MB reader Andrei H. wrote in response to this post:

[You wrote,] “But having said that, this indictment is totally phony … What you won’t hear in the press is that A) This is a perfectly legal move, and
B) the Democrats did the exact same thing.”
You don’t really mean to imply with item B that because my cousin does something illegal, like kill someone let’s say, that I am excused if I engage in killing people.
DeLay will be charged and prosecuted on his own terms. The fact that there are Democrats who have performed illegal acts in the past or present means nothing in our court system with regard to indictments or prosecution.
In other words, the indictment will prove to be baseless and phony if DeLay did nothing illegal. Full stop.
If you want intellectual honesty from people, you should practice what you preach.

I wasn’t trying to say that DeLay should be excused of illegal behavior because the Democrats did the same thing. I’m using the comparison to the Democrats to illustrate the fact that under normal circumstances, these kinds of transactions are not illegal.

But these are not normal circumstances. We have an outgoing Democratic prosecutor staging a dramatic final act and trying to come up with something to show for an investigation that has lasted over two years and cost the taxpayers uncounted (to my knowledge) amounts of money.

You’re going to hear Democrats argue that Ronnie Earle has prosecuted more Democrats and Republicans, and therefore has demonstrated that he is no partisan. In fact, Terry McAuliffe just made this argument on CNN. Here’s what I wrote when CJR Daily floated this argument earlier this summer:

First of all, the larger proportion of Democrats might have something to do with the fact that Republicans running things in Texas is a relatively new thing. To give you an idea, in 2002 the Republicans gained control of the Texas House for the first time since Reconstruction.
Second, if failing to mention Earle