DeLay Gets A Double Whammy

It looks like everybody is picking on poor Tom DeLay (R-TX) the Republican Majority Leader in the House of Representatives today. On the DeLay Crime List today we find. A trip to Russia in 1979 financed by a lobby group for the Russian Government. What is the matter with that you ask? Well nothing if it were you or me, but for a member of congress it is against the law to accept trips funded by a foreign government or their representative in this case the lobbyists. The Washington Post reports: DeLay reported that the trip was sponsored by a Washington-based nonprofit organization. But interviews with those involved in planning DeLay's trip say the expenses were covered by a mysterious company registered in the Bahamas that also paid for an intensive $440,000 lobbying campaign. Umm Tom..don't you think you should have checked into the backround of a "mysterious company registered in the Bahamas"? Then, no sooner is this reported than The New York Times reports that DeLay's wife and daughter were paid $500,000 since 2001 by his campaign committee and his political action commitee. Most of the payments to his wife, Christine A. DeLay, and his only child, Dani DeLay Ferro, were described in the disclosure forms as "fund-raising fees," "campaign management" or "payroll," with no additional details about how they earned the money. The article went on to say: The payments to Mr. DeLay's family have continued into 2005; the latest monthly disclosure filed by Americans for a Republican Majority shows Mrs. DeLay was paid was paid $4,028 last month, while Mrs. Ferro received $3,681. Earlier statements show that the two women received similar monthly fees from the political action committee throughout 2003 and 2004. Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, which is a research group closely monitoring DeLay and his fund-raising and expenditure said "It's DeLay Inc. If it's not illegal, it certainly is inappropriate for members of Congress to use their positions to enrich their families." "Questions are raised anytime a politician puts close family members on the payroll." said Larry Noble, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics and a former general counsel of the Federal Election Commission. Combine these two reports with all the other alleged ethics violations swirling around DeLay, along with the mild but effective rebuke from Vice President Dick Cheney yesterday for his remarks against the Judges associated with the Schiavo case and I see big trouble ahead for Mr. Delay. It looks to me like the GOP wants to distance themselves as far as possible from DeLay before the '06 election cycle by giving the media a little help in finding these latest DeLay shenanigans. It certainly isn't the reporters digging this up as can be seen by their reluctance to cover anything anti-Bush or for that matter anti-Republican Party.