Here’s the troubling thing: That 20 percent is running the country, and they’re now pressing for such changes in the way the courts decide cases. While most Americans are apparently indifferent to the long-term implications of the Schiavo case, many religious conservatives see it as having lasting political utility. Its most important outcome, they say, is in highlighting an unsettling flaw in American governance. They call this flaw “judicial tyranny,” though most of the rest of us know it by a friendlier name, “checks and balances.”

For the politicians representing this minority — which is to say, leaders in the House and Senate, if not the president himself — the Schiavo case presents an opportunity to stem what conservatives frequently call an “out-of-control” judiciary. By “out of control,” they mean out of their control; in the Schiavo case, after all, we saw two branches of the federal government succumb to the will of this savvy minority, while a third branch remained determinedly out of reach. Now that third branch is under attack. It is far from clear that the judiciary will survive unscathed.

Conservative legal scholars concede that the Schiavo case does not rank as history’s most egregious instances of “judicial activism.” Supreme Court decisions on church-state divisions, the death penalty, gay rights and, of course, abortion are still more deeply hated. But the case, with its emotional appeal and saturation media coverage, has clearly juiced the troops at an opportune moment — just in time for an expected Supreme Court vacancy and for a Senate debate over a Republican plan (aka the “nuclear option”) to prevent Democrats from filibustering judicial nominations.

Confronting “judicial tyranny” is now “the great battle of our time,” Gary Bauer, the former presidential candidate, wrote in his daily e-mail newsletter a few days after Schiavo died. James Dobson, the influential evangelical leader and founder of the ministry group Focus on the Family, unleashed a 5,000-word attack on the judiciary in the April issue of his Action Newsletter. Dobson writes that “although many fine men and women serve on the bench,” their decisions on moral issues illustrate “the heady abuse of power that is all too common among independent fiefdoms known as judges. They rule like royal monarchs. And sitting on the top of the pyramid is the U.S. Supreme Court, which threatens the liberty that was purchased with the blood of countless men and women who died to secure it.”

These attacks are tame in comparison to the pugilism of Texas politicians. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay reacted to Schiavo’s death by declaring that “the time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior”; he made it clear that the responsible men he was talking about were judges. Meanwhile, Republican John Cornyn of Texas, in a speech on the Senate floor last week, suggested that outrage over so-called judicial activism might lead “to the point where some people engage in violence” against judges. (He later backpedaled.)

As Slate columnist Dahlia Lithwick pointed out, this new conservative line against the judiciary is broader than previous right-wing attacks on judges. Conservatives are now criticizing all federal judges, not just “liberal” judges. More precisely, many are upset with the very idea that judges act as a check on the other branches of government. The Supreme Court may be stacked with Republican nominees, and it may have handed the presidency to a Republican candidate who lost the popular vote, but that doesn’t matter to Dobson. He still believes that Justice Anthony Kennedy is “the most dangerous man in America,” and that stopping judicial tyranny is urgent.

Kennedy was nominated to the court by Ronald Reagan. Other than in a few big cases involving gay rights, abortion and, most recently, the death penalty, Kennedy has mostly sided with conservatives on the court. For the religious right, though, “mostly” is not good enough. Religious conservatives want judges that never waver, which is why groups like Dobson’s support efforts that would both radicalize the courts as well as reduce their authority.

It isn’t clear how far these efforts will go. Passage of the nuclear option — which would leave Senate Democrats with virtually no say on who gets on the courts — looks possible, but not guaranteed. Various other Republican efforts to strip judges of their authority in specific kinds of cases look rather unlikely to pass, as do plans to impose term limits or other curbs on judges’ tenure. What matters, though, is that in the wake of Schiavo, the right is fully committed to its battle on the federal judiciary.

Cass Sunstein, a constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago Law School, stresses that Republicans have already succeeded in their efforts to remake the judiciary. In the past 30 years under Republican presidents, the federal courts have become strikingly more conservative. No current Supreme Court justices are as liberal as some we’ve had in the past — as Earl Warren, or Thurgood Marshall, or William Brennan. Yet at the same time we have more extremely conservative judges — like Antonin Scalia, or Clarence Thomas — than we’ve ever had. These judges, who favor an interpretation of the Constitution that allows no room for changing times, envision a judiciary that is less interventionist than the kind of third branch that liberals would demand.

