« Wicked Science Takes on the Soul | Main | USDA Screws Organics Industry Again »

June 28, 2007

For this Former Witness, it's DeLay-ja Vu

Boy, is the Tom DeLay case sounding familiar. A dirty right-wing politician gets caught laundering money and engaging in other illegal behavior, he is taken to court, his reputation is justifiably smeared, he challenges the court's decision based on a technicality, the decision is overturned on that technicality, and all the stupid right-wingers shout, "He is vindicated!" and promptly forget every dirty thing we factually know the politician did.

NW Republican, predictably, says, "Of course the Democrats really don’t care about whether the charges were true or not. What they really wanted was a political issue." And then turns the conversation toward the political attack campaign being waged against Democrat Betsy Johnson (which Loaded Orygun has so excellently debunked) while entirely failing to see the irony in doing so.

For Tom DeLay's part, he says:

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals today ruled that I was wrongfully indicted by Ronnie Earle, the Mike Nifong of Texas, on laws that didn’t even exist. The court affirmed the decision to throw out the conspiracy indictments because they were based on laws that weren’t even on the books. What Ronnie Earle accomplished is no rookie error – it’s a political attack using our legal system as the primary weapon.

Ronnie Earle’s politically motivated indictments cost Republicans the leader of their choice, and my family hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees. The damage he has done to my family and my career cannot be rectified, but the courts have recognized a significant portion of the injustice and ruled accordingly. For nearly two years I have been willing and eager to go to trial and with this ruling, we are thankfully closer to that day.

Yep. Sounds familiar. Read the actual news story here (note that the criminal conspiracy charges were dropped, not because they weren't true, but because "conspiracy to violate the election code was not a crime until 2003," which was after DeLay engaged in his conspiracy). You've just got to love those technicalities. To learn more about the background of the DeLay case, check out Wikipedia's overview. Oh, and disabuse yourself of the notion that faithful right-wingers will ever look at the facts about their own dirty politicians.

Posted by Becky at June 28, 2007 11:11 AM