A new week, a new grand jury and a new indictment

I had planned to write today about the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, but stop the presses, Tom DeLay was handed another indictment by a Travis County grand jury.

Now this is a new grand jury that was only sworn in at noon today. The charter for the previous grand jury expired last week. However District Attorney, Ronnie Earle was able to convince this new grand jury to issue a 2 count indictment against the former majority leader just ours after they were sworn in. The two counts are conspiring to launder money and money laundering.

In his own defense, DeLay has characterized Earle of being "an unabashed partisan zealot” who targets Republicans for prosecution, Earle of course is a Democrat.

In Earle’s defense, his record includes successful prosecutions of many Democrats, both large and small in political standing. Included in this record is the prosecution of the Texas State Treasurer (a democrat) in 1982, as well as prosecuting himself in 1983 for tardy campaign finance disclosure fillings for which he pled guilty and fined himself $212.

Rep. Christopher Shays (R-CT) has been calling for DeLay’s resignation. (When folks in your own camp start calling publicly for you to resign, it’s time for the rest of us to take a little closer look below the surface.)

It will be interesting to see what else will come out about Tom DeLay in the upcoming weeks. Years of ethics abuses and hand slapping by the House ethics committee may finally be catching up with him, and he only has himself to blame.

Let see what happens when the ‘hammer’ meets the ‘anvil’..