Always good to look back at history.

The first Monday of the New Year is starting with a bang... I am working on a few posts with lots of updates, news stories, reports from a press conference by seven groups (including Public Campaign/Public Campaign Action Fund) calling on Congress to clean up its act, etc. etc. etc.

The second of eight corporations indicted in the DeLay-related state fundraising scandal agreed to cooperate with the District Attorney investigation: SEARS.

An editorial in the Houston Chronicle hits the nail on the head regarding the irony of DeLay negotiating an agreement on a local issue in his district. And they explain well exactly what I have been thinking on it.

TAKE ACTION: Demand a Recorded Vote on the DeLay Rule

Here is our half page ad in the Houston Press. (The Houston Chronicle insisted on some changes we were not willing to make in the ad in order to run it.)

This may be a little afield from the general focus on money in politics and ethics, but I thought this was good to share...

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay appeared on the Sean Hannity show, guest hosted by Ollie North, no less, and blasted critics of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. From conservative NewsMax.com:

Richard Cohen of the National Journal has a lengthy article summing up all the swirling problems around Majority Leader Tom DeLay. It is a subscription only service, so I will excerpt passages from it to give a flavor of how damning the evidence is that mounts against the Hammer, and the worry among Republicans about their leader. Read through the excerpts to see the credit the Daily DeLay gets!

It starts out:

I am not making this one up. Promise.

We have more information on where five additional members stand on the DeLay Rule, and we have updated our database. Cass Ballenger of North Carolina, Amo Houghton of New York, and Nathan Deal of Georgia abstained from the vote, bring the number of members not voting to 36.

I forgot to post this last week... We did have a winner of Is That A Politician in Your Pocket? for being the 5,000th signer of the petition: J. Henley of SW Florida. Our winner wrote that taking action on-line in “corrective political efforts” helps to “protect democracy.” Congratulations!