Let's Not Pat Ourselves on the Back Just Yet

Just got this mail from John Lapp of the Democratic Congressional Committee and once you read it, you may understand my concern.

I'm writing to both thank you for adding your name to our petition, and to congratulate you on a startling victory.

On Wednesday the GOP suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of an outraged American public, with House Republicans voting overwhelmingly to restore the House ethics process. You'll recall that back in January, when they thought no one was watching, more than 200 of them voted in favor of the very weakened rules that they voted to repeal Wednesday, making this perhaps the greatest mass flip-flop in modern Congressional history.

While we might have a hard time convincing ourselves that the Republicans have had a true change of heart about putting their party before their country especially since one top GOP aide admitted to the Washington Post that it was simply "impossible to win the communications battle" - the restoration of a serious ethics process in the House is a resounding victory in its own right. This change happened because of you and thousands like you, who signed our petition to repeal those rules, who stood up and told the Republicans that the American people will not stand by as their government is turned into an unaccountable, "pay-for-play" free for all.

That's not all of it, and yes, I'm happy to see the Ethics Committee rules rolled back. Sure, I'm thrilled people came together and spoke out.

But as I've said too many times, lopping off part of the snake doesn't necessarily remove all the venom, and there's no indication yet DeLay's going elsewhere. I was glad to see Jonathan Alter (please, Jon, update your photo - you haven't had a head of hair like that in ... five years?) of Newsweek agree that we'd probably do best to leave DeLay in office until Texas voters kill him off in 2006. IF they kill him off, of course.

And even if they do kill him off, we've still got a lot of snakes in Congress on both sides of the aisle. Tom should be specifically ordered not to have his hand in politics again and no one is EVER going to go against Tommy boy that way. As long as he and his machine live, his taint will be everywhere. His machine will survive him. His rot exceeds him.