The Exterminator Targets Judges

Republican Majority Leader Tom DeLay is playing out his own version of wag the dog, starting a war on federal judges to distract people from his own ethical sump.

Last week, in front of Focus on the Family, he conflated his own political corruption problems with the right-to-life of Terri Schiavo: the same forces that are murdering Terri Schiavo are also after me, DeLay told the credulous Christians. And if that wasn't crude enough for you, on Thursday, immediately after Schiavo's death, DeLay issued a statement asserting that "the time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior." In an atmosphere where judges or members of their families have been recently murdered, and in which a North Carolina man was taken in by the FBI for issuing a murder-for-hire offer on the lives of Michael Schiavo and the judge who ruled in his favor ... how exactly are we to interpret DeLay's words other than as a not-so-veiled threat.

DeLay followed up the above statement by standing in front of cameras on Thursday and saying that he wants to "look at an arrogant, out-of-control, unaccountable judiciary that thumbed their nose at Congress and the president." He has referred to the "failure" of state and federal judges to "protect" Terri Schiavo, which is exactly the kind of there's-only-one-right-answer dogmatism that we've learned to fear from people who are holier than you or I.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) thinks that DeLay might have broken a federal statute against threatening U.S. judges: "Threats against specific federal judges are not only a serious crime, but also beneath a Member of Congress," Lautenberg wrote. "Your attempt to intimidate judges in America not only threatens our courts, but our fundamental democracy as well."

As the noose on his corruption tightens, we look for DeLay to flail away at soft targets even more wildly.