# How Dare They Not Prosecute Tom Delay?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-dare-they-not-prosecute-tom-delay/551280>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [August 24, 2010, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-dare-they-not-prosecute-tom-delay/551280 "2010-08-24T12:43:59Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 140

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**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\
**Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-dare-they-not-prosecute-tom-delay/551280/140 "2010-08-29T03:27:41Z")

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> [@How would SCOTUS rule on California's Prop 8? With what consequences?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-scotus-rule-on-californias-prop-8-with-what-consequences/550182/193):
>
> > [@Bricker](#):
> >
> > Now let me rebut in turn: if that was in fact the goal, do you have an opinion on whether or not this was the best way of reaching the goal?
> 
> You have brought this up several times.
> 
> What I find interesting is very recently you were schooling us on how the “best” solution has nothing to to with the law. And this was regarding a Constitutional right which, I would think, is deserving of more scrutiny than just any old law. Indeed you hammered at this point in the other thread repeatedly:
> 
> > [@How would SCOTUS rule on California's Prop 8? With what consequences?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-scotus-rule-on-californias-prop-8-with-what-consequences/550182/193):
> >
> > For about the sixteenth bazillion time, you cannot attack a law under rational basis by asking, “Well, if that’s the reason, why don’t they do this other thing that is an even better way of advancing their interest?”
> > 
> > Stop doing that. It’s not part of the rational basis test. I have no idea why people continually return to asking that question, despite being told repeatedly that this is not how the test works. It’s in the quoted text right above: **we do not care if there happens to be a better or more efficient way of advancing the apparent state interest.** Can’t you see it sitting there, waiting to be read and understood?
> 
> Now here you demand that DeLay is off the hook because a bill was not the “best” means to achieve a given goal. A goal that is not even a Constitutional question.
> 
> So which is it counselor?

Oh.

My.

God.

I’d ask if you were kidding, but … no, no, you’ve said enough to make me believe you’re probably seriously confused.

So:

One discussion has to do with what steps the courts take when analyzing a law for Equal Protection violations. That’s the rational basis test.

The other discussion – this one – has to do with a legislator’s ideas about a law he will, or will not, support.

Those two methods of analysis have nothing to do with one another. Nothing.

If Congress had passed the Murkowski bill, and the President had signed it, and then someone sued because it treated guest workers differently than other guest workers… THEN, sure enough, we’d apply the rational basis law and we’d say that (1) Preventing rape and forced abortions are legitmate government interests, and (2) This bill was in fact rationally related to that goal. So under the rational basis test, yes, this bill would survive.

But that’s not remotely the discussion here. Here the discussion doesn’t involve the Equal Protection Clause. It involves the decision by one lawmaker not to support a law which other lawmakers did support. There is no particular “test” for that, no framework under which the law is analyzed.

One has nothing to do with the other. It’s as though you grabbed things that sound the same and tossed them together. Do you not understand any of the basic concepts in play here? Seriously?

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