Why it's good to wait

Tom Delay, Republican strong-arm in the House of Representatives was indicted today by Texas prosecutor Ronnie Earle:

The indictment accused DeLay, 58, of a conspiracy to violate Texas election law, which prohibits use of corporate donations to advocate the election or defeat of political candidates. The alleged scheme worked in a roundabout way, with the donations going to a DeLay- founded political committee, then to the Republican National Committee and eventually to GOP candidates in Texas.

This has been bubbling for quite some time and now has bubbled-over as Earle is moving forward to prosecute. DeLay has stepped down temporarily as House Majority Leader while the case is investigated and/or taken to trial.

DeLay has many detractor's in the public-at-large as well as the political- and pundit classes. I have read and heard many a liberal lambaste DeLay over this in recent months, assured that he is guilty before even investigated, much less tried.

I would offer a word of advice to those folks; it is always wise to wait and watch how things resolve. It's the surest way of avoiding looking like an ass.

Case in point are the screamers and the howlers over the Katrina response. Seems that not all the tales of woe from New Orleans were accurate or true.

Hugh's post from 9/10 lays the groundwork for a discussion on what exactly the media was giving us. Yesterday's LA Times gives us yet another report to ponder.

"It just morphed into this mythical place where the most unthinkable deeds were being done," [Major Ed]Bush said Monday of the Superdome.His assessment is one of several in recent days to conclude that newspapers and television exaggerated criminal behavior in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, particularly at the overcrowded Superdome and Convention Center.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune on Monday described inflated body counts, unverified "rapes," and unconfirmed sniper attacks as among examples of "scores of myths about the dome and Convention Center treated as fact by evacuees, the media and even some of New Orleans' top officials."

Indeed, Mayor C. Ray Nagin told a national television audience on "Oprah" three weeks ago of people "in that frickin' Superdome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people."

Meanwhile, the Bush-Haters went into over-drive after hearing such reports and leveled hugely unfair and inaccurate criticisms of the Federal response that I could hardly believe. Now, after having time to digest and wade through it all it begins coming out that many of those criticisms and claims were based on bad information.

While I hate to "play politics" with something horrific as Katrina, I still can't help but laugh at the chumps who walked out on this limb in their histrionics only to see it break under them.

I would caution them not to get too far out on this particular branch, to say perhaps too much about what did or didn't happen in the DeLay matter and to give it all the time it requires for finding a full understanding. Unless they like looking like chumps...