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Last post for the night. I've got a huge stack of undergrad papers to grade, and although I'd rather hit myself in the head with a hammer for the next 6 hours, well....

So one parting shot. Slate has an excellent backgrounder on the man behind the man, Tom DeLay's best buddie Jack Abramoff.

Where to begin examining the extraordinary career of Jack Abramoff? His work trying to secure a visa for the great Zairian kleptocrat Mobutu Sese Seko, perhaps, or the bilking of an estimated $66 million out of Native American tribes, clients he described as "monkeys," "troglodytes," and "idiots"? Or his leadership of a 1980s think tank financed, unbeknownst to him apparently, by the intelligence arm of South Africa's apartheid regime? No, the chapter of our man's story that matters most at the moment begins with a toast given by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay during a New Year's trip they both took to Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands in 1997. "When one of my closest and dearest friends, Jack Abramoff, your most able representative in Washington, D.C., invited me to the islands, I wanted to see firsthand the free-market success and the progress and reform you have made," DeLay said before an audience of Abramoff's clients in the islands' garment industry—whom, upon his return to Washington, he helped win an extended exemption from federal immigration and labor laws.

For more on the Abramoff-DeLay-apartheid connection, head over to Laura Rozen's War and Piece. Don't forget. There are now ongoing federal, state, and Congressional investigations into Abramoff. It's only a matter of time before they start connecting the dots to the Republican leadership.

UPDATE: Want to know why the whole Mess-o-DeLay matters? Josh Marshal has the answer.

With all of Tom DeLay's bossism and corrupt rule now finally being revealed to a wider audience, I figure it's time to revisit the DeLay Rule, and remember which Republican members of the House were so devoted to DeLay (i.e., owned by DeLay) that they were willing to rewrite their caucus's rules on his request because they thought he was about to indicted back in Texas. We've got a whole library of the letters the DeLay Rule backers sent to their constituents trying to explain themselves.

That vote was meaningless if the average American didn't know who DeLay was or what he had done. But if his actions continue to stay on page one, and if he eventually ends up getting taken down, that vote becomes a gold mine for the Democratic Party. Assuming, of course, that the party runs on a "party of reform" agenda.

One particularly interesting twist? In the last election the GOP proudly ousted Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, forcing the Dems to turn to new leadership. They saw it as a huge blow to the Democratic Party, and perhaps it was short term. But long term? If your party is lead by someone with whom the nation is already familiar it's difficult to position yourself as a reformer. But under new leadership that problem naturally goes away. And thanks to the Republicans that's precisely what the Dems have.

Oh yeah, and lest I forget, that new Dem leader? He comes from the West.

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