Michael Hedges at the Houston Chronicle takes a closer look at DeLay's record fundraising for his legal defense fund, as well as some of the expenses. Since 2000, when the indicted former Majority Leader was first charged with a House Ethics violation, the fund has raked in $1.4 million.

The Houston Chronicle reports on a letter that indicted former Majority Leader Tom DeLay sent to constituents this week in which he angrily claims that Democrats are practicing "politics of personal destruction."

Citing the recent spate of scandals in the nation's captital, DeLay writes: "What we're fighting is so much larger than a single court case or a single district attorney in Travis County. We are witnessing the criminalization of conservative politics."

...that any Judge in his right mind could remove Judge Robert Perkins from presiding over indicted former Majority Leader Tom DeLay's criminal trial. There's no way. What a dangerous precedent that would set!

But, nonetheless, DeLay's attorneys have made the request and Senior Judge C.W. "Bud" Duncan Jr. has set a hearing for Nov. 1 in Austin to hear DeLay's motion to remove Perkins from his case, the Houston Chronicle reports.

Think Progress has this nugget from The Washington Post: turns out indicted former Majority Leader Tom DeLay took an R.J. Reynolds corporate jet to his arraignment in Houston on Friday. Reynolds is "a longtime contributor that has flown him to Puerto Rico and other destinations."

R.G. Ratcliffe and Dale Lezon of The Houston Chronicle report on DeLay's sneaky trip to a Harris County Sheriff's Department, "dodging" reporters who'd been camped out a a Fort Bend Police Department since the arrest warrant was issued Wednesday.

"Now Ronnie Earle has the mugshot he wanted," [DeLay's lead attorney Dick] DeGuerin said.

The Boston Globe's Rick Klein files a piece with a Richmond, Texas, byline today. Worth a read.

I agree with Ambassador Schechter:

OK, so those aren't really the kind of anonymous calls that Samantha Levine writes up in today's Houston Chronicle, but an unknown group called "We The People" is making calls to voters in Republican congressional districts across the country.

I'm still scratching my head about this move of DeLay's to try to subpoena Earle and members of the grand jury. Is it all just for the media coverage? It certainly doesn't look like a good legal move, or even a sound one.

Here's more from today's Houston Chronicle:

At the center of the case against the indicted Tom DeLay and his indicted PAC director, Jim Ellis, is a October 2, 2002 meeting in DeLay's Capitol office.

The Washington Post's Jeff Smith and the Houston Chronicle's RG Ratcliffe move this story ahead today.

The timeline is pretty simple:

Travis County D.A. Ronnie Earle told the Houston Chronicle that new information obtained over the weekend led to the most recent indictments against former Republican Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

Dick DeGuerin, DeLay's attorney, called Earle's statement "crazy," and accused the prosecutor of offering "a sweet deal" to DeLay's co-defendants to get them to testify against his client.