DELAY WATCH

Everybody leads with Rep. Tom DeLay announcing—via interviews in Time and a
local paper published late last night—that he's not going to run for reelection and will quit Congress, he offered, "probably by the end of May. " DeLay is set to make a formal announcement today.

Last week a second DeLay aide pleaded guilty to conspiracy and corruption charges and has sung to the feds about, as the Washington Post puts it, "a criminal enterprise being run out of DeLay's leadership offices." Not that that had anything to do with the congressman's decision, of course. DeLay explained that he was stepping down only because he was in a tough reelection campaign and was just taking one for the team. "This is a very strong Republican district," he said. "It's obvious to me that anybody but me running here will overwhelmingly win the seat."

Detailing how the feds are creeping ever closer to DeLay, a piece inside the Post points out that not only have two once top aides pleaded guilty, but DeLay's former chief of staff was also named in the latest government docs as a collaborator. In another plus for DeLay pulling out now, he can take all the cash from his campaign war-chest and drop it into his defense fund, which as the Post notes has so far been "financed largely by corporations with business before Congress."

Asked if he'd done anything illegal in office, DeLay told Time, "No." Anything immoral? "We're all sinners," said the Hammer.

THANKS TO TODAY'S PAPERS

and for all things delay head on over to the TPM Cafe Muckraker.