It won't kill you.......Come on, It really won't hurt too much. I promise that parts of your body will not fall off. That's right! You, too, can vote for Democrat Richard Morrison to replace that scoundrel Tom DeLay.

In my weekly column last week, I admonished you to find and recruit someone in the next two years to run against Tom DeLay in the Republican primary. However, I've had second thoughts about that. I was wrong. Most of the people who vote in primaries are the party hardy voters. They'd vote for DeLay because they are used to voting for DeLay and sadly, the Fort Bend Republican party has been highjacked by the Christian Right (which are neither), and DeLay plays to them. A friend of mine admitted to me that she had early voted for DeLay before reading my column. "Why did you do that?" I asked because I knew that she was aware of some of DeLay's more villainous actions. "Habit," she replied.

So it is my belief that the only way we can rid ourselves of this DeLay pest is to hold our nose and cross over and at least vote on the Democrat side of the ballot for Richard Morrison as our U.S. Congressman.

A little about Morrison...... Morrison, an attorney, is married with four children. He and his wife are active at Holy Rosary church in Rosenberg. As an attorney, Morrisom has advocated for environmental and consumer rights and in the case Kerr vs. Harris County he protected the property of Houston area residents from improper condemnation and seizure. On the issue of the economy and jobs, Morrison supports deficit reduction, no sales tax increase, tax cuts for families and small businesses, closing loopholes that allow corporations to move off shore and evade taxes and incentives for companies that keep jobs in America.

He says that health care must be available and affordable to all, especially seniors and children. He will also work to preserve Medicare and Medicaid, help small businesses provide health care coverage to their employees and support stem cell research.

On education, Morrison supports "good pay and fair benefits for teachers" and the passage of HR 594 and opposes all unfunded federal mandates placed on school districts. He says he will also work to reduce air pollution and protect lives and property from floods and support extending passenger rail lines into District 22.

"I will take the 'war on terror' to the terrorists without compromising our essential civil liberties. I support the sunsetting of the extreme provisions of the Patriotic Act, which gives the federal government excessive power to spy on innocent citizens, " he says.

Why I can't support Teflon Tom......Tom DeLay has almost single-handedly made the Republican party the party of derisive action. He has turned his governance over to the very lobbyists that are only interested in their own industry. Our "Teflon Tom" belongs to the school of "leave no CEO behind." He has woven a cloudy group of money, lobbying, and grass-roots true believers that push right-wing pressure on the entire Republican agenda and therefore on the country's agenda. These true believers are ideological extremist.

This far-flung network is composed of money pockets that are state or federal PACs, direct-mail operations, partisan right-wing religious groups that have aggressive sounding acronyms like ARM, ROMP, STOMP. They sound suspiciously like the off books entities created by Enron, don't they?

DeLay has been rebuked by the House Ethics Committee three times overall, two times in the last ten days. These admonishments are unusual for any legislator, especially one who wants to be speaker of the House. Some watchdog groups have called for him to resign.

The 62-page Ethics Committee report chastised DeLay for trading support for the congressional candidacy of the son of retiring Rep. Nick Smith, R-Mich., in exchange for Smith's vote on Bush's Medicare bill, for asking federal aviation officials to track an airplane involved in a Texas political spat, and for conduct that suggested political donations might influence legislative action.

Yet, in a press conference reminiscent of "Baghdad Bob,' DeLay applauded the admonishments and said they proved he was clean. He said, "I'm very pleased that the ethics committee and these honorable people that serve on that ethics committee have dismissed the frivolous charges brought against me." Talk about spin. They didn't dismiss the charges. They admonished him.

Tom has openly declared himself sent by God to "stand up for a biblical world view in everything I do and everywhere I am." For him, politics is a "battle of souls." He says that he seeks a "God-centered" nation that, among other things, would curb contraception, discriminate against homosexuals, outlaw abortion, end the separation of church and state, and post the Ten Commandments in every school (even though Tom has violated more than a few of the Ten himself).

He states that "our nation will only be healed through a rebirth of religious conviction and moral certitude." The thing that concerns me is that this biblical world view sounds suspiciously like the "end times" prophets and I don't really like someone who wants to see the end of the world be the same someone with the power to affect the end of the world.

Tom DeLay has been in Washington the past 20 years and in Austin the six years before that. The framers of both the U.S. Constitution and the Texas Constitution did not intend that serving in the body politik would be a full-time, lifetime occupation. They expected volunteers to serve for a few years then go back home and work a real job.