8

NYTimes - Representative Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, escalated his talk of a battle between the legislative and judicial branches of government on Thursday, saying federal courts had "run amok," in large part because of the failure of Congress to confront them.

Judges, including Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and one member of the federal appeals court who heard the Schiavo case, have already been sharply critical of Congressional efforts to interfere with their authority as a violation of the Constitution's separation of powers. In a recent report, Chief Justice Rehnquist called one such measure "unwarranted and ill-considered" and said "a judge's judicial acts may not serve as a basis for impeachment."

Bush declines to endorse DeLay's comments

(USA: Congress, All Topics)

posted by ElBow on 04/08/2005 03:45:22 PM EDT

http://agonist.org/story/2005/4/8/12445/62586

DeLay's Backers Launch Offense

Conservatives Say GOP Is Threatened

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40496-2005Apr9.html

By Mike Allen

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, April 10, 2005; Page A04

Allies and friends of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (Tex.) have concluded that public attention to his ethics is unlikely to abate for months to come, and they plan to try to preserve his power by launching an aggressive media strategy and calling in favors from prominent conservative leaders, according to Republicans participating in the strategy sessions.

The Republicans said the strategy combines leaks from DeLay allies about questionable Democratic trips and financial matters; denunciations of unfavorable news stories as biased, orchestrated rehashes; and swift, organized responses to journalists' inquiries.

[...]

DeLay staff members are linking with outside lawyers -- including Barbara Comstock, former research director of the Republican National Committee -- to form what is essentially a campaign organization aimed at minimizing damage to DeLay and building support despite what they believe will be a continuing torrent of news stories about his travel, fundraising and dealings with lobbyists.

One Republican familiar with the strategy, who asked not to be identified in order to be more candid, described the message as "Clintonian" in that it emphasized the idea that "there's no news, and they're out to get us" -- with the addition that "liberal media, liberal Democrats" are to blame.

[...]

The info here on Shays and Santorum is posted elsewhere, but I noticed looking at front page newspaper images that this was page A1 above fold LA Times, so adding it.

LA TIMES 4/11

THE NATION

2 in GOP Take Aim at DeLay

By Mary Curtius

House majority leader, facing questions over trips he took, is urged to 'lay out what he did.'

The near-solid wall of public support that Republicans have displayed for beleaguered House Majority Leader Tom DeLay began to crack Sunday, with a Senate leader saying the Texas Republican needed to "lay out what he did and why he did it" and a House member calling on him to step down from his leadership post.

DeLay, who last year was admonished three times by the House Permanent Select Committee on Ethics for his hardball political tactics, has been the subject of recent news reports involving trips he took that were indirectly funded by lobbyists or foreign agents -- a violation of House rules.

DeLay's staff has said that the congressman knew only that the trips were paid for by nonprofit groups and that he had reported that on disclosure forms.

He also has been criticized for his association with a lobbyist who is under federal investigation.

Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, a conservative who is the third-ranking Republican in the Senate, told ABC's "This Week" that DeLay needed to explain his actions.

"I think he has to come forward and lay out what he did and why he did it and let the people then judge for themselves," Santorum said. "From everything I've heard ... everything he's done was according to the law."

In an interview Sunday with Associated Press, Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut -- a moderate who is one of DeLay's most outspoken critics among House Republicans -- was more blunt....

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-delay11apr11,1,6405543.story?coll=la-headlines-
nation

http://agonist.org/story/2005/4/11/55022/8816

DeLay Apologizes for Rhetoric in Schiavo Case; White House Explains Bush-DeLay Ties

By David Espo The Associated Press

Published: Apr 13, 2005

WASHINGTON (AP) - House Majority Leader Tom DeLay apologized Wednesday for using overheated rhetoric on the day Terri Schiavo died, but refused to say whether he supports impeachment of the judges who ruled in her case.

DeLay backtracked as White House spokesman Scott McClellan said President Bush considers the Texas Republican, who is battling ethics allegations, a friend, but suggested that the majority leader is more of a business associate than a social pal.

"I think there are different levels of friendship with anybody," McClellan said.

At a crowded news conference in his Capitol office, DeLay addressed remarks he made in the hours after the brain-damaged Florida woman died on March 31. "I said something in an inartful way and I shouldn't have said it that way and I apologize for saying it that way," DeLay told reporters.

