A bit more on Tom Delay....
Lawyer and blogger extraordinaire,
Joe Gringo
If you like current events, politics, golf, México, football, history, despise Hillary Clinton, believe in a redneck jihad against radical Islamists, enjoy great food and some good Tequila (the drink and the town), hanker down neighbor...crack one open...'cause you've come to the right place.
Thursday, September 29, 2005
About Me
- Name: Joe Gringo
- Location: Phoenix, Arizona, United States
I was born and raised in Arizona, the 5th of 6 children. The 'rents moved here from Minnesota about 1 year before I was born. I am married to a truly beautiful Mexican girl (see archived posts for June.."How I met the Queen of Tequila). I love golf, football, most anything pertaining to Mexico, current events/politics and I have the ability to talk backwards ALMOST as fast as I can talk forwards. Now you can take that 2 ways, let's just say I do speak at the same speed/rate as any normal Joe, I even did a stint on the #1 rated morning radio show (93.3 KDKB) here in Phoenix a few years back as "The Amazing Dr. Rewind". Que tenga un buen día!
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11 Comments:
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In your dreams. Earle may be a Democrat, but, so were 12 of the 15 politicians he has indicted over the years!
The article you quoted offers no reason as to why Earl is corrupt. Therefore, we'll simply take it that PowerLine is regurgitating the dying squeal of a corrupt politician.
Prison has a wonderful way of silencing and humbling the arrogant!
Corrupt? Really? So, was the whole grand jury corrupt too?
Travis County DA Ronnie Earle has been gunning for Tom DeLay for years, trying to tie the long-time GOP House leader to political corruption -- and coming up empty, at least so far. However, NRO's Byron York notes that Earle has found others in violation of the law along the way, notably large corporations who have donated to DeLay campaign, forbidden by Texas law. Does he prosecute the corporations? Apparently only if they don't comply with the Ronnie Earle Clemency Program, which consists of demands for huge cash contributions to his own pet causes:
Ronnie Earle, the Texas prosecutor who has indicted associates of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay in an ongoing campaign-finance investigation, dropped felony charges against several corporations indicted in the probe in return for the corporations' agreement to make five- and six-figure contributions to one of Earle's pet causes.
A grand jury in Travis County, Texas, last September indicted eight corporations in connection with the DeLay investigation. All were charged with making illegal contributions (Texas law forbids corporate giving to political campaigns). Since then, however, Earle has agreed to dismiss charges against four of the companies — retail giant Sears, the restaurant chain Cracker Barrel, the Internet company Questerra, and the collection company Diversified Collection Services — after the companies pledged to contribute to a program designed to publicize Earle's belief that corporate involvement in politics is harmful to American democracy.
Some legal observers called the arrangement an unusual resolution to a criminal case, at least in Texas, where the matter is being prosecuted. "I don't think you're going to find anybody who will say it's a common practice," says Jack Strickland, a Fort Worth lawyer who serves as vice-chairman of the criminal-justice section of the Texas State Bar. Earle himself told National Review Online that he has never settled a case in a similar fashion during his years as Travis County district attorney. And allies of DeLay, who has accused Earle of conducting a politically motivated investigation, called Earle's actions "dollars for dismissals."
Earle wants to fund a program at Stanford University that engages in deliberative polling, run by a personal acquaintance of Earle's, James Fishkin. In order to do that, Earle has used the indictments he has gathered in various political corruption cases to strongarm companies into donating large sums of money to the program in exchange for Earle dropping the charges. The amount of money that Earle wanted from Sears was so high that the company initially offered Earle the chance to pound sand. Eventually, the four corporations agreed to fund the program with an understanding that the result would not simply be an anti-capitalist screed.
For most people, this would appear to be nothing less than extortion, although certainly Earle has set up this scam well enough to avoid that charge. However, Texans can certainly smell the corruption this entails. All Ronnie Earle has to do is to file charges against any corporation that donates to a non-profit that might have a political connection. From that indictment, Earle can demand a hefty "donation" to Stanford's program in return for a clean bill of health. Most large corporations won't spend the money to fight off a determined DA, especially where politics are involved, and Earle gets his money. In fact, it's reminiscent of Jesse Jackson's corporate shakedowns exposed by Kenneth Timmerman two years ago.
