What's It Tell Ya That "Beto" Gonzales Can't Get A Law Job Even In Texas?

How corrupt does one demonstrably corrupt, semi-slick former real-estate lawyer have to be NOT to catch a break down thar in Lone-Star Land?

Scott Horton is about as elegant, parsimonious and precise a phrase-maker as currently graces the blogosphere. Here he is on Texas: Justice DeLayed...:

In theory, our legal system affords equal access to justice. But, as George Orwell offers in Animal Farm, some of us are more equal than others, and Tom DeLay is, in Texas politics, the most equal of all. Texas courts, which are notoriously political, are packed with Republicans who owe their careers to Tom DeLay, directly or indirectly. That makes the justice dealt out in the DeLay case justice without equal.

DeLay is now facing trial in Austin on charges of money-laundering. But his case has been bottled up by an appeals court dominated by Republicans. Ronnie Earle, a legendary prosecutor who has taken down far more Democrats than Republicans in his day, had hoped to end his career with this trial–but DeLay’s fellow Republicans insured that this would not happen. They waited patiently for Earle to retire and then handed down a preliminary ruling. The Republican judges find no reason why one of their colleagues who, before coming on the bench, said the DeLay prosecution was “politically motivated” could not then rule on the case. That reflects a novel understanding of the canons of judicial ethics, which–at least in places other than Texas–require that a judge handle his matters impartially. When a judge expresses an opinion on the merits of a case before it comes to him, that is prejudgment. It disqualifies him from participating in the case. Why this extraordinary departure from settled rules of judicial ethics? It appears that with one Republican recused, the court would have a tie vote, and DeLay would be denied the deus ex machina he is waiting for: a court ruling that the prosecution’s case is fatally defective.

As the Houston Chronicle reports today, the Republican majority on the court even blocked the two Democratic justices from filing dissenting opinions.

Horton concludes with a broad-brush swipe or two at the whole oxymoronic notion of "Texas Justice," well-deserved, imho, including a swipe at the legend of Judge Roy Bean!

But the critical thing is: Tom Delay walks the happy walk. A similar fate, we can surmise, will forgive all the Crawford mafiosi, since no one on Mr.O's lawnorder team impresses me as possessing the temerity to reverse a precedent that would so predictably return to bite one in the ass, upon one's timely or inauspicious departure from the Office oneself...Wouldn't, as a former Occupant once remarked whose own tenure was not unmarked with malfeasance, be prudent...