“The real danger is not Tom DeLay talking recklessly,” Sunstein says. The Schiavo case presages something scarier — the continuing “massive transformation of the federal judiciary.”

To many observers, it isn’t immediately clear how the state and federal court rulings in the Schiavo case might be construed as “judicial activism.” Over the years, court decisions that have most rankled the right are those in which — to quote various conservatives, including George W. Bush — judges “legislate from the bench,” finding new rights (such as a right to privacy, or a right to gay marriage) in old texts. The Schiavo case involved no apparent legislating from the bench. As Vikram Amar, a constitutional law professor at the University of California Hastings College of Law, notes, “The term ‘activist’ ceases to have any coherent meaning if it’s applied to judges who stay out of things. Maybe you can call it a slothful judiciary, but not activist.”

Schiavo’s case would never have made it to the federal courts had it not been for Congress and the White House, which, under heavy pressure from religious conservatives, intervened during the weekend after Schiavo’s feeding tube was removed on March 18. Republicans in the Senate and the House — with little opposition from Democrats — rammed through a strange law that applied only to Schiavo’s parents. The bill, referred to by many as “Terri’s Law II” (the first “Terri’s Law” was enacted in Florida in 2003), directed the federal courts to hear Schiavo’s parents’ plea to reinsert the feeding tube.

Conservative legal scholars admit that it’s difficult to label the courts’ decision to stay out of the case as an instance of judicial activism. But they still insist that the courts acted unfairly in the Schiavo case. They say that the courts should have examined the fundamental issues of fact in the Schiavo affair, such as whether she was indeed in a persistent vegetative state, or whether she’d ever told her husband that she wouldn’t want to be kept alive on a feeding tube. Federal judges didn’t think so and instead focused their review on matters of law, such as whether Schiavo’s constitutional rights to due process and religious freedom had been violated by the Florida courts. They also debated whether Terri’s Law II was constitutional in the first place. Ultimately, they decided that if the Schiavo case went to trial, the court was unlikely to find that her rights and freedoms had been violated. So they rejected Terri Schiavo’s parents’ request to restore her feeding tube.

To conservatives, this is where the judges failed the nation. Their decision, says Jordan Lorence, senior counsel at the Alliance Defense Fund,” a group that fights cases of church-state separation across the nation, was based on personal biases rather than the law. “The federal courts blew off Congress. They said, ‘We’re only going to give superficial, perfunctory review,’” Lorence says. “The judges inserted their personal opinion in the case when they said, ‘We think this legislation is improper and unnecessary so we’re going to drag our feet on it.”

By refusing to review the facts in the case, the courts were “thumbing their nose” at Congress, in DeLay’s colorful phrasing. When Congress told federal judges to jump off a cliff to save Terri Schiavo, DeLay and company believe, the judges should have jumped.

When Dobson looks at the federal judiciary, he sees a system that is “far too powerful and is totally out of control.” In his newsletter, he implores readers: “Please tell me you understand the danger of this outrageous situation. To put ultimate power in the hands of those who promise to make up their rules as they go along — or to base them on treaties that were never ratified by Congress — is a recipe for disaster. Democracy itself hangs in the balance.”

Every time the courts subvert the will of Congress and the White House, Dobson considers the judges to have acted in an unprincipled way. It is a mistake to think that Dobson and his cohorts simply want a more conservative federal judiciary. What they actually want is a federal judiciary that, in addition to being conservative, is tremendously more deferential to Congress and the White House, two institutions in which Dobson feels more at home. In Dobson’s perfect world, Congress and the president could single-handedly have saved Terri Schiavo; to the extent that the courts played a role, it would have been as a rubber stamp.

It is worth noting that not all conservatives share the idea that the judges in the Schiavo case acted in an unfair manner. Bill Frist, for instance, told reporters last week that he thinks the courts did a good job, even though he disagreed with their decision not to order the reinsertion of her feeding tube. Sean Rushton, executive director of the Committee for Justice, one of the conservative groups taking the lead in pushing for the elimination of the filibuster to block judicial nominees, says that “when we talk about the judiciary going forward, I don’t think we’re going to cite the Schiavo case as an example of unprincipled judging.” Even many religious conservatives — including Lorence of the ADF — say that there’s only a little bit of judicial activism in this case.

