Crooksandliars has the best Tom DeLay Daily Show Clip they have in their archives. The highlight? "You never hear about the laws Tom DeLay doesn't break."
The TPM Muckraker has this little gem:
R. Jeffrey Smith of The Washington Post points out one advantage to DeLay's quitting the race now: he can convert all of the campaign money he would have spent on a close election to his legal defense fund. Contributions to the fund had been dropping late last year.
And it looks like money for hte legal fees could be something that DeLay will need.
Meanwhile, Think Progress notes that DeLay already has a new purpose in life: getting rid of Ronnie Earle. Earle is the District Attorney who charged DeLay with money laundering.
SNOW: Okay, so at this point, you know - are you willing to let bygones be bygones?
DELAY: Absolutely not. Texas should not allow a district attorney from Travis County have this kind of power. And they can take his power away from him because there was the Texas legislature that gave him this power. And I think that will happen in the next session of the Texas legislature.
SNOW: Oh, really?
DELAY: Yes.
What DeLay wants is that people of his stature be above the law in Texas, not beholden to some pesky 'District Attorney'. They should be free to money launder to their heart's content!
And there is another little reason why DeLay might have stepped down; he might not win:
"Even though I thought I could win, it was a little too risky," [The Galveston County Daily News] quoted [DeLay] as saying.
But will the ghost of DeLay leave the halls of Congress? After all, as Josh Marshall notes, he built the machine that is running Congress right now.
So DeLay is out. But it's DeLay's House. DeLay's Republican DC machine. They built and fortified it with the money he brought in. The great majority of them voted for the "DeLay Rule" custom tailored for Majority Leader DeLay to avoid stepping down even after indictment. The current Republican membership of the House ethics committee was hand-picked to provide protection for DeLay and the old membership was purged. He's their guy. Their rule rests on his machine. They can run but they can't hide.
Although I do not know for sure, I believe Tom Delay has done wrong, and he should be taken down for he has done.
Its also immoral that he is taking money for his campaign and using it for his campaign funds. Those people who donated it wanted a Republican to win that district. That money should be given back to those people, or at the very worst given to the republican who runs in that district.