Tom DeLay

It is really, really mean to be happy over the misfortune of others, but I cannot help but be pleased about the fall of Tom Delay. If that was not bad enough, I am not even all that incensed about the scandal that led to his fall (I mean, come on - corruption in the GOP Party Leadership? Really?). The truth is that I have had a serious bias against Mr. DeLay for many years, one that makes it hard for me to hear anything he says. All I can think about whenever I hear his name is a television interview with him that I watched many, many years ago before he was in a major leadership position in his party. The interview took place in the early nineties when people were freaking way the hell out about the rise of juvenile crime (which has since fallen) and were predicting horrible futurific scenarios about the new juvenile super-predators (who ended up being fictitious). Mr. DeLay, a man from this state, no less, where we actually know how to reform juvenile capital offenders when we want to reform them and have a proven record at it, was on television advocating the death penalty for juveniles convicted of capital crimes. The interviewer was trying to pin him down on how young was too young for the death penalty. He would not be pinned down but I heard him say that he thought it would be appropriate in some circumstances to execute eleven-year-olds. That was pretty much the last thing I ever heard him say because it was all that I could hear anytime he opened his mouth from that day forward. Eleven-year-olds....