"DeLay could single-handedly breathe new life into the Democrats' "culture of corruption" theme if he gets back into the race"

Oh, yeah. That "culture of corruption" theme worked so well in California, where it was used in the race for the corrupt Duke Cunningham's seat.

Look, Americans EXPECT Congress to be corrupt. It's a little agreement they have. "I'll keep returning you to office where you can net infinite caches of money and influence, and all you have to do in return is tell me how swell I am. I'm better than anyone else, because I'm American. I'm great because I live in Texas ---or Alabama, or New York, or wherever. Just make sure you refer to me and my neighbors as 'the good people of the state of (fill in the blank)'. You throw some pork our way; maybe you can cut our taxes by one trillionth of one percent.. that would be a huge coup enabling you to claim that you cut taxes while 'the other guy' wants to tax and spend us to death. We'll fall for it, no problem. You do all those things, and say bad things about the Mexicans and Muslims while still allowing them into this country to help out your Big Business buddies by providing cheap labor, and you keep outsourcing our jobs to Guam and the Marianas and China and India....and we're ok with you. Just deliver those miniscule tax breaks to us while delivering billions in taxes to the rich - because the rich really are better-- and you're good."

Americans don't really care about corruption, as most Americans are hoping they can come up with a money-grabbing scheme themselves and become rich; and they hope that if their scheme is illegal, there's a loophole somewhere that will help them get away with it.

We're a corrupt culture these days. Americans hope Rudy Giuliani, a man so steeped in corruption, arrogance and blinding egotism that it almost hurts, will become our president, because he's "tough". Americans want tough guys to represent us, because we're such chickens we get hysterical every time someone mentions the word "plot" (unless it's Republicans responding to dissent, labeling their critics "crazy conspiracy theorists who see plots everywhere". Then Americans scoff). Let's face it, tough guys aren't nice guys. If they use strongarm tactics, that's ok. America wants the tactics of the mafia used to "protect" us. They want tough guys who break heads to look out for us, and if we have to pay the tough guys off by letting them wet their beaks here and there, well that's ok to the majority of Americans.

Here here, to the previous letter and not only do I want more corruption, as it is the American way, I would like the trains to run on time. But alas even "il duce" Rudy couldn't do that here in New York.

Apparently Hoekstra has taken a page from Cheney's book: If there is a one percent chance al-Qaida penetrated the CIA we should assume it is an actionable fact.