What are you suggesting? That a soon to be Sec. of State contact drug dealers, mobsters, terrorist, or corrupt Mexican officials to invade the sovereign state she’s supposed to be defending by crossing the border into Texas n order to take out a sitting U.S. Senator she doesn’t agree with politically?

You are an idiot! No wonder you voted for Obama.

Sultry Beauty on January 20, 2009 at 4:44 PM

Whoa…calm down. Are you some kind of reactionary? Try reading this again.

Lets see Cornyn must like unemployment. He’s going to be unemployed soon. Hillary will talk to Mexico about making it so.

kanda on January 20, 2009 at 3:27 PM

You know Mexicans vote in Texas. They will vote him out for blocking Hillary. Then he will be unemployed.

As for who I voted for it wasn’t Obama if that helps you feel better. If you think I am an idiot then you must feel pretty idiotic yourself after the way you went into this tirade. What a gross over-reation. Do you feel paranoid? You better seek professional help. I’m serious.

kanda on January 20, 2009 at 5:01 PM

Does anyone care that her appointment violates the Constitution? Article I, Section 6, to be exact.

Socratease on January 20, 2009 at 5:02 PM

Section 6. The Senators and Representatives shall receive a compensation for their services, to be ascertained by law, and paid out of the treasury of the United States. They shall in all cases, except treason, felony and breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any speech or debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other place.

No Senator or Representative shall, during the time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil office under the authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time: and no person holding any office under the United States, shall be a member of either House during his continuance in office.

Actually this was taken care of when she agreed to receive the same pay as before the raise. In effect the raise was rolled back so this does not apply.

kanda on January 20, 2009 at 5:11 PM

If Ronnie Earle has a case against DeLay why hasn’t he moved from a GJ Indictment into a trial? If DeLay broke the law does his resignation from public office negate his crime? What kind of District Attorney would allow DeLay to elude prosecution just because he changed jobs? Unless of course the entire rouse was to remove “The Hammer” from the House.

Texas Gal on January 20, 2009 at 4:49 PM

Perhaps the investigation is still uncovering additional crimes.

kanda on January 20, 2009 at 5:12 PM

No he has not been proven guilty nor has he been declared innocent.

kanda on January 20, 2009 at 5:35 PM
Declared Innocent? Are we suddenly under the Code of Napoleon? Where you are Guilty until prooven innocent? I know we now have a citizen of the world as President, but I didn’t think I was suddenly transported to France!

In this country you are innocent until prooven guilty… he was indicted but never taken to trial, even though HE was the one trying to get things sped up. This started in 2005… FOUR YEARS in which the prosecution could have gone to trial…

Hmmm… whatever happend to the RIGHT to a speedy trial?

And yet, folks like you, and the media, convicted him, and destroyed his political career…

While Hillary, with all the pecadiloes of Bill, Whitewater, Vince Foster, her LIEING to the American People about Bill’s affairs… skates on… and now having questions about Pay for Play with Bill (and her being the recipient of some of that money, that whole pesky community property thing, and her using their money for her presidential run), skates on…

Interesting dichotomy isn’t it?

Romeo13 on January 20, 2009 at 5:59 PM

Innocent is a reference to your original post.

Ahhh…. so hes guilty till prooven innocent?

When 4 years on, they won’t take it to trial?

Oh, and ONE count has already been thrown out?

Romeo13 on January 20, 2009 at 5:31 PM

You must know that our system of justice never proves innocence. It only proves guilt. An example of declared innocent would be the boys from Duke who were declared innocent.

On April 11, 2007, North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper announced at a press conference that he had dismissed all charges against the three lacrosse players. He not only dismissed the charges but he took the unusual step of declaring the accused players innocent

As I said he wasn’t declared innocent either. Perhaps you were unaware of these facts.

kanda on January 20, 2009 at 6:17 PM

And yet, folks like you, and the media, convicted him, and destroyed his political career…
Romeo13 on January 20, 2009 at 5:59 PM

Actually I didn’t do anything. He resigned in shame after he realized he was not going to escape prosecution for his crimes. He destroyed his own career. He is just another crook among many who let their political power go to their heads. They think they are above the law. They are not. I suggest you follow up with the DA on where the trial for this scumbag stands.

kanda on January 20, 2009 at 6:22 PM

He is just another crook among many

kanda on January 20, 2009 at 6:22 PM
The defense rests.

Romeo13 on January 20, 2009 at 6:26 PM

Perhaps if you kept it in context it would make sense.

He is just another crook among many who let their political power go to their heads. They think they are above the law. They are not.

Sorry if you rested already. You can’t reopen the trial without new evidence, or wait for your appeal.

kanda on January 20, 2009 at 6:30 PM

DeLay did absolutely nothing wrong but I’m surprise that you believe he did. I’ve come to think you were more discerning. Are you a Democrat? Are you a Texas Democrat?

