Ronnie Earle DOES have a lump of coal for Tom DeLay

It's a little bonus subpoena of the campaign contribution records of Bret Wilkes, the bagman of resigned-in-disgrace, about-to-be-sentenced, and playing-state’s-evidence California GOP Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham.

Here’s a complete list of Wilkes Corp/ADCS recipients, almost entirely Republicans; DeLay ranks No. 3.

In addition to the campaign contributions, DeLay was one of a number of Congressmen taking free rides on Wilkes’ time-shared private plane.

If you’ve followed much of this story, you may remember that Cunningham agreed to roll over for the feds as part of his plea. Now, of course, Earle’s case is state-level, but investigations like this often pursue parallel paths, with information, the need for information, and prosecutorial back-scratching coming to the fore.

With Earle appealing the district court decision to throw out the conspiracy count against DeLay, we have a full month, surely, for more financial links between DeLay and various shady lobbyists to start popping up.

So, despite Denny Hastert’s plan to keep the House out of session until the end of January, to postpone a leadership vote as long as possible, this can be nothing but bad news for the Hammer.

Now, the next big question is — do the House GOP long knives finally start coming out? Perhaps not so fast.

Roy Blunt Jr., who might be expected to be most likely to shiv DeLay, got money both from Wilkes and the MZM PAC. A complete list shows MZM PAC recipients are almost all Republicans.

NB: This should show people like Josh Marshall and Kos diarists that I’m not ignorant, that I don’t appreciate the seriousness of some of these financial shakedowns and slush funds, and that, in cases where Republicans are just about entirely at fault, that I won’t hesitate to point that out.

See this Daily Kos diary for a bigger overview on how Wilkes got to be who he is.

But, remember, this is the Wilkes case. Not the Abramoff case. The two are intertwining more and more, but the Indian gaming part of the Abramoff schtick is still a separate, and sadly, at least somewhat bipartisan, issue.