Friday, September 30, 2005

I Was Wrong (Alert The Media)

I really don’t know if Tom Delay is guilty of anything or not, in fact, I admit I don’t know much about Tom Delay at all. But After reading about this case, It certainly appears that Ronnie Earle, Democrat District Attorney for Travis County, Texas, is indeed gunning for Delay, and will resort to false allegations to accomplish that goal.

The now famous Rep. Tom Delay indictment filed Wednesday in the 147th Judicial District Court in Travis County, Texas can be found here in it's entirety.

Read it. It is relatively short.

Notice that Mr Delay is mentioned only in the beginning of the document where it lists the defendants of the case and at the end where it mentions that he did “knowingly, intelligently and voluntarily waive the application of articles 12.01 and 12.03 of the Texas code of criminal procedure“…etc, etc, etc

What does this legalese mean? It means that Tom Delay allegedly knew of a conspiracy.

Allegedly.

There’s more to this than meets the eye. This website here claims that Travis county DA Ronnie Earle is a partisan hack who has been gunning for Tom Delay for years. Indeed, Earle has convened five other grand jury’s in the past for the purpose of indicting Mr. Delay but has failed every time. In addition to that, he has attempted on three separate occasions to obtain various indictments of Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Republican Senator from Texas, to no avail.

The Wall Street Journal has this on the subject:

The Majority Leader also deserves the presumption of innocence because of Mr. Earle's guilty past. A liberal Democrat, he has a history of indicting political enemies, Democrat and Republican, on flimsy evidence that didn't hold up in court. In the mid-1980s, he indicted Attorney General Jim Mattox, a rival of his ally Ann Richards, on bribery charges. Mr. Mattox was acquitted and won re-election.
In 1993, he indicted Kay Bailey Hutchison, who'd just been elected to the U.S. Senate, on charges of misconduct and records tampering. Mr. Earle was forced to drop the case even before it went to trial. Earlier this year, the prosecutor delivered a widely criticized speech at a Democratic fund-raiser in which he compared his prosecutorial targets to "Mussolini and his fascists" and all but declared that he had Mr. DeLay in his sights.


Other websites I have found indicate that Earle is simply a good ‘ol country lawyer who only wants to ferret out corruption in government.

A very noble cause, right?

Well, lets see what the Ronnie Earle apologists have to say about their hero.

Media Matters says:

While Earle is an elected Democrat, as Media Matters for America has previously noted, a March 17* editorial in the Houston Chronicle commended his work: "During his long tenure, Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle has prosecuted many more Democratic officials than Republicans. The record does not support allegations that Earle is prone to partisan witch hunts." This assertion supports Earle's own claim about his record; a March 6 article in the El Paso Times reported: "Earle says local prosecution is fundamental and points out that 11 of the 15 politicians he has prosecuted over the years were Democrats."

What the article doesn’t mention is that the Democrats that Earle indicted were political enemies of Earle, and Conservative Democrats at that.

Rush Limbaugh reports that Earle has dropped charges against major corporations in the past on the promise to him that they will contribute money to his pet projects. Captains Quarters does, too, saying:

“Ronnie Earle, the Texas prosecutor who has indicted associates of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay in an ongoing campaign-finance investigation, dropped felony charges against several corporations indicted in the probe in return for the corporations' agreement to make five- and six-figure contributions to one of Earle's pet causes.”

There is a lot more to be found there. Read that, too.

That is called extortion, and if memory serves, extortion is illegal, too.

It is also interesting to note, that MSNBC and other “mainstream media outlets“, somehow conveniently fail to mention that fact, or the fact that Earle is a Democrat.

I was watching television this morning and I caught just enough of the Daily show to hear Jon Stewart, the very Liberal host, announce the indictment of Delay accompanied by a thunderous chorus of applause, hoots, and cheers. He failed to mention that Earle is a Democrat, also.

NOTE: It occurred to me that The Daily Show audience is a collection of people who don’t read, or at least, blindly accept any and everything that the Liberals tell them, never mind whether it’s true or not. In short, if they can read, they must read the New York Times, a newspaper that doesn’t let truth stand in the way of their “objective reporting“, as evidenced by the recent admission that the story reported by them regarding Geraldo Rivera, turned out to be manufactured out of whole cloth. That is at least the third time in the last year that they have been caught in a lie, so why would anyone ever take anything they say as fact?

