After a decade of buying power and influence on the Hill, former Rep. Tom DeLay's ARMPAC (Americans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committe) is going out of business says Paul Kane at Capitol Briefing. The subject of intense legal scrutiny, the activities of ARMPAC, and its local offshoot TRMPAC, placed purveyor Tom DeLay in hot water from which he has yet to escape.

Rep. Barbara Cubin (R), the Wyoming incumbent, threatened to slap an opponent who brought up Tom DeLay's ARMPAC donations to her. For the record, she took $22,520 from ARMPAC and another $1,000 from DeLay's campaign committee. And voted with him more than 94% of the time. Read more at In DeLay's Pocket.

The state comptroller halted payments to Cassidy & Associates, a firm hired by the state that has ties to Tom DeLay, reports the Houston Chronicle. Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayton began an audit of the firm after the paper reported that the firm, which employs Todd Boulanger, a former partner of disgraced lobbyist Abramoff, paid $7,600 for a reception for Tom DeLay’s ARMPAC within days of receiving its first payment of $15,000 from the state.

Tom DeLay's ARMPAC received an inquiry from the FEC on March, 8, 2006, asking them to clarify if they charged the "usual and normal" amount for the transfer of ARMPAC's mailing list to DeLay's congressional campaign committee. The campaign was charged $3,138.87 for the mailing list.

Seems like a small amount of money for this list, huh?

Back in 2003, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission released some 1.5 million email messages that it collected as part of its investigation of Enron's price-gouging of California consumers. The press pounced on some of the choicer bits, but this is truly the gift that keeps giving.

DeLay's ARMPAC has no money. ARMPAC's year-end report shows that the PAC received $17,000 from six different PACS. The PAC spent a little less than that on disbursements which mostly consisted of the salaries of Delay's wife (Christine DeLay), his daughter (Danni DeLay Ferro), and his codefendant in Texas Jim Ellis (the PAC gave Ellis his December paycheck and fronted him his January one as well).

It'll be messy:

229 Members of the 109th Congress took $2,381,328 from Tom DeLay’s ARMPAC.

A major investigation by The Associated Press is a must read. It shows what Tom DeLay does with all that special interest money--over the past six years, he's spent more than $1 million on:

...48 visits to golf clubs and resorts with lush fairways; 100 flights aboard company planes; 200 stays at hotels, many world-class; and 500 meals at restaurants, some averaging nearly $200 for a dinner for two.

Fired Up Missouri reports that Texas prosecutors are examining campaign finance records of Gov. Matt Blunt for the year 2000. Previous news reports have said that Prosecutor Ronnie Earle was looking at records for ARMPAC; Roy Blunt's leadership PAC, the Rely on Your Beliefs Fund, and the Missouri Republian Party. It appears that the net is now wider than that.

A Daily DeLay reader passed along a note that yesterday the McGuireWoods LLP PAC filed an amended mid-year report for 2005 showing the PAC failed to itemize almost 200 contributions totaling nearly 60 pages of additions to the report.

What’s the significance? This is the same law firm that advices Tom DeLay and ARMPAC on how to comply with federal campaign finance laws.