The saying goes; a motivated prosecutor could indict a ham sandwich if they wanted to. Tom Delay has been indicted on conspiracy charges after years of this prosecutor trying. First it was Abramoff, but after realizing that scandal implicated Democrats (in fact over 200 Congressmen started “fixing their paperwork”) and it was ok’d by the House of Representatives lawyers, they had to drop that one. Now they got a conspiracy charge that was cooked up to give this prosecutor jurisdiction he would not otherwise have. That’s not to say that he’s innocent, but it is to say that the Democrat’s plan to power is not to beat Republicans at the polls, it’s to invent charges against them. Call it the Rush Limbaugh treatment.

Here are some quotes from Democrats on the development:

But Nancy Pelosi, House Democratic leader, called his indictment “the latest example that Republicans in Congress are plagued by a culture of corruption at the expense of the American people”.

And from Tom McMahon of the DNC:

People ask what the difference is between the two parties, and this indictment gives one clear answer.
Republicans are committed to pushing the legal limits to collect checks from special interests who want to use government for their own narrow purposes. Democrats are committed to funding our party with contributions from ordinary Americans so that when we take power, the government will represent the people.
You can make your personal commitment to changing the culture of corruption by getting your Democracy Bond — a monthly commitment to contribute to the Democratic Party:

Need we bring up some examples of Democrat corruption?

These people are all rich before they get into office and they take large pay cuts once elected, so they take perks. This isn’t something that is a Democrat or a Republican agenda because both parties are guilty of it. Need we bring up former disgraced Presidents that committed perjury?

The message the DNC is sending out is, “Get the corrupt Republican cronies out of office! We want our corrupt cronies in!”. That’s about as intelligent it is. And to be fair, that’s exactly the platform of the Illinois GOP against the Democrats in ’06. It swings both ways, but as a state that’s about to go on two consecutive governors in two terms getting indicted (who were from opposing parties) let’s at least be honest about corrupt being a political value, not a partisan value.

The lesson for the GOP, however, is that conservativism pays. If you are doling out millions in pork, eventually the money is going to get traced back to you. You won’t ever get bought or bribed if you aren’t in the business of wasting taxpayer money. The timing of DeLay announcing that fiscal conservativism is dead is nothing short of ironic here.

Said jcb @ 8:09 pm | Permalink   

1. “I am not a crook.”

   Comment by john D — 9/28/2005 @ 10:43 pm

---

2. Capitol Hill’s DeLay Era Ends — or at Least Stalls

   The indictment yesterday of Tom DeLay ended — at least for now — the reign of the most powerful l

   Trackback by Unpartisan.com Political News and Blog Aggregator — 9/29/2005 @ 1:00 am

---

3. Serenity!

   Today’s dose of NIF - News, Interesting & Funny … + Stop the ACLU Thursday!

   Trackback by NIF — 9/29/2005 @ 8:50 am

---

4. Ronnie Earle has prosecuted 15 politicians. 12 of them Democrats. Tom DeLay is only the third Republican he’s ever prosecuted.

   Classic money laundering scheme, too.

   Comment by Denny Hix — 9/29/2005 @ 9:26 am

---

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Line and paragraph breaks automatic, website trumps email, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website