Shortly after Schiavo's death, Delay said it represented a failure of the legal system. DeLay's statement also said, "The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior."

DeLay said at the news conference that he was eager to appear before the leaders of the House ethics committee and give "everything I have" in connection with allegations of misconduct.

That committee, meanwhile, has deadlocked on a Democratic demand for changes in the rules that Republicans pushed through the House this winter.

The committee's leaders, Reps. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., and Alan Mollohan, D-W.Va., said they had no plans to grant DeLay's request to appear before them until the committee sorts out its organizational difficulties.

DeLay seemed at pains to soften, if slightly, his rhetoric of March 31, when Schiavo died despite an extraordinary political and legal effort to save her life.

"I believe in an independent judiciary. I repeat, of course I believe in an independent judiciary," DeLay said.

At the same time, he added, the Constitution gives Congress power to oversee the courts.

"We set up the courts. We can unset the courts. We have the power of the purse," DeLay said.

Asked whether he favors impeachment for any of the judges in the Schiavo case, he did not answer directly.

Instead, he referred reporters to an earlier request he made to the House Judiciary Committee to look into "judicial activism" and Schiavo's case in particular.

more

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBT8II4I7E.html

DeLay Only the Latest Target

Thursday, Apr 14, 2005; 9:10 AM

As the Tom DeLay controversy refuses to die--or, I suppose some folks would say, the press refuses to let it die--we've been hearing a lot from the Texas congressman about liberal media bias.

Are journalists really "out to get" the House majority leader, as he seems to believe? And is that because they don't like his conservative views?

I'd suggest that DeLay is simply a big fat target for investigative reporters because he lives close to the edge (if the three House ethics panel admonishments are any indication). In fact, when another Texas congressman was in a House leadership position--a congressman who happened to be a Democrat--he also got pummeled by the press.

I speak, of course, of Jim Wright, who resigned as House speaker in 1989 after nearly two years of negative press (fueled in part by Newt Gingrich, who pursued the kind of partisan jihad against Wright that Republicans are now complaining about when their guy is the pinata).

The Media Notes Research Team has gone back into the archives to see how The Washington Post, as a prime representative of the MSM, acted when Wright's backside was on the line....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/nation/columns/kurtzhoward/?nav=pq

judges, Schiavo, and the Family Research Council's infotainment, Social Security, De Lay's base,

it's all inter-related:

Lobbying Heats Up on Filibuster Rule Change  (USA: Congress, All Topics)

posted by artappraiser on 04/04/2005 04:56:05 PM EDT

http://agonist.org/story/2005/4/3/213857/1647

Santorum: Frist will go nuclear  (USA: Congress, All Topics)

posted by Sean Paul on 04/07/2005 12:11:12 PM EDT

http://agonist.org/story/2005/4/7/65731/80319

Frist playing both sides! Lying thru his teeth...

April 15, 2005

Frist Set to Use Religious Stage on Judicial Issue

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

posted by artappraiser on 04/15/2005 05:17:16 AM EDT

attached to House Leader Raises Possibility of Trying to Impeach Some Judges in Schiavo Case

http://agonist.org/comments/2005/3/31/152326/475/11#11

and approval probably came from on high [none / 0] Replies: 0

Bush Is Seen as Unlikely to Seek DeLay's Ouster

By ELISABETH BUMILLER

Published: April 15, 2005

posted by artappraiser on 04/15/2005 05:22:59 AM EDT

attached to House Leader Raises Possibility of Trying to Impeach Some Judges in Schiavo Case

http://agonist.org/comments/2005/3/31/152326/475/12#12

at Hot Tub Tom's House Of Scandal!"

http://houseofscandal.org/

In DeLay's Home District, Rumblings of Discontent Surface

By RALPH BLUMENTHAL

Published: April 17, 2005

Patricia Baig, a Republican from Tom DeLay's Congressional district in Texas, took out a full-page advertisement calling on him to resign.  

Beverly Carter, a Republican precinct chairwoman who backed Richard Morrison in 2004, says Mr. DeLay has shortchanged the district.

"Now there's blood in the water.  The sharks are circling," a Democrat says....

SUGAR LAND, Texas.....

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/politics/17delay.html

The White House is publicly standing behind a leader whose legislative abilities Bush respects and needs for the fights ahead.

