Patron of Charles Boustany, Tom DeLay, indicted, gives up leadership post

The major national political patron of Seventh District Congressman Charles Boustany, Republican Majority Leader Tom DeLay, was indicted on criminal conspiracy charges by an Austin, Texas, grand jury on Wednesday.

DeLay's national political action committee, Americans for a Republican Majority, contributed $15,000 to Boustany's successful 2004 campaign, according to Federal Election Commission records.
DeLay also formed a PAC within Texas called Texans for a Republican Majority and used that organization to fund and direct state legislative races in the Lone Star State which produced a Republican majority in the Texas Legislature which subsequently re-re-districted Texas's Congressional Districts in a way that produced seven new Republican members of the U.S. House from Texas.

The indictment alleges that DeLay was involved in a conspiracy to route illegal corporate contributions into those Texas legislative races by laundering the money through national Republican campaign accounts.

Congressman Boustany is not involved in the case.

However, Boustany's political debt to DeLay was made clear when, on one of his first votes as a congressman on his first day as a member of Congress, Boustany voted to rig the Ethics process in the House in such a way that would ensure that new ethics complaints against DeLay would not be pursued.

House Democrats, to their credit, refused to participate in the rigged process. Ultimately, public pressure forced House Republicans to go back to the Ethics Rules that had been in existence prior to their attempt to exempt DeLay from the ethics code.

Congressman Boustany's willingness to put party above principle in matters related to his patron DeLay stands in stark contrast to Boustany the Campaigner who told voters he would not be part of the corrupt politics of the past. Boustany was somewhat right: his support for efforts to protect DeLay's corruption was not business as usual in the Congress — it was elevated to a whole new level.

Tom DeLay is the cornerstone of the Republican regime of corruption and influence peddling that has reach its zenith during the Bush/Cheney administration. In less than one year in the Congress, Charles Boustany has proven himself to be a loyal soldier in the effort to conceal and defend that corruption.