Another Republican preemptive strike?

The Republican chair of the House Ethics Committee has suddenly decided he wants to investigate Tom DeLay. Now.

The devilish little detail here is that if the equally-divided Committee gets deadlocked along party lines after 45 days, then — under the new, DeLay-friendly rules — the complaint is dismissed, whereas under the old rules such a deadlock would automatically trigger a subcommittee for further investigation. Link

So: Looks like the Republicans are expecting unfriendly attention and perhaps successful challenge to the new rules and figure they'd better get this done before that happens!