The official blog of the Libertarian Party
January 09, 2006
Rep. Tom DeLay Decides Not to Run For Leadership Post
After conferring with senior Republican leaders, Rep. Tom DeLay decided not to seek his previously held position of House majority leader. An election for a new House majority leader will take place the week of January 30.
House Majority Whip Roy Blunt is seeking the House majority leader post, having been serving as the acting House majority leader since September. Other candidates that are likely to run for the position of majority leader include House Education and Workforce Committee Chairman John A. Boehner (R - Ohio), Rep. Mike Pence (R - Indiana), and House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis (R - California).
Republican congressional leaders, such as Rep. Dennis Hastert and Rep. David Dreier, put pressure on DeLay not to seek reelection as House majority leader. DeLay has come under fire for allegedly being involved in money laundering to finance state political campaigns and as well as his office having links to Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who last week pleaded guilty to fraud and tax evasion. Many believe the deciding factor in DeLay's decision was Abramoff's plea agreement with prosecutors. Political strategist Rich Galen commented, "DeLay is the first political casualty of the Abramoff affair. I don't think there's any question about that."
The loss of a senior leadership post is the beginning of the embattled congressman's problems. DeLay is facing a possible tough reelection campaign this year against former Congressman Nick Lampson and a possible primary challenger, former representative Steve Stockman, according to the Washington Post. DeLay is expected to regain his coveted seat on the House Appropriations Committee. A vacancy opened on the committee due to the resignation of Randall "Duke" Cunningham (R- California), who pleaded guilty to receiving bribes from defense contractors.
Posted by at January 9, 2006 03:11 PM
Reader Comments:
Does the LP have anyone we can put up for this position this election cycle?
Pavel
Pavel,
You have to be a member of the majority party (Republican Party, right now) and a member of Congress in order to run for majority leader. I highly doubt Ron Paul would get any support from his fellow House Republicans.
-Lee Brenn, LPMN
The best we could hope for is a Moderate Republican (these days defined as one who is not foaming at the mouth), but I'm not going to hold my breath.
I guess in this isolated instance "Justice DeLay'd was not justice denied" (sorry, couldn't resist).
TIM WEST FOR TEXAS CONGRESS
We recruited 2 candidates to challenge Delay in US House district 22. Bob Smither and Stan Norred have filed for the Libertarian Party nomination. Our entire list of candidates is at lptexas.org/candidates.shtml.
Patrick Dixon
Chair, LP of Texas
www.LPTexas.org
Rep. DeLay is in major trouble politically. The loss of his leadership post is the least of his troubles.
DC Political Report has this race rated as five star Democratic pickup. Larry Sabato has it as lean republican. Cook political has it likely republican. Rothenberg has it rated competitive. Not good news at all for a long time incumbent. Given the fact he only scored 55% of the vote in 2004, he is in major trouble.
I will personally bet money, even if he is ultimately exonerated on criminal charges, that he will lose his seat. I wouldn't mind a couple of spoilers in the race to hedge my bet. Right now, ushering a major neocon leader out of Congress is my primary concern. Of course, it would be nice if a Libertarian candidate put in a good showing also.
That last post by Nigel brings me to another of my hot button topics. Primary elections.
I have always detested party primaries as a method of selecting candidates. I think a move should be made to eliminate primaries for ALL races and move to select candidates either via local, state or national committee, as appropriate, or via caucuses.
In either of these manners, candidates could actually be screened by their respective parties, to see if they actually sincerely hold the beliefs of the respective parties and that they are quality candidates. They would also serve to keep embarrassing inter-party squabbles out of the eye of the public. In all cases, voting should be by voice vote. For presidential elections, I support an ascending series of caucuses/conventions. i.e. local, regional, state, national.
Liberalize election laws to make it easier for a party to gain a ballot line in all elections. Once the party gains that ballot line, they would have it for ALL partisan races in the state and could fill it with whatever candidate they see fit or leave it empty if they find no suitable candidate.
http://freestarmedia.com/
You know this site has a movie, song, and links and lot of things going on for freedom, some things suprass this libertarian party. At least these people are doing a lot of actions. Are we going to do anything beside blogging?
