HOIST ON ONE'S OWN PETARD-- HOW THE LITTLE BUG MAN'S GREED SABOTAGED HIS OWN ELECTION CHANCES

Today's NY TIMES is running an article by Rick Lyman about sweet irony and Tom DeLay. " The unconstitutional gerrymander engineered by DeLay, and all the criminal financial activities surrounding it have stripped DeLay or the Majority Leader job he engineered the coup to retain! Further, all the hubbub about his criminal activities have disturbed his normally complacent constituents. (A recent USA TODAY poll shows DeLay losing to an unnamed Democrat by double digits-- 49% to DeLay's catastrophic 36%!) But the real irony, the TIMES story points to, the petard hoist, is because "the redistricting led to the loss of six Democratic seats in Texas in 2004, but it also shifted thousands of Democratic voters to strong Republican districts. Among those, Mr. DeLay's 22nd District added several Democratic-leaning parts of Galveston County; several political analysts estimate they may have raised the district's Democratic vote around 5 percent. 'There is huge irony here,' said Richard Murray, a University of Houston political scientist. 'Six Democrats in Congress were eliminated, but the seventh victim may turnout to be the author of the plan.'" (Inshallah)

And it is one of those Democrats who was gerrymandered out of his seat, Nick Lampson, who looks like he could defeat DeLay, if DeLay somehow manages to avoid prison by November, a big "if" indeed!

A few weeks ago Ken explained to be that one doesn't say "hoisted on one's own petard" but "hoist on one's own petard." It sure looked like heretofore a photo of ex-Majority Leader DeLay's photo will make a great illustration next to the definition in the dictionary-- or at least in Wikipedia.