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It’s the corruption, stupid.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Infrastructure week. at last.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

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You are here: Home / Politics / Activist Judges! / If That Bar Gets Any Lower, It’s Going To Hit The Floor

If That Bar Gets Any Lower, It’s Going To Hit The Floor

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Convicted felon and conservative leader Tom Delay has been in the news lately, which reminded me of this:

The Texas Republican on Friday suggested an impeachment case could be made against judges who rebuffed Congress’ will in the Schiavo case. As the severely brain-damaged Florida woman faded, Congress passed a law allowing federal courts to review the decisions of state judges who turned down her parents’ efforts to resume her feeding. But state and federal judges all the way up to the Supreme Court upheld those decisions.

On the day Schiavo died, DeLay said: “The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior.”

He meant to say “answer for their behavior, in Heaven, after they live a long and fruitful life, and die of natural causes”

Sen.Rick Santorum ( R-Pa., said the courts had practiced nothing less than “judicial tyranny” in this case and took aim at those who say Congress overstepped its bounds in getting involved.

Sen. John Cornyn (search ), R-Texas, said he wondered if frustration against perceived political decisions by judges “builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in violence, certainly without any justification.”

Cornyn was just wondering about that. Just idly musing. He’s intellectually curious! So sue him, liberals.

Democrats like Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts have called the comments tantamount to inciting violence against judges.

“Mr. DeLay’s escalating threats aimed at intimidating the federal judiciary fundamentally disrespect our Constitutional framework and dishonor the oath we take as public officials to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. Mr. DeLay’s remarks are unworthy of a leader,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said in a statement Friday.

Not a problem, right? Conservative leaders regularly repeat this sort of inflammatory, demonizing nonsense about judges with whom they disagree. Too, they were in the midst of a concerted political campaign to invigorate and rally their fundamentalist religious base, and they got a little…reckless.

No harm, no foul. Right?

Except this insane rhetoric became a political problem for conservatives partly because a federal judge’s family had been murdered by a lunatic bearing a grudge about a month prior to Delay’s comments.

So, Delay reluctantly, finally, apologized for the comments:

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, riding out a political storm over allegations he took trips that were paid for by lobbyists, tried to put to rest another swirling controversy Wednesday: his threats of retribution against judges involved in the Terri Schiavo case.
—
“I said something in an inartful way and I apologize for it,” DeLay told reporters who jammed a conference room in his Capitol office suite. “I’m sorry I said it that way and I shouldn’t have said it.”

When current GOP leaders can’t even meet the low, low bar that constitutes the Tom Delay standard of responsible conduct, I think it’s past time for some soul-searching.

Reader Interactions

22Comments

  1. 1.

    Zifnab

    When current GOP leaders can’t even meet the low, low bar that constitutes the Tom Delay standard of responsible conduct, I think it’s past time for some soul-searching.

    When Tom DeLay apologized for his comments, he wasn’t in any risk of losing his congressional seat either way. But he was a national media figure, and he did need to execute a mea culpa so he could continue getting sloppy blow jobs from Chris Matthews.

    Were DeLay to apologize the same way today, Tea Party Sugar Land would start grumbling about a primary challenge against him.

    It’s a Brave New World, baby.

  2. 2.

    LGRooney

    Slime doesn’t really care how low the bar goes. It can always find a way to seep.

    Oh, oh, sorry, you meant a hurdle. But, aren’t you given an ethical pogo stick just by virtue of being in the GOP?

  3. 3.

    licensed to kill time

    __

    “I said something in an inartful way and I apologize for it,” DeLay told reporters

    Tom DeLay, the Inartful Dodger.

  4. 4.

    henqiguai

    …I think it’s past time for some soul-searching.
    Obviously, this assumes a soul to be searched, in the first place. Unwarranted assumption there…

  6. 6.

    kay

    @licensed to kill time:

    It took him three months, but he got there. Maybe they need encouragement rather than our scorn :)

    I think he’ll do well, post-sentence, with proper rehabilitation. Hope for the best! Good luck!

  7. 7.

    licensed to kill time

    @kay:

    Will being convicted of a felony keep him out of politics? He’d lose his right to vote, no? That might be a good outcome!

    eta: I love your dry and wry sense of humor :)

  9. 9.

    PWL

    ..And one other thing to note: how the party which always wants to “get government off our backs” were more than happy to have the ENTIRE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT intrude itself into what was totally a personal choice for Mr Schiavo to make.

    Government in the boardroom (where it obviously needs to be, given the last two years)? BAD! Government in the bedroom? A-OK!

  10. 10.

    licensed to kill time

    @kay:
    State o’ Texas says yes:

    In Texas, a convicted felon regains the right to vote after completing his or her sentence. Therefore, once you have completed the punishment phase (including any term of incarceration, parole, or supervision, or completed a period of probation ordered by the court), you would be eligible to register and vote in the state of Texas.

    Oh well.

