Tom DeLay Convicted by Texas Jury, Thank You Ronnie Earle

The following, cross-posted from The Agonist, is from my friend and co-author Nate Wilcox, who wrote extensively about Tom DeLay, Ronnie Earle, Richard Morrison, and Kelly Fero in our book Netroots Rising. “Sweet vindication” is right! Now, I just hope DeLay actually goes to prison and spends a long time there for all the nasty, horrible s*** he did. How do you spell evil? T-O-M-D-E-L-A-Y.

Six years ago Tom DeLay was publicly crowing about the Republican “permanent majority”. Seven years ago he told a man who asked him to put out a cigar, “I AM the federal government.”

Today a jury of his peers has convicted him of felony money laundering.

The Department of Justice, despite having convicted criminal-lobbyist turned informer Jack Abramoff set up with a desk of his own at the DoJ, dropped the investigation of DeLay’s many many crimes three years ago.

But one Texas prosecutor with a naive sense of justice pressed charges against DeLay in a much tougher case and today a tiny bit of justice was done. Here’s to you Ronnie Earle! Well done and at great personal cost.

I wrote at some length about the underhanded process the Albert Gonzales/Karl Rove DoJ used to remove the lead prosecutor from the DeLay case here. Basically instead of firing him the way they did most of the other prosecutors who were investigating corrupt GOP congressmen in that period, they made a deal with Harry Reid and got the guy a judgeship then replaced him with a party apparatchik.

The fact that Obama applied their “let’s not bicker and argue about who killed who” philosophy to DeLay and the rest of his criminal coterie is just one of their many sins of omission.

But here’s some sweet vindication for those who clung to the belief that someone who committed so many egregious crimes as DeLay would someday see justice.

I’d also like to commend my friend the late Kelly Fero who worked tirelessly behind the scenes to bring press attention to DeLay’s crimes and Fred Lewis the activist who actually spotted the $190,000 discrepancy in the TRMPAC records and Richard Morrison who ran a quixotic campaign against DeLay in 2004 that led directly to his downfall.

None of these guys got any credit or thanks from the media or the political establishment, in fact they are all treated like pariahs for trying to stop the bi-partisan money go round. But today we all win.