Making Something Out Of Nothing

Everybody who isn't a Democrat seems to agree that there's nothing to the flap over Senate Majority Doofus Bill Frist's sale (at a substantial loss - who uses inside info to do that?) from his blind trust of his family's HCA stock.

So, naturally, Republicans are diving out of the way so that Clinton-era holdovers in the Securities & Exchange Commission can launch a full-blown investigation anyway:

[T]he problems probably won't go away. This is, in part, because various Republicans, not the least of whom is Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Christopher Cox, are recusing themselves from the process due to their ties to Frist or the party.

Son of a *&^%$. What ties does Chris Cox have to Bill Frist? And now a regulatory agency head has a "conflict of interest" if the figure his agency is charged with investigating is of the same party???

Republicans are concerned. "This is such a clear-cut case of nothing, yet we're all backing off. The Democrats are going to keep this thing alive as long as they can," says a Republican political consultant.

[A]n SEC source says at least two career staff there - both former political appointees in the Clinton administration - continue to go full speed ahead for a formal investigation.

"They have already drawn up a subpoena list. They want to get into this thing and go beyond HCA and look at other stuff. Someone has to pull the plug," says the SEC staffer.

Good God. I never would have believed back in the late '90s, when Bill Clinton was running his criminal empire pretty much right out in the open and still running rings around the hapless, sad sack GOP Congress that was elected to hem him in and send him home (or to the Greybar hotel) that I would one day look back at those days from the vantage point of unified Republican governance and pine for them fondly as a time of partisan steadfastness and courage by comparison. Now we have the White House, plus majorities on Capitol Hill, yet so obsequious have 'Pubbies become that they hand back power without even token objection to let the other party hound them as if it were still the bad old days.

There aren't words to adequately describe this spectacle. If "they" have nothing, why in the blue hell are "we" backing off? And then another of "us" says that "somebody" has to pull the plug? Well who would that be, IF NOT THE !#$%^&* REPUBLICANS who wouldn't know how to wield power with a thick instructional manual and a pile of Energizer batteries? Who won the bleeping election anyway? And would somebody please let the GOP know? I don't think they got the memo.

At least Tom DeLay isn't going gentle into that nausea-inducing good night:

Earlier today, Tom DeLay's lawyers moved to dismiss Ronnie Earle's conspiracy indictment on the ground that Texas's conspiracy statute had no application to the election laws until it was amended in 2003 - subsequent to the 2002 election cycle that is the subject of the indictment. The Austin Statesman notes that the term of the grand jury that Earle used to indict DeLay expired last week, and the statute of limitation may have run in the meantime.

So what is Earle gonna do? What else - get another grand jury and file an even more ludicrous charge:

Sure enough, just a few minutes ago Earle got a new grand jury to indict DeLay on a new charge of "money laundering," which I assume we can take as an acknowledgement that the original charge can't stick.

The Hammer released a statement that nailed Earle's worthless ass to the wall:

Ronnie Earle has stooped to a new low with his brand of prosecutorial abuse. He is trying to pull the legal equivalent of a 'do-over' since he knows very well that the charges he brought against me last week are totally manufactured and illegitimate. This is an abomination of justice.

Despite the degree to which DeLay has "gone native" over the past few years, I am still reminded of what President Abraham Lincoln said of General Ulysses S. Grant when pressured by his critics to fire Grant for the huge casualties generated by his aggressive attacks against General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia: "I cannot spare this man; he fights."

A priceless commodity at a time when even the President has all but quit the field of partisan battle.