Demagogue

The world's biggest asshole is blaming an editorial in a Texas newspaper for why he was indicted by a grand jury yesterday. According to the AP, Tom DeLay blames an editorial published by the Austin American-Statesman for pushing a Texas prosecutor to pursue the criminal indictment against him:

"It was this renewed political pressure in the waning days of his hollow investigation that led this morning's action," DeLay said Wednesday after a grand jury indicted him on a criminal conspiracy charge.

... DeLay said that prosecutor Ronnie Earle had said as recently as two weeks ago that DeLay was not the target or focus of his probe into election spending in the 2002 state legislative campaigns.

"Soon thereafter, Mr. Earle's hometown newspaper ran a biting editorial about his investigation, rhetorically asking what the point had been, after all, if I wasn't to be indicted,'' DeLay said.

... Arnold Garcia, editorial page editor for the American-Statesman, said the newspaper was doing its job in writing the [Sept. 11 editorial]. "We're commenting on an item of public interest,'' Garcia said. "But you should never forget the newspaper didn't indict Mr. DeLay. A grand jury did."

The editorial said Earle and the grand jury may have good reason for indicting just organizations, but "time is running out, and on the face of it, the felony indictments returned last week against the Texas Association of Business and the now nonexistent Texans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee are disappointing."

The American-Statesman posted the Sept. 11 editorial on its Web site Wednesday, along with a new editorial commenting on the indictment and on Delay's remarks.

"DeLay was not mentioned by name, nor was there an allusion to him," the new editorial states. "It is either DeLay's hubris or his conscience that leads him to think that the editorial targeted him."

Conscience? Nah, can't be. Doctors must have removed that organ from DeLay's body when they took out his appendix.