Tom DeLay (R-TX) has hired another lawyer to defend him as an ethics committee investigation looms. Bennett Roth and Michael Hedges of the Houston Chronicle report that DeLay has enlisted Richard Cullen, a former state attorney general in Virginia who served as chief counsel to former Sen. Paul Trible, R-Va., when the lawmaker was a member of the House-Senate select committee looking into the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s.

According to Mike Allen of The Washington Post, Republican strategists are beginning to worry that the recent ethics scandals surrounding Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) might have a negative impact on his colleagues in the 2006 elections.

On Friday, we joined three other watchdog groups in faxing a letter to Ethics Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-WA) and Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV), the ranking Democratic member of the committee, demanding that they appoint an outside counsel to investigate House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX).

We urged them to act within two weeks.

Please take a minute and make two telephone calls today to these members to respectfully request that they act without delay.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, stepped up his rhetoric against NBC yesterday in an on-going feud over the use of his name in primetime television shows.

In Wednesday's season finale of Law & Order, a police officer searching for a suspect in a murder of a federal judge suggested looking for "somebody in a Tom DeLay T-shirt."

Tom DeLay responded angrily to the use of his name on the popular NBC drama "Law and Order: Criminal Intent" yesterday. CNN's "Inside Politics" reports that the "ripped from the headlines" episode centers around the murder of a federal judge in which a police officer investigating the crime suggests that they put out an A.P.B. for "somebody in a Tom DeLay t-shirt."

Moving Ideas, an electronic policy network, will host an online discussion today from 1:00 - 5:00 PM titled "Failing Congressional Ethics." Our own David Donnelly will be joined by Dr. Craig Holman of Public Citizen's Congress Watch, Mike Surrusco of Common Cause, and Michael Tomasky of The American Prospect, to discuss the House Ethics Committee and Tom DeLay's involvement with its members.

Tune in live and ask your questions here.

Democracy 21 today released a new report titled House Majority Leader DeLay's Ethics Problems: The Ethics Rules and Issues that Need to Be Addressed by the House Ethics Committee. You can read the report here.

Facts on the Attack?

Mike Soraghan writes up Colorado Rep. Bob Beauprez's #2 spot on the DeLay rankings in today's Denver Post. Beauprez spokesman Jordan Stoick calls the rankings the work of "an attack group," and refuses to respond to the fact that Beauprez has taken $20,000 in campaign contributions from ARMPAC, given $1,000 to DeLay's legal defense, and voted with the Majority Leader 96% of the time.

This morning we launched a petition campaign to call on Speaker Hastert to appoint a special counsel to investigate Tom DeLay. In America, you can't buy a jury. It's illegal. But DeLay, though his PAC, has given money to 225 or the 232 GOP members. We can't get an impartial ethics committee from that jury pool. Congress can't police itself.

Laughing all the way to the bank.