The Moose sees it too. Marshall Wittman says that the sourcing of those DeLay hit articles makes it look a lot like Rove may be pulling the trap door lever on the bug man.

Meanwhile, the Mallet got his House caucus to line up in support and got Rep. Roy Blunt (R) of Missouri, their #3 man, to sign up as chief spear-catcher: "I don't see any wavering of the support for the leader. I think a lot of members think he's taking arrows for all of us."

(Can someone out there translate that line into Italian for us?)

Finally, a conservative pal sent me a form letter from the ACU's David Keene calling on all conservatives to line up behind Tom DeLay and defend him with every measure of their strength.

So it would seem that to small government, strong national defense and traditional values has been added a fourth pillar of the conservative movement: defending Tom DeLay no matter what new ethics infractions, crimes or generalized corruption might show up in tomorrow's papers.