Right-wing terrorist backing gusanos Díaz-Balart and Ros Lehtinen among Tom Delay's faithful

CUBAN-AMERICAN Congress members Lincoln Díaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen have voted, on 93% and 92% of occasions, respectively, with Tom Delay, according to a study of the conduct of Congress members in relation to the former Republican leader of the House currently caught up in a corruption scandal.

The percentages have been published on the Internet by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee based on an analysis of votes between January 2004 and March 2005. Both Congress members have voted in favor of a proposal to soften the rules of ethics, a resolution whose sole objective was to protect Delay, according to Democrats who are accusing the former Republican leader in Congress of having accepted money from the pharmaceutical giants in exchange for legislation to protect the extremely high price of medicines.

Delay's maneuvers have benefited the pharmaceutical manufacturers to the tune of $140 billion, the Democrats are charging. Billions of taxpayer dollars wound up in the hands of special interests like Enron, thanks to Delay and his backers.

Caught up in the web of the Jack Abramoff corruption scandal, the former Republican leader in the House was forced to definitively resign this post as head of the ruling majority in the House, from which he had been temporarily suspended.

Abramoff confessed his guilt of conspiracy, bribery, tax evasion and fraud, directly implicating a dozen politicians who also barefacedly benefited from the lobbying system, those pressure groups who influence legislators votes.

Delay received three warnings in 2004 from the Ethics Committee of the House of Representatives. According to The New York Times, the wife and daughter of the legislator have received more than half a million dollars since 2001 in payments from the Political Action Committees (PAC) that covered the congressman’s campaign.

On February 20, 2004, Delay appeared in Miami at an event organized by capos of the Cuban-American ultra-right and gave a virulently anti-Cuban speech.

Among those present and applauding him from the front row were Lincoln Díaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.