As Tom DeLay begins his career as a reality star, Melanie Sloan reminds us that "he was CREW’s raison d’être”
Former Majority Leader Tom DeLay begins his new career as a reality show star tonight on "Dancing with the Stars." CREW helped DeLay launch this new career by forcing him out of his former role and we're having a watch party tonight at "Top of the Hill" bar on Capitol Hill. Here's some background:
Are you ready for some Tom DeLay dancing?! CREW is.
At first blush, the nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington doesn’t come across as made up of a bunch of party animals. Just last week, the group released its list of the top 15 most corrupt members in Congress.
But because of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s participation in “Dancing With the Stars,” which debuts Monday night, CREW has decided to do something it has never done before: throw a party.
“We decided the very day the news broke — we just couldn’t believe it — and we thought not only did we want to watch it, but everyone we know wanted to watch it. You don’t get an opportunity like that every day,” CREW executive director Melanie Sloan told Shenanigans. “It’s a whole new level for Mr. DeLay.”
CREW was one of the nonpartisan nonprofits that held DeLay’s feet to the fire back in the Jack Abramoff scandal days. As Sloan admitted: “He was CREW’s raison d’être.”
“I always say if I never do anything else in my entire life, I helped tell the world about Tom DeLay and helped remove him from Congress and improved Washington,” she boasted. “It’ll be a guilty pleasure to watch him. He’s certainly taken quite a tumble to go from majority leader to reality show contestant. It’s not an aspirational position for most people.”
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The first victim of human trafficking that I ever met told me that she danced in her tears. She was recruited from Manila, Philippines to work as a waitress in the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), but she was forced to strip and dance in a sleazy club seven nights a week. Every evening after the club closed, she was sold to customers against her will. By dawn she was locked inside a rundown barracks until the next evening when she would again dance in her tears.
Tonight the new season of ABC’s Dancing with the Stars will premiere to the delight of millions of fans. Among the contestants in the show’s ninth season is Republican politician Tom Delay, the former House Majority Leader who hails from Sugar Land, Texas. In 2006 Delay departed from the U.S. Congress in disgrace after he was indicted for conspiring to violate campaign finance laws. His connections to convicted felon and former lobbyist Jack Abramoff are legendary. Two of Tom Delay’s former staffers were indicted in the Abramoff scandal. The Abramoff –Delay deals involving casinos, Russian oil and money laundering are well known and are said to be under investigation. Tom Delay is probably the first morally bankrupt person chosen to be a contestant on Dancing with the Stars...
...read the rest here: Unheard No More!