Such political attacks on the judiciary are nothing new. “The judiciary has been politicized from the outset,” Amar says. The disappointments have spanned the political spectrum. A conservative court frustrated FDR’s early New Deal programs, earning the antipathy of Democrats (and prompting his efforts to pack the courts). The court under Chief Justice Earl Warren — which gave us the Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954 and a host of criminal-justice decisions fair to defendants, including Miranda — riled conservatives. Bowers vs. Hardwick, the 1986 opinion upholding state sodomy laws, upset liberals. Lawrence vs. Texas, the 2003 case that overturned Bowers, upset conservatives. The anger that Democrats felt over Bush vs. Gore might only be eclipsed by the anger Republicans felt over Roe vs. Wade.

What’s different about the current period, Amar says, is that the politicians criticizing the court “seem to be more reckless. The House and increasingly the Senate don’t just vent and say stuff– they also go through the motions and try to pass legislation.”

Last year the House passed the Marriage Protection Act, which barred federal courts from hearing any claims concerning the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, the 1996 law that allows states to decline to recognize same-sex marriages granted in other states. In September, the House passed another bill stripping federal courts of their right to hear cases involving the constitutionality of the phrase “under God” in the pledge of allegiance.

In neither case did the Senate follow suit. Because the Constitution is generally thought to give federal courts the power to review all questions arising under federal law, many observers say such laws would have been deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. But just because these proposals may have been unconstitutional doesn’t mean they weren’t breathtaking in their reach; they indicate Republicans’ deep contempt toward the federal courts, as well as what Amar calls “the absolute lack of sophistication in the way the House of Representatives seems to discuss the courts.”

While the House may pass reckless legislation that goes nowhere, the Senate is on a course to institute a radical rule change that would permanently alter the makeup of the federal courts. The Senate, which must confirm every nominee to the federal bench, is currently composed of 55 Republicans and 44 Democrats (there is one independent, Vermont Sen. Jim Jeffords). Therefore, on the basis of simple majority vote, Democrats can keep a nominee off the federal bench only by persuading some Republicans to go their way.

During Bush’s first term, though, Democrats began filibustering judicial nominees, a virtually unprecedented tactic that required each nominee to win 60, rather than 51, Senate votes in order to make it to the court. Democrats used the filibuster to block 10 of Bush’s 52 nominees to federal appeals courts; these 10 nominees were opposed largely on ideological grounds, principally because Democrats contended they were too conservative.

Republicans claim that the Democrats’ actions were unfair and unconstitutional. Bush routinely says that his judicial nominees deserve an “up or down” vote. In February, he renominated seven of the 10 filibustered judges in order to press the matter. The strategy was designed to prompt an epic showdown in the Senate, a showdown that may come in the next few weeks.

This is how things will go down: If Democrats again attempt to filibuster one of these previously blocked judges — the first nominee would likely be either Priscilla Owen, who sits on the Texas Supreme Court, or Janice Rogers Brown, of the California Supreme Court — Republicans are expected to trigger a complex parliamentary maneuver in which they’d vote on permanently eliminating the use of the filibuster for all judicial nominees, including those to the Supreme Court.

When Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott was majority leader, he began calling this proposal the “nuclear option”; wary of the bad message this sends (Republicans don’t want to be thought of as the party that annihilated the Senate), they have now begun calling it the “constitutional option.” But even by that label it is seen as no less radical a move. If the gambit passes, Republicans will have virtually unchecked power to hand out lifetime appointments to conservative federal judges, completely remaking the third branch of government.

It isn’t quite clear just yet if Republicans will launch this effort. In recent days, stung perhaps by criticism over Republicans’ actions in the Schiavo case, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has appeared to waver on the issue. Religious conservatives, though, are pressing hard for him to attempt to eliminate the filibuster, and the ones I spoke to were confident that he will indeed go nuclear.

Groups on both sides of this debate are spending millions to win. Liberal organizations say they’re putting down at least $5 million to defeat the nuclear option. Their slogan is “Because America Works Best When No One Party Has Absolute Power.” They have already begun advertising on television in 18 states (The ads show shots of Jimmy Stewart filibustering in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”) “We’ve opened up our 2,500-square-foot war room, and we’re doing a massive grassroots effort; we’ve got 75,000 signatures right now,” says Ralph Neas, president of the People for the American Way Foundation, one of the leading progressive groups opposed to the Republicans’ effort.

