Oh, DeLay (Part 2):
The history of Tom DeLay's hometown, Sugar Land, Texas, like much of the history of the red states of America, is a tale of how the thriving, mostly white, Houston bedroom community was built on the bleeding, broken backs of slaves and convicts. East of the Brazos River, the place was originally a land grant plantation in 1828 that grew mostly (and then only) sugarcane. The Oakland Plantation was massive and contained hundreds of slaves to do the ridiculously labor-intensive work of harvesting the cane in the ridiculously impossible heat of the Texas sun, the air filled with the sickening stench of cane being boiled in the mill and processed in the refinery. When the Civil War ended, in order to keep the plantations going, the good white people of Sugar Land "leased" convicts from the state prison farms that sprung up in the area, 500 or so men. The brutal working conditions (remember: not only were these essentially slave laborers, but they were also being "punished") made the prisoners give Sugar Land the name "Hell Hole on the Brazos." The last cane was harvested in 1928, a century after it started. The town, however, was there to stay, and its refinery, owned by Imperial Sugar, became the central industry and more or less owned the town until about 1960, when it became its own hell hole which belched forth the bile-ridden bit of vomit known as Tom DeLay.

Tom DeLay's entire career in Washington and Texas has been twenty years of such vile depravity in the name of the people of Sugar Land that Hell has been tempted to call its own back. DeLay was elected Majority Whip a scant two years after he had been part of the House checking scandal, where a bunch of members of Congress, fat and loathsome from their own putrescent sense of privilege, knowingly wrote tons of bad checks that were cashed by the House Bank. DeLay was a relatively minor offender, with only $5300 overdrawn, which he admitted to, but blamed "gross mismanagement" of the House bank, not his own greed.

And, in a wave to Sugar Land's past, in 1994 DeLay effectively blocked legislation and even hearings on a textile factory on Saipan island, which imported labor from other countries, like the Philippines and China to make the material for clothes sold by JC Penney, the Gap, and others. The laborers were forced to use the company store, paid very little, and were kept, essentially, as slaves. DeLay called the factory, which the Clinton adminstration wanted to drag into the 20th century, a demonstration of the "free market" at work. Wined and dined on privately funded trips to Saipan, DeLay bloviated at a banquet there, "You are up against the forces of big labor and the radical left" in the United States.

DeLay is a pustule, an infected wart on the ass of the body politic. His entire reason for existence is to wreck and destroy any semblance of decency in a maniacal pursuit of power for power's sake. His associates shake down groups for major cash, like the $45 million billed to Indian tribes for lobbying and consulting by two DeLay cronies. Now, you think that money was paid because these guys were so good? Or because it bought access to DeLay?

Not only did the motherfucker set up the Texans for a Republican Majority PAC to funnel cash to candidates for the Texas legislature so DeLay could redraw the map of Texas's congressional districts like a degenerate meth addict in a rubber room alone with crayons, but here's the kicker on how actually, actively evil DeLay is, the reason that the non-white children of Sugar Land weep whenever they see the Hammer's picture because they know he has the potential to fuck them in their sleep: DeLay set up a charity for abused children in order to raise tons of soft money for Republican convention parties. The name of the charity? Celebrations for Children, Inc. The punchline? DeLay's pride in all the legislation he has shoved through the House in support of foster kids, which was always a slam against abortion rights, but now just seems like long-term cover for fiduciary abuse. Or maybe we'll just call it "hypocrisy," a high-falutin' word that follows DeLay around like Apostles followed Christ.

We haven't touched on Westar, his vicious blackmail and bribery for the vote of Rep. Nick Smith on the Medicare bill, and his routine habit of picking up underage black hookers, having them blow him in his limo, and then gutting them like brown trout from the Brazos at the Lincoln Memorial. God, how weary his bodyguards are of cleaning intestines off Lincoln's mighty throne and mulching the bodies of the whores for the Rose Garden fertilizer.

So, yesterday, when the House Republicans overturned the rule that says if a leader is indicted for a crime, he or she must step aside, at least temporarily, until cleared, the GOP said, "Fuck you" to ethics and a bigger "Fuck you" to anyone who would dare question the legality of the actions of its leaders (remember, DeLay might be indicted by a Democratic DA in Texas for the whole money-funneling thing). Remember, DeLay is a born-again Christian. Why does that matter? Because born-agains, especially powerful ones, get a pass from their constituents. You have accepted Christ, you say, and are therefore above reproach for his actions. In other words, if you love Jesus, it doesn't matter how many people you dick over - Jesus forgives, even as he weeps, Jesus forgives. And anyone who would dare question the works of the goodly, godly man of Sugar Land, why that's like a slave questioning his master. The slave can never be right. The master is always right.

The folk/blues legend Leadbelly was incarcerated at Sugar Land, at the Central State Prison Farm, in the 1920s. He wrote "Midnight Special" about the train that went through Sugar Land every night. If you dared cross the white people of Houston, Leadbelly wrote, "You can bet your bottom dollar/ That you're Sugar Land bound." And while we may not be toiling in the sun, reaping sugarcane with our wounded hands, with the House's actions and its embrace of its corrupt dog of a leader, we're all Sugar Land bound, the fucking Hell Hole into which law and order and fairness descend into meaninglessness.

(Tip of the rude hat to astute reader Derek for some of the info on Sugar Land.)