Thursday, May 17, 2012

The Trials of Tom DeLay

My former congressman, Tom DeLay, has a problem. Here he has a 3 year prison sentence hanging over his head for conspiracy and money laundering, and now, come to find out, in his appeal to the 3rd Federal Circuit Court of Appeals he  is facing a two to one Democratic to Republican judge panel.

Not because of the luck of the draw, as it turns out.

As it turns out, it is because whenever they asked a Republican justice to sit for the case, they begged off. Republicans have declared the former Congressional majority leader persona non grata and are diving for the weeds.

So Tom is up against a Democrat majority panel.

Not to say that his lawyers aren’t still trying to fight to configure the panel to be more like one to their liking. They continue to badger one Democratic judge for an answer on whether she will recuse herself because she had some fairly negative remarks about DeLay several years ago at a political convention.

My question to the lawyer, though, is whether or not a federal court justice is allowed to exercise their first amendment rights of free speech. This means that 5 of the Supreme Court justices should recuse themselves from any and all cases involving a Democrat.

I wonder how Tom is going to look in those orange overalls.

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