A recent Wall Street Journal opinion poll asked respondents whether they thought the Democrats’ proper role in Congress should be to “work in a bipartisan way to pass Bush’s legislative priorities” or, instead, to “provide a balance so Bush and Republicans don’t go too far.” By a 2-1 margin, respondents wanted Democrats to make sure that Bush doesn’t go too far. As for the filibuster, 50 percent want to keep it, while 40 percent want to see it defeated.

If the Democrats’ message is that the filibuster is necessary to check Republican excesses, conservatives say the filibuster must be eliminated in order to check Democratic abuse. More plainly, they say the filibuster on judicial nominees is simply unconstitutional and that it leads to less-than-great judges on the bench. The Constitution doesn’t give the Senate the right to defeat a nominee just because it doesn’t like the nominee’s ideology, conservatives say.

“It really hasn’t ever been the case that presidents have to consider a possible filibuster” in picking their nominees, says Rushton of the Committee for Justice. If that were true, some of today’s Supreme Court Justices — for instance, Clarence Thomas — wouldn’t have made it to the court.

If you’re a liberal, you may think this is a good thing. But if Clarence Thomas doesn’t get on the court, neither does a liberal justice like Brennan. If you require a supermajority for all Supreme Court nominations, you’re inevitably relegating yourself to more moderate federal judges — judges that are neither predictably liberal nor conservative. Did the founding fathers envision that? Do liberals want that? The difference between a filibuster and no filibuster is the difference between a court full of judges with arch views — whether liberal or conservative — and a court with nine Anthony Kennedys, one that doesn’t toe an especially firm ideological line.

But balance is apparently the last thing that conservatives want. To hear conservatives talk about Kennedy, you’d think there was a special circle of hell reserved for him. Kennedy, who has sided with the liberals in landmark cases involving gay rights, abortion and the death penalty, is an apostate; not only that, his jurisprudence, like Sandra Day O’Connor’s, is seen as ad hoc, ever shifting with the times, unmoored by tradition or law. Kennedy is fond of citing the opinions of foreign courts, as well as more mystical concepts of personhood.

In Planned Parenthood vs. Casey, the 1992 decision that upheld abortion rights, Kennedy declared, “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” Kennedy’s warm and fuzzy approach to the law prompts endless derision from conservatives. And when Republicans get rid of the filibuster, says Rushton, “You will not see Anthony Kennedy-style Zen Buddhism from the bench.”

On the other hand, what’s wrong with Anthony Kennedy-style Zen Buddhism? Supreme Court justices are enormously powerful, and you get only a few chances, every now and then, to select a new one. These people are going to serve on the court for decades. Wouldn’t it be more prudent, says Amar, to choose someone who’s neither too far gone on either the left or the right? “If Bush gets three picks he’ll lock into place a conservative court for the next 40 years,” Amar says. “If the country isn’t conservative for all those years” — if the country, as it is bound to do, shifts in its mores — “you wouldn’t want those conservative judges there.” Keeping the filibuster, Amar says, ensures a more moderate court, and there’s nothing wrong with moderation for 40 years.

Republicans, who currently enjoy enormous power in two branches of the federal government, believe they can leverage that power into the third branch, while at the same time holding on to the Congress and the White House. None of us knows if this is true. But at least for now, if Republicans overcome the filibuster, they’ll enjoy a year or more in which they can pack the courts with conservative judges. Under Bush, in the absence of a filibuster, and spurred by a powerful interest group, they are likely to give us many more judges in precisely that mold.

McHenry has been one of the most completely shameless of House Republicans since his arrival in Congress, in 2005, when he immediately and publicly endorsed Tom DeLay’s brilliant plan to exempt himself from ethics rules as his connections to Jack Abramoff began to end his career. But he was born to be cheerfully corrupt: He’s a product of the College Republicans, an organization that trains little Lee Atwaters, Karl Roves and Grover Norquists in the arts of scorched-earth campaigning and wholly irresponsible “governing” on behalf of the monied interests that bought you your job. The ethos is win by any means necessary, legal or quasi-legal (or worse, as long as you never get caught), and McHenry was very good at that, according to Benjamin Wallace-Wells’ memorable profile of the then-freshman in the Washington Monthly.

After the College Republicans, and a failed state legislature race, McHenry moved on to truly insidious conservative astroturfing/push-polling/communications firm DCI, then worked for Rove, then took a political appointment in the Bush administration, then moved to the district he now represents, where he started a real estate company that did not actually buy or sell any real estate, so that he could run for Congress as “a small businessman.”

