Better yet, DeLay got the attorney that kicked Earle's ass last time out.

The story is getting out now how Earle tried to ruin Hutchinson, then dropped the case at the last minute and used the press to get the remnants of his case out.

You'd think it would be smarter NOT to tell everyone you were out to get another party's leader.
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Good thing Dems never promised anything of the sort.
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Let's not hold any of them accountable for any reason.

Cash in at will boys, ethics means - 0 -.
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Good thing Dems never promised anything of the sort.
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Market Place
  What Did Bill Frist Know and How?

By FLOYD NORRIS
Published: September 29, 2005
DID Senator Bill Frist violate insider trading laws when he sold his stake in HCA Inc., the hospital chain that his father helped found?

That question has led to inquiries from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department, and a complaint to the Senate Ethics Committee. It is impossible to know what those inquiries will turn up, but so far there is no information on the public record that would indicate violations of the laws.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Monday there was no wrong doing when shares of HCA Inc. were sold one month before a poor earnings report sent the stock falling.

Mr. Frist, a physician and the Republican leader of the Senate, has said that he ordered the sale to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest, adding that he was "looking ahead at my final years in the Senate and what might come next." That appeared to be a reference to his consideration of running for president in 2008.

News articles after the sale was first reported noted that Mr. Frist appeared to have sold close to the top of the market for HCA shares in June, and that the stock later fell after the company reported poor earnings.

At the time Mr. Frist sold his shares, several insiders at HCA also sold. Mr. Frist has said he began the process in April, a time when there were also insider sales. He has not said whether those sales influenced his decision. But if the public reports of any of those sales played a role in persuading him to sell, that would be perfectly legal.

The law requires disclosure of insider sales in part to inform investors of such trades, and, as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, Congress required in 2002 that such disclosures be made within days of the actual sale.

To make a case against Mr. Frist, investigators would have to find evidence that he had access to material, nonpublic information and that such information influenced the decision to sell.

"If there is evidence of communication between him and the corporation," that could damage the senator's position, said Joel Seligman, the president of the University of Rochester and the author of a history of the S.E.C. If there is no such evidence, he added, then Mr. Frist is unlikely to have a problem.

Mr. Frist has denied having inside information. To prove he had such information, investigators would have to either find a document, such as an e-mail message, or obtain testimony from the person who gave him that information.

That person, if he or she exists, could face prosecution as well, and would probably not come forward voluntarily. In many insider trading cases, the S.E.C. is able to make a case against one defendant, who may have told others of having inside information, and then persuade that person to testify against others, in hopes of getting a lighter penalty.

Thus it is unlikely that Mr. Frist would face charges alone. Instead, a prosecution seems possible only if someone else is caught and chooses to testify against him. That would be likely only if investigators find others to have engaged in illegal trading of HCA shares.

In the past, some people suspected of insider trading have faced legal problems not because their trades could be proved to be illegal but because explanations they gave turned out to be lies. Defense lawyers generally urge clients to keep quiet, in part to avoid such a risk, but silence may not be a reasonable option for a politician.

As a point of law, Mr. Frist could be innocent even if it were shown that he traded on the basis of material, nonpublic information. Under court rulings, it would also have to be shown that an insider violated his duty to the company by disclosing the information to the senator.

For example, if the senator's brother, a former HCA chairman who is still a director, had accidentally left a confidential document out at a family gathering, there might be no violation by a relative who saw the document and sold stock because of what he had learned. Such a defense, while it might work in court, could be highly damaging politically.

Mr. Seligman, the S.E.C. historian, pointed to one case the S.E.C. lost in court in 1984, involving Barry Switzer, then the University of Oklahoma football coach. A judge believed that Mr. Switzer had overheard, at a track meet, a conversation between a corporate insider and his wife, and that the insider had not realized Mr. Switzer was listening. In that case, the insider had not breached his duty through the accidental disclosure, and Mr. Switzer therefore could legally trade on the information.

It may not be true that Mr. Frist is facing these investigations only because he is a prominent politician. Any well-timed sale by a relative of a corporate director, made shortly before bad news is disclosed, might attract S.E.C. interest. But in normal circumstances there would be no publicity regarding such inquiries unless they led to action by the commission or the Justice Department. In this case, however, Mr. Frist chose to disclose the fact he was being questioned.
http://select.nytimes.com/2005/09/29/busin...lace.html?8hpib

Oh stoppit, Davis.

