Former House Majority Leader and right-wing nutcase Tom DeLay has decided to hang up the boots, call it a day, cash in his chips, get ready for jail. So says the New York Times. Mr. DeLay resigned "temporarily" as the House majority leader last fall after he was indicted for money laundering.

This warms my weary heart, not just as a progressive American, but also as someone interested in workplace safety and environmental issues -- which were, in a perverted way, the orgin of the Tom Delay that we have learned to know and love:

DeLay wasn’t groomed for politics. After growing up in Texas and Venezuela (his father worked in the oil fields), he went to the University of Houston. Instead of going into medicine as his father wished, DeLay went to work for a pest control company.

In the extermination business, DeLay discovered what was to become his political raison d’être: opposition to government regulation. In the seventies the Environmental Protection Agency banned Mirex, a pesticide used to fight the fire ant. The E.P.A. found Mirex (a probable carcinogen that becomes more concentrated as it moves up the food chain) to be highly toxic to marine crustaceans, and also discovered its presence in mothers’ milk in Southeastern states. DeLay calls the Mirex ruling his first exposure to the E.P.A.’s blundering ways.

DeLay’s aversion to regulation might have pointed to a Congressional career built around an anti-environmental agenda.

Don't let the door hit you on the way out.