Ronnie Earle is the most corrupt politician in Texas (I don’t know about other states, but District Attorneys are politicians here) and is well-known for using his political agenda to prosecute people. Not only did he indict Kay Bailey Hutchison within days after she won her Senate seat (the first such seat occupied by a Republican since 1875), but he also “investigated” or indicted Democrats who managed to get on his wrong side, like Gib Lewis, who once ran against Earle for office, and Bob Bullock, the Democrat political mentor of President Bush. In the Hutchison case, she demanded a jury trial and as soon as the jury was seated, Earle dropped the case. If his case was so weak that we would not even present it, then why did he indict Hutchison in the first place?

Earle is also a close friend of Robin Rather — the daughter of Dan Rather. She has sponsored several fund-raisers for Earle and has at least once (in 2000) contributed the maximum amount allowed by law to Earle’s campaign. Ben Barnes, the Democratic lobbyist and former lieutenant governor of Texas, is a also a running buddy of Earle’s and joined Robin Rather in sponsoring an Earle fundraiser. Did I mention that Ben Barnes was featured prominently in the 60 Minutes report that triggered Dan Rather’s Memogate escapade?

At a recent Democrat fundraiser, Earle compared Tom DeLay to a bully. Such a thing is not only in bad taste, but is probably also illegal, since the ABA’s Canon of Ethics prohibits extra-judicial statements concerning “the character…of the accused” or “any opinion as to the guilt or innocence of the accused, the evidence, or the merits of the case.” Apparently, Earle is using his power to prosecute DeLay in the media before he tries to prosecute him in court. The potential for contaminating the jury pool is mind-boggling. It would be nice to bring down Ronnie Earle on ethics charges. Such a thing could happen — Tom DeLay is a tough fighter and Ronnie Earle just may have met his match.

Captain’s Quarters writes that “NRO’s Byron York notes that Earle has found others in violation of the law along the way, notably large corporations who have donated to DeLay campaign, forbidden by Texas law. Does he prosecute the corporations? Apparently only if they don’t comply with the Ronnie Earle Clemency Program, which consists of demands for huge cash contributions to his own pet causes.” This sounds an awful lot like Jesse Jackson, who accused Anheuser-Busch of racism, but relented when they gave one of his sons a lucrative beer distributorship in Chicago.

Now, National Review Online is reporting that Ronnie Earle has given a film crew permission to make a motion picture about his work on the DeLaycase. This gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “show trial.”

The resulting film is called The Big Buy, made by Texas filmmakers Mark Birnbaum and Jim Schermbeck. “Raymond Chandler meets Willie Nelson on the corner of Wall Street and Pennsylvania Avenue in The Big Buy, a Texas noir political detective story that chronicles what some are calling a ‘bloodless coup with corporate cash,’” reads a description of the picture on Birnbaum’s website, markbirnbaum.com. The film, according to the description, “follows maverick Austin DA Ronnie Earle’s investigation into what really happened when corporate money joined forces with relentless political ambitions to help swing the pivotal 2002 Texas elections, cementing Republican control from Austin to Washington DC.”

“We approached him [Earle], and he offered us extraordinary access to him and, to an extent, to his staff,” Birnbaum told National Review Online Thursday. “We’ve been shooting for about two years.”

Birnbaum and Schermbeck showed a work-in-progress version of The Big Buy last month at the Dallas Video Festival. At the moment, they do not have a deal for the film to be shown anywhere else. Their last film, Larry v. Lockney, was shown on PBS, and they hope that perhaps a similar arrangement might be made for the new picture. Whoever ends up showing it, the film has so far been funded entirely by its makers. “We tried really hard to get it funded,” Birnbaum says, “but we didn’t get any takers.”

It sounds like a good idea to keep the rule requiring House leaders to step down from their posts when indicted, but when prosecutorial powers are abused by two-bit partisan hacks like Ronnie Earle, one has to wonder whether we should allow single individuals to wield so much power as to change the face of government. One can imagine a situation whereby the Democrats find a dozen Ronnie Earle’s throughout the country and wipe out the entire Republican leadership and damage their re-election chances by issuing bogus indictments that stand no chance in court. 

There’s a lot of of dirty politics and — dare I say conspiracy? — going on down here in Texas.