Texas Gal on January 20, 2009 at 6:57 PM

Actually since you asked I voted for Goldwater in 64. He was gonna nuke the ruskies back to the stone age. I’ve really been a Republican since 1968. Nixon was the one. I stayed during the Nixon years when being a republican wasn’t cool. I’ve beat the street for Saint Ronnie and Bush 41 and 43. Not for McCain though he was too far left for me. I would have voted for Hillary as the most conservative of the bunch but she didn’t get nominated. Never considered Obama but I like Bob Barr the former republican this time around. Could not vote for him here in NC.

Lets see, in those forty years I’ve come to know some sleezy politicians but none so bold as Tom Delay. I know he is trying his best to squirm out of it but his peers in the house could not be fooled thats why he quit. If he was in the right he would have stuck it out to the bitter end. He disgraced our Republican Party. The republican party he left behind is worse than the democrats we were replacing. 40 years of hard work down the drain because of Republican politicians who let power corrupt them. If you asked me in 94 how we would govern I would have told you with honesty, dignity, fairness, and honor. The republicans did not do any of those. Now we will have to rebuild our party. Time is our friend. The democrats are going to own every problem that comes along. If we get good republicans to run for office we can win back the congress and the Presidency. If we keep supporting the bums currently in office we will go the way of the whigs.

kanda on January 20, 2009 at 7:27 PM

MirCat on January 20, 2009 at 7:53 PM

Wow that is profound, and true.

kanda on January 20, 2009 at 8:08 PM

See, it was all about politics. The Dems in the House needed to get DeLay out and the Dems in Texas accommodated them.

Texas Gal on January 20, 2009 at 8:52 PM

You could be right that the Texas Democrats got him but the House republicans threw him out because they believed it. I am not a texan so it doesn’t matter to me in that respect but as a republican he dishonored all of us. As for the DA thats a local issue. If you think it was politically motivated with no basis in fact then you need to get the DA indicted like they did for the DA in the Duke case. You don’t have to take it if you know its wrong. To be honest other than a few diehards most everyone I know thinks Delay was crooked.

kanda on January 20, 2009 at 10:06 PM

I’d like to see a picture of Hillary forcefully grabbing Cornyn by the arm at that luncheon today, as I have been hearing

ToddonCapeCod on January 20, 2009 at 10:22 PM

Knowing Hillary he probably learned that crossing Hillary and Obama ain’t too good for his political career. Grandstanding is going to cost him big time for the next 4 years maybe 6. He deserves it for putting his personal feeling ahead of the country in a time of war (pronounced whoa-ah).

kanda on January 20, 2009 at 10:48 PM

Texas Gal on January 20, 2009 at 11:14 PM

I’m aware of that rule but you know they revised that rule for him but then it turned out he kept acting like a jerk so they rescinded that special tom delay rule.

From the Boston Globe.

Coddling Tom DeLay
November 18, 2004

THE HOUSE majority leader, Tom DeLay, who was cited by the House Ethics Committee for three violations this year and another in 1999, was rewarded yesterday by his fellow Republicans with a rules change that will allow him to keep his leadership position even if he is charged with a serious crime.

This shameful action, coming only 15 days after an election supposedly dominated by pledges of morality and reform, casts a cloud over the House and adds evidence — if any were needed — that House Speaker Dennis Hastert, sitting in a chair once occupied by Henry Clay, Sam Rayburn, and Tip O’Neill, provides no more leadership than a cardboard cutout.

DeLay said — apparently with a straight face — that the change was needed to protect Republicans from the Democrats’ “politics of personal destruction.”

Representative Henry Bonilla, who led the effort to benefit his fellow Texan, said, “This takes the power away from any partisan crackpot district attorney who may want to indict” party leaders.

Bonilla might take care about name-calling. It is true that a local Texas prosecutor has already indicted three DeLay associates on charges of illegal fund-raising for the 2002 legislative elections in Texas — elections that gave Republicans the majority they needed to redistrict the congressional delegation, producing a swing of five more GOP congressmen from Texas.

However, one of the four admonishments of DeLay from the House’s own bipartisan Ethics Committee concerned that same redistricting. And the US Supreme Court has intervened, telling lower courts to take a close look at the charges relating to that redistricting.

And from the NY Times

House G.O.P. Voids Rule It Adopted Shielding Leader
By CARL HULSE

Published: January 4, 2005

WASHINGTON, Jan. 3 – Stung by criticism that they were lowering ethical standards, House Republicans on Monday night reversed a rule change that would have allowed a party leader to retain his position even if indicted.

Lawmakers and House officials said Republicans, meeting behind the closed doors of the House chamber, had acted at the request of the House majority leader, Representative Tom DeLay, who had been the intended beneficiary of the rule change.

