I've refrained from writing about the charges against my congressman, Tom DeLay. I think that too many others have done an excellent job analyzing why the charges are flawed and why Delay will likely be acquitted if he ever goes to trial.

Today, though, the Washington Post began an offensive to bolster political hack Ronnie Earle's public image.

Earle has an eccentric streak, clearly, sometimes in the service of projecting a squeaky-clean image. He once filed charges against himself for submitting a campaign finance report a day late. He asked a judge to fine him, His Honor obliged, and Earle was out $212.

Still, Earle can defy pigeonholing. Buck Wood, an Austin lawyer and friend of Earle's, says the prosecutor is "definitely a moderate," and that he's "not involved in the Democratic Party."

Raised on a cattle ranch in the tiny north Texas town of Birdville, Earle served briefly in the Texas House before being elected district attorney. A self-described "radical moderate," he has faced little serious opposition in his reelection campaigns. This comports with commonly heard descriptions of him -- adjectives such as "maverick," "idealist" and "crusader."

Indeed, Earle is a former Eagle Scout more interested in social policy than in collecting death-penalty convictions. He has taught a course at the University of Texas at Austin on "reweaving the fabric of community." Starting in the mid-1980s, he insisted that some of his prosecutors work in the same building as social workers and police officers in an effort to curb child abuse before it occurred.

And he has never hesitated to use his job as a bully pulpit. In a speech two weeks ago before a state lobbying group, Earle said, "corporate money in politics" has become "the fight of our generation of Americans. . . . It is our job -- our fight -- to rescue democracy from the money that has captured it."

Such pronouncements are typical Earle, says Texas Rep. Terry Keel (R), who served under Earle for nearly nine years before seeking public office himself.

"Ronnie has a very deep philosophical belief about good and evil," Keel said. "He sees corporate involvement in politics as an evil to be attacked at any costs."

And the profile even has an extended anecdote that is designed to show how Ronnie Earle is a fearless prosector who won't back down when he is right -- even if he ultimately cannot get at the corrupt officials he is seeking to bring down.

Ronnie Earle, the Texas prosecutor vilified by Rep. Tom DeLay as a "rogue district attorney" and an "unabashed partisan zealot," has heard worse.

There was the time, for instance, that a prominent Texas Democrat vowed to murder him.

"He would hold all these press conferences and say terrible things about me," Earle said, referring to Bob Bullock, the future lieutenant governor whom Earle investigated for allegedly misusing government resources in the 1970s.

"I know at least twice people took guns away from him when he said he was going to kill me."

Earle, a Democrat, was laughing as he recounted the story in the Travis County district attorney's office last week. And like many sagas in Earle's career, the Bullock episode comes with a footnote.

Earle couldn't persuade the grand jury to indict Bullock, who was then the state's comptroller and struggling with a drinking problem. But years later, once Bullock had sobered up, the two men were recounting old times at Bullock's kitchen table.

"You know years ago when you investigated me?" Earle recalled Bullock telling him. "I was guilty as hell."

Now two things struck me with this story. First is the fact that Bullock "just happened" to go on to serve as lieutenant governor -- under George W. Bush (the two offices are elected separately in Texas). Second is that Bullock has been dead for six years, and so cannot defend himself against Earle's claims of murderous designs and confession of criminal wrong-doing.

But that, of course, is how Ronnie Earle works -- he'll attack a political opponent with all sorts of extreme accusations and let them stick to the target like brambles in a briar patch.

It has taken several years and six grand juries to get this nothngburger of an indictment. But we can expect more stories of this "courageous maverick prosecutor" in the weks and months to come.