And yet another gift

The House Republicans had a chance to purge their ranks of Tom DeLay corruption; something that would have seemed to be a good move with midterms a year away. Instead they elected corrupt DeLay clone Roy Blunt.

Late this afternoon, Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri, the majority whip, was appointed temporary House majority leader, with David Dreier of California, the chairman of the Rules Committee, designated to assist him. Earlier in the day, Republicans on Capitol Hill said Speaker J. Dennis Hastert intended to appoint Mr. Dreier to take over for Mr. DeLay.

Well Hastert tried.

Over at the Washington Post Terry M. Neal agrees that it's looking a lot like 1994.

It didn't take long for DeLay's supporters to get the talking points. In a statement e-mailed to reporters hours after news of the indictment broke, the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, leader of the Traditional Values Coalition, said DeLay was "a Christian man" and accused prosecutor Ronnie Earle of exacting "political retribution."

Yet, The Washington Post's Jeffrey Smith reported last year that "Earle, an elected Democrat who oversees the state's Public Integrity Unit, previously prosecuted four elected Republicans and 12 Democrats for corruption or election law violations."

And the Associated Press reported last December that Earle had prosecuted some of the biggest Democratic names in the state, including, "former Texas House Speaker Gib Lewis, former Texas Attorney General Jim Mattox, former State Treasurer Warren Harding and former Texas Supreme Court Justice Don Yarbrough."

Buried under a sea of political scandal in the late 1980s and early 1990s, congressional Democrats often evoked the same defense. And it didn't work.