Once in the United States House of Representatives, McHenry personally intervened in a wild and bloody College Republican National Committee chair election, on behalf of a personal friend of his who’d become slightly toxic after he sent fundraising letters attempting to trick “elderly people with dementia” into donating to the CRNC. And he was successful! The horrible kid won, against all odds:

In other phone calls, McHenry was more blunt: “He told me, and several of my friends that we were done in politics if we didn’t support him,” another College Republican chapter president told me. (McHenry has admitted that he and Deans made the calls but denied that they threatened anyone’s career). Over the course of two weeks, after a couple of a dozen calls, McHenry prevailed upon those in the North Carolina delegation to change their votes, removing three votes from Davidson’s column and putting them in Gourley’s. Gourley ended up winning by six votes; had North Carolina voted the other way, Davidson might have won.

Another of McHenry’s first acts in Congress, Wallace-Wells writes, was to champion a bill that was specifically written to rip off a large portion of his constituents, by making it “much harder for government to regulate or block the conversion of credit unions into banks …” He is a close ally of major consumer financial institutions with a plum assignment to the Committee on Financial Services, which is great for raising money.

It’s only natural that Elizabeth Warren, whose mission is to protect consumers from unethical and predatory practices by these institutions, is Patrick McHenry’s enemy. You can complain on his Facebook wall all you like, but the Republican from North Carolina is incapable of feeling embarrassment.

And his treatment of Warren will only make him a bigger conservative hero and an even more attractive investment opportunity for major banks.

The charges arose after DeLay set up a PAC to funnel corporate money, which is barred in Texas elections, to candidates for the state legislature. The group raised $190,000 and funneled it through the national Republican Party, which then distributed the money to several state-level candidates in Texas.

To learn more about the case that brought DeLay down, I spoke with Lou Dubose, who co-authored “The Hammer,” a biography of DeLay. The former editor of the Texas Observer and the current editor of the Washington Spectator newsletter, Dubose covered the trial gavel to gavel in Austin. He was in the courtroom on Monday when DeLay gave a lengthy presentencing speech accusing prosecutors of having political motivations and claiming he had $10 million in legal bills. 

I asked Dubose whether DeLay, who is planning an appeal, will ever see the inside of a jail cell, and whether the former majority leader appears humbled by the ordeal of the trial.  The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Did you ever think that you would see this happen?

I really didn’t. This was a working class jury, and I think that made a huge difference.

What was the dynamic with the jury — why did that make a difference?

Gary Cobb, the assistant DA who tried the case, really dragged out the $50,000 checks and the flights on corporate jets with the same persons who had written the checks to DeLay’s PAC. The sort of life that Tom DeLay lived at the expense of the corporate lobby — I think that really made an impact. By their clothes and what we know about them, it was a real working-class jury.

Oddly enough, Tom DeLay spent the entire duration of the three-week trial in a motor home rather than the Four Seasons. He drove his motor coach over here and checked into a motor home park in south Austin, a long way from where he was playing golf at Saint Andrews in Scotland. Then there was also the fact of the way the DeLays dressed, the fact that Reverend Rick Scarborough was sitting behind them. There was a lot of bling there that these people on the jury didn’t have.

Was it possible to tell where the $190,000 ended up? Did it just go to the state GOP?

The money came back, and it went to the candidates in Texas for whom it was designated. The backstory, of course, is that the Republicans controlled everything in Texas but the statehouse. Therefore they could not control redistricting. So DeLay set this organization up in 2001 for the 2002 election and they had to win a majority in the house. They moved this $190,000 up to D.C. because they were specifically raising corporate money, which was easier to raise. They sent it to Washington with specific instructions to send it back to these designated candidates. The candidates got the checks in the exact amount of $190,000.

And DeLay personally raised the money?

Well, that was the question. He stayed in the background but the state proved that he was aware that that transaction had happened. He was probably involved in directing it, although they didn’t have direct testimony on that. They put the three men who did the money-laundering in a room together in Sugar Land, Texas, in DeLay’s district, before the transaction was made.

Remarkably, at one point in the trial, DeLay went out and talked to Laylan Copelin of the Austin American-Statesman, who is a really terrific reporter. And Laylan asked him if he could have stopped the transaction. And DeLay said, “I could have stopped it, but why would I?”

And that was used in the trial?

In the middle of the trial, the state called Laylan Copelin as a witness — really bizarre. He’d been sitting there most of the trial; two weeks into the trial they call him as a witness because of what DeLay had said. His story ran, and two days later he was on the stand testifying as to what he had been told.

