The problem with absolute one-party rule — command of the legislative, executive and judicial branches by one political party — is its quick and certain transition to mafia-like corruption. The further problem is the corruption becomes so massive, so widespread and so common, that it ceases to be news. It’s just the way things are. Only a fool would fail to pay or criticize or even see as criminal or immoral the neighborhood loan shark or numbers racket boys. That kind of thinking can get you hurt. A willful blindness to the corruption is much safer.

And that’s today’s Texas. And it’s nowhere more apparent that in our courts, which, from the Texas Supreme Court on down, have been colonized by hacks and cronies of Tom DeLay and Tom Craddick.

The 3rd Court of Appeals unasked-for opinion that illegal money laundering doesn’t apply to money laundering with checks — you read that right — provides a perfect window into the endemic corruption of Texas government. The sole purpose of this ruling is to provide a get-out-of-jail free card to some top henchmen of the current leadership. And the ruling was paid for by the same contributors who brought the current corrupt leadership to power.

The three judge panel of the court who signed the opinion — W. Kenneth Law, Bob Pemberton and Alan Waldrop — are all owned by the same corrupt cabal that gave us the now disgraced Tom DeLay, the extremist autocrat Tom Craddick and others.

Before joining the court, Waldrop was a lobbyist for Texans for Lawsuit Reform, itself deeply implicated in the very scandal which led to the 3rd Court’s ruling. The TLR is to this corrupt, one-party, out-of-balance rule what junk yards or car washes are to the mob: influence peddlers and special interest protectors posing as a legitimate enterprise.

Waldrop received $5,000 from the TLR, $5,000 from anti-public school obsessive James Leininger, $6,000 from Walter Negley, and significant support from various other involved PACs.

Pemberton received $6,500 from Bob Perry, the Houston-are construction magnate who funded the notorious, ugly Swift Boat campaigns. He DeLay’s most significant benefactor, Craddick’s too. Harold Simmons, also notorious for his megalomania and his dark and ugly attack campaigns on political opponents, gave Pemberton $5,000. The TLR gave him $7,500.

Wanting in on the take, Ken Law received $5,000 from the TLR.

Most Texans will recognize this kind of corruption from the movies, especially mob movies in which the bad guys escape the long arm of the law because they’ve paid off the judges. Most of those movies are based on reality, and that reality has become all-too-real in Texas.