Tom DeLay

Tom Delay said Hillary Clinton will be the next president.

One of Hillary's closest advisers, Patti Doyle, gets profiled.

Bill Clinton's former economic adviser was named the new head of the Congressional Budget Office.

Former White House National Security Adviser Richard Clarke says Democrats should, among other things, distribute anti-terrorism funding to cities and states based on population size.

In the AG's report on Alan Hevesi, it says the state comptroller used four state employees as chauffeurs for his wife.

The money to repay the state for the work those four employees must come from Hevesi's personal funds, not his campaign account.

Of the $150.6 million the state Senate spent on member items, $36.6 million went to projects on Long Island.

George Pataki will let Eliot Spitzer fill some appointments.

Mike Bloomberg warned of rush hour lasting up to 12 hours in 2030 if the city doesn't plan for massive population growth and improvements to its infrastructure. And the Times looks at two new state lawmakers.

-- Azi Paybarah

It’s been barely a week since her fellow House Democrats officially picked Nancy Pelosi as the  read more »

It’s been barely a week since her fellow House Democrats officially picked Nancy Pelosi as their c  read more »

At first glance, you might think Tom DeLay is enjoying the last laugh in this story. But read all the way through the the end -- the Democrat, former Representative Nick Lampson, is actually leading in Texas's 22nd District. The GOP write-in candidate is merely on course to serve out the final month of DeLay's term. -- Steve Kornacki

To the Editor:  read more »

To the Editor:    read more »

When future historians of the current Gilded Age in our nation’s capital need to designate its  read more »

Tom DeLay was on Chris Matthews' Hardball last night and boy is he weird looking. Too tan, too slick. I wonder if he's had work done. But he said of Valerie Plame: "She's not a CIA agent, she's not out in the field. She sits behind a desk in Langley." The purpose of the law was to shield people in the field who were in harm's way.

DeLay may be a 3-toed lizard, but he's right about this. There is something so empty about (my side) the left's piety on this issue, something so carney about Joe Wilson's tears, as I've said before. Leaking of secrets happens all the time in Washington, it should happen. I really could care less that Plame was outed. I wonder how much she cares about it, really.

If Bush's side had any intellectual integrity, they would have adopted the DeLay position from the start. But they didn't. Because here Joe Wilson is right: they are viciously sanctimonious. This case became politicized—because of the right, its need to protect its image in the big carnival, "the war on terror," and its willingness to do anything to protect the lies that led up to war. The crime was meaningless; it's the coverup.

That righteous cause known as the Tom Delay Legal Expense Trust has filed its quarterly report and, as always with these things, it offered up a few tasty afternoon tidbits. The trust reported raising $314,435 and spending $312,465, with the largest chunk of change (some $125,000) going to the Texas outpost of Rudy Giuliani's law firm, Bracewell and Giuliani. On the donor side, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. gave $5000 and two New York defense attorneys -- Daniel Benson and Marc Kasowitz of Kasowitz, Benson, Torres and Friedman -- each gave $1000 and $5000 respectively. -- Lizzy Ratner

John Kerry sounded like a candidate this morning when he spoke to the National Action Network annual convention breakfast via phone (he had been scheduled to speak in person, but like New York's Senators, was stuck in DC due to the debate on the immigration reform). On Katrina:

Hurricane Katrina showed us with Mr. Brown, you know Mr. Brown--Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job, Brown. Well let me tell you, Mr. Brown is to Katrina--it's a metaphor for the whole administration--Mr. Brown is to Katrina, what this guy Paul Wolfowitz is to our troops being received in Iraq with flowers and parades; and Mr. Brown is to Katrina what Donald Rumsfeld is to decent wartime planning and leadership and making sure our troops have armor and up armored humvees; and Mr. Brown is to Katrina what Dick Cheney is to visionary energy policy; and Mr. Brown is to Katrina what Tom Delay is to ethics; and Mr. Brown is to Katrina what George Tenet is to 'slam dunk intelligence'; and Mr. Brown is to Katrina what George Bush is to 'Mission Accomplished' and 'Wanted Dead or Alive.' This is the Katrina Administration.

Then, Kerry ended on this note:

We didn't win the presidency, nobody feels that more than I do every single day, but you know what, we won 10 million more votes then Bill Clinton won when he won re-election in 1996. We exceeded our goals in every single precinct in America and the lesson is: next time we're just going to set bigger goals. We're going to go out there and get the job done. We're going to turn this country around, win back our future, and win back what we deserve, and we're going to make this country what it can be.

—Nicole Brydson

Two one-time stars of the New York congressional delegation are now lobbyists who will spend Tuesday night raising money for Tom DeLay, the AP reports.

It's only January, but get used to a lot more of this.

It's a campaign spot for Kirsten Gillebrand, who's running for congress against John Sweeney. Leading with stills of Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay, and a narrative of the scandal, the ad says: "It's worth asking -- what is our congressman doing to fix this mess? He's going skiiing. In Utah. With lobbyists."  read more »

The ad, by Hudson Partners (the Glover Park Group's political arm) cuts to footage from the slopes, with music by the Go-Gos. And lots of details of Sweeney's pharmeceutical-industry funded junket.