Bush still calls DeLay a friend, although spokesman Scott McClellan pointedly noted last week that "there are different levels of friendship." The President's team is increasingly frustrated by the majority leader's inability to mount a defense more persuasive than blaming his problems on a liberal conspiracy. DeLay, says a senior Administration official, "is handling this like an idiot."

also

Perhaps, but DeLay's travel arrangements may be drawing the interest of the Justice Department. A source tells TIME that at least one former Abramoff assistant who was involved in setting up the trip to England and Scotland is scheduled to be deposed this week by the FBI, whose Washington field office has assigned half a dozen agents to an investigation into the dealings of Abramoff and his business associate, former DeLay spokesman Michael Scanlon. The focus of the probe, says a senior FBI official supervising the investigation, is "allegations of any wrongdoing involving moneys that went into or left the Indian tribes." Also joining the task force are agents from the Interior Department and the Internal Revenue Service. In addition, two Senate committees are looking into various aspects of Abramoff's operation, including allegedly improper use of charities he established and persuaded his clients to fund.

from

Time Magazine

When Tom Met Jack

By KAREN TUMULTY

Inside the cozy relationship between Tom DeLay and D.C.'s most notorious lobbyist. Could it take the leader down?

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1050216,00.html

Even a senior administration official now thinks "the liberal media" defense is dumb? Come to think of it, I haven't heard them use it lately, and I also saw Bush being cited as having read a newspaper....

Lott urges Bush to give DeLay 'aggressive support'

By Audrey Hudson

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

President Bush needs House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to further his legislative agenda and should be more outspoken in his defense against ethics charges, Sen. Trent Lott, Mississippi Republican, said yesterday.

    "I do think the White House needs to remember that people who fight hard for you as a candidate and for your issues as a president ... deserve your support, aggressive support," said Mr. Lott, who resigned his majority leadership post because of the furor over comments he made in 2002.

    "Again, he may feel that he shouldn't get into the details of the workings of who the leaders are or how the leaders act in the House or the Senate. I read very carefully what he had to say last week. ... I wish it had been more, frankly. Frankly, he needs Tom DeLay," Mr. Lott told ABC's "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos.

more

http://washingtontimes.com/national/20050418-125215-5685r.htm

today, according to MSNBC reporter, live from Congress, just on air.

He says Republicans 'dropped a bombshell,' that they put forward a deal in a press conference: we will do an investigation of De Lay if some of you Dems agree to some of the rules changes.

see this article for background:

With Changes to House Ethics Rules, Standoff May Emerge

(USA: Congress, All Topics)

posted by artappraiser on 04/18/2005 11:23:30 AM EDT

http://agonist.org/story/2005/4/18/82212/4138

Currently committee is split 5/5 on the rules changes.

Ron Reagan, the anchor, intrepreted it as "the Republicans wilting a bit".

But the reporter felt their offer would go nowhere. So I don't particularly understand why he called it a bombshell. But there it is, just telling it as I heard it.

NYT Week in Review 5/8 cover story

(the handshake picture is blown-up to take up more than 1/2 of page.)

Tom DeLay's Empire of Favors

By ANNE E. KORNBLUT

How is it that Tom DeLay is more popular among Republicans than, say, President Bush's proposals for Social Security?

Republicans are loyal to their leader for a multitude of reasons.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/08/weekinreview/08korn.html

WASHINGTON | May 12, 2005    

Few Republicans in House Are Expected at DeLay Event

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG   (NYT)   News

When 900 conservatives gather at a downtown Hilton hotel on Thursday night to pay tribute to Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, the House majority leader who is caught up in a swirl of accusations over his fund-raising and ties to lobbyists, only about three dozen House Republicans will be there.

Representative Melissa A. Hart, a Pennsylvania Republican who serves on the ethics panel that is likely to investigate Mr. DeLay, will not be among them.

"They were confused," Ms. Hart said Wednesday, after organizers of the event said they were initially told that she would attend. "My initial response was no."....

  http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/12/politics/12delay.html

 WASHINGTON | May 19, 2005    

U.S. Audit Is Said to Clear Committee Run by DeLay

By PHILIP SHENON   (NYT)   News  

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/19/politics/19delay.html

NYT

Treasurer of Texas Group Is Fined Nearly $200,000

By ANNE E. KORNBLUT

Published: May 27, 2005

WASHINGTON, May 26 - A Texas judge ruled on Thursday that the treasurer of a political action committee formed by United States Representative Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, broke campaign finance laws as the group propelled the party into power in the Texas House in 2002.