So I think DeLay proved to be a terrible client for a storied criminal defense attorney, Dick DeGuerin. That said, the state did an incredible job putting on a case that had to be by nature largely circumstantial.

Do you think he will ever spend a day in jail?

No. Simply because the Court of Criminal Appeals is an elected court, it’s all Republican, it’s highly political. It’s known as a prosecutors’ court, but in this case I would bet that they’re going to rule for the defendant. The Third Court of Appeals, where the appeal will start, is also a Republican court.

What are the issues in the appeal?

These courts are going to have to find a creative way of setting Tom DeLay free. One argument that they once made that they might try to revive is that money-laundering didn’t apply to checks, it applied to cash. This involved checks. The problem with that at the appellate level is that there have been a number of convictions based on money laundering with checks. So are you going to overturn all these prior convictions in order to save Tom DeLay?

What is DeLay doing these days?

You know, nothing. He is struggling to remain relevant. DeLay was always the star at CPAC, the annual conservative conference in Washington. But he hasn’t been allowed to speak there. Two years ago at CPAC, he was trolling for interviews. At the last CPAC convention, he was shunned.

He’s become a pariah to the Republican Party, and I don’t quite understand why. The true believers hold him responsible, rightly, for the Bush Medicare prescription drug bill, which DeLay pushed through. But he’s of no use to them anymore, and he’s not wanted. So most of what he does is struggle to remain relevant, and he’s not. Dick DeGuerin, in his closing argument, said “This prosecution has rendered my client unemployable.” And to my knowledge, he’s not employed.

His media statements have been defiant, but has he changed?

I don’t think so. That’s what’s remarkable. This is the same Tom DeLay that I saw every day for a year and a half when I followed him in Washington. It seemed to me that it never occurred to him that he no longer had the power that he once exercised. He had no regrets — he’s the same guy, except that he’s driving in a motor home instead of sleeping in the Four Seasons.

“This is an abuse of power. It’s a miscarriage of justice, and I still maintain that I am innocent. The criminalization of politics undermines our very system and I’m very disappointed in the outcome,” DeLay told reporters outside the courtroom. He remains free on bond, and his sentencing was tentatively set to begin on Dec. 20.

Prosecutors said DeLay, who once held the No. 2 job in the House of Representatives and whose heavy-handed style earned him the nickname “the Hammer,” used his political action committee to illegally channel $190,000 in corporate donations into 2002 Texas legislative races through a money swap.

DeLay and his attorneys maintained the former Houston-area congressman did nothing wrong as no corporate funds went to Texas candidates and the money swap was legal.

The verdict came after a three-week trial in which prosecutors presented more than 30 witnesses and volumes of e-mails and other documents. DeLay’s attorneys presented five witnesses.

Prosecutors said DeLay conspired with two associates, John Colyandro and Jim Ellis, to use his Texas-based PAC to send $190,000 in corporate money to an arm of the Washington-based Republican National Committee, or RNC. The RNC then sent the same amount to seven Texas House candidates. Under Texas law, corporate money can’t go directly to political campaigns.

Prosecutors claim the money helped Republicans take control of the Texas House. That enabled the GOP majority to push through a Delay-engineered congressional redistricting plan that sent more Texas Republicans to Congress in 2004 — and strengthened DeLay’s political power.

DeLay’s attorneys argued the money swap resulted in the seven candidates getting donations from individuals, which they could legally use in Texas.

They also said DeLay only lent his name to the PAC and had little involvement in how it was run. Prosecutors, who presented mostly circumstantial evidence, didn’t prove he committed a crime, they said.

DeLay has chosen to have Senior Judge Pat Priest sentence him. He faces five years to life in prison on the money laundering charge and two to 20 years on the conspiracy charge. He also would be eligible for probation.

The 2005 criminal charges in Texas, as well as a separate federal investigation of DeLay’s ties to disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, ended his 22-year political career representing suburban Houston. The Justice Department probe into DeLay’s ties to Abramoff ended without any charges filed against DeLay.

Ellis and Colyandro, who face lesser charges, will be tried later.

Except for a 2009 appearance on ABC’s hit television show “Dancing With the Stars,” DeLay has been out of the spotlight since resigning from Congress in 2006. He now runs a consulting firm based in the Houston suburb of Sugar Land.