Mrs. Schiavo's death is a moral poverty and a legal tragedy. This loss happened because our legal system did not protect the people who need protection most, and that will change. The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior, but not today.

Senator Frank Lautenberg responded to this with a letter to DeLay which said:

"You should be aware that your comments yesterday may violate a Federal criminal statute, 18 U.S.C. §115 (a)(1)(B). That law states:

"Whoever threatens to assault.... or murder, a United States judge... with intent to retaliate against such... judge.... on account of the performance of official duties, shall be punished [by up to six years in prison]"

"Threats against specific Federal judges are not only a serious crime, but also beneath a Member of Congress. In my view, the true measure of democracy is how it dispenses justice. Your attempt to intimidate judges in America not only threatens our courts, but our fundamental democracy as well."

My comment on this was:

DeLay's comments are disturbing, but I very much doubt that are in violation of the law as Lautenberg is claiming.

For the judges involved to "answer for their behavior" could mean any number of things, including impeachment, popular pressure to resign (stoked by the right, of course), or even their ultimate judgment at the Pearly Gates. There's no way that such a vague statement can be construed as definitively threatening murder or assault, so Lautenberg is either reaching, or attempting a purely rhetorical thrust at DeLay.

Let's keep focused on the real evidence against DeLay, and not get sidetracked by rhetorical give and take.

Of course, I was right and wrong at the same time, but, more to the point, I completely missed the point.

Lautenberg's charge, I now realize (or assume, I guess) wasn't a serious assignment of law-breaking to DeLay, but merely following my own prescription of just a couple of weeks ago, when I wrote (following Chris Bowers' lead):

Democrats should take advantage of Tom DeLay's continuing (and growing) ethics and legal problems by using him as the exemplar of all that's bad about the GOP, and in this way nationalizing Congressional campaigns by creating a foil to work against. After an ad campaign to soften up the opposition and raise DeLay's national ID, we should use all the techniques that have worked so well for the right-wing (morphing the local candidate's face with DeLay's, using grainy footage and the least flattering photos available, etc.) to demonize a man who well deserves that fate.

So, here's the correction: I was wrong to criticize Lautenberg, even by implication, when he was just doing his bit to raise the public's awareness of Tom DeLay's attributes: his love of threats, his corruption, his bloated ego, his lack of ethics, and his big fat mouth.

My apologies to Senator Lautenberg, who did good.