  11. 11.

    kay

    @licensed to kill time:

    Oh, I’m thrilled. I think felons should be able to vote, post-punishment. Even this felon.

    Who knows? People change. He could emerge a bleeding heart liberal, although I imagine he’s none too fond of judges right now. That may not change.

  12. 12.

    licensed to kill time

    @kay:

    Actually, I don’t believe in disenfranchisement for felons, either. I hope DeLay does some soul-searching and re-thinks what he has done, though I don’t hold out much hope for that.

    I was just thinking how just it would be if his manipulation of the system deprived him of the ability to jigger with it in the future.

  14. 14.

    El Cid

    That bar has ever been set at lofty heights.

    WASHINGTON, Nov. 22— Senator Jesse Helms [R-NC and R-Hell], the likely next chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, created a new uproar today when he was quoted saying that President Clinton was so unpopular on military bases in North Carolina that he “better have a bodyguard” if he visits the state. Mr. Helms later called the comment “a mistake.”
    __
    Asked about the Helms comments at a White House news conference today, President Clinton said, “I think the remarks were unwise and inappropriate.”
    __
    Just days after Mr. Helms, a Republican from North Carolina, created a furor by saying that President Clinton was not up to the job of Commander in Chief, he told The News and Observer, a newspaper in Raleigh: “Mr. Clinton better watch out if he comes down here. He’d better have a bodyguard.”
    __
    Mr. Helms said soldiers disliked President Clinton because he had avoided service during the Vietnam War, supported homosexuals in the military and had reduced military spending.
    __
    After several senators criticized the comment that Mr. Helms made to the Raleigh newspaper on Monday, he issued a statement in which he called it “an offhand remark” not meant to be taken literally.
    __
    “I made a mistake last evening which I shall not repeat,” he said. “In an informal telephone interview with a local reporter I made an offhand remark in an attempt to emphasize how strongly the American people feel about the nation’s declining defense capability and other issues.
    __
    “Of course I didn’t expect to be taken literally when, to emphasize the cost and concerns I am hearing, I far too casually suggested that the President might need a bodyguard, or words to that effect.”
    __
    Asked about his reaction to Senator Helms’s remarks and “if you feel comfortable with him being chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee that is going to oversee your foreign policy,” Mr. Clinton responded that the comments “were unwise and inappropriate”…

    Helms certainly upheld a higher standard upon being questioned about his bullshit, particularly about statements which would bring in a Secret Service investigation.

    Although in itself such a statement would be odd anyway, given that the President tends to have a bodyguard, maybe two, at all times.

    Helms, of course, did not serve in Vietnam either, instead appearing on a large NC TV station as a commentator on the news program regularly denouncing blacks for the Civil and Voting act as violent and as communists and subhuman and slothful and so on. (Mysteriously the archive footage of which vanished from storage one day.)

    Of civil rights protests Helms wrote (WRAL-TV commentary, 1963), “The Negro cannot count forever on the kind of restraint that’s thus far left him free to clog the streets, disrupt traffic, and interfere with other men’s rights.” He also wrote (New York Times, 2/8/81), “Crime rates and irresponsibility among Negroes are a fact of life which must be faced.”

    Before that he helped segregationist racist Willis Smith run against moderate incumbent Franklin Graham by physically doctoring photos to show Graham’s wife dancing with a black man.

  16. 16.

    Mnemosyne

    Except this insane rhetoric became a political problem for conservatives partly because a federal judge’s family had been murdered by a lunatic bearing a grudge about a month prior to Delay’s comments.

    Yes, but her family wasn’t murdered by someone who was directly linked to Tom DeLay, so clearly you’re just trying to put the blame on him when he’s totally innocent.
    /snark

    (IIRC, it turned out that her family had been murdered by someone who was pissed off about his bankruptcy case and had nothing to do with the white supremacists who had been threatening her, but I can’t find the story now.)

  17. 17.

    Delia

    @licensed to kill time:

    I hope DeLay does some soul-searching and re-thinks what he has done, though I don’t hold out much hope for that.

    I hope to find a unicorn in my garden. I think my chances are better than yours.

  19. 19.

    fucen tarmal

    well to be fair to delay, the prisons are full of convicts who wish their judge or judges in general would “get got”. he really is only speaking as one would expect of a career criminal.

  21. 21.

    fucen tarmal

    @kay:

    actually, and i think this speaks volumes about texas, its the only state, of many with movements to re-enfranchise felons, where the effort is being led, and supported by republicans.

  22. 22.

    David Hunt

    I note that my reading of the excerpted quote is that Delay doesn’t really apologize for what he said but for the method that used to call on the Real Murkins to make the judiciary pay for the horrendous crime of ruling against Republican interest. I read it as effectively the same as “I’m sorry that I got caught.”

    Delay and the conservative slimes that we’re dealing with today remind me of a phrase Robert Heinlein had one of his characters use to describe a man he didn’t approve of. “A size twelve ego in a size seven soul.” I am quoting for memory so I could easily have gotten the numbers wrong.

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