While I have not cared for Tom DeLay, I think that someone should point out that this was a pure, political trial, and I cannot rejoice when people are wrongfully convicted, period. I have given too much of my life to this cause to go back on principal, and while he treated Ron Paul wrongly, I am not going to abandon my own beliefs.

First, the original prosecutor in this case, Ronnie Earle, shopped grand juries, being voted down by two of them before finding a grand jury that was headed by a political enemy of DeLay. So, we can see from the start that the process stunk. Second, the original charge was not grounded in any law, so prosecutors had to come up with what the media has called a “novel legal theory” to bring charges. Any time prosecutors are permitted to make up the law as they go along is a prescription for tyranny, and I would hope that libertarians actually might stand against such things.

Third, this was a trial run by Democratic prosecutors with a Democratic judge and jurors who were culled from a county that votes heavily Democratic. Fourth, prosecutors had to stretch the law to claim that corporate donations to a PAC were illegal when, in fact, they were not. Fifth, the trial depended heavily upon hearsay testimony, which always is suspect.

Now, again, none of this is an endorsement of the politics of Tom DeLay. Nonetheless, when I see this kind of legal corruption by prosecutors in Texas, it makes me ill. Furthermore, Texas is a state where prosecutors seem to specialize in lies and wrongful convictions, and the evidence is clear that the state has been executing innocent people.

I can understand how people would have strong feelings about DeLay, and in many ways, he was part of what is wrong with Washington and the Ruling Class. However, I prefer that we not pervert the law in the process of attacking him.