The more I read about Tom DeLay's indictment, and the defenses of him that are being thrown around, the more I become convinced that DeLay really does exemplify the kind of corruption that has made our government more responsive to demands for favors from big corporations than it is to the needs of American taxpayers. Whether or not he is guilty of the charge being brought against him, however, I do not know. With the evidence that has been made public to this point, I don't think Earle will be able to convict DeLay, but I also don't think a grand jury would have indicted DeLay had they not been presented evidence of wrongdoing beyond what is public at this point.

The defenses that I have read largely hinge on a legal technicality, but whether DeLay is elected or not, what happened is undoubtedly shady and contrary to the intent of the law. There are also problems with the way the allegations are presented by DeLay's defenders. From National Review Online:

The alleged violation involved a money swap between the now-defunct Texans for a Republican Majority PAC (TRMPAC), which DeLay helped found but never managed, and the Republican National State Elections Committee (RNSEC). TRMPAC sent a check for $190,000 to RNSEC, and RNSEC then sent checks totaling approximately the same amount to Texas House candidates in October of 2002. Earle, a Democrat, calls this money laundering, because the money that TRMPAC sent to RNSEC came from corporations, which are barred from contributing to campaigns in Texas.

The problem with this description is that what really happened is the following:
A political action committee (The TRMPAC mentioned above) that DeLay founded took in $155,000 in corporate money, and sent $190,000 to the Republican National State Elections Committee (RNSEC), the "soft money" arm of the Republican Party. This committee then wrote checks amounting to $190,000 to seven Republican candidates using its noncorporate accounts.
The flow of money here is obviously from the corporate contributors to the candidates, with the TRMPAC and RNSEC acting as mediators. This is textbook money laundering -- intended to conceal the source of the money, which was corporate donors.

Republican Deparment of Justice official Barbara Comstock attempted to spin the issue by stating: “Had corporations sent money directly to the RNC or RNSEC, the transaction would be legal. How could anyone conspire to do indirectly what could legally have been done directly?” Yes it would have been legal for the corporations to send money directly to the RNSEC, so long as the RNSEC did not use that money for campaign contributions, as it did. I agree that it would make no sense to run the money through an additional PAC if the money was not intended to go to Republican candidates, but as we know the intention was to use the corporate money for these campaign contributions, and that is why the money was run through the TRMPAC first, to further hide the original source of the money.

So it is obvious that this is nothing more than straight-from-the-books money laundering -- if Earle has evidence that DeLay had advance knowledge of this transaction, and DeLay's lawyers don't skirt the intent of the law on some minor technicality, DeLay should be found guilty. Then again, if Earle can't tie DeLay to the transaction or if there is a technicality that can be exploited, the Hammer will walk free.

Whatever happens, it should be clear at this point that the charges are not "fabricated" and that someone went to a lot of trouble to conceal the source of that money. Why would they do that if what they were doing was completely legal?