We are about to see a flurry of investigations of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay…a man who's in enough trouble that his Republican colleagues had to pass a rule that said he would not lose his leadership post if he were indicted by a Texas grand jury. I have no idea if he will survive or not.
But don't you get the idea that once all the inquiries are done, the real scandal will be not what DeLay has done that violates the law but all the things he was able to get away with that didn't violate the law?
When the Enron investigations started, a friend of mine predicted that no one of any importance would serve any real time behind bars. I asked why he felt that way. He said, "Because guys like that have done such a good job getting laws amended their way and working the loopholes that they could rob a liquor store and shoot the manager…and it still would not be, in some technical sense, illegal."