BY DAN
KENNEDY
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Monday, June 09, 2003
Trouble for DeLay? Maybe it
will come to nothing. But the overweening arrogance of House majority
leader Tom "The Exterminator" DeLay may finally be getting him in
trouble, according to the Washington Post.
On Friday, the Post's
Thomas
Edsall reported that DeLay
was one of four members of Congress who split $56,500 from a troubled
Kansas-based company called Westar Energy. Building on reporting done
by the Kansas City Star, Edsall wrote about company e-mails
stating that the donations to the four Republican lawmakers were
aimed at getting them to vote in favor of repealing a federal
regulation that was not to Westar executives' liking.
In a follow-up
on Saturday, Edsall and Juliet Eilperin noted that, last September,
the Wichita Eagle reported that repeal of the regulation could
have brought $27 million to two Westar executives.
DeLay's office has strongly denied
that there was any quid pro quo. But this story bears
watching.
Also on Saturday, Post
reporter R. Jeffrey Smith had a long recap of the efforts of Texas
Republicans to chase
down fleeing Democrats so
they could get a quorum in the legislature and ram through a
redistricting bill.
The story centers on the way three
federal agencies -- including the Department of Homeland Security,
which is supposed to track terrorists -- were used to find the
Democrats, many of whom had crossed the border into Oklahoma so they
couldn't be dragooned back to Austin. DeLay's involvement is
recounted in quite a bit more detail than I've seen
previously.
Records, you will not be surprised
to learn, have been destroyed.
posted at 7:36 AM |
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MEDIA LOG ARCHIVES
Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
