DeGuerin stumbles in defense of DeLay

While the case against him still appears to turn on mostly circumstantial evidence, The Hammer keeps inching himself toward the slammer.

Tom DeLay's own evidence turned against him Wednesday as a calendar showed the former U.S. House Majority leader in a meeting with a key political aide two hours after the man received the check used in an alleged $190,000 political money laundering scheme.

Uh oh.

DeLay, R-Sugar Land, contends he did not learn of a corporate money swap between his Texans for a Republican Majority and the Republican National Committee until political aide Jim Ellis told him of it on Oct. 2, 2002.

In a statement to Travis County prosecutors in 2002, however, DeLay said Ellis told him about the money swap before it happened. DeLay now insists he misspoke.

Did you misspeak then, or are you misspeaking now?

Defense lawyer Dick DeGuerin introduced DeLay's calendars on the idea that they would show no meetings between DeLay and Ellis during the crucial days of September when the money exchange was arranged, to bolster DeLay's Oct. 2 claim.

Confirming the calendars with former scheduler Mary Ellen Bos, DeGuerin argued that DeLay and Ellis met only three times in September and October 2002.
Blank check

Once was Sept. 5, before the alleged scheme began. The second time was on Oct. 2, which is when DeLay now contends he learned of the money swap. And the third meeting was on Oct. 8, after the money was exchanged.

But Travis County prosecutor Beverly Mathews got Bos to confirm under cross examination that Ellis also was in a group of people who had a 1-2:30 p.m. grass-roots planning meeting with DeLay Sept. 11, 2002, in his congressional leadership office. Mathews noted that the meeting occurred shortly after Ellis received a blank TRMPAC check that was used in the money exchange.

"I just missed that one," DeGuerin said sheepishly afterward, noting he only had obtained the calendar on Sunday. "The (Sept. 11) meeting was with a bunch of other people."

A pretty serious mistake for a high-powered defense attorney like DeGuerin. If he loses this case, he's probably going to have to adjust his world's-highest-retainer downward.

Even if the jury convicts, DeLay probably wins in a Republican-dominated appeals court, or even the SCOTUS if it gets to that. Because in the wake of Citizens United, there is a case to be made that DeLay's crimes are no longer crimes.

I'm still thinking The Bugman skates over this increasingly thin ice. But it may be later rather than sooner.

This week's snapshot from the Conservative Freak Show

Possibly to become a regular feature of this blog.

-- TeaBaggers are committing rampant voter fraud in order to award Bristol Palin a "Dancing With the Stars" championship.

While Bristol Palin denies any Tea Party conspiracy theories, there's no denying that conservatives have been pushing for votes for Bristol, using blogs and Twitter to start a movement. But what isn't widely known is the evidence—via message board comments on some conservative sites—that this mobilization involves fixing this (albeit meaningless) election through a technical snafu on ABC's website, which allows Palin's supporters to cast an infinite number of email votes ...

Personally I could not care any less about either 'DWTS' or anyone named Palin. The motivation by conservatives here appears to consist of hoping that "liberal heads explode". The thing is very few Democrats watch television drivel like this.

Another popcorn fart that the Tea P's have mistaken for an earthquake.

-- Louie Gohmert "Pyle" got an SFA art instructor fired, and then complained again to the officials of the university for making him look bad by doing so.

The now-former art galleries director at Stephen F. Austin State University, Christian Cutler, was asked by Gohmert's staff to jury a high school art competition. He agreed -- until he looked up Gohmert online and saw his interview with "Anderson Cooper", in which Gohmert ranted about the threat of terrorists having babies in the United States and then training them to return as adults and attack.

The next time Cutler spoke with Gohmert's staff, he says, he declined to do the art competition, saying he didn't want to work with a "fear-monger" like the congressman.

So Gohmert personally wrote a letter to Cutler, and copied the president of the university.

Go on. Read the excerpt of the congressman's letter. I'll wait. 

The letter, sent on Sept. 20, prompted several meetings and emails among Cutler and his supervisors, according to copies of the emails and notes from the meetings. One called him the same day. The next day, his two supervisors met with the provost, calling the incident the "last straw."

A few days after that, on Sept. 25, the board of regents met privately to discuss "personnel matters" regarding Cutler, according to a meeting notice. Before the meeting, the university president, Baker Patillo, forwarded Gohmert's letter to the chair of the board via email.

Cutler submitted his resignation three days later.

But that was the end of it. Right?

That wasn't the end of it, though. After several news outlets, including TPM, wrote about the story in late October, Gohmert wrote another scathing letter -- this time to the vice chair of the board of regents -- accusing the school of "hanging [him] out to dry," according to internal emails.

"I did not ask for that guy to be fired, frankly I would have preferred he hadn't been for this very reason [that] I would be blamed even though yall said he was a problem and there were other issues," he wrote. "But doing what I didn't ask for in dismissing that the manipulative liar and then refusing to make ANY statement about what was done is hanging me out to dry for something I did not do." [sic] 

The school had refused to give statements to the media about what happened.

"Now, I am the scapegoat nationally for SFA's decision. This is not really fair nor good. I do appreciate your ongoing concern for fairness and truth and know you will encourage doing whatever you believe is appropriate," he wrote. 

It's getting very nearly impossible for any kind of satire to be written about Gohmert, because he's so good at it all by himself.

-- Guess who?

A GOP senator who voted against the Democrats' sweeping health care bill quietly got a healthcare stimulus of his own: $960,000 doled out to the University of  *edited* for a Primary Care Residency Expansion program.

Who would you like to surmise is the candidate for this week's Hypocrisy Hall of Fame?

What's more, the senator, Republican John Ensign of Nevada, has also joined about a dozen Republican senators in a crusade to end earmarks in the federal budget.

The special dispensation for the University of Nevada was created via an earmark, a legislative maneuver that directs funds to be spent on a specific project.

So not only did the anti-healthcare senator get a special healthcare program funded in his state, he also got it through an earmark, a process he himself claims to oppose.

*Applause*