More Republican-Sponsored Shinanigans in the House of Representatives

You all probably know about the DeLay Rule, a ploy by House Republicans to protect the majority leader from having to be accountable for his criminal behavior. Under the DeLay rule, If Tom DeLay is indicted, he still gets to be the House Majority Leader.

Then yesterday, the House Republicans were alluding to replacing the Republican Chairman of the House Ethics Committee, Joel Hefley of Colorado, with a fellow who donated $5000 to DeLay's defense fund, Lamar Smith of Texas.

Many Republicans expressed dissatisfaction with Mr. Hefley after the committee reports critical of Mr. DeLay were issued, saying he had allowed Democrats to score political points against Mr. DeLay for conduct that did not merit such scrutiny.

But the potential for change in the chairmanship has drawn fire from Democrats. "It is our responsibility to uphold a high ethical standard," Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader, said in a statement Wednesday. "Removing a chair of the ethics committee for upholding that standard would be a stain on the House of Representatives."

And today, we find out that the House Republicans want to change the rules again to make ethics violations harder to investigate.

A House leadership aide said a package of rules changes to be presented to the House when Congress convenes on Tuesday could include a plan that would require a majority vote of the ethics panel to pursue a formal investigation. Now, a deadlock on the panel, which is evenly split between parties, keeps a case pending. The possible change, the aide said, would mean that a tie vote would effectively dismiss the case.

So, next time Tom Delay gets busted for illegal campaign finance activities, if all the Democrats want the issue looked into, and all the Republicans don't want it looked into, the case will be dropped.

But they have even more up their sleeves to protect Tom DeLay and future campaign finance criminals:

And Texas Republicans have made it clear that they want to transfer the authority for prosecuting the case away from Ronnie Earle, the Travis County district attorney, and give it to Greg Abbott, the state attorney general.

Andrew Taylor, a prominent Republican lawyer in Austin, recently told The Austin American-Statesman that he expected to be lobbying to legalize corporate donations when the Legislature returns in January.

How can they get away with this stuff?