After doing the additional research that I didn’t do yesterday before posting my comment, it has become clear that I owe Sean Hannity an apology. He was right. I was wrong. Rush is right, too. Ronnie Earle is just as much a partisan hack with a vendetta against Delay as they say he is.

24 comments:

Jaymeister said...

The D.A. can present a case, but only a grand jury can indict. Are all of the members of this grand jury partisan hacks too? They could have dismissed this whole thing.

Also, while you disparage the "liberal" New York Times, do you honestly consider the WSJ Editorial Page, Captain's Quarters and Rush Limbaugh as politically objective sources?

Jaymeister said...

One final point. I find it interesting that you are quick to dismiss a duly processed indictment against DeLay because of the D.A.'s political affiliation, and yet you've already convicted Earle of extortion based on a few blurbs on Right-leaning websites.

Mark said...

Glad you brought that up, Jay, as I forgot to include that information: Earle stacked the grand jury, as he had the other 5 times, except they couldn't find enough against Delay to bring an indictment in spite of that fact. This will probably be thrown out of court too.

2nd question.... Yes. At least they have never been caught in a deliberate lie. And I didn't disparage them, They have done that very well on their own.

Poison Pero said...

Ho, hum.........Another day in Texas politics.

This is s non-starter......And everyone knows it.

But the Dems will have fun with it while it lasts.
----------
Word to the wise, though.

Be careful what you ask for, because Delay won't take this sitting down.......You better beleive there will be some payback.

Isn't politics great?

Poison Pero said...

Ho, hum.........Another day in Texas politics.

This is s non-starter......And everyone knows it.

But the Dems will have fun with it while it lasts.
----------
Word to the wise, though.

Be careful what you ask for, because Delay won't take this sitting down.......You better beleive there will be some payback.

Isn't politics great?

Erudite Redneck said...

All I want for Tom DeLay is a fair hanging.


Grandpappy told my pappy
Back in my day, son
A man had to answer
For the wicked thing he done
Take all the rope in Texas
Find a tall oak tree
Round up all of them bad boys
And hang 'em high in the street
For all the people to see

And justice is the one thing
You should always find
You gotta saddle up your boys
You gotta draw a hard line
When the gun smoke settles
We'll sing a victory tune
And we'll all meet back
At the local saloon

We'll raise up our glasses
Against evil forces
Singing, "Whiskey for my men, beer for my horses!"

We got too many gangsters
Doing dirty deeds
Too much corruption
And crime in the streets
It's time the long arm of the law
Put a few more in the ground
Send them all to their Maker
And he'll set them on down
You can bet, He'll set 'em down

Cause justice is the one thing
You should always find
You gotta saddle up your boys
You gotta draw a hard line
When the gunsmoke settles
We'll sing a victory tune
And we'll all meet back
At the local saloon

And we'll raise up our glasses
Against evil forces
Singing, "Whiskey for my men, beer for my horses!"
Whiskey for my men, beer for my horses!

You know justice is the one thing
You should always find
You gotta saddle up your boys
You gotta draw a hard line
When the gunsmoke settles
We'll sing a victory tune
And we'll all met back
At the local saloon

We'll raise up our glasses
Against evil forces
Singing, "Whiskey for my men, beer for my horses!"
Singing ,"Whiskey for my men, beer for my horses!'

(Toby Keith, Willie Nelson)

--ER

Jaymeister said...

BTW, the mainstream media did indeed mention that Earle is a Democrat. None of the media have failed to present DeLay's defense based on that.

As for partisanship, if you're a Democrat who prosecutes others in the same party, that shows you're not partisan. DeLay picked the wrong word for Earle's alleged agenda.

As for the stacked grand jury, the foreman of the current grand jury said about DeLay, "He's probably doing a good job. I don't have anything against him. Just something happened." That doesn't sound like a partisan zealot to me.

Look, I'm all for the proces being played out, and if it turns out that DeLay did nothing wrong he'll walk. (He'll probably walk regardless.) I just think that mounting a defense based on who is prosecuting you rather than on the facts of the case is suspicious. It's illogical. If somebody robbed ten houses in the past, that doesn't prove that he robbed your house. Even if Earle is the most corrupt prosecutor int he country, that doesn't necessarily mean that DeLay is innocent. You'd think that people in a state as high on justice as Texas wouldn't keep electing someone who is as Earle is portrayed.

Toad734 said...

So Ken Star and the Republicans weren't doing their thing for political reasons but as soon as a Republican gets in trouble its baseless partisan politics. Don't you see the hypocrisy in that?

