Some More on Melissa Hart

As some of you may recall (from yesterday), Southwestern PA's own Melissa Hart is a part of the unfolding Delay Corruption story, if only peripherally.

She's among the new members of the House "Ethics" Committee. The previous committee had rebuked "The Hammer" a number of times already, but Speaker Hastert replaced a number of the Republicans on that committee with some, shall we say, more loyal members of the House - in what the Washington Post rightly calls an Ethics Purge.

But things are a little more interesting than that.

Melissa Hart is also among those who voted for the so-called "Delay Rule" change in the House. In a nutshell, the rule required a member of the House leadership to resign from his/her leadership post in the event he/she is indicted for criminal behaviour. Since an indictment of Mr Delay is (or perhaps was) expected, the House republicans dutifully changed the rules to protect him.

And, as I said, our Missy voted for that rule change.

Oh, and I guess I should probably mention that according to the Political Campaign Action Fund's website, Melissa Hart has actually received $15,000 from ARMPAC.

What is ARMPAC, you ask?

I'm glad you asked. ARMPAC is the "Americans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee" and ARMPAC is very very closely related to Tom Delay himself.

So here's another question to Congresswoman Hart, member of the new "Ethics" committee, "Doesn't this at the very least look really really bad?"

It looks to me like you were picked to be on that "Ethics" committee not for whatever fidelity to Ethics you may have, but because you're a House Republican bought and paid for by The Hammer himself.

Was the 15 Grand worth your political soul?