DeLay won’t seek re-election 




DeLay won’t seek re-election
Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, tainted by a lobbying scandal that ensnared some of his former top aides and cost the congressman his leadership post.

The Associated Press quoted unnamed officials as saying DeLay also is likely to resign his Texas seat and leave Congress by the end of May.

  • Federal Probe Has Edged Closer to DeLay
    The pending resignation of former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), once one of the most powerful lawmakers in Washington, comes amid a federal criminal investigation that already has reached into his inner circle of longtime advisers.

    DeLay faces a trial later this year on money-laundering charges in Texas that stems from an October 2005 indictment related to corporate contributions to state elections in 2001 and 2002. Since then, two former aides and one of his most prominent contributors have pleaded guilty in a separate federal probe to crimes including conspiracy; wire, tax and mail fraud; and corruption of public officials.

  • EPA plan could let plants skirt pollutant limits
    The Environmental Protection Agency is considering ways to allow many industrial facilities that emit at least one of 188 hazardous air pollutants to avoid having to comply with the most stringent technology controls to limit pollution.

  • Amnesty International claims CIA used private airlines to hide CIA torture flights
    Amnesty International is set to release a report claiming that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) used private aircraft operators and front companies to hide CIA rendition flights and "black site" detention facilities in foreign countries.

    The report also details dozens of destinations around the world where planes associated with rendition flights landed and took off. In addition, the report lists the private airlines with permission to land at U.S. military bases worldwide.

  • The High Court Punts
    The Supreme Court ducked its duty yesterday. It declined to review a notorious case testing President Bush's sweeping claim to have the power to seize American citizens on American soil and toss them into indefinite detention outside the normal legal process — simply by declaring them to be "enemy combatants."

    The justices were asked to rule on the case of Jose Padilla, an American citizen who was held for more than three years at a Navy brig in Charleston, S.C., supposedly on suspicion of being part of a plot by Al Qaeda to explode a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the United States. No such case was ever presented against Mr. Padilla, and just before the issue of his detention could reach the Supreme Court, the government transferred him to a civilian prison. It filed criminal charges accusing him of the far lesser conventional crime of conspiring to send money overseas for violent purposes.
 

Posted: Tue - April 4, 2006 at 02:44 PM           |

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