Okay, this is very negative reinforcement for this new thing I’m trying: flipping off all the computers and gizmos to spend evenings — sans connectivity — with my wife. I try it tonight. And now I come back to the electronic world to find that Tom DeLay has finally given up the political ghost and I wasn’t there to see it. Delay won’t seek reelection and according to Time will resign from Congress in the near future.

I haven’t seen anything but the headlines yet. But I think the story here is clear. Prosecutors knocking down one pin at a time. Paul Kiel and I were talking about this before I left the office early this evening: Rudy, to Buckham, to DeLay. They’re each going to down. And the road map was clear — though largely implicit — in the Rudy plea documents.

DeLay’s lawyers must have sat him down over the last 72 hours and explained to him that he needs to focus on not spending most of the rest of his life in prison.

More soon.

So DeLay is out. But it’s DeLay’s House. DeLay’s Republican DC machine. They built and fortified it with the money he brought in. The great majority of them voted for the “DeLay Rule” custom tailored for Majority Leader DeLay to avoid stepping down even after indictment. The current Republican membership of the House ethics committee was hand-picked to provide protection for DeLay and the old membership was purged. He’s their guy. Their rule rests on his machine. They can run but they can’t hide.

Here’s the letter Rep. David Dreier (R-CA) sent out to constituents defending the DeLay Rule. Remember, on DeLay’s say-so, he was interim Majority Leader for about three hours.

We’ve got a library of the letters Republican Reps sent out to their constituents little more than a year ago defending the DeLay Rule and DeLay’s right to be free from “manipulation, disruption and political intimidation” from “partisan or self-serving district attorneys.”

That was Denny Hastert’s line too. The DeLay Rule was necessary because the old system “left elected officials vulnerable to politically motivated attacks by partisan attorney’s hoping to remove them from their positions of leadership.”

Reps. Beauprez, Cole, Frelinghuysen, Bilrakis and others. We’ve got their letters and many more.

They were all spouting the same line. DeLay owned them all. They did his bidding. Next.

The full DeLay run down. That and other news of the day in today’s Daily Muck.

You gotta love the headline on MSNBC. DeLay’s bowing out because the reelection campaign would be too ‘nasty’. Who knew he was such a shrinking violet.

Mystery organization DeLay’s going to go work for in northern Virginia?

Interesting. Already seeing lots of Republicans putting out the talking point that DeLay’s departure ends or sharply diminishes the salience of the corruption issue in this year’s midterm — and plenty in the media are picking it up and running with it.

Now how exactly, the resignation and probable indictment of the architect of the DC GOP political machine helps the GOP is an open question. But as we’ve been saying, they can’t shed him so quickly. Over at TPMmuckraker.com, we’re going to be posting links to which members of the House GOP caucus voted for the DeLay Rule. We’re also going to be posting constituent letters various members of Congress wrote supporting the DeLay Rule and seeing whether they still stick by what they said.

Just to refresh everyone’s memory. What was the DeLay Rule?

Sensing he was soon to be indicted by a District Attorney in Texas, DeLay got the House Republican Caucus to change its bylaws to allow him to stay in office even after he’d been indicted. Most of them happily complied. We’ll get you that list.

Relatedly, there’s the purge of the Ethics Committee and the change in the ethics rules (both to protect DeLay). Where does your Republican member of Congress stand on those questions now?

Don’t know? Why not give them a call?

Did they support the purge of the ethics committee in January 2005?

Did they vote for the DeLay Rule in November 2004? Need more details on the whats and whys of the DeLay Rule? Here’s an article from The Hill’s Jonathan Kaplan published the morning before the vote. He gives the basic run-down. Here’s the list of TPM posts on the topic. So you can see what happened after that.

We’ve got a list of what they told their constituents then. What are they saying now?

Join in. You can play from home.

For more DeLay downfall news, check out TPMmuckraker.com.

Here’s how Rep. Mike Ferguson (R-NJ) defended defending DeLay back in November 2004. It’s the letter he sent to constituents to explain why he voted for the DeLay Rule to allow DeLay to remain in power even after being indicted.

I’m curious what he says about it now.

Can DeLay change his residency from Texas to Virginia while he’s currently out on bond and set to stand trial in Texas? Apparently so.

I know Mike Allen, the author of today’s Time interview/article with DeLay. So I’m sure this was no more than an error made under tight deadline pressure. But, still, it’s important to set the record straight.

Mike writes …

DeLay was forced to vacate his post as majority leader because of a House Republican rule (known as “the DeLay rule,” because it was enacted amid concern about his legal situation) that requires a leader under indictment to step down.

This stands what happened on its head.

The “DeLay Rule” was the new caucus rule House Republicans passed in November 2004 to allow DeLay to remain Majority Leader even after he was indicted. In other words, the existing rule mandated that any member of the leadership had to step down if indicted. DeLay was the first guy who the rule was actually going to hit. So he had the caucus change the rule for him.

Eventually, they were forced to overturn their own rule change because of an overwhelming public backlash against their cravenness and lack of principle.