Friday, June 09, 2006
The Hammer Outfoxed Again
So Tom DeLay figured he could pretend to run again, rake in a bunch of campaign donations, then bail out of the campaign (and his congressional seat) a few days after winning the GOP primary and then use the cash to pay off his lawyers? Well, he can go ahead and try it, but there's a good chance that the Texas GOP may be forced to keep his name on the 2006 ballot, even though he'll be too preoccupied with avoiding a prison cell to actively run for his seat. The Texas Democratic Party has asked for and recieved a temporary restraining order keeping the Texas GOP from putting anyone in DeLay's place as the GOP candidate for his congressional district. At a minimum, the Texas Republican Party must sit on its hands until at least June 22, the date when a judge has scheduled a full hearing on the matter. And when they do finally get around to picking someone to replace the Bug Man, they'll have to contend with former Republican, former Congresscritter, and always nutty Steve Stockman, who is now a Libertarian who will probably take a good chunk of the yahoo vote from whichever DeLay minion gets anointed by the Buggy One to be his replacement. How nutty is Stockman? Well, remember when the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City got blown up by right-wing nutballs? He was a US Congressman at the time. The morning of the bombing, about 45 minutes before it happened, Stockman's office got a fax warning of a planned bomb attack in Oklahoma City. Instead of alerting the Federal Protective Services -- which would have done a lockdown of all Federal locations in that city -- the fax was tossed in the recycling bin where it languished for a few days. And when his office finally did connect the fax to the bombing, they didn't notify the FPS. Instead, they contacted the (wait for it) National Rifle Association. (Originally, the word was that they contacted the NRA before even calling the FBI, but the story was later changed to indicate that the FBI was called first. However, to judge from Stockman's own testimony, they spent far more time talking with the NRA than with any actual members of Federal law enforcement.)
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