"To the Point" with Warren Olney was tons of fun. I went on right after Rep. Dreier.

Rep. Rob Simmons (R-CT), from The Hill:

“I voted against Tom DeLay on changes to the House rules,” Simmons said in a release put out by his office, referring to the proposed rule changes that would have protected DeLay in the event that he is indicted by a Texas district attorney. The statement was released in response to Shays’s comments.

An editorial in the San Antonio Express News urges the Texas Legislature to throw out HB 913, the bill designed to protection Tom DeLay, Tom Craddick and their corporate friends from prosecution. The editorial board rightly connects this bill to the rule pushed by U.S. Rep. Henry Bonilla (R-TX) -- the DeLay Rule -- last November:

No wonder a watchdog group is calling this a "Politician Protection Act."

Josh Marshall, as usual, has the details.

In short, Speaker Hastert revamped the Ethics Committee yesterday and tossed three members, including Rep. Joel Hefley (R-CO) as chair (as expected), Rep. Kenny Hulshof (R-MO), and Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-OH), all of who all voted against the DeLay Rule and played roles in the bipartisan investigations into DeLay.

Below Rick posted my oped from the Houston Chronicle in which I listed three reasons why DeLay retracted the DeLay Rule.

Let's not be Pollyannas. The Chron, on the editorial page, gave a fourth reason:

I have gotten a lot of email about how far Republicans in the House went in backtracking, so I wanted to clarify what they did and what they didn't do.

Most of the attention last night and today centered on Tom DeLay's stunning defeat when he was forced to reverse the DeLay Rule. We should be proud of the role we played in making that happen.

Post your comments here to discuss the victory over Tom DeLay and the repeal of the DeLay Rule!

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Lots of newspapers front-page the DeLay Rule Reversal, including the New York Times, Washington Post, and DeLay's hometown Houston Chronicle. Here are key excerpts from those papers and more:

NY Times:

Public Campaign Action Fund released the following statement tonight on the GOP Congressional majority's actions in reversing the DeLay Rule and abandoning their proposal to weaken ethics guidelines:

GOP reverses course on both the weakening of rules changes and the DeLay Rule, according to Associated Press.

Statement soon.