One other fact that will rankle Texans: Sears offered to donate to the University of Texas at first -- and Earle refused to agree to it, insisting that the money go to California's Stanford University and his friend's program instead. He later relented when he found a similar program at UT run by a Fishkin protege.
Fine, bust Ronnie Earle too, but none of this makes Tom Delay innocent. He committed electoral fraud.
Or are you really trying to say that electoral fraud is ok? Was the whole grand jury that indicted Delay guilty too?
PS - Did Ronnie Earle break the law? If he didn't break the law then he didn't break the law. There goes PowerLine's flawed argument.
A little birdie whispers in our ears that a lawman like Ronnie Earle probably really does know what he can and can't do, especially when he does it for all the world to see.
Tom Delay on the other hand committed electoral fraud. Can you spot the difference?
Finding someone 'worse' doesn't actually get a criminal off the hook. If Ronnie Earle went to prison tomorrow, Tom Delay still committed electoral fraud.
There is a lot of innuendo and inference about things that Tom Delay might have done, possibly, but you hear no facts. In fact they have no real accusations because those accusations would require facts. If the Democrats had any facts, they would waste no time laying them out before the MSM.
Innuendo and inference? He was indicted by a Grand Jury consisting of Republicans and Democrats.
There really is no mystery, no innuendo, no inference. It's a straight crime.
The companies involved were long ago indicted for their part in it... and they admit it. Several of Delay's associates were long ago indicted for the same crime.
This was indictment was expected by the Republican party, which a while ago changed the law to protect Delay from this, and then changed it back after fearing the wrath of the public.
I'm trying to break it to you slowly... (far from being 'innuendo') this is a serious crime for which Tom Delay could serve two years in prison.
Where have you been? There are facts, evidence, witnesses, sworn testimonies, previous indictments, police, judges and a grand jury. The Democrats could sink without trace and Delay's antics would still be a crime.
Tom Delay laid himself out.
If he's guilty, he needs to do the time. One more thing, remember Kaye Bailey Hutchison?
The editors of National Review weigh in on Ronnie Earle's indictment of Tom DeLay:
Following the indictment of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, conservatives are left wondering what to make of the charges. The answer is simple. The charges are absurd and should be thrown out of court.
Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle has charged DeLay with conspiracy to make a contribution to a political party in violation of the Texas Election Code. The alleged violation involved a money swap between the now-defunct Texans for a Republican Majority PAC (TRMPAC), which DeLay helped found but never managed, and the Republican National State Elections Committee (RNSEC). TRMPAC sent a check for $190,000 to RNSEC, and RNSEC then sent checks totaling approximately the same amount to Texas House candidates in October of 2002. Earle, a Democrat, calls this money laundering, because the money that TRMPAC sent to RNSEC came from corporations, which are barred from contributing to campaigns in Texas.
Earle is wrong. Before campaign-finance reform, this kind of soft-money for hard-money swap was perfectly legal and happened all the time. In October of 2002, the Texas Democratic party did the same thing when it sent $75,000 to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and received $75,000 back from the DNC.
Also, as former Department of Justice official Barbara Comstock noted yesterday, “Had corporations sent money directly to the RNC or RNSEC, the transaction would be legal. How could anyone conspire to do indirectly what could legally have been done directly?” Earle considers these transactions illegal because he thinks they should be, and he’s convinced a grand jury to play along with him.
In addition, DeLay denies that he had anything to do with the (legal) transaction at issue. It strains credulity to think, as Earle apparently alleges, that the House Majority Leader was involved in the day-to-day mailing of checks by this PAC.
“Had corporations sent money directly to the RNC or RNSEC, the transaction would be legal."
You've just said it. He broke the law. End of argument.
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