(One imagines that Sweeney will be more eager to talk about wiretapping.)

If we are to believe the latest press releases from Capitol Hill, the leaders of Congress aren&rsquo  read more »

If we are to believe the latest press releases from Capitol Hill, the leaders of Congress aren’t a  read more »

Only one GOP members of the New York House delegation has, so far, gotten into the mix of the fight to succeed Tom DeLay.

"Mr. Walsh is committed to [Roy] Blunt and is stumping (making calls on his behalf)," emails a spokesman for Rep. James Walsh, Dan Gage.  read more »

No New Yorkers are on this Hotline list of members committed either to Blunt or John Boehner; spokesmen for King, Sweeney, and Fossella couldn't say where their bosses stood.

But one Capitol Hill Republican who doesn't work for any of these members says Tom Reynolds, the only New Yorker in leadership, is close to both contenders, and probably does fine either way.

Recklessly and audaciously, George W.  read more »

Recklessly and audaciously, George W.  read more »

In a sign that dealing with the New York press corps is the trial by fire I alleged to Andrea Tantaros it is, the Hill reports that the D.C. consulting firm that hands out "Flak Jacket" and "Bomb Thrower" awards to press operatives has, er, honored three New Yorkers: Hillary spokesman Philippe Reines, Chuck aide Phil Singer, and Kevin Madden, who didn't always work for Tom DeLay. (via JustHillary)  read more »

Join a Texas law firm, and pretty soon you have all kinds of new friends.

That seemed, basically, to be the idea behind Rudy's partnership with the firm now known as Bracewell & Giuliani.  read more »

But the $100,000 in fees (.pdf) from the Tom DeLay Legal Expense Trust seem to be a bonus.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is out with a call for House Republicans to return Tom DeLay's money, after one New Hampshire Republican broke ranks and did just that. Vito took $10,000 from DeLay's PAC, and his DCCC Web page is a road map to the kind of attacks Republican House members are now going to face.

You can even write a letter to the editor of a New York newspaper, talking points provided.  read more »

The Observer, thankfully, is not on their list.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay was just indicted by a Travis County grand jury. Story here.  read more »

"If it had teeth, it would bite you," my mother used to tell me when I couldn't find something that  read more »

“If  read more »

The deepening reds and blues of America's political map are making it harder and harder to be a Repu  read more »

As the rhetoric of the radical right turns shrill and even violent, the stunning moral emptiness of  read more »

Never underestimate the Republican leaders in Washington.  read more »

Steny Hoyer, the U.S. House Minority Whip, is in Albany today meeting State Senate Minority Leader David Paterson. We're told he's hoping that New York's Democrats can retake the State Senate and then oversee the kind of deeply partisan redistricting made popular by Tom DeLay, relieving both him and Paterson of their minority status.  read more »

Two months ago, the Republican members of the House of Representatives voted to repeal the rule that  read more »

In 1990, Guy Molinari became Staten Island borough president and handed down his seat in the U.S.  read more »

Immediately upon returning to Washington, the victorious majority in the House of Representatives ag  read more »

In what even John Podhoretz thought was an act of arrogant overreach, the House Republicans voted Wednesday to repeal the rule that kept members under indictment -- as Tom DeLay may soon be -- out of leadership. It was a voice vote, but Josh Marshall has been trying valiantly to get these guys on the record.

There are only a few GOP members we care about down here in the city: Peter King on Long Island, John Sweeney upstate, and, of course, our own Vito Fossella.

King told me he voted Yes on the DeLay rule, and pointed out he'd opposed it when the Republicans first introduced it to demonstrate their purity 12 years ago. "It's a consitutional issue - the presumption of innocence," he said.

Sweeney voted Yes on the DeLay rule, his spokesman Demetrios Karoutsos emails, in part to protect "the integrity of government from partisan attacks of a political nature." Tom DeLay must surely appreciate that effort.  read more »

Silence, so far, from the Fossella camp.

An empire requires an imperial city, and the Republicans turned New York into the backlot for Julius  read more »

Few people in New York City have heard of U.S. Representative Thomas Reynolds.  read more »

California's current freak show, also known as the recall campaign, has rightly been disparaged as a  read more »

Displaying your kill is an old cowboy custom.  read more »

Expectations for the Congressional leadership have reached such a dismal level that they can now get  read more »

Nobody knows whether Nancy Pelosi can prevail where Dick Gephardt failed.  read more »

We are living in a time when scoundrels seek to bully the loyal opposition and demonize all dissent  read more »

Remember the inspiring Presidential rhetoric that unified the nation against terrorist assaults?  read more »

After preventing action on aviation-security legislation for weeks-a strategy that should trouble th  read more »

Now that everyone is allowed to laugh again, however anxiously, it seems appropriate to mention the  read more »

Since John Sweeney ascended to the presidency of theA.F.L.-C.I.O.  read more »

Once upon a time, I thought I loved mankind. I believed in brotherlylove.  read more »

In a nation whose public discourse has turned pornographic and puerile, the "politics of personal de  read more »