The everybody does it defense is enshrined in the Constitution.
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Because DeLay's defenders want to gloss over the facts, it's important to understand the specifics of the indictment brought by Ronnie Earle, the Democratic district attorney in Travis County. The charges offer a fine summary of how the new machine politics works.

DeLay and two associates are accused of raising $155,000 from six corporations for a special political action committee he established, Texans for a Republican Majority. The PAC, in turn, wrote a check for $190,000 to the Republican National State Elections Committee.

The national committee turned around and made contributions to seven candidates in the 2002 state legislative elections in Texas. How did the national group know whom to help? According to the indictment, a DeLay associate provided Terry Nelson, the Republican official who received the check, with a list of candidates to support and the amounts they were to receive.

Why go to all this trouble? Because corporate contributions are illegal in races in Texas, so the corporate money needed to be laundered. The point of the exercise was to win a Republican majority in the Texas Legislature so DeLay could execute his plan to redraw congressional district boundaries, knock out Democratic incumbents and pad his majority in the House with five new Republicans.

DeLay insists he did nothing illegal, but even if he wins the case, the core facts speak to the hubris of the new machine politics. Drawing congressional district lines for political purposes is an old story, but DeLay went a step further. He got the Texas Legislature to toss out a congressional map that had been drawn only two years earlier, an unprecedented act of political gamesmanship.

The corporations that forked over the cash to DeLay's PAC did so not because their hearts were filled with affection for those particular Texas legislative candidates but because they recognized DeLay's power over federal legislation. It put an innovative gloss on one of the oldest rules in politics: Power begets money, which begets more power, which begets more money.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...5092902662.html

Ethical questions raised over House's new majority leaderRep. Blunt hired the consulting firm of DeLay associate who is also named in the indictment
By MARY CURTIUS
Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON - House Republicans struggled Thursday to regain their political balance, one day after House Majority Leader Tom DeLay relinquished his leadership position after being indicted by a grand jury in his home state of Texas.

As he worked to unite the party and turn its attention back to the legislative agenda, Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri, DeLay's successor as majority leader, faced ethics questions himself.

Records on file with the Federal Election Commission show that since 2003, Blunt's political action committee has paid $94,000 in salary to the consulting firm of Jim Ellis, a long-time associate of DeLay. Ellis has been indicted in the same case as DeLay, accused of conspiring to illegally influence the outcome of Texas legislative elections by channeling corporate money to Republican candidates.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-kstreet30sep30,0,1685864.story?coll=la-home-headlines

DeLay Helped Cement GOP Ties to Lobbyists
His pressure helped turn business groups into a key part of the party's political machine.

By Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten, Times Staff Writers


WASHINGTON — Whether or not Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) returns to power, few industry lobbyists in the nation's capital are likely to forget the lesson he once taught the electronic manufacturers: Support the Republican Party — or else.

That industry felt DeLay's wrath in the fall of 1998, when one of its leading trade associations hired a Democrat as its top lobbyist. DeLay and his staff temporarily blocked one of the industry's favorite measures from coming to a vote.

His slap at the Electronic Industries Alliance led to a private reprimand from the House Ethics Committee, and even some Republicans called his approach heavy-handed. But DeLay was not deterred.

And the beleaguered former House majority leader has left a lasting mark on the capital: turning the Washington lobbying establishment into a critical cog of the Republican political machine.

Seven years after the dust-up with the electronics group, many on K Street — home to Washington's network of business associations and lobbying shops — believe they can no longer divide political contributions evenly between the parties. Instead, they see their success in Congress riding more on how hard they work to provide money and political muscle to the Republican Party and its quest for a long-lasting conservative majority.

Although DeLay's indictment this week on a Texas campaign finance charge renews questions about the ethics of mixing corporate interests and electoral politics, his well-cemented relationship with business is likely to benefit the GOP into the future.

"DeLay deserves credit for bringing about a significant change" in the way Washington works, said Richard Hohlt, a veteran lobbyist for banking and other interests. "It takes a whip and a chair to control K Street, and DeLay had both and used them," said Hohlt.

"He was the tip of the spear," said Stuart Roy, a former DeLay aide who now works as a consultant. "Before we were in the majority, the Republican leadership was reticent" to go too far in telling trade groups what to do, he said. "Now it is the mind-set of the leadership: If you are supposed to be pro-business, that should be reflected in your political giving and your political activity."

