John Carter and Tom DeLay, Tom DeLay and John Carter

The Austin American Statesman had an article about Tom DeLay a week ago Sunday. It had an interesting tidbit about our Congressman John Carter, aka, Tom DeLay's most vocal defender.

A 2001 trip to South Korea was financed by the Korea-U.S. Exchange Council, in violation of House rules banning foreign agents from paying for congressional travel.

The organization also paid for trips to South Korea by other members of Congress from both parties, including U.S. Rep. John Carter, R-Round Rock, who said the ethics committee had approved the council paying for the trip.

DeLay said last week he was not aware that the group registered as a foreign agent three days before his trip.

Let's put aside the fact that ignorance is not excuse. There was an item a few weeks ago on 60 Minutes, The D.A. And Tom DeLay. You can watch it here. The man in the video defending Tom DeLay and attacking Ronnie Earle is none other than, your Congressman, John Carter. One of my favorite parts is excerpted below.

And these activities, he (Craig McDonald the director of Texans for Public Justice) says, are "spelled out."

"Candidate evaluation recruitment. Message development and communication," says McDonald. "These activities cannot be paid for with corporate dollars under Texas law."

But that very point is being challenged.

DeLay’s fellow Texan, Republican Rep. John Carter, says whether the law was broken depends on what your definition of “administrative” is.

"No court has actually defined clearly what administrative purposes is," says Carter.

60 Minutes showed him TRMPAC's brochure with the statement of how the corporate funds would be spent.

"Active candidate evaluation and recruitment. Message development. Market research and issue development," says Stahl. "I mean, how is that administrative?"

"Active candidate evaluation and recruitment, that’s a party of administrative procedure," says Carter. "That’s a party function."

"I thought administration was the running of the office. The Xerox machine. Paying bills," says Stahl.

"This is what the court has to rule on," says Carter. "If they find all these things are administrative, there’ll be no convictions in this case."

John Carter being a member of the No Frivolous Law Suits Party thinks we need a court to decide whether - "(a)ctive candidate evaluation and recruitment. Message development. Market research and issue development." - are administrative procedures? WOW! Remember how Republicans used to howl about, "That depends on what your definition of 'is' is"? This is the same thing. Now DeLay is in quite a bit of trouble but he is still very powerful. All of this stems from illegal cooperate money being funneled to state legislative races, which is illegal in Texas. They needed the legislature so they could redistrict the state out of turn and increase the Republican majority in Congress. But, of course, we already knew that.

This article, Tom DeLay's funny-money trail, of where DeLay's problems stand at this point. In my opinion Tom DeLay and John Cater should be tied together whenever possible. If you mention one while talking to someone in this county, make sure you mention the other as well.