Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead.....

Which old witch? Why....err....Tom Delay!

Hot Tub Tom, the man who never met a lobbyist he couldn't sell out to, has announced he will effectively resign from the House of Representatives, and spend the rest of his life working on behalf of the Christian principles he has always valued so greatly. (Like casino gambling, slave labor, and keeping out of jail?)

Joy reigns throughout Munchkinland the USA!

Odd timing, though. Instead of simply not running for reelection, he ran in the Republican primary, and barely won, but did manage to build up a million dollar war chest. So what will happen to those campaign dollars? Will he give them to his successor, or to his party, to continue to fight the good fight?

According to the Washington Post:

An additional impetus for putting off the resignation until now was suggested by John Feehery, a former aide to DeLay and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). "He needed to raise money for the defense fund. That was the bottom line," Feehery said. "He wanted to make sure he could take care of himself in the court of law." Under federal campaign rules, any reelection money a lawmaker raises can be used to pay legal fees stemming from official duties.

So, by some "quirk" of the law, a congressman can spend his campaign funds for legal bills. Odd, that. So it seems that Tom was in a race for dollars, not votes. It could explain the odd lack of advertising......Good old Tom Delay, loyal to the very last....to Tom Delay.

And, until ethics laws are strengthened and enforced (and the right wing political machine voted out), this is just a cosmetic change. I don't think the overlords of Saipan have to worry that their slaves will be getting the minimum wage, or even minimum human rights, any time soon.

Or that corporations will stop writing laws to their own benfit.

Money talks.