[quote]WASHINGTON (CNN) – Rep. Tom DeLay will drop out of his re-election race, two Republican congressional sources told CNN Monday.
DeLay was forced to step down as House majority leader last year after being indicted in his home state of Texas.[/quote]
About time this Republican scumbag caught on that he wasn’t wanted.
He’s going to “spare” his Houston district the mudfest? The time to spare his constituents was when he on his way up the ladder to becoming the biggest hypocritical sack of crap on Capitol Hill.
Of course, this is a guy who, in line with apparent GOP policies shamelessly puts his snout into the trough even when traveling to criminal court dates.
[quote]DeLay brushed off the torrent of investigative news articles questioning the funding behind the golf, private planes and resort hotels that marked his travel at home and abroad. He even accepted a plane from R.J. Reynolds Tobacco to go to his arraignment. “There’s nothing wrong with it,” he said. "They had a plane available. My schedule was such that I couldn’t do it commercially
This guy was (and, terribly, probably still is) one of the most powerful Republican leaders, setting the tone for nearly everything that the Congress has done for the past several years. Look at his legacy of partisan hatred, money grubbing, hardcore racism, and shameless pandering to the extreme right and religious nuts. Delay, the genius behind the worst puffery of the whole Schiavo situation, of course was cool with having his own father put down. Hypocritical to the core, he’s the mirror image of the GOP of today.
[quote]The pending resignation of former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), once one of the most powerful lawmakers in Washington, comes amid a federal criminal investigation that already has reached into his inner circle of longtime advisers.
The picture appeared to darken further last week. DeLay’s former chief of staff Edwin A. Buckham, the lawmaker’s closest political and spiritual adviser, was described in court documents filed by the Justice Department as someone who collaborated with the others – Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, former DeLay deputy chief of staff Tony Rudy and former DeLay aide Michael Scanlon. They arranged payments, trips and favors that the department’s investigators charged were part of an illegal conspiracy, according to the documents.
DeLay himself was formally designated as “Representative #2” in the documents, a title that cannot be considered a good omen. The lawmaker designated in the same documents as Representative #1 – Rep. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio) – has been cited by the Justice Department as having received “things of value” for performing official acts.[/quote]
DeLay is doing this because the Republican leadership can absolutely not afford to lose control of either House. They’re terrified of the power of subpoena- if Democrats can force people to start testifying under oath, DeLay, the Duke, Scanlon, Abramoff etc. are going to have a lot more company.
[quote]The original author is counting all deaths from illness, suicides and accidents as “military casualties”, to make the combat deaths seem less important. Since the article is complaining about people’s attitudes toward deaths in combat operations, why would he need to sneak non-combat deaths into the figures?
The answer is to look at the deaths in the combat categories - hostile action and terrorist attack:
George W. Bush . . . . . . 1157 (2001-2004)
Bill Clinton . . . . . . . . . . . 56 (1993-1996)
George H.W. Bush . . . . . 172 (1989-1992)
Ronald Reagan . . . . . . . 288 (1981-1984)
[/quote]
What about the troops dead under the Gipper from 1985-1989?
But, seriously, it’s hard to take Chewycorns seriously when he’s offering up sheer puffery like that. He might as well start showing us annual traffic fatalities to show us how 9-11 “wasn’t a big deal”.