NP: Fall Out Boy, From Under the Cork Tree

I'm not sure what the revelation that Jack Abramoff was charging expenses for a couple of Democrats as well as Tom DeLay does to the mounting tide against the head of the House Republicans. It certainly gives DeLay some plausible deniability on this one particular trip, as the Dems in question -- who aren't named in the Times piece until the seventeenth paragraph -- provide documentation that maybe DeLay didn't know who was paying his bills.

The opportunity, then, for Democrats is to either offer up Clyburn and Thompson as some sort of sacrificial lambs of bipartisanship when it comes to ethics investigations or to use them as a point of contrast between a simple mistake or miscommunication and a broader pattern of exploiting rules and loopholes. The GOP will obviously want to use this to say "everybody is doing it," so the onus is on the left to say that DeLay is a different animal, or at least a bigger animal.

Of course, there's also the school of thought that says DeLay should keep his job at all costs for the foreseeable future, as he provides an easy target and rallying point for the midterm elections. I'm not sure if I buy into that yet, but I would definitely like to see at least one chamber of Congress swing back blue. Mostly so they are assured of not doing anything, instead of relying on procedural warfare to achieve the normal state of gridlock.