Maybe the reason Earle has been after DeGay for years is because DeGay is a crook and Earle knows it. Why were the Feds after Gotti for so long, just because he was Italian?

The WordSmith from Nantucket said...

jay,

the difference between the NY Times and someone like Rush or Captain's Quarters is that the former tends to lean left in many frontpage straight news stories that read like opinion editorials and liberal talking points; whereas the latter two sources are admitted conservative partisans and the readership knows it. They aren't masquarading behind a mask of neutrality and nonpartisanship.

Mark said...

Wordsmith, Also, Rush and Captains Quarters and Hannity and WSJ haven't been caught lying 3 times in the last year.

Ken Starr was chosen by the Democrats, and then, when he did what they chose hom to do they turned on him.

Jaymeister said...

Wordsmith, Also, Rush and Captains Quarters and Hannity and WSJ haven't been caught lying 3 times in the last year.

I guess you didn't stick around long enough at Media Matters.

The WordSmith from Nantucket said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
The WordSmith from Nantucket said...

Are you addressing me or Mark?

I ask because I'm the one that said I like using Media Matters in a previous post, and since my name is quoted in your post...makes it confusing.

Jaymeister said...

Sorry, Wordsmith. The coment was in reply to Mark. I didn't properly clip his previous quote. It should have started with "Rush".

BTW, Wordsmith, do you post on Media Matters? There are some very reasonable conservatives who comment on there. Once in a while I post there as DiamondDog.

Mark said...

Ha ha ha. Most conservatives are reasonable. It's reasonable Liberals that are in short supply.:)

Jaymeister said...

I resemble that remark. :-)

Francis Lynn said...

It is a well known adage that a prosecutor can get a Grand Jury to indict a ham sandwich. The rules of evidence are different, presumption is different. It is a loose compilation of testimony where the prosecutor is all powerful & controls the event. Throw in a partisan prosecutor & voila. It is not like in a courtroom. You want that ham on rye?

Marie's Two Cents said...

Well I was waiting and hoping you would come back to your senses Mark before I posted, and Thank's for doing so :-)
What you havent been hearing I suppose or reading yet is that Earle is also in the process of doing a "Movie" based on bringing down Tom Delay! Isnt that some sort of a crime? lol... I thought No One was suppose to talk on either side about the case, let alone make a MOVIE, and or money off of it! There are always 2 sides to every story.

Marie's Two Cents said...

Oh P.S,
You watch and see if the Liberals dont go after Senator Frist next!! I mentioned a while back the Liberals are in full attack mode, and Nancy Pelosi and her ilk is the first one out there denouncing the Republicans in every way and trying to paint the party as "Corrupt" that's thier new tactic. They cant bring down the President and they know it, so they are trying to pick apart the Republican Majority leaders one by one. Trumped up charges are thier new tactic, they know most of the American public will not delve into finding out the truth, and most will only remember Delay, or Frist (Who will be next)have been "Indicted". They are counting on the fact that the American Public will only remember what they "Hear" and will read "Nothing".

Mark said...

They've already started on Frist, and yes, I knew about the movie, too.

Jaymeister said...

I hope you gave Martha Stewart as much benefit of the doubt as you are giving Frist.

Mark said...

i don't know anything about what's going on with Frist, all I know is that the Dems are after him now. I don't know what for.

Jaymeister said...

The SEC is investigating a stock transaction he made. He held stock in a blind trust in his family's business, and sold his stock not long before it took a dip on the market. Other company insiders sold off stock at around the same time. That's what is being investigated.

Regarding the DeLay thing, does anyone else see the type of divide we saw during the O.J. trial? Back then it was a racial divide, and now it's a political divide. Republicans see Ronnie Earle as the Mark Fuhrman of this case.

Mike's America said...

Mark: When are you going to switch to Haloscan so you can rid your pages of the garbage of Bruiser and company...

So now we learn that one of the jurors in the first Grand Jury was determined to vote to indict Delay BEFORE going into hear the evidence...

That should answer Jaymeisters question as to whether the jurors themselves were "partisan hacks."

And Earle was so conscious of the weakness of that first indictment that he went to a second grand jury which REFUSED to indict Delay on money laundering...

So... Earle went to a THIRD Grand Jury and got what he wanted.

I'm still waiting for Earle to indict key officials in the Texas Democrat Party who were laundering similar sums as Delay, in the same time frame.

Think he will indict them? HA!