Yesterday I spoke with a lawyer that has been following this. In his opinion DeLay is between a rock and a hard place.

If he tries to show that the money laundering charge was bogus then he will leave himself open for the charge that he took corporate money and that would be easy to prove since even he has admitted that he did.

This has been a Felony in Texas since 1903. He would easily be convicted of it and would have to appeal that case which he would likely win since the SCOTUS recently ruled that it is OK for corporations to give directly to pols.

But the bottom line for Delay? He can never run again. As long as he is a convicted felon he is barred from office in Texas. He is also so 'hot' no one will want to be close to him since they might get burned in the process.

As Republicans are fond of saying: If you have done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear.

There is already a movement in Texas to 'get' the Judge in the trial and see to it that he is never elected to anything again.

Good old Republican theory: If a Judge rules against one of your criminals then destroy his career.

Before anyone here decides to join up with this movement you need to realize that the Judge, Pat Priest, retired five years ago and only hears cases to which he is appointed by the Chief Justice of the Texas Sup. Court. Cases like this one where nut jobs might start a movement to see to it that you are never elected to anything again if one of their criminal heros is found guilty.

But this could work out to be a good thing. If he never hears another case the Republicans can claim victory for doing nothing.

And if you have been watching the Republicans for the past two years you will know that doing nothing is what they do best!

No, lying is what they do best.

And taking massive amounts of dollars from corporate lobbyists whose masters tell them what to do in return for all that money is a close second.

A recent example is the Caifornia congressman from my district, - Doolittle and his wife; finally got caught up in an influence peddling scandal of large proportion, and had to resign his Congressional seat.

He should have gone to jail. But instead, he has a new job !

He is a lobbyist now !!! Further evidence, if any was needed - that we live in a plutcracy, where money is king.

This is no democracy at all.

Dems are guilty of it too, of course, but nowhere to the extent and degree and in the sheer amounts of money the republicans are guilty of getting involved with. Just look at the votes, the republicans ALWAYS hew to the corporate line. The voters are always subordinate to that.

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Yup--They got the chicken humper

LOL!

luckily he is not a SF member.

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His conviction was reversed by the appellate court for lack of evidence.

Conviction of ex-US House leader DeLay tossed - U.S. News

Seems he's never served a day as he was out pending the appeal...

Now he can get his Texas concelead carry permit back......

There's no need in that. He can't carry at Starbucks any more anyway.

Well... It was just a case of him waiting until the right Judges were in office.

There were three Judges, two were Republicans and one was not. The two Republicans found that the Jury had made a mistake and that they did not understand what was being presented.

Now the case will likely go to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals where there are nine Judges, seven of which are Republicans, so I guess DeLay has nothing to worry about there!

The political theory under which your comment above is made is precisely the one you operate under. My wife checks the mirror before she goes out in public......

Unless you live in Texas you really cannot understand what is at work here.

Republicans in Texas are vindictive and they are not shy about letting anyone know this.

They did finally elect enough Republican Judges for DeLay to take his case to court and stop trying to postpone it. Conservatives know the Judges threw the case for one of their own and are celebrating their takeover of the Court system in Texas.

This is major league stuff, and trying to pretend it does not exist will only make it worse.

Of course, no over zealous democrat prosecutor would, say, impanel a Grand Jury, say, in Austin and score a political victory?
And the overturn was not simply on a technicality, but was a devastating judgment against the prosecutor and the original judge.
Democrats would NEVER play politics with the court process would they?

You err in seeing that ONLY repubs would ever plat politics.

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

It looks like a disagreement about some fairly arcane points of law. Which part of the opinion levels a devastating judgment against the prosecutor or trial judge?

Here's the full opinion: http://images.bimedia.net/documents/tom-delay-appeal-doc-12D.pdf

Oh loss of libertay!!

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That Delay should never have been charged.

Its not just this case that bothers me. Its any time an over-zealous prosecutor uses his office to either advance himself, or advance his political party.
Its not a good thing when "my": side does it, and evil when "your" side does it. We all need to cry "foul" whenever the judicial system is used for purely political purposes.
Another example would be the Duke lacrosse case--that prosecutor should have done jail time as the case was a complete fabrication.

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags