Tom DeLay announced that he will not seek reelection and will resign his seat in Congress. The legal charges against the former House Majority Leader, at least up until this point, have been more smoke than fire. But DeLay stands guilty of plotting with nearly 434 co-conspirators to make government bigger, impersonating a conservative, and aiding and abetting the transformation of the GOP from a Goldwater-Reagan party to a Nixon-Bush party (at least on spending). DeLay's departure should be welcomed by conservatives not just because Congress will have one less enemy of limited government, but because this increases the chances that a real conservative--Steve Stockman--will pick up this seat.

I can't say I will be sorry to see him go. He was also very bad on foreign affairs given that he was a committed Christian Zionist (one of the more absurd developments in American Protestantism). He once told the Knesset that he was an "Israeli at heart," I suppose he thought he was saying something akin to Kennedy's "Ich bin ein Berliner." I wish he would take Chuck Hagel with him into retirement to await the Rapture somewhere far from DC.

I doubt that he is retiring though, he will probably run for gov. or sen. in a few years once the current investigation of him concludes.

Let's replace him with Greg "The Hammer" Valentine!