Someone in Texas squealed on Tom DeLay. One of my fathers lessons has long been that conspiracies fail because people have different motivations and loyalties. Virtually always, those loyalties will come into conflict.

Well, it looks like someone's loyalties came into conflict with Rep. DeLay's. And one of Kevin Drum's leaders has a guess as to whom that might have been: one of those corporate "persons" caught in the middle of the scandal.

Look at it this way, if the DeLay/Abramoff/Norquist machine is really a giant protection racket, the businesses aren't entirely pleased to be in the middle of it. Now that there's a sign of weakness in the machine, one of the businesses, looking out for its bottom line, squeals on DeLay in order to break the machine.

It's a good business move. And, for us, it's great politics.

It sure is great to see big business look out for their shareholders and consumers.

Of course, we can't be sure this is what happened yet, but we'll likely find out in the coming months.