The woes of Tom DeLay have been well documented on this blog and others, and the story is finally beginning to gain some traction in the mainstream media. Leslie Stahl dug deep into the story on 60 Minutes earlier this month, and most of the major national papers have also begun to look into the story. This week, it's US News and World Report's turn to look into the Hammer. Kit R. Roane, Dan Morrison and Carol Flake Chapman have the first story:

It takes a lot to work off a bad handle. So it says something about Tom DeLay that the scrappy Texas legislator once known as "Hot Tub Tom" has become "the Hammer," one of the most powerful Republicans to come down the pike in a long time.

It didn't happen overnight, of course. It took years, but as he accumulated more and more power, DeLay also made more than his share of enemies, and some began looking for him to slip, wondering if there would finally be a payback time for his cozy relationships with lobbyists, his fundraising schemes, and his ham-handed politics.

These days, Washington is on the edge of its seat as the Hammer faces a maelstrom of legal and ethical troubles, caught up in scandals involving former aides, eight-figure lobbyists, and political action committees.

The trio of Roane, Morrison, and Chapman do a good job of connecting all of the dots in the story and laying out the state of the potential case against the Majority Leader. If you don't feel like you know all of the details, make suer to check it out. For those interested in the larger picture, US News' resident pundit Gloria Borger has a piece of her own in the issue as well.

If DeLay reported to a corporate board, he would be in a heap of trouble. At the very least, he would be answering some tough questions. But, lest we forget, this is Congress--so DeLay's pals are protecting him. In November, they passed a rule allowing someone who is indicted to continue to serve, just in case. (Happily, it was quickly overturned when Republicans realized they had created a public-relations disaster.) But GOP efforts to support DeLay didn't stop there: They bounced the Republican who led the ethics panel that dared rebuke DeLay, replacing him with a more dependably loyal member. Then, GOP party leaders decided to rewrite the rules of the traditionally bipartisan ethics committee to make it more difficult to pursue investigations of misconduct. Now Democrats on the committee are balking, refusing to conduct any ethics deliberations at all. It's a mess, leaving the House without any real way to investigate or punish its own.

Borger provides the Democrats and progressives with a perfect line of attack to go after DeLay: the Republicans purport to run Congress like a business, but the only business run like the Republican Congress is Enron.