Way, way, waaaayyy on the DeLay-low. That’s Rep. John Sweeney of New York. So far we’ve had a half dozen TPM constituent-readers call and still no answer on how he voted on the DeLay Rule.
And while we’re at it, Ohio’s Steve Chabot? A letter-writer.
We’ve been getting conflicting word throughout the day on how Minnesota’s Mark Kennedy voted on the DeLay Rule.
This morning his staffers said they didn’t know how he voted. Later he was a letter-writer. Later still we heard they were saying it was ‘closed vote‘ and the ‘no vote was taken‘ line.
The last TPM reader who got through to the congressman’s office was told that the vote was by “unanimous consent”, which should come as some surprise to those in the Shays Handful, who say they voted against it.
We hadn’t noticed, but the man who made it the Shays Handful, Rep. Chris Shays, put out this press release yesterday regarding his no vote on the DeLay Rule.
Wisconsin’s Rep. James Sensenbrenner, down-the-line letter-writer.
The local paper says Delaware’s Mike Castle is in the Shays Handful.
Putting together an itemized tally of who’s in the Shays Handful, who’s a letter-writer, who’s down with DeLay is somewhat beyond our capacities here at TPM. But the folks at The Daily DeLay are doing it at their site. They have a running tally based on some of our reporting here. And they even have a handy explanation of the DeLay Rule lexicon we’ve been developing to explain who did what.
We have a few more notations of loyal DeLay soldiers from Texas who not only supported the DeLay Rule, but happily said so publicly.
Not a surprise really. After all, he owns these guys.
The three are congressmen Joe Barton, Kevin Brady and John Carter.
Media Matters has a nice run-down here of how the media is uncritically picking up and running with the DeLay machine’s claims that Ronnie Earle is pursuing a partisan agenda by investigating DeLay and his already-indicted associates. That unsubstantiated charge, of course, is their rationale for the DeLay Rule.
This is rich.
Florida’s Adam Putnam voted for the DeLay Rule on Wednesday. And here in the local paper he’s explaining how he stood up for principle by voting for the ‘compromise’ …
U.S. Rep. Adam Putnam, R-Bartow, said he voted for the compromise in Republican House rules covering suspension of House GOP leaders, who are indicted in state courts, but that he would not have voted for the proposal that would have totally exempted committee chairs and other leaders from state indictments.
The issue has arisen because of a potential Texas grand jury indictment on political corruption against Majority Leader Tom DeLay.
“It would have been to me rather hypocritical to have said that we are above state law, but not above federal law,” Putnam said. “The initial package stated that House Republican leaders would be excluded from state courts, but not federal courts. But there is total agreement on the final package (with the compromise),” he said.
I’m glad he clarified<$NoAd$> that.