The judgment awarded nearly $200,000 to five Democrats who were ousted by Republican candidates backed by Texans for a Republican Majority, the political committee founded by Mr. DeLay to help win control of the Legislature.

Mr. DeLay was not named in the case, and he has maintained that he did not play a role in how the group's money was raised and spent.

But the decision was a symbolic victory for Mr. DeLay's critics, lending credence to accusations that his allies used illegal campaign finance tactics to win a Republican majority in the state for the first time in 130 years.....

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/27/politics/27delay.html

the last line here is funnier than the line when it aired lol

DeLay says use of name on 'Law & Order' was a 'slur'

WASHINGTON (AP) -- House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is upset that a popular NBC crime drama used his name as part of its show.

DeLay called the 'Law & Order' reference to him 'a great disservice to public discourse.'  

Brendan Smialowski, Getty Images

DeLay wrote NBC to complain that one of the characters on Law & Order: Criminal Intent invoked his name in a story line about the shooting death of a federal judge. "Maybe we should put out an APB for somebody in a Tom DeLay T-shirt," the fictional police officer said.

DeLay, in a letter to NBC Universal Television chief Jeff Zucker, called that reference a "slur."

"This manipulation of my name and trivialization of the sensitive issue of judicial security represents a reckless disregard for the suffering initiated by recent tragedies and a great disservice to public discourse," he said.

DeLay, R-Texas, criticized the federal judiciary after the courts refused to stop the death of Terri Schiavo. "The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior," he said in a statement on March 31, hours after Schiavo died.

DeLay apologized the next week, saying he had spoken in an "inartful" way and meant that Congress should increase its oversight of the courts.

"This isolated piece of gritty 'cop talk' was neither a political comment nor an accusation," NBC Entertainment President Kevin Reilly said. "It's not unusual for L & O to mention real names in its fictional stories. We're confident in our viewers' ability to distinguish between the two."

Creator/executive producer Dick Wolf added: "But I do congratulate Congressman DeLay for switching the spotlight from his own problems to an episode of a television show."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-05-27-delay-law_x.htm

With DeLay in Its Sights, MoveOn Targets 7 GOP Members

Wednesday, Jun. 1; 11:46am

MoveOn PAC, the political arm of the liberal group MoveOn.org, will launch radio ads Thursday in the districts of seven potentially vulnerable Republican House Members, tarring them for their association with embattled House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas).

http://www.rollcall.com/pub/1_1/breakingnews/9484-1.html

no access to more without subscription, but you all know where google is, doncha?

WASHINGTON | June 21, 2005    

Firm Says House Lawyers Approved Payments for Trips

New documents may bolster the arguments of Representative Tom DeLay, whose overseas trips have come under ethics scrutiny.

By PHILIP SHENON   (NYT)   News  

 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/21/politics/21ethics.html

Remember my thread

Hee! Chickens home to roost for Tom DeLay. What goes around comes around...Hillary Clinton Tom DeLay on the vast right-wing left-wing conspiracy

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/21/politics/21ethics.html

It's going to be the continual newly discovered dcoument tit-for-tat as long as possible....each wing of conspiracy contributing to the narrative...

was the above-fold left side headline treated equal in size to the Iraq government story on the right. Image:

exterminator before he served in the Texas House.

... that switched sides.

EOM

roach motel, then.

Catch the line about the media! Hee.

....Some other numbers in the news about which you probably didn`t hear.  Previous polls have suggested strong disapproval by Republicans and Democrats alike of the Congressional intervention in the Schiavo case.  That was directed at all those who forced the issue.  Turns out there was also considerable blow-back against the man at the forefront of the legislation.  House majority Leader Tom DeLay, in his own Congressional district.  

The Zogby poll commissioned by the "Houston Chronicle" showed that 58 percent of 501 likely voters in the Texas 22nd district say they think he was wrong to intervene.  Nearly half say the reason DeLay intervened was political gain and not morals;  40 percent say they think less of him now than they did last year.  The poll was heavily skewed in favor of Republicans; 53 percent to 33 percent Democrats taking this poll, yet 45 percent of all respondents said they would vote for somebody else now.  Only 38 percent said they were sure they would vote for him again.  And DeLay`s complaint about his treatment by the media:  46 percent in his own district say he has been treated fairly.  Only 40 percent think, unfairly....

from

'Countdown with Keith Olbermann' for

April 4

Read the transcript to the Monday show

Updated: 3:30 p.m. ET April 5, 2005

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7393519/

(note headline date there is a mistake, is supposed to say April, not March; beginning of transcript is on the pope and the secondary line says April

but then she's 'liberal media', ain't she? :-) It will be interesting to see what people like Limbaugh do on all this; his type is a strong supporter of Cheney/Frist/Scalia types but has no fondness for the fundie nuts like DeLay's crowd of supporters...

