Justice DeLayed

Tom DeLay, the cantankerous House Majority Leader, was indicted today on one count of conspiracy to violate political fundraising laws, a felony. Because of Republican House rules, the indictment forced the former exterminator to resign his leadership position in the House. At the White House, Scott McClellan stated, "I think the president's view is that we need to let the legal process work." And you know what? The president is absolutely correct. I don't know enough about the specifics of the case to make an informed comment on substance, but I believe in the principle that DeLay is innocent until proven guilty, and hopefully justice will be served.

Having said that, the initial reaction from DeLay can be described as dubious. If I were in his position and believed in my innocence, I would have responded like this: "The charges against me are false. The facts are A, B and C, and the law clearly states X, Y and Z, which shows that there was no violation." But DeLay did not devote one word of his statement to any of the details of his case. Instead, he attacked the prosecutor, Austin district attorney Ronnie Earle. Earle is a Democrat, and that alone seems to qualify him, in DeLay's eyes, as "an unabashed partisan zealot". DeLay claims that this indictment is some kind of partisan vendetta.

The partisan argument is weak on two counts. First, Earle hs prosecuted 15 public corruption cases, and 12 of them have been against Democrats. The other point is that, while I'm no expert on Texas jurisprudence, I'm pretty sure that the D.A. can present a case, but only the grand jury can indict. So are all of the members of the grand jury partisan zealots? William Gibson, the grand jury foreman, said of DeLay, "He's probably doing a good job. I don't have anything against him. Just something happened." That doesn't sound to me like someone with a political agenda.

The charge of partisanship is reminiscent of Ken Starr's investigation into Whitewater and, ultimately, the Clinton-Lewinsky affair. But the proof is in the pudding: After all the millions of dollars spent by Starr on his Reno-approved witchhunt and all the evidence gathered, the grand jury never saw fit to indict Bill Clinton on any charge. We can argue until the next millennium about what Congress should have done with the Starr Report as a political process. But in the court of law, the end result would lead one to conclude that Starr was either incompetent or on a wild goose chase. The fact that the grand jury in Austin saw enough evidence to warrant an indictment against DeLay means that there is at least a case there to be argued.

Time will tell what will happen in this case. It isn't the first charge of impropriety that DeLay has had to answer for. I can't sum this up any better than Arianna Huffington:

Delay, Frist, Abramoff, Safavian... Wasn't this the crowd that was going to "restore honor and integrity" to Washington? If this is what integrity looks like, let's bring back Oval Office blow jobs.