DeLay Indicted

CNN reports:

DeLay faces a single conspiracy count stemming from a long-running campaign finance investigation, the county clerk's office in Austin told CNN.

DeLay blasted the charge a "sham" and an act of "political retribution."

"I have done nothing wrong," DeLay told reporters. "I have violated no law, no regulation, no rule of the House."

Michelle Malkin has a good roundup.

Mark Levin can't find a single sentence in the indictment tying DeLay to a crime. Nevertheless, Jonah Goldberg says this is going to be a tedious, drawn out process all the same.

As a matter of pure political strategy it seems to me that the Republicans have a great deal to learn from the Clinton administration. They managed, as best they could, to translate the myriad investigations into their “ethics” into the general political complaint that everyone should “move on.” Indeed, that’s where we got Moveon.org, which at the time baldly lied that they were a non-partisan, one-issue organization. If the GOP can’t make this into an issue about the increasing desperation of the Democrats -- which does have the benefit of being at least partly true -- they’ll be in trouble. Not life-threatening trouble, but trouble nonetheless.

The problem, of course, is that they don’t have nearly as sympathetic a media climate to operate in.

Indeed. And that could make all the difference in the world. One thing you have to admit is that the timing couldn't be any better for the Democrats. Bush is already taking heat from the left for creating these wascally hurricanes in the first place, while at the same time ticking off the right by committing so much federal aid to cleanup and recovery costs.