April 7, 2005

OP-ED COLUMNIST

The Passion of the Tom

By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

Before, Republicans just scared other people. Now, they're starting to scare themselves.

When Dick Cheney tells you you've gone too far, you know you're way over the edge.

Last week, the vice president told The New York Post's editorial board that Tom DeLay should not have jumped ugly on the judges who refused to order that Terri Schiavo's feeding tube be reinserted. He said he would "have problems" with the DeLay plan to get revenge on the judges: "I don't think that's appropriate."

Usually, the White House loves bullies. It embraces John Bolton, nominated as U.N. ambassador, even though, as The Times reports today, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is reviewing allegations that Mr. Bolton misused intelligence and bullied subordinates to help buttress W.M.D. hokum when he was at State.

But there's some skittishness in the party leadership about the Passion of the Tom, the fiery battle of the born-again Texan to show that he's being persecuted on ethics by a vast left-wing conspiracy. Some Republicans are wondering whether they need to pull a Trent Lott on Tom DeLay before he turns into Newt Gingrich, who led his party to the promised land but then had to be discarded when he became the petulant "definer" and "arouser" of civilization. Do they want Mr. DeLay careering around in Queeg style as they go into 2006?

On Tuesday, Bill Frist joined Mr. Cheney in rejecting Mr. DeLay's call to punish and possibly impeach judges - who are already an endangered species these days, with so much violence leveled against them. "I believe we have a fair and independent judiciary today," Dr. Frist said. "I respect that."

Of course, Dr. Frist and the White House still want to pack the federal courts with right-wing judges, but they don't want it to look as if they're doing it because Tom DeLay told them to or because of unhappiness at the Schiavo case....

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/07/opinion/07dowd.html

Committee report issued by that pantheon of lies and deceit.

I recommend reading it in full.

the money quote:

March 31, 2005; Page A04

....House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) challenged his liberal critics yesterday to "bring it on,".....

Reply to This....Meanwhile judiciary is Congress' target next week....

http://agonist.org/comments/2005/3/23/221441/997/38#38

also see

House GOP defense is 'liberal media' gambit

NYT April 7

http://agonist.org/comments/2005/4/5/203627/5502/10#10

and

DeLay's Backers Launch Offense

Conservatives Say GOP Is Threatened

WaPo April 10

http://agonist.org/comments/2005/4/5/203627/5502/18#18

EDITORIAL

Power for Power's Sake

Government is hobbled by Tom DeLay and it is up to his fellow Republicans to finally realize that.

Published: April 17, 2005

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/opinion/17sun1.html?

Excerpts:

When power and leadership come to politicians incapable of handling either, the results can be disastrous. The Democrats who controlled Congress into the 1990's grew so comfortable with their majority that they lost track of the country. As House speaker, Newt Gingrich sacrificed his revolution to his swollen ego. And now there is Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, whose hunger for power has grown so insatiable that it has detached him from the nation's business, the principles of electoral democracy and even the mainstream of his own party.

Mr. DeLay's ethical and financial lapses are serious and disqualifying for his high office. But even more alarming than his love for political money is his abuse of power. He appears to be confused about the difference between a legislative majority won in an election and total control held indefinitely.

Mr. DeLay is not content with having a Republican president and majorities in both houses of Congress. He wants to control every aspect of government fully, and to deny the Democrats any role at all. The method is simple: when the game does not go his way, he changes the rules.

<snip>

At first, Mr. DeLay's endless power grabs served a policy agenda, just as Mr. Gingrich's 1994 revolution had its Contract With America. Whether you liked it or not, it was a list of political positions and government initiatives. But increasingly, Mr. DeLay has been in hot pursuit of things that have nothing to do with the issues on which the Republicans ran in the last two elections, and everything to do with accumulating and monopolizing power.

