TAB trial set

I confess, I lose track of these things.

State District Judge Mike Lynch on Wednesday tentatively ordered a trial for the Texas Association of Business on charges that it made illegal corporate contributions to its own political action committee.

In effect, the state's largest business organization is accused of paying its officers with corporate dollars while they were politicking for a slate of legislative candidates in 2002.

The defense argued that the group's actions were protected free speech, while prosecutors claim the association violated the state ban on spending corporate money in connection with campaigns.

TAB was indicted along with Tom DeLay and the rest back in 2005. As far as I know, they haven't been involved in any of the myriad of appeals that have taken place, so I'm not exactly sure why it's taken this sucker so long to come to trial. At least they won't have any trouble empaneling a jury that has no prior knowledge of the case, since by now everyone would have forgotten all about this even if they had known something in the first place.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on September 08, 2008 to Scandalized!