The first block quote below is from the CBS transcript of last Sunday's 6o Minutes piece:
DeLay’s fellow Texan, Republican Rep. John Carter, says whether the law was broken depends on what your definition of “administrative” is. "No court has actually defined clearly what administrative purposes is," says Carter. 60 Minutes showed him TRMPAC's brochure with the statement of how the corporate funds would be spent. "Active candidate evaluation and recruitment. Message development. Market research and issue development," says Stahl. "I mean, how is that administrative?"And here's Charlie Kuffner's take:
"Active candidate evaluation and recruitment, that’s a party of administrative procedure," says Carter. "That’s a party function."
"I thought administration was the running of the office. The Xerox machine. Paying bills," says Stahl.
"This is what the court has to rule on," says Carter. "If they find all these things are administrative, there’ll be no convictions in this case."
I'd like to propose an alternate explanation to the question of why no court has ever ruled on what constitutes an "administrative purpose". There's no case law because no one has ever come anywhere close to violating this century-old law before, and the reason for that is because anyone with two brain cells to rub together can plainly see that "administrative" means "non-political". When you have a law that is crystal clear, and that draws a very bright line, as this one does, it seems to me that you should expect there to be very little case law because there should be no confusion about what the law says. Nobody's been brazen enough before to claim that confusion was even a plausible explanation. If they get away with it now, then this law never actually meant anything.
Norm Ornstein's clever quip about Mother Teresa getting caught turning right on red in a state that doesn't allow it is spot on. This isn't an honest mistake, it isn't a testing of boundaries, and it isn't a case of the law not keeping up with new technologies. It's shameless pettifoggery, and it deserves to be slapped down.
It's this kind of duplicitous bullshit and slavish toadying performed by footlickers like Carter that makes me despise the Republican party. DeLay ought to be tarred and feathered, and all of his minions in the House know it, and they just don't have the stones to do so, much less speak up about it. They continue to vouch for him, cover for him, run interference, and punish those who dare stand up and speak out.
Tom DeLay is precisely the reason why the GOP invites comparisons to the Nazis.
If they know what's good for them, they'll get rid of him. I ain't counting on the Repubs to take out their own trash, though. And if Joe Hart doesn't oblige, and Ronnie Earl gets derailed, well, there's another opportunity for Richard Morrison in a bit less than two years.
