Hi. I'm Tom DeLay And I'll Be Conducting Your Ethics Lesson Today

Well, this caught us by surprise. Of course, given our traditional breakfast of Bloody Marys and Rum Cake, sometimes the floor catches us by surprise.

Democratic leaders are acting like traitors by opposing the Iraq war, and President Bush must answer with a toughened stance, former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said.

And the first thing we thought was, they let him give interviews from prison? Silly us though, he's not in prison.

Yet.

Anyway, Apparently Mr. DeLay was in Pittsburgh because he knows if he keeps moving around it will be harder for U.S. Marshals to find him, when he was recognized by a newspaper reporter after he had withdrawn $100 from an ATM machine using one of his many aliases. Never one to be able to walk away from a chance to get his name in print, Mr. DeLay agreed to an interview in which he said: U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi "are getting very, very close to treason."

When asked what was worse, opposing an unnecessary war in which thousands are needlessly killed and injured, driven from their homes and have their lives and the lives of their families permanently damaged, or violating the public trust and presiding over what could be the most corrupt, unresponsive and incompetent administration ever sent to Washington, DeLay responded, "Um...which one has democrats in it?"

Bush cannot afford to lose this fight, DeLay said. The president must demand a "clean bill" that does not set a withdrawal date or include so-called pork barrel spending on unrelated projects, he said. When asked to compare the pork in the democrat's bill with the pork record set under his leadership when the republican backed transportation bill was passed, DeLay responded that since leaving Congress he had become a vegetarian.

His resignation and subsequent scandals that roiled the GOP leadership helped Democrats seize control of Congress last year, DeLay said. He faulted Republicans for not coming up with a new agenda. "They let too much attention be drawn to the fact that we were a bunch of corrupt, bumbling, scum bags," he told the interviewer. "Hard to win on a record like that."

Delay praised the president, but had harsh words for his handlers: "If they let George W. be George W., he'd be just fine. By now he would have forgotten he's president, wandered off someplace and we would have accepted Cheney as our cyborg overlord."

The administration, DeLay said, needs to stand up to Democrats. He criticized the administration for replacing former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld after the November election. "Since when does government listen to the people?" he asked. "Especially people who don't contribute to republicans."

As for his indictments, DeLay said he was set up by the Democrats as a "poster boy" for political corruption. "This is what happens when you're good at something," he said. "People just want to tear you down."

"It's not good enough to defeat somebody politically or vilify him publicly," DeLay said. "They've got to get all law and order on you, all nation of laws and not of men. These people just don't understand why anyone would go into public service."

DeLay, who resigned from the House in June, is promoting his book, "No Retreat, No Surrender: One Man's Struggle With Cognitive Dissonance."