Indeed, although DeLay's indictment Wednesday forced him to step down, at least temporarily, as House majority leader, the same view of K Street has been adopted by the person replacing him in that role, Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.). Blunt was assigned by DeLay several years ago to take over the monitoring of K Street, and some lobbyists say he has surpassed DeLay in getting businesses to mobilize on behalf of the conservative agenda.

The revolution in corporate behavior began with the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994, when DeLay was among the most outspoken of several GOP leaders demanding that business groups support the party — not only by contributing to Republican campaigns but by helping GOP leaders round up voters and selecting party faithful to run trade associations.

When the National Assn. of Securities Dealers hired a former Clinton administration official, John Hilley, as a vice president in 1998, DeLay told the industry publication Traders Magazine that the hiring was a "very big mistake."

"For an organization to hire a highly partisan Democrat gives me great concern, because I won't deal with such organizations," he said. (Hilley stayed and was later promoted.)

Now, prominent Republicans head some of the city's most influential trade groups: Former Michigan Gov. John Engler leads the National Assn. of Manufacturers, and former Commerce Secretary Don Evans, a friend of President Bush, runs the Financial Services Forum. Marc Racicot, a former Montana governor who was once chairman of the Republican National Committee, leads the American Insurance Assn.

Lobbyists who have their offices in the glass-and-steel buildings that line K Street say that DeLay's effort has had real impact.

Many of the Republicans who have taken lobbying and trade association jobs recently owe their positions to GOP benefactors in Congress. About two dozen former DeLay staffers work as lobbyists. In these jobs, they often have access to funds they can use as donations to campaigns and conservative causes. The corporate world also supplies contacts in congressional districts that can help Republican candidates with grass-roots campaigns.

The Bush administration has sought to take advantage of these ties in building unified support for judicial nominees, the president's Social Security proposal and, more recently, immigration overhaul — issues that in the past did not draw much trade association activity. DeLay and other GOP leaders used business contacts to push for passage in 2003 of the new Medicare prescription drug benefit, which was a priority of the pharmaceutical industry.

Before Republicans won control of the executive and legislative branches in 2000, Washington lobbying had been studiously bipartisan. Contributions from many industry groups were close to evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats.

But DeLay and his allies had been working several years to change that. To keep pressure on businesses to shift toward the GOP, DeLay and his allies in 1995 compiled a list of the 300 or so largest business-affiliated political action committees, along with a breakdown of their campaign donations by party. Lobbyists were told their ranking, and DeLay pressed those low on the list to give more to Republicans. Over time, contribution patterns changed.

The accounting profession, for example, gave more than half of its campaign donations to Democrats in 1994. So far this year, 71% has gone to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan research organization. The insurance industry increased the share of donations to Republicans from 55% to 68% in the past decade. Energy interests increased the share going to Republicans from 64% in 1994 to 75% a decade later.

To monitor business hiring in Washington, DeLay and conservative activist Grover Norquist launched the "K Street Project," which tracks K Street jobs and who fills them.

Norquist assigns a full-time staffer to keep up with hiring changes, which are then posted on a website. This week, for example, the site says that a liquor manufacturer has tapped a new corporate affairs chief who has made contributions to Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). A separate item reports that a Washington lobbying firm has promoted an executive who had donated to the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign fund.

Norquist said House and Senate GOP leaders consulted the database to review hiring decisions by K Street firms.

There are cases when firms hire Democrats for top jobs. But they often pay a price.

Last year, conservatives fumed when the Motion Picture Assn. of America hired Bill Clinton's former Agriculture secretary, Dan Glickman, to run its Washington office. Afterward, Republicans removed tax-relief provisions for the film industry from a pending tax bill. Later, Glickman hired prominent Republicans, including a senior aide to House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert.

The electronics alliance in 1998 learned there was a cost to hiring a former Democratic lawmaker, but it was not fatal to the alliance's interests. Its legislation eventually passed, and it kept the Democrat as its top lobbyist.

A campaign finance activist, Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, agreed that DeLay's approach had penetrated deeply.

"It is a reality in the psyche of Washington lobbyists," he said.

But Wertheimer said he believed the indictment of DeLay and a separate investigation of a DeLay friend, lobbyist Jack Abramoff, could lead to an abrupt change in that way of thinking.

DeLay's efforts, he said, "have institutionalized a process of public officials demanding private companies hire lobbyists of their choice, and lobbyists must be required to pay in return. But that system under DeLay's leadership has become so blatant and brazen that I do not expect it to last in its current form."

