# How Dare They Not Prosecute Tom Delay? **URL:** \ **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:** 98
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2010, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-dare-they-not-prosecute-tom-delay/551280/98 "2010-08-27T16:45:13Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Is there anything INHERENTLY wrong with the latter? No. One could argue that the movie gives more chance to slant the story, and the personal trip is better. But obviously there’s potential for abuse on the personal trip, too. So Congress, AFTER THESE EVENTS, decided to forbid the practice. Doesn’t make anyone “scum” for accepting such trips before that watershed event. Interesting dodge counselor (on that and the stuff before/after is snipped here for brevity). Unfortunately in the past you have taught us here that circumstantial evidence counts and that we need to look at the evidence in totality. > [@Circumstantial Evidence](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/circumstantial-evidence/8244/8): > > As others have suggested, circumstantial evidence is simply evidence that tends to prove an issue by proving other events (circumstances) from which the occurrence of the matter at hand can be reasonably inferred. Say some guy has been shot to death. The police note that I made statements of how much I hated that guy, bought a gun of the same caliber a few days earlier, traveled to the dead person’s city 500 miles away on the same day as the crime, have evidence I got into an argument in public with the person just prior to his death and I tested positive for gun powder residue on my hands. Any of those things alone are not illegal or indication of guilt. I can buy a gun legally. I can travel where I like. I can express my intense dislike for someone if I want. Having an argument with someone is not illegal. Gun powder residue could get there from target practice. Is all that enough to convict someone of murder? I don’t know but I’ll bet dollars to dimes the police would consider that suggestive enough to make me a person of interest and I am willing to bet you’d agree. So why peel out Delay’s actions individually and note that each one is not, in and of itself, a big deal and wholly ignore the context and actions as a whole? Only reason I can guess is you are dancing around trying to support an insupportable position and trying to obfuscate the issue. > [@](#): > > You don’t care about that. Stop claiming you do. > > You may care that he shitcanned THIS bill, but when a single person in power does something unilaterally you like, you’re for it. Hell of a thing to say. Are you in my head? I may like a given bill not getting passed if I disagree with it but I will not say I am ok with a bullshit process to see that happen. I know this because I realize that the same tactic can be used when I like a bill and it is being blocked by the other side. Down that road lies a mess. I admit I am cautiously tolerant a filibuster, which to an extent does this, but not as it currently stands today which is far too easy. At least with a filibuster someone (once upon a time anyway) had to get up there and hold the floor and be very public about the effort. To keep a bill at bay they had to stay there. What Delay did was silently assassinate the bill and it quietly goes bye-bye. > [@](#): > > You know, if the bill really was about that, then why wasn’t there a section that said, “Rape is hereby a federal crime and will be punished thus and so…” and “Abortion procured against the free consent of the mother is a federal crime…” > > This bill wasn’t about that. You may search in vain for the words “rape” or “forced abortion” in that bill. They don’t exist. That bill was intended to grandfather in a whole bunch of temp workers so they’d have claim to US nationality. And you know how I know that? > > BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT THE FUCKING BILL SAYS. > > You claim the bill was about ending rape and forced abortions, but when i ask where it says that, you can only shrug weakly and mewl something about how you assume that would have been the effect of the immigration reforms at some point in the future. > > Let’s at least be honest about that: the bill didn’t have a goddamned thing to do with ending forced rape. I said the bill did not look like enough to me. That said do you KNOW that the bill would have no effect at helping the workers there? That the bill may as well have been about traffic laws for all the effect it’d have on the workers? Or is it possible that the Senate felt this was a reasonable and not overly intrusive way of gaining better results for the workers via immigration reform (considering 90% or more of the workforce there were immigrants)? This would result in rapes and forced abortions going down by giving immigrants more ability to control their fate? > [@](#): > > Wow, what happened to your utter disgust at one person sabotaging the will of an entire legislative body? How is deem-and-pass a single person thwarting the will of the whole legislative body? Seems to me the bill ends up for a vote at which point you can vote it up or down. Not seeing it. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-dare-they-not-prosecute-tom-delay/551280)._