DeLay Clearly Broke The Law Hitting Up Corporations for Political Funds

Salon -- Delay - "It never ceases to amaze me that people are so cynical they want to tie money to issues, money to bills, money to amendments."

According to FEC rules, "candidates, officeholders, and their agents or organizations established, financed, maintained, or controlled by the candidate can't raise soft money."

The extreme positions DeLay stakes out, and his propensity for outlandish rhetoric, make it easy to portray him as an ideological fruitcake. He has, after all, blamed the teaching of evolution for the massacres at Columbine high school, compared the Environmental Protection Agency to the Gestapo, and once allowed a petrochemical lobbyist named Gordon Gooch to actually write legislation. Speaking of liberals on the House floor earlier this year, DeLay said, "Their malignant hold over the intellectual life of this country must be exorcised, and men and women who are willing to speak the truth offer our only hope of reclaiming our culture from the grip of a hedonistic, reckless and destructive descent into nihilism."