The most striking recent example was Mr. DeLay's outrageous attempt to inject Congress into the personal tragedy of the Schiavo family. When nearly 20 judges, many of them conservative jurists appointed by Republicans, blocked Mr. DeLay, he became enraged and applied his principle of power.

<snip>_

Mr. DeLay says that his only critics are Democrats and their supporters, by which he includes this page. But Republicans are worried. Mr. Gingrich, who knows a thing or two about overreaching, said last week that Mr. DeLay "at some point has got to convince people that what he has done was reasonable and authentic and legitimate."

President Bush, who at least has an agenda related to public policy, has gingerly taken a step or two back from Mr. DeLay. On Wednesday, Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said: "We support his efforts, along with the efforts of other Congressional leaders, to move forward on the agenda that the American people want us to enact."

That point is surely lost on Mr. DeLay. After all, this is the man who once was reported to have declared upon being stopped from lighting a cigar in a government-owned building, "I am the federal government." The remark now seems prophetic. Government is hobbled by Mr. DeLay and it is up to his fellow Republicans to finally realize that.

NYT 4/25

Print ed. headline, page A1:

G.O.P. Seeks End to Ethics Clash; DeLay Is at Issue

Website headline:

Credit Receipts for DeLay Trip Raise Concerns

By CARL HULSE and PHILIP SHENON

Democrats said the latest disclosures about Representative Tom DeLay's travel were another reason why the Republican majority should undo changes in House ethics rules.

------

House Republicans said Sunday that they intended to redouble their efforts this week to resolve a partisan impasse over the ethics committee as Representative Tom DeLay faced new disclosures regarding his overseas travel that could eventually come before the committee.

"We need a functioning ethics committee," a senior Republican leadership aide said Sunday. The aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Representative J. Dennis Hastert, the House speaker, was increasingly determined to find a resolution to the dispute keeping the panel that enforces House rules from beginning operations this session. The aide said Mr. Hastert was being driven more by institutional concerns than by the furor engulfing Mr. DeLay, the majority leader.

Mr. DeLay himself has called for the panel to review trips that have come under special scrutiny, especially ones involving the lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Mr. Abramoff played a role in arranging a trip to Britain for Mr. DeLay, his wife and members of his staff in May 2000, a trip that included stops in London and at the St. Andrews golf course in Scotland.

The Washington Post reported on Sunday that it had obtained travel receipts showing that Mr. Abramoff's personal credit card had been used to pay $6,938 for Mr. DeLay's airfare to and from Britain,....

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/25/politics/25delay.html

Ethics Rules on Travel for House Members

Following are excerpts from the House of Representatives' ethics rules on travel:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/25/politics/25ethicsbox.html

it's all media bashing. The liberal media dun it. On guy specifically picked out a talk going on at the National Press Club by Bob Woodward on trust in media, and they all got a great chuckle out of that, it was told as if it was a joke. Then he went on and on about the myriad ways the liberal media hates upstanding fine people like Tom DeLay and act out on their hate. All to laughter.

Phyllis Schafly (been very active lately, the grande dame of baiting and framing liberal name-calling, I have something else on her activities lately written down somewhere to post, will try to find) particularly picked on the Neo-Con pie throwing episode. (Was it Kristol? I forget.) Derisively, as in "how childish." To laughter.

One picking on Pelosi. Derisively, as in: Hillary Clinton redux.

Every single thing the left does for P.R. purposes, they watch, they study, and they take and reframe as a joke. They've been doing it a long time, at least since the 80's.

Mho: They know how to do this, they've been doing it a long time, since the 80's. Also mho: I'm real tired of the left feeding these trolls. I'd wish they'd learn how not to.

Records of 2 Democrats Are Subpoenaed

By PHILIP SHENON

Published: May 13, 2005

WASHINGTON, May 12 - A federal grand jury has subpoenaed the files of a former executive director of the Democratic National Committee and another Democratic political consultant in a criminal investigation of Jack Abramoff, the Washington lobbyist at the center of corruption and influence-peddling inquiries by the Justice Department and Congress, the consultants say.

Brian Lunde, executive director of the committee in the mid-1980's, and his consulting partner, George Burger, said in interviews that they had provided the grand jury with records for a $50,000 contract they received three years ago to help win Democratic support for legislation allowing an Indian tribe to reopen its shuttered casino in West Texas....

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/13/politics/13abramoff.html?ex=1273636800&en=06a42af1a07346d0&amp
;ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss