Tom DeLay Steps Down as Majority Leader

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10704050/

Na Na Na Na, Na Na Na Na, Hey Hey Hey, Goodbye. :)

:thumbsup:

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Tom DeLay Steps Down As House Leader

By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent 50 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Rep. Tom DeLay, the defiant face of a conservative revolution in Congress, stepped down as House majority leader on Saturday under pressure from Republicans staggered by an election-year corruption scandal.

"During my time in Congress, I have always acted in an ethical manner within the rules of our body and the laws of our land," the Texas lawmaker told fellow Republicans in a letter informing them of his decision. rofl

Still, referring to criminal charges he faces in his home state, he added, "I cannot allow our adversaries to divide and distract our attention." rofl

DeLay temporarily gave up his leadership post after he was charged, but always insisted he would reclaim his duties after clearing his name.

His turnabout cleared the way for leadership elections among Republicans buffeted by poor polls and by lobbyist Jack Abramoff's confessions of guilt on corruption charges in connection with congressional wining and dining.

The race to replace Delay as majority leader began taking shape immediately, with Reps. Roy Blunt of Ohio, the GOP whip, and John Boehner of Ohio, a former member of the leadership, making clear their intentions to run.

Speaker Dennis Hastert, his own grip on power secure, said he expects elections to be held when lawmakers return to the Capitol the week of Jan. 31. That set the stage for several weeks of political maneuvering, and the possibility of a wholesale shuffle in the leadership lineup 10 months before midterm elections.

Democrats, eager to take control of the House in November, reacted to DeLay's announcement with studied indifference.

"The culture of corruption is so pervasive in the Republican conference that a single person stepping down is not nearly enough to clean up the Republican Congress," said Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader. [True that, Nancy.]

Added Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the House Democratic campaign organization: "With the permanence of their special interest philosophy, a change in the Republican cast of characters simply doesn't matter." [True again, unfortunately.]

Democrats must gain 15 seats in November to win control of the 435-member House.

At a news conference in Texas, DeLay said he had called Hastert, R-Ill., on Saturday to inform him of his decision. "Our success in lowering taxes, creating jobs, growing the economy and providing effective national security was helped by Tom Delay's leadership," the speaker said in a statement. Hilarious! [You gotta be sh*ttin' me.]

The 58-year-old DeLay, an exterminator before his election to Congress in 1984, said he intends to seek re-election next fall. "I plan to run a very vigorous campaign and I plan to win it," he told reporters in Texas. rofl [And OJ plans to find the real killer.]

The voters aside, his political future will hinge not only on the outcome of the Texas allegations, but on the future of the Abramoff investigation.

Michael Scanlon, a former DeLay aide and an Abramoff business partner, pleaded guilty in the fall to corruption charges. In court papers, the lobbyist said he had once paid $50,000 to the wife of another former DeLay aide to help kill legislation opposed by his clients.

DeLay has been a fixture in the Republican leadership since the GOP won its majority in the 1994 election landslide.

An outsider at first, he muscled his way up the hierarchy when he won election as whip over the hand-picked choice of then-Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga.

When Gingrich nearly fell in a coup more than three years later, DeLay went before fellow Republicans at a private meeting and emotionally confessed his role in the plotting. He prospered politically, moving up to become majority leader, the No. 2 post, in 1999.

Contrition was never a quality he displayed to his adversaries — Democrats, outside interest groups and others who sought to check the advance of the conservative GOP agenda he promoted.

DeLay raised millions of dollars for the campaigns of fellow House Republicans, conservatives and moderates alike, earning their gratitude regardless of their ideology. He courted controversy almost reflexively, including his involvement in an attempt to force corporations and industry groups to hire more Republican lobbyists.

He rarely backed down.

DeLay was the driving force behind President Clinton's impeachment in 1999, weeks after Republicans lost seats at the polls in a campaign in which they tried to make an issue of Clinton's personal behavior. [Could he look like more of a hypocrite now? I don't think so.]

DeLay's downfall began at home in Texas, when he led a drive to redraw the state's congressional district boundaries and increase the number of GOP seats in the U.S. House. He succeeded, but was soon ensnared in an investigation involving the use of corporate funds in the campaigns of Texas legislators who had participated in the redistricting.

Flashing his trademark defiance, DeLay attacked prosecutor Ronnie Earle as an "unabashed partisan zealot." He pledged repeatedly to clear his name and said he would reclaim his duties as majority leader by the end of January.

The scandal spawned by Abramoff intervened, though.

Within two days of the lobbyist's appearances in federal court last week, GOP lawmakers began circulating petitions calling for elections. Hastert immediately made clear he would not stand in the way.

`After the Abramoff thing we got critical mass," said Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who long had advocated new leadership.

While Flake is a conservative in a safe congressional district, others suddenly calling for change were more moderate Republicans who could face difficult re-election campaigns this fall.

New Mexico's Heather Wilson was among them.

She said three of DeLay's "former senior staff members have admitted or have been implicated in corrupt and illegal activities to get money for themselves by influencing legislation. Whether or not Mr. DeLay was involved himself or knew this was going on, he is responsible for his office."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060107/ap_on_go_co/delay

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Scandalous! A year of Republican treachery

You could wait for the book, or check out the darkest shadows of the past 12 months right here:

Duke of California

In the Department of Plain Old-Fashioned Boodling, let's start with California's own Congressman Duke Cunningham, who tearfully pleaded guilty to taking $2.4 million in bribes from a defense contractor, and is now in the slammer. Don't forget that 32 other GOP congressmen took campaign cash from that same bribe-giving contractor and have shed no tears.

Noe's Way

In Ohio, the sewer of political corruption, Governor Bob Taft pleaded "no contest" to taking bribes and favors from an indicted top Republican fund-raiser named Tom Noe. Taft had put the state's workers' compensation fund in the hands of Noe, who turned around and invested it in rare coins, as millions disappeared. Many of Taft's top staffers also wrongfully accepted Noe's favors and "loans," as did a GOP congressman. Noe was also indicted for illegal bundling of campaign cash for Dubya. The entire Ohio Republican Party is reeling from this scandal.

Doctor Is Out

In Washington, the wealthy Dr. Bill Frist, the Senate Republican leader, is now under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for making a second fortune through illegal insider trading in the stock of the scandal-plagued company his family owns HCA (Hospital Corporation of America, America's largest hospital conglomerate) -- which had previously been fined a record-breaking $1.7 billion for defrauding Medicare and Medicaid.

Generous Jack

Then there's the jolly little band of Republican boodlers who clustered around indicted megalobbyist Jack Abramoff with their hands out. Abramoff is now singing to prosecutors after his indicted henchmen snitched on him -- and by the time Abramoff is done naming names, there'll be a hail of indictments of congressmen and at least three senators, like Idaho's Conrad Burns, a major recipient of Abramoff's largess. This will be as big, or bigger, than the S&L scandal back in the '80s.

Abramoff's biggest buddy and water carrier, House Republican Leader Tom "the Hammer" DeLay, is already under indictment in a different scandal -- illegally laundering corporate campaign cash for Texas legislators who gerrymandered the Democrats out of six U.S. House seats. If Abramoff gives up his man DeLay, the majority leader will be in double jeopardy.

Legal Outlaws

Of course, there's an old saying in Washington: The real scandal isn't what's illegal, the real scandal is what's legal! At the top of the list of legal boodlers has to be Halliburton, Dick Cheney's old company. When a Pentagon procurement officer blew the whistle on deliberate Halliburton cost overruns in Iraq that bilked hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars, Bush's man Rumsfeld punished not Halliburton but the whistle blower! And then the Bushies turned around and gave Halliburton juicy post-Hurricane Katrina reconstruction contracts -- even as they threw the poorest victims of Katrina out of their hotel and motel rooms and onto the streets. Scandalous, but legal.

Payola

Also quite legal is Washington's pay-to-play revolving door, where retired solons are paid lavishly as lobbyists to distribute campaign cash to their former colleagues in return for special legislative favors. In fact, 43 percent of the 198 lawmakers who have left for the private sector since 1998 have become lobbyists, according to a new study by the public-interest group Public Citizen. Example: When Louisiana Republican Billy Tauzin stepped down as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, where he used to regulate the drug industry among other things, he took a job heading a drug-industry lobby that reportedly pays him $2.5 million per year. Scandalous but legal. But there's so much of this sort of thing that a cynical and blinkered press gives it short shrift, and most voters don't ever hear about it.

Big Brother

All the others are only about money. The biggest scandal in the long run is the Republicans' shredding of the Bill of Rights. Bush's recent admission that he ordered spying on American citizens by the National Security Agency without a court order -- clearly an impeachable crime -- is only the tip of the iceberg. Just two weeks ago, NBC got hold of a 400-page Pentagon memorandum revealing that, under Rumsfeld, the military had been spying on anti-war and other protest groups and individuals, accumulating a huge database through this surveillance of Americans exercising their free speech rights. Many of those targeted were student or religious groups. My fave among the Pentagon's spying targets: the gay group at the University of California at Santa Cruz, which -- to protest military recruitment on campus because of the anti-gay "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy that has only increased the number of gays expelled from the armed forces -- decided to stage a "kiss-in." When the Pentagons' gumshoes reported this, their superiors deemed the kiss-in a "credible threat" of... terrorism! Bush's FBI has also been caught massively investigating anti-war, environmental and student groups -- including those dangerous folks at PETA -- as possible "terrorists." But the Pentagon's and FBI's spying hasn't gotten nearly the media attention of Bush's illegal electronic eavesdropping. Americans fought a revolution against one King George for the right to criticize their government when they thought it necessary. This Republican administration thinks it has royal prerogatives to brush aside the Constitution's guarantees of that right if it wants to. And if that isn't scandalous, what is?

http://www.laweekly.com/ink/06/07/politics-scandalous.php

[W*GS]

Scandalous! A year of Republican treachery

It's not just Republican treachery - it certainly is, but your buds in the Democratic Party are hardly lily-white, to wit:

Payola
Also quite legal is Washington's pay-to-play revolving door, where retired solons are paid lavishly as lobbyists to distribute campaign cash to their former colleagues in return for special legislative favors. In fact, 43 percent of the 198 lawmakers who have left for the private sector since 1998 have become lobbyists, according to a new study by the public-interest group Public Citizen. Example: When Louisiana Republican Billy Tauzin stepped down as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, where he used to regulate the drug industry among other things, he took a job heading a drug-industry lobby that reportedly pays him $2.5 million per year. Scandalous but legal. But there's so much of this sort of thing that a cynical and blinkered press gives it short shrift, and most voters don't ever hear about it.

From http://www.lobbyinginfo.org/documents/RevolveDoor.pdf


Party Breakdowns of Members-Turned-Lobbyists

In 2000, George W. Bush became president while the Republicans retained their control of both houses of Congress. In other words, it was a hostile landscape for lobbyists whose contacts were squarely in Democratic camps. This environment is reflected in a partisan breakdown of who became a lobbyist.

The percentage of Democrats who passed through the revolving door dropped dramatically for the class of 2000, when 62 percent of Republicans became lobbyists but only 15 percent of Democrats did so. [See Figure 3]

By comparison, in 1996 and 1998, about half (50 percent in 1996 and 52 percent in 1998) of the Democrats became lobbyists, slightly outnumbering their Republican counterparts (40 percent in 1996 and 46 percent in 1998).

Ex-Congresscritter Democrats becoming icky lobbyists...


Big Brother
[...]
Americans fought a revolution against one King George for the right to criticize their government when they thought it necessary. This Republican administration thinks it has royal prerogatives to brush aside the Constitution's guarantees of that right if it wants to. And if that isn't scandalous, what is?

The Clinton era was an unprecedented assault on our RKBA, a right also guaranteed by the Constitution.

LABF, if you're consistent, you ought to think those attempts were "scandalous".

Do you?

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Ha ha ha! rofl

Don't worry, Whigs - you can probably still get Hot Tub Tom to be the keynote speaker at "your" convention again next year - if you don't mind holding it at a federal prison.

:laugh:

In the meantime, this should help you get your facts straight:

Following the Abramoff money — and it didn't go to Democrats

When the media was actually able to tear themselves away from the West Virginia mining accident long enough to cover anything else for a moment or two yesterday, they would invariable turn to the Jack Abramoff guilty plea and, in many cases, imply or say directly that Abramoff was a bipartisan crook who gave to both major political parties.

To check out this assertion, I spent hours pouring over Federal Election Commission filings via Political Money Line and Newsmeat and have found that the mainstream media is amazingly incorrect.

An analysis of all donations under Jack Abramoff's name or by his wife, Pamela - who donates under "Pam," "Pamela" and "Mrs. Jack Abramoff" - since 1977 and through January 2, 2006, shows that they made a total of $338,418 in political contributions. Of that, $204,000 went to individual political candidates, while $134,000 went to Political Action Committees (PACs).

Of the $204,000 that went to people running for the House and Senate, not one dime went to a Democrat. Yes, that's correct - 100 percent of Abramoff's personal donations went to Republican candidates or, in an extremely isolated case, he gave $750 to Howard Phillips of Virginia to run for something or other on the Constitution Party platform in the mid 1990s.

Other than that, it was all GOP money. Who were the biggest piglets at that trough? Little Tom DeLay picked up a cool $15,000, or over seven percent of the total all by himself. Congressman Eric Cantor (R-VA), who Tom DeLay made one of his lieutenants a couple of years ago, snagged $13,000 and Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) took almost $10,000 over the last 10 years.

No wonder when Rohrabacher, who has been frequently linked to Abramoff, was asked about being used as a financial reference in Abramoff's purchase of the Suncruz casino cruise line, he said " "I don't remember it, but I would certainly have been happy to give him a good recommendation. He's a very honest man."

Well, I guess that's true by Republican standards.

Abramoff also gives generously to PACs, which our analysis shows may have cheated the admitted crook, as a couple of them actually slipped up and gave a tiny bit of money to Democrats. In an examination of all PACs receiving money from Abramoff since 1980 and looking at how each of those groups allocates their total funds, I found that, of millions and millions of dollars, almost all of it goes to GOP candidates.

And you really have to hunt for the exceptions. For example, the relatively small Arena PAC gave $1,000 to Representative Joe Baca (D-CA) and, in the 1990s, gave a total of about $1,500 to Congressman Ralph Hall (D-TX). Don't know how that happened but, even so, it only amounted to two percent of all the money given by that PAC - the rest went to Republicans.

Likewise, Newstar PAC and the Preston Gates Ellis PAC - both of which have gotten generous donations from Abramoff -- have given about 15 percent and 40 percent of their money, respectively, to Democrats.

So whether it's direct donations -- of which Democrats have received nothing -- or indirect PAC money, which has only been given to a few Democrats in miniscule amounts, there's not much of a personal connection between Abramoff and the Democratic party.

Sorry, mainstream media.

If you would like to look at how the personal Abramoff money has been allocated over the years, I've set up a little web page here with all the details. It's interesting reading -- he even donated to Oliver North's Senate campaign. Remember him?

Now, that's no guarantee that a couple of Democrats won't also be swept up as partners in crime when people starting looking under the hood of the Abramoff money machine and examining where the millions he's bilked from others have gone - but I seriously doubt it.

This guy's never given money directly to a Democrat in his life and, for a crook like him, why hang with Democrats when there are so many of his own kind to buddy up to on the Republican side of the aisle?

And, by the way, Sourcewatch says that Abramoff raised over $100,000 for President Bush's re-election campaign and even became a coveted " Bush Pioneer" in the process.

I'm sure, given yesterday's developments, that Bush will be giving that money back any day now. Won't he?

http://bobgeiger.blogspot.com/2006/0...-it-didnt.html

[Bronco_Beerslug]

Repubs are falling like leaves from trees and scurrying for their very political lives. About time these criminals are being brought to justice!

[W*GS]

No comments on the same source pointing out that the Democrats exploit the "revolving door" when it suits them?

That Clinton "scandalously" attempted to violate a Constitutional right?

Thanks, LABF, for living up to your reputation for turning a blind eye to your own party when they're scum. Your sort of hyperpartisan behavior does you no good.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Repubs are falling like leaves from trees and scurrying for their very political lives. About time these criminals are being brought to justice!

And Whigs doesn't know whether to piss, sh*t, or go blind. :D

Whigs' most staunchly-held, most fervently defended, and most cherished belief is that the Democrats in Washington are as corrupt (if not more so) than their Republican counterparts.

Now that this belief of his is being torn asunder by incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, he's sounding more and more discombobulated and foolish by the day.

:laugh:

[W*GS]

And Whigs doesn't know whether to piss, sh*t, or go blind.

None of the above. Just desserts, actually.

Whigs' most staunchly-held, most fervently defended, and most cherished belief is that the Democrats in Washington are as corrupt (if not more so) than their Republican counterparts.

I thought it was that Bush was the best President ever. Or that a corporate plutocracy is just what America needs.

If you're gonna whack strawmen, at least make it clear which one you're whacking. You've got so many mistaken beliefs about me that you can't even keep them straight.

Now that this belief of his is being torn asunder by incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, he's sounding more and more discombobulated and foolish by the day.

As if there's never been a Democratic Speaker who's had to resign in disgrace (look it up) or that Demorons have always been of the highest moral character...

It's you who are "more discombobulated and foolish by the day" with your attacks on me and your misrepresentations of my beliefs, LABF. It's difficult to believe that you could get any sillier, but you manage.