The GOP needs to brace itself.  There's gonna be a lot of this sort of stuff being brought to public attention.  If they have any brains, they'll turn DeLay into a scapegoat by spring.


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Maybe, maybe not.  So far the only actual "defense" I've heard from DeLay (other than the "it's all political" squalling) has been that the prosecutor won't be able to prove intent to commit a crime because he consulted lawyers who told him the scheme was legal.

He's not making any bones about the money NOT having been laundered through the RNC to evade Texas laws against corporate donations to state legislature candidates.


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Of course it's political, as was DeLay's scheme.

Have you read the indictment?

What exactly is the charge and where is the evidence?

How do you mount a defense against an indictment that doesn't even mentioin your name?

In which case should it be criminal? If DAs start going after political enemies as a matter of standard practice are we really going to have a better poltical system?

Bear in mind DeLay IS a politician. Earle is supposed to be an officer of the court.
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DeLay isn't claiming he didn't do it, AV.  He's claiming it wasn't a crime.

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So can the "it's all political" bull. Of course it's political, as was DeLay's scheme. And DeLay has done what he's accused of doing. The only thing in dispute is criminal intent, not scuzzy politics.

Is it a conspiracy for Earle to tell Dems he's going to get DeLay and then focus on him for an indictment?
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Yeah, like he's going to be deterred. Asking a.v. to can the 'it's all political" stuff is like asking a human to 'can' his/her 'close your eyes while sneezing' automatic response. It's an impossibility.
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Is it REALLY a good idea to let the enemy force you into tossing your people overboard whenever they please? It's obviously been politicallly coordinated, Earle TOLD THEM AHEAD OF TIME he was going to get DeLay, and the Dems were ready to get out the word for fundraising purposes the SAME DAY.

If Democrats at least had the class to wait and see what EVIDENCE the indictment concerned it wouldn't look like a purely politcal setup. Planned and coordinated in Washington and not Texas.
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He sure did and because he knew DeLouse was guilty as sin, If he didn't think he could make the charges  stick he would not have said that, IMO. In fact if he didn't have the goods that would have been a foolish remark...Earle doesn’t strike me as a fool...
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(Wow, that shunning the corrupt thing would be a 9.0 earthquake in both parties, but particuarly in the current GOP.  There goes 1/3 of the Dems, and half the pubbies!)
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It didn't "suddenly" become criminal, IMO.  What appears to have happened recently is some sort of fairly new evidence of either "conspiring" (which could be something like one of the money launderers saying DeLay phoned him and told him to add a name to the list or something--an act in furtherance of the conspiracy), or evidence of "intent" (that DeLay knew or reasonably should have known that the scheme was illegal under Texas law, which could be as small as a joke about paying a fine if they get caught).
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Yeah, like he's going to be deterred. Asking a.v. to can the 'it's all political" stuff is like asking a human to 'can' his/her 'close your eyes while sneezing' automatic response. It's an impossibility.
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QUOTE
I have sincere doubts that this is anything but political at this point.

Well, you could join me, McCain, and Christie Whitman in trying to form a New Bull Moose Party, to force the GOP to reform and return to small gubmint, balanced budgets, and individual freedom from gubmint intrusion as stated in the Bill of Rights.

Although I'm not so sure about McCain.  He's sure got a damn bee in his bonnet about steroids.  Since when is professional sports the Senate's beeswax?  Johnny, Johnny, take a deep breath.  Yes, cheaters sometimes win, and this is one of those times, but get a grip, it's NOT a Federal Crime!
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Are you sure it's not? I mean, really, are you sure it's not? 'Cause I think it is.

Think of what MLB gets from the Feds in terms of legal protections and exemptions.

Also, think of the Controlled Substances Act.
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I don't think I could be a Republican no matter how much they changed. But Democrats aren't any better. It's like the only thing they want to give me is an abortion or a paltry check for not working. Neither of which I need.

I just don't see how either party is of any benefit to me.
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I don't think I could be a Republican no matter how much they changed. But Democrats aren't any better. It's like the only thing they want to give me is an abortion or a paltry check for not working. Neither of which I need.

I just don't see how either party is of any benefit to me.
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I -am- thinking of the Controlled Substances Act, and thinking that the CSA is unconstitutional, an excessive elasticity of the commerce clause.
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