Those attending the Republican meeting, which was held on the day before the opening of the 109th Congress on Tuesday, said Republicans unanimously agreed to restore the old rule after Mr. DeLay told them that the move would clear the air and deny Democrats a potent political issue. In the past year, he has been admonished by the ethics panel three times: for his tactics in trying to persuade a colleague to support the Medicare drug bill, for appearing to link political donations to support for legislation and for involving a federal agency in a political matter in Texas.

Even Rolling Stone gets into the act…

The Hammer Falls
Are the Democrats tough enough to bring down Tom DeLay?
JOSHUA GREENPosted May 19, 2005 12:00 AM

After the revelations of the past few weeks, there is no longer any doubt that Rep. Tom DeLay is the most corrupt official in Washington — which is saying a lot, given the ethical standards of Capitol Hill. The Republican majority leader, known as “The Hammer,” has broken nearly every House ethics rule on the books in recent years, enjoying lavish trips paid for by corporate lobbyists and foreign agents. DeLay stayed at the luxurious Hapuna Beach Prince Hotel in Hawaii as a guest of the American Association of Airport Executives, who picked up the $52,000 tab for eight members of Congress. He went golfing in Scotland, Russia and South Korea with family members and aides, racking up $283,000 in expenses that were covered by a host of special interests, including Enron, AT&T and the Nuclear Energy Institute. His wife, Christine, and daughter Danni Ferro have received $500,000 from his campaign for their political work on his behalf — including a late-night party for corporate donors at the Rio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, where a lobbyist poured champagne over Danni’s head while she was in a hot tub on the balcony of DeLay’s suite. The majority leader — a master at covering his tracks by laundering corporate gifts through seemingly innocuous groups like the National Center for Public Policy Research — insists that his first-class jet-setting is undertaken solely for “educational” purposes.
The accusations against DeLay are hardly new. The congressman from Texas has been openly flouting the law for years, receiving an unprecedented three rebukes in a single week from the House ethics committee after he bribed a fellow Republican to vote for a bill and sold his own vote on another in exchange for a corporate donation. What is new, however, is the momentum that is gathering to oust DeLay for his unethical conduct. With more abuses coming to light each day, even members of his own party are calling for him to resign. DeLay is “an absolute embarrassment to me and to the Republican Party,” Rep. Christopher Shays, a Republican from Connecticut, said recently. The man who has long bullied supporters and opponents alike — once going so far as to order the Department of Homeland Security to help hunt down and arrest Democrat legislators in Texas — suddenly appears likely to face censure and even indictment.

As you point out the article continues and points out the democrats went after Delay

The combined Democratic effort has taken a serious toll on the majority leader. Once considered untouchable, DeLay, who has been in Congress since 1984, won re-election last year with only fifty-five percent of the vote in a heavily Republican district. There are signs that even conservatives are becoming fed up: A recent poll taken in his district showed that fifty-one percent of voters disapprove of DeLay. As his situation worsens, longtime supporters are beginning to abandon him. Even DeLay’s connections on K Street are drying up: The corporate lobbyists who routinely supplied him with private jets and other cherished perks are suddenly refusing his requests for fear of being tainted by scandal. “People who rule by fear, as DeLay has done, frequently find that when something happens to them, there are very few people around to support them,” says Thurber of American University.

Sad but apparently true. I hope they bring it to trial. I want to see if it was political or was based on facts of wrongdoing.

kanda on January 21, 2009 at 12:32 AM

Okay .. you keep believing that DeLay was so dirty that he was never prosecuted for any crimes. It was the District Attorney of Travis County (Austin, the capital of TX) that indicted him, not the House of Representatives. The DA in not a federally elected official, he’s a county employee, elected by the county residents. But he is a Democrat.

Texas Gal on January 21, 2009 at 1:10 AM

Texas Gal I know you are a really intelligent person who likes Tom Delay a lot. He obviously has you snowed. I know you must feel terribly embarassed that the sleezbag was caught. If the facts of what he did doesn’t convince you he was dirty, I sure won’t be able to. Suffice it to say I have been in houston many times between 1999 and 2001 as I worked for a huge computer company no longer in business that was headquartered there. I have many friends from Sugarland and Houston who hate the guy and they are republicans. Politics aside, what he did was sleezy. When you look at all the things he did if becomes a concern. When you look at the paid trips he and his family took it becomes a concern. When you look at the quid pro quo and arm twisting he did to get votes for bills he supported it becomes a concern. When you look at him being admonished by the house ethics committee 4 times in 5 years while the republicans were in charge of the house it becomes a concern. Thats not politically motivated. Thats the republicans getting concerned over his unethical dealings. He set a new standard for corruption even the democrats havent exceeded. Finally when you look at the indictments handed down by a texas grand jury it raises concern.

Your only defense of him comes down to the the criminal case has not come to trial yet. Maybe if you contact the DA’s office they will provide an answer as to why.

Tell me some of the great accomplishments he made for the people of his district. He represented them for 15 or so years in the house. Surely this great man must have done many great things. No one ever talks about his accomplishments.

kanda on January 21, 2009 at 8:11 AM