Politics is a particularly difficult business. Reputations shined for a lifetime can be destroyed in a nano news cycle.

Currently a number of Republicans are under clouds of legal/ethical challenges. Like the movie &#8220Groundhog Day,” the theme of corruption of the most powerful comes back over and over again in Washington, regardless of party affiliation.

Under the Special Prosecutor Law (expired after the Clinton years) it seemed every administration official in the 1990s was investigated.

One special prosecutor from that era is actually continuing his investigation of Henry Cisneros as you read thisŠfive years after the law expired. So, legal and ethical charges in Washington are hardly news.

Yet one has to consider the case of Tom DeLay as special among all those in the past. The charges, past and present, against DeLay are actually too long to list here.

The current ethical issues are

three: First, that DeLay has accepted travel gifts from his good friend, lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Second, that Tom &#8220laundered” money in the PAC he started to create a Republican majority in Texas.

Third, that Delay has used his position in the House of Representatives to politicize the House ethics committee, firing the Republican committee chair that last year cited him for three ethics violations, and replacing him and other committee members with loyalists to himself.

There is a fourth issue that apparently is not covered by current law, though it should be. It is the issue that may best characterize the nature of Mr. DeLay better than those above.

This issue begins in Cicero, an ethnic neighborhood in Chicago, where Tony Soprano would have felt completely at home.

In Cicero you can make a living in the insurance business without ever writing a single policy. It works pretty simply. You and a couple of your friends stop in a retail shop and advise the owner that there have been several windows broken in the area. You offer to protect their windows.

They usually decline. Shortly after the visit, a window in the store is broken. The insurers stop back, lament the breakage, and again offer to protect the windows of the store.

They may also mention that there have been fires in stores in the neighborhood, and the owners should have protection for fires as well. At this point the retailer decides to purchase insurance and the insurers begin stopping by weekly to pick up their all-cash payments.

Usually, the store experiences no more damage and life goes on in Cicero.

DeLay grew up in Texas, but understands Cicero. Tom created the K Street project, named after a Washington street that houses the offices of many of the most accomplished lobbying firms. The project was an insurance product that Tom offered to lobbyists.

It worked this way: Tom would find out a lobbyist had called on a Republican, any Republican.

He then contacted the lobbyist and informed them that they had contributed to Democrats (before DeLay lobbyists regularly contributed to both parties, giving 20 percent or so more to the party in power) and that if they continued to do this they would have no access to the majority party.

Many responded by stopping their bi-party contributions and supporting the Republicans only. They would then be called upon to pay for golf events, dinners and other activities, as well as make regular contributions to the party.

This worked well and they then gained access to help shape legislation that affected their special interests.

Tom DeLay keeps windows from breaking - if you can afford the insurance. And that is just the tip of the iceberg.

Does character matter? Only if you find this protection racket offensive.

Dr. Jim Crawford is an administrator at Ohio University Southern. He can be reached at drjim893@msn.com.