Bully pulpit: how Tom DeLay changed Washington.

• Author: Malanowski, Jamie

It seems more and more possible that the name of Chris Bell will join that of Charles Julius Guiteau on the list of disgruntled office-seekers who helped derail a powerful politician's career. Guiteau, however, merely shot James Garfield, one of our ready below-average Buckeye presidents. Chris Bell may end up slaying a dragon.

For those not in the know, Chris Bell is a one-term Texas Democratic congressman who lost his bid for reelection when the Texas legislature gratuitously gerrymandered him into a district where he had to face another (apparently more popular) Democratic incumbent. With his career nipped in the bud, Bell, perhaps humming the "Me and Bobby McGee" lyric about freedom being another word for nothing left to lose, filed a 187-page ethics complaint against Tom DeLay; the powerful House Majority Leader and engineer of the hyper-aggressive redistricting scheme that claimed Bell's seat.

Bell's long-overdue complaint accused DeLay of "bribery, extortion, fraud, money laundering and the abuse of power." In response, the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct has so far rebuked Delay twice. The first time was for being insufficiently discreet in his influence-peddling ("Geez, Tom, take the time to maintain a veil of hypocrisy, willya?") The second time was for using the Federal Aviation Administration to track down furtive Democratic Texas legislators after they had escaped to Oklahoma in an effort to deny the Republican majority a quorum for the redistricting session in which the state Democratic Party would be sliced and diced to death. (The panel had shown a lot of backbone to this point, but in a prime example of state-of-the-art buck passing, deferred action on another of Bell's complaints, this one alleging illegal corporate fundraising. They are going to wait and see what happens to three DeLay cronies who have been charged with felonies in that matter.)

Regardless of what else happens--and there hangs in the air the kind of ominous silence that precedes the dropping of the other shoe--Bell's complaint has already inspired House Speaker Dennis Hastert to deliver what will surely prove to be one of the Ten Most Unintentionally Hilarious Comments of the Year. "The worry I have," Hastert told The New Fork Times, "is that you again politicize the process, and it denigrates what ethics is all about."

And surely the name of Tom DeLay should never be associated with any denigration of ethics.

Tom DeLay is the most odious...