House Majority Leader Tom DeLay was indicted today, according to news reports. The indictment forced DeLay to step down from his leadership post — although not from Congress. (Under rules House Republicans adopted, then later abandoned, DeLay could even have held on to his leadership position, too.)

“I have done nothing wrong,” DeLay said of the indictment, on campaign finance charges. He attributed the grand jury’s action to a partisan attack launched by Democratic Travis County, Texas, District Attorney Ronnie Earle.

But controversy has swirled around DeLay for years, from foreign travel arranged and paid for by embattled lobbyist Jack Abramoff to the bare-knuckles redistricting plan that saw the GOP increase its numbers in the Lone Star state delegation to campaign finance. He’s yet to be convicted of anything, of course, but we’ve been suspicious of the guy for a long time.

So, let’s do the math: The House Majority Leader is indicted and forced to step down; the Senate Majority Leader, Bill Frist, is under investigation for alleged insider trading by the Securities & Exchange Commission. And then there’s President Bush, whose approval rating is in free-fall thanks to his mishandling of Iraq and Hurricane Katrina.

Not a good week to be a Republican in leadership, is it? But don’t go by us; we’re obvious left-wing partisans. Then again, we haven’t been indicted or investigated, either. So there’s that.

Let’s go to the Various Things & Stuff mailbag, where we find an e-mail from our only lookalike (outside of Drew Carey, that is), state Sen. Bob Beers. Beers, as you’ll recall, is running for governor, but he took time out to question our characterization of U.S. Rep. Jim Gibbons’ 2003 speech to the Legislature as critical of Gov. Kenny Guinn’s tax plan.

We looked over Gibbons speech (it’s been a long time since 2003, and our memory is not so good). And while we agree with Beers that Gibbons did not criticize Guinn or his tax plan by name, we also argue it’s impossible to miss what Gibbons was saying. And what he was saying was not sympathetic to Guinn, either.

Take a look at a few paragraphs:

“The slightest push in the wrong direction will destabilize our economic recovery,” Gibbons said, early in the address.

“My friends, there is a legitimate concern from our fellow Nevadans that tax policy, whether it originates in Washington, D.C., or here in Carson City, is often being formulated under the wrong set of priorities,” he said. “As Sir Winston Churchill once said at a time when England was also suffering from some of the same conditions that we are in the United States. ‘A nation trying to lift itself into prosperity by raising taxes is like a ban standing in a bucket trying to lift himself up by the handle.’ We could actually use some of that Nevada-born common sense in fighting for tax and spending discipline in our nation’s capital.”

Hmmm. That doesn’t seem to supportive of poor Guinn, does it? Let’s read on.

“But now more than ever, we must carefully determine where we draw the line between balancing a government programs’ checkbook against the taxpayers’ checkbook. As families all across Nevada realize, you base your spending on how much you earn; you don’t base your earnings on how much you want to spend. The hurdle presented by the [Gibbons-authored] Tax Restraint Initiative was motivated by these very principles and it will, once again, play a role in this historic session of your Legislature.”

Sorry, but we have to conclude that these passages were nothing less than a primary school lecture to Guinn on how to run state business, delivered just one month after Guinn himself had addressed a joint session of the Legislature to present his doomed gross-receipts tax plan. Sure, he didn’t name names, but it was criticism all the same. As Beers surely knows, in politics, people often don’t say what they really mean, but find ways to say it anyway so that they can later claim they never did. This is surely one of those cases.

So, with much respect, we stand by our item.

And another correspondent, who must remain nameless to protect his position at a white-shoe law firm in town, writes to complain that we’re not updating the blog in a timely manner. To him, we say, you’re right, and we apologize. Things have been crazy around the Various Things & Stuff offices lately, and we’ve been negligent in our postings. We’ll endeavor to have each days’ information before your eyes by noon every day.

Former Federal Emergency Management Agency Michael Brown is turning out to be a Class-A prick. After bungling the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts and returning to Washington, D.C., in shame, Brown found the courage to go before a House committee and … blame others.

“My biggest mistake was not recognizing by Saturday that Louisiana was dysfunctional,” Brown told the panel. (The hurricane actually made landfall on Monday, Aug. 29.)

That’s funny, because we were about to suggest that his biggest mistake was not finding a way to evacuate hundreds of poor residents of New Orleans, many of whom later drowned. But more on that in a second.

“I’ve overseen over 150 presidentally declared disasters. I know what I’m doing and I think I do a pretty darn good job of it,” Brown added.

Really? We know President Bush thinks “Brownie” did “a heck of a job” in the days immediately following the disaster, but here’s our question: If he does such a good job, why was he sent packing back to D.C., and why did he later resign his post? (More on that in a second, too.)

Brown tried to say that he personally tried to persuade Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco to order an evacuation, but she didn’t. Alas, that’s not true: Blanco did give the evacuation order, and she did it two days before Katrina hit, on Aug. 27.

And Brown’s testimony got some negative reviews from other people, too. U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., lambasted him thusly: “I’m happy you left. That kind of look in the lights like a deer tells me you weren’t capable of doing the job.” And his colleague, U.S. Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, was equally blunt: “I don’t know how you can sleep at night. You lost the battle.”

Indeed he did, but it looks like the war is going well. According to a story printed in the Review-Journal, Brown is still on FEMA’s payroll, consulting at what would be an annual rate of $148,000 per year! We cannot imagine what advice he’s giving FEMA, but we sure as hell hope they’re doing the precise opposite.