Mark B, I agree wholeheartedly. Primary elections are a waste of time and taxpayer money. I think that each party should select its candidate (no matter what the means, to be decided by that party) and when they select a candidate they float it to the public in the elections and we choose. That way there it would be impossible for there to be 100s of choices for governor (as there was in California) unless there were 100s of political parties, and I would suggest that any area able to support 100s of political parties is doing quite well to say the least.
And while we are at it with the reforms, it would be nice to get rid of the damn electoral college and let the people elect the president and others by direct vote.
Primaries have some value: why do we want to keep "embarassing interparty squabbles" out of the public eye? For example, let's say a good libertarian can't run in a certain race because of really onerous petition requirements. So he challenges a socialistic incumbent in one of the major party's primaries. This gets libertarian views out in the public eye; otherwise, the party leadership decides in a smoke-filled room to
ignore the outsider. Just the possibility of primary challengers running public campaigns may help keep the incumbents honest (no LOL)and may even adopt (or pay lip service to) some of the challenger's issues.
If there is anyone who should replace Tom Delay as House Majority Leader, that someone is Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX). He is a constitutionalist, he believes in limited government, and he is a Libertarian in the true sense of the word.
I believe if he were chosen to be leader, he could unite libertarians and small government conservatives into a unified major force. He would also give President Bush and other big government conservatives, including neo-conservatives, a spitting headache. William Kristol, Micheal Ladeen, Charles Krauthammer and other neoconservatives would all go crazy at the choosing of Ron Paul. I know that it would never happen, but one has to admit that it is nice to dream.
For pete's sake, HG, would you please at least spam on topic?
Elections and primaries aside for the moment, the one target we should be bringing our guns to bear on is in the so-called Presidential "debates". This is the first line of defense in the entrenchment and artificial perpetuation of the "two-party" (vanilla and French vanilla) system. This has the greatest potential to give us the sort of exposure to the electorate we are looking for. It may also be a vulnerable target. NOW is the time to hammer away at it before the 2008 Republocrat Punch and Judy show.
I would like to remind everybody to stay on topic for this and any thread and to limit the number of links to irrelevent articles.
Regarding the Muslim post above. I think one that religion should be outlawed as it is a terrorist religion and these people should be deported with citizenship taken from them or other means. People who come into this country to do this should be removed. I am sorry. This has to stop.
Wow, outlaw a religion? That's very Libertarian of you.
If I had posted that, I'd remain anonymous as well.
To the offthread poster who offered the Yahoo news story as evidence against immigrant Muslims:
Did You Even Read the Article?
Nation of Islam members attacked a grocery in urban Oakland owned by an immigrant from the mideast, because liquor is sold there:
["
Six men connected to a bakery founded by a prominent black Muslim family have been arrested in the Nov. 23 attacks, which were caught on store security cameras. In both instances, the vandals asked store clerks why they were selling alcohol when it was against the Muslim faith.
One of the men arrested on charges that included hate crimes and vandalism was 19-year-old Yusuf Bey IV. His father, Yusuf Bey, a black Muslim leader who died in 2003, founded Your Black Muslim Bakery, which sells Malcolm X books along with baked goods.
"]
Justin M. Norton, "Muslims Clash Over Oakland Liquor Stores", Associated Press, January 9, 2005
Maybe you should emulate Barney Fyfe, and keep all live rounds in your shirt pocket. Your feet wil thank-you for it.
"Mother Superior jumped the gun"
Lennon/McCartney
"Happiness is a Warm Gun"
BIPOLARPOLITY
Please explain your criticism in English.
THIS IS NOT A MUSLIM NATION.
It's not a Christian Nation, either. What of it?
THE MUSLIM has no business trying to overide a business. They want to like like an islamic, they can go back to Islam.
No libertarian are you. Why are you here? All you ever do is talk crap about muslims and post links.
I should convert to Islam just so I can piss you off. :) Then I guess I would have to go back to where I came from....which was Deism....hmmmmmm
think VERY HARD
TIM you can be smart sometimes and other times, jeez.
>>BIPOLARPOLITY
>>Please explain your criticism in English.
>>THIS IS NOT A MUSLIM NATION.
----------
The post was in English; please try to think critically. the US is not a muslim nation, but it is not a Christian country either.
Fourth paragraph below, as it is extremely doubfult you can wade through 5 paragraphs of Jefferson, posted as context.
Lay off Newsmax, the glasspipe of Internet datastreams, for a while, and maybe your vocabulary will increase.
