Columnist Donald Lambro offers this analysis of the charges against Tom DeLay, and notes that the "conspiracy" was to engage in a common, apparantly legal practice.

Close examination is needed of what, if any, laws were broken. The fund-raising PAC formed by Mr. DeLay (and run by his two associates) raised money to help elect Republican candidates to the Texas legislature in 2002. These funds came from many sources, including donors who gave as individuals within the contribution limits set by law.

This money was apparently mingled in the PAC account with corporate contributions, allowable under Texas law for party administrative expenses. The PAC sent a check from that fund to the RNC in Washington for party-building activities. The RNC, as it does among many states, contributed funds to help Texas Republicans win elections.

The indictment sees all this as an illegal money-laundering. But Mr. Baran and other attorneys I have talked to say that charge is weak at best, because no one can prove corporate money mingled in an account flush with individual contributions was ever used to help elect the Texas candidates.

"The defense is going to be that the corporate money contributed to the Republican Party was not used for the contributions to the candidates. And that's true," Mr. Baran said. "Then the question becomes would the Texas contributions be made at all, but for the corporate money. And that's where the tie-in and alleged laundering comes in."

It is illegal under Texas law to use corporate money to defeat or elect candidates for public office. But campaign finance law experts note that until the McCain/Feingold finance reform took effect in 2002, it was common in both parties to exchange corporate money for "hard money" from individual donors.

Mr. DeLay says his PAC cleared the transactions with its lawyers and the RNC did likewise. And even The Washington Post, no fan of Mr. DeLay, editorialized that while this looked like an end run around the corporate contribution law, the "more difficult question is whether it was an illegal end run."

I can't wait to see Ronnie Earle get his head handed to him again. After all -- given the fingibility of dollars, it is impossible to prove that the money used for these contributions was anything other than donations from individuals -- or that what this PAC did was substantially different than what every other PAC, Republican or Democrat, did to make their influence go further.