Ding! Dong! DeLay is done!

That's right. I said it. Tom DeLay, the Texas congressman and former House Majority Leader, is resigning from Congress -- and I am thrilled. He is the epitome of what I despise about Washington and politics. To elaborate...

He is often called the "Hammer" because of his reputation for using strong-arm tactics. I think it's shameful and dishonest when politicians -- on either side of the aisle -- always "toe the party line". Politicians are elected by their constituents and their loyalty should be to those constituents -- not to a straight-down-the-line party platform. Very few people in the country agree with everything in either party's platform -- and elected representatives shouldn't be bound to it. Tom DeLay, however, had a reputation for using his coercive powers as a party leader to get people to toe that line. Yes, that's politics, but it's something I find unseemly. And Tom DeLay was a master perpetrator of this despicable practice.

DeLay also had a bad habit of being involved in shady dealings. This included possible money-laundering, performing political favors for family members, and cozying up to and shamelessly bullying lobbyists. I know he hasn't been convicted of anything, but where there are waves (and waves and waves) of billowing smoke, there is almost always fire. And the lobbyist dealings alone, such as the Abramoff-funded golf trip to Scotland, is enough for me to revel in DeLay's fade into obscurity.

So he's gone. And I'm glad. Maybe this will send a message to the rest of the jackals that they need to put down the lobbyist crack-pipe and start, again, doing the jobs they're were hired to do.