================================
Jefferson's Autobiography
as Published in
"The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Memorial Edition"
Albert Ellery Bergh - Editor -
Copyright, 1905, The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association
---------------------------
Vol 1: pp 64-68
----------------
On the subject of the Criminal law, all were agreed, that the punishment of death should be abolished, except for treason and murder; and that, for other felonies, should be substituted hard labor in the public works, and in some cases, the Lez talionis. How this last revolting Principle came to obtain our approbation, I do not remember. There remained, indeed, in our laws, a vestige of it in a single case of a slave; it was the English law, in the time of the Anglo-Saxons, copied probably from the Hebrew law of "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," and it was the law of several ancient people; but the modern mind had left it far in the rear of its advances.
These points, however, being settled, we repaired to our respective homes for the preparation of the work. In the execution of my part, I thought it material not to vary the diction of the ancient statutes by modernizing it, nor to give rise to new questions by new expressions. The text of these statutes had been so fully explained and defined, by numerous adjudications, as scarcely ever now to produce a question in our courts. I thought it would be useful, also, in all new draughts, to reform the style of the later British statutes, and of our own acts of Assembly; which, from their verbosity, their endless tautologies, their involutions of case within case, and parenthesis within parenthesis, and their multiplied efforts at certainty, by saids and a foresaids, by ors and by ands, to make them more plain, are really rendered more perplexed and incomprehensible, not only to common readers, but to the lawyers themselves.
We were employed in this work from that time to February, 1779, when we met at Williamsburg, that is to say, Mr. Pendleton, Mr. Wythe and myself; and meeting day by day, we examined critically our several parts, sentence by sentence scrutinizing and amending, until we had agreed on the whole. We then returned home, had fair copies made of our several parts, which were reported to the General Assembly, June 18, 1779, by Mr. Wythe and myself, Mr. Pendleton's residence being distant, and he having authorized us by letter to declare his approbation. We had, in this work, brought so much of the Common law as it was thought necessary to alter, all the British statutes from Magna Charta to the present day, and all the laws of Virginia, from the establishment of our legislature, in the 4th Jac. 1. to the present time, which we thought should be retained, within the compass of one hundred and twenty-six bills, making a printed folio of ninety pages only. Some bills were taken out occasionally, from time to time, and passed; but the main body of the work was not entered on by the legislature until after the general peace, in 1785, when, by the unwearied exertions of Mr. Madison in opposition to the endless quibbles, chicaneries perversions, vexations and delays of lawyers and dedi-lawyers, most of the bills were passed by the legislature, with little alteration.
The bill for establishing religious freedom, the principles of which had, to a certain degree, been enacted before, I had drawn in all the latitude of reason and right. It still met with opposition; but, with some mutilations in the preamble, it was finally passed; and a singular proposition proved that its protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word "Jesus Christ," so that it should read, "a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination.
Beccaria, and other writers on crimes and punishments, had satisfied the reasonable world of the unrightfulness and inefficacy of the punishment of crimes by death; and hard labor on roads, canals and other public works, had been suggested as a proper substitute. The Revisors had adopted these opinions; but the general idea of our country had not yet advanced to that point. The bill, therefore, for proportioning crimes and punishments, was lost in the House of Delegates by a majority of a single vote. I learned afterwards, that the substitute of hard labor in public, was tried (I believe it was in Pennsylvania) without success. Exhibited as a public spectacle with shaved heads and mean clothing, working on the high roads, produced in the criminals such a prostration of character, such an abandonment of self-respect, as, instead of reforming, plunged them into the most desperate and hardened depravity of morals and character.
===============
BIPOLAR obviously with your copy instead of a link, tell me you are not equip with good grammer to write the information yourself, to insults one's english tells me you do not have a clue nor do I believe you even understand what you post either.
BIPOLAR I suggest you go and live in the Muslim country and try to do what was done in Oakland from our standpoint over there.
You would be cut in piece real quick.
Are you also aware they want to mutilate females in this country as well. They want doctors here to circumcize the (which they refuse to do) females around age 6 and sew them up to preserve them for marriage.
The thought make me ill.
To carry that type of barbaric act.
Ah, nothing like the smell of stagnant water and rotted flesh in the morning...
As long as citizens obey American laws, what difference does their religion make?
| 
Does the LP have anyone we can put up for this position this election cycle?
Pavel
Posted by: pavel at January 9, 2006 03:53 PM