It was established years ago that Delay is an unethical, mean spirited jerk. There is no mystery there. The people I wonder about are: (a) the people who vote him into office; and (b) the people in Congress who elect him to leadership positions.

When he got slammed by the Ethics Committee a few weeks back he had a press conference in which he claimed to have be exonerated. He had a bunch of fellow legislators standing behind him with great, big, phony smiles on their faces. You'd think he won the Nobel Prize. At yesterday's press conference he had a bunch of them standing behind him again while he claimed that the proposed rule change has nothing to do with his situation in Texas.

His unbelievable phoniness comes direct from Dick Cheney's playbook: if you are going to lie, lie big. That way people will think there is something they don't know because no one could be that phony.