The Hartford Courant editorializes about Reps. Rob Simmons' and Nancy Johnson's response to their fellow delegation member, Rep. Chris Shays. The paper says Simmons and Johnson should join, not distance themselves from, Shays:

From Mike Allen of the Washington Post we learn more about all the behind-the-scenes maneuvering to defend Tom DeLay from, well, Mike Allen of the Washington Post and his colleagues in the fourth estate. There's some surreal about this -- people leaking the srategy to deal with the hostile media to one of the reporters who is being accused of being too hostile.

Here are some choice passages:

Rich Lowry of the National Review Online whines too much. He writes up a complaint that the stories in the newspapers are not news and that the attacks against DeLay show that Democrats dont have ideas.

Sorry, I thought this was about whether Tom DeLay is fit to serve in Congress. Lowry forgets to mention a few things in his whining essay, like:

Repeated ethics violations.

Author/journalist Lou Dubose does some of the best, most thorough reporting on Tom DeLay and DeLay Inc. This morning he has a long piece in Salon (which you can read if you have a subscription or watch a trailer to a movie to get a day pass).

Here's Lou's quick answer to why DeLay is still in power:

Nick Thompson of Slate performs a service by giving a quick scorecard of DeLay's stench and troubles. His scores, to my eye, are a little low. I talked at length with Nick about this story Tuesday -- he's done a good job in a short amount of space.

Lou Dobbs has a quick on-line poll about DeLay:

Do you believe House Majority Leader Tom Delay is the victim of a campaign by the “liberal” media to embarrass him?

Even with the bias in the question, the results are overwhemingly NO. As of this writing, it's 93% "No", 7% "Yes".

Check out this new website: www.dropthehammer.org. Coming to you from folks at the American Progress Action Fund, this site is designed to pressure specific corporations to stop contributing to Tom DeLay's legal defense fund and to ask for refunds of the money they have alrady contributed.

In response to our ads and ads by Campaign for America's Future criticizing DeLay for his corruption and unethical tenure in Congress (which we think should end, now), Tom DeLay had three words for us all:

"Bring it on."

No joking. Can't imagine Republican colleagues around the country are happy about that.

So, folks, here's how to bring it on:

The stories are rolling in from this morning's press conference announcing Public Campaign Action Fund's launch of ads criticizing Tom DeLay.

The Associated Press explains how Public Campaign Action Fund chose Republican targets:

The "virtual" room was packed at this morning's telephone press conference announcing Public Campaign Action Fund's and Campaign for America's Future's ad launch criticizing Tom DeLay. More than 30 reporters were on the call, representing mainstream outlets such as CNN, NBC, Fox News, the Associated Press, Reuters, and the National Journal. Stay tuned for coverage.