"Did Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) try to get the Feds to hunt down the runaway Texas Democrats or not? It’s coming down to one man’s word against another’s. On one side you’ve got Tom DeLay, and on the other you’ve got … well, Tom DeLay."

That's the lede of my new column in The Hill which goes over some of Tom DeLay's, let's say, not altogether consistent statements about just how involved he may or may not have been in trying to get the Feds to arrest those Texas state legislators and haul them back to Austin to make a quorum call.

Yesterday Democrats in Washington were giving Tom Ridge a hard time for not agreeing to turn over the transcripts of the calls that the Texas Department of Public Safety made to the Department of Homeland Security to get them involved in the manhunt.

Now this morning, the Forth Worth Star-Telegram -- the paper that broke the original story of Homeland Security's involvement last week -- reports that "one day before Democrats ended their boycott of the Texas House last week, the Texas Department of Public Safety ordered the destruction of all records and photos gathered in the search for them."