Best news I’ve heard all day.

A judge ordered former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to serve three years in prison Monday for his role in a scheme to illegally funnel corporate money to Texas candidates in 2002.

Slimy, mean little man.  I found this part amusing.

Hastert, an Illinois Republican who was House speaker from 1999 to 2006, testified that DeLay was not motivated by power but for a need to help others. Hastert talked about DeLay’s conservative and religious values, his efforts to provide tax relief for his constituents in Texas, his work helping foster children and the help he provided to the family of one of the police officers who was killed in a 1998 shooting at the U.S. Capitol in Washington.

“That’s the real Tom DeLay that a lot of people never got to see,” Hastert said.

Yeah, right.  A real Mother Teresa.  Shut up, Hastert.

I’d love to think that others watching DeLay get his just deserts could learn and possibly be deterred from going down the same path.  It ain’t about to happen.  Greedy, self-serving, egocentric, power-hungry bastards tend to view themselves as omnipotent demi-gods and demi-gods, as we all know, don’t need no stinkin’ lessons from anyone.

As for DeLay, these words sum up who this creep is.

“I can’t be remorseful for something I don’t think I did.”

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Matt Bai looks at the real villains of Saturday’s tragedy.

…the problem would seem to rest with the political leaders who pander to the margins of the margins, employing whatever words seem likely to win them contributions or TV time, with little regard for the consequences.

[...]

In fact, much of the message among Republicans last year, as they sought to exploit the Tea Party phenomenon, centered — like the Tea Party moniker itself — on this imagery of armed revolution…

It’s not that such leaders are necessarily trying to incite violence or hysteria; in fact, they’re not. It’s more that they are so caught up in a culture of hyperbole, so amused with their own verbal flourishes and the ensuing applause, that — like the bloggers and TV hosts to which they cater — they seem to lose their hold on the power of words.

Exactly.  I doubt there exists a single politician from either party who wishes for the type of tragedy that occurred in Arizona on Saturday. But while their lack of intent might absolve them technically from blame, it does not do so from an ethical perspective.  While a Sharron Angle might have thought it cutesy to speak of “Second Amendment remedies”, for the crazies out there, it meant exactly what it sounded like.

And here is a word for all those who are crying out that the left has jumped all over the Arizona shootings with anger and indignation toward the right.  For the last two years, the left has been warning of the dangers of politicians and conservative media types using violent imagery in their language. They’ve been calling for an end of talk of armed revolution from the likes of Bachmann, Palin and Beck.  Few on the right took the warnings seriously.  So when a mentally unstable young man fires his gun into the face of a Democratic politician, who the hell do you think the left is going to point fingers at?  Get real.  Whether it turns out that the shooter was directly influenced by the dangerous rhetoric or not, Saturday’s shooting was the exact scenario the left had been predicting.

The right did not listen then. Will they listen now?

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Washington Post:

The surgeon who operated on Arizona Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords said he was “optimistic” she would recover from being shot in the head by a man with a semi-automatic weapon outside a grocery store.

Six others at the congressional outreach event did not.

Federal law enforcement sources said that John M. Roll, the senior U.S. District judge in Arizona, was shot and killed in the incident. The Pima County Sheriff’s office said that five others including a nine-year-old child had died, and a total of 18 people were injured.

A 22-year old man was taken into custody after being tackled by people in the small crowd after the shooting…

The man was identified as Jared Loughner, who appears to have left a trail of Internet postings, including some that express convoluted observations about government. Law enforcement officials said they believed he was a military veteran.

Too early yet to point fingers or assign blame.

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It astounds me that anyone would actually come to the defense of Roman Polanski.  Some have gone as far as to call his arrest in Switzerland the culmination of a witch hunt. They talk of his charm and intelligence, his genius even, as if any of it could somehow make his deed any less reprehensible.  Poland and France are pleading that Switzerland and the United States release him from custody.

Why?

Here is a man who drugged, raped and sodomized a 13 year old girl.  He pleaded guilty to the charges and when he felt his plea bargain would not be accepted, he fled the country.  He’s been a fugitive for over 30 years.  He is a criminal.

Let him have his day in court like everyone else.

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There appears to be a problem as to where to place convicted swindler, Bernie Madoff.

Sentenced to 150 years, Madoff will probably be sent to a medium- or high-security prison, probably in the northeastern U.S, according to lawyers and prison consultants. Even worse for Madoff, fellow inmates serving life sentences may want “to make a name for themselves” by harming the ex-money manager, a former inmate said. The Federal Bureau of Prisons, which will decide where he’s jailed, may isolate Madoff to protect him from other prisoners.

One word.  Gitmo.  Should work as long as Obama and his successors keep it open for the next 150 years.

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