Texas Democrats hiding in Oklahoma, Rangers called in

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Rspaight
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Texas Democrats hiding in Oklahoma, Rangers called in

Postby Rspaight » Tue May 13, 2003 9:29 am

This is hilarious:

http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/05/ ... index.html

'Amber Alert' issued -- for on-the-run Texas lawmakers
'It is a disgrace to run and hide'
Tuesday, May 13, 2003 Posted: 3:54 AM EDT (0754 GMT)

AUSTIN, Texas (CNN) -- The political version of the Amber Alert was posted for 53 Texas legislators who fled the state Capitol to avoid a vote that could cost Democrats seven congressional seats.

Without the Democrats present, the Republican-controlled House does not have the two-thirds quorum needed for a vote on legislation to redraw congressional districts.

News reports late Monday quoted leaders of the missing Democrats as saying they are gathered across the state line in Ardmore, Oklahoma, out of reach of Texas Rangers who have been ordered to arrest them and return them to the House chamber.

A bulletin was posted Monday on the Texas Department of Public Safety Web site -- the same one used to alert citizens to missing children and wanted criminals -- asking for help in locating the missing lawmakers.

"The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) is asking the public for assistance in locating 53 Texas legislators who have disappeared," the bulletin read. "Anyone who has information regarding the current whereabouts of the legislators listed below is asked to call 1-800-525-5555."

"Under the Texas Constitution, the majority of members present in session in the House can vote to compel the presence of enough members to make a quorum," it read. "Members of the House did so this morning and directed the Sergeant-at-Arms of the House and the DPS to locate the absent members and bring them back to Austin."

The Web site then names the 53 missing Democrats.

A report in The Austin American-Statesman newspaper Tuesday morning said the group was gathered in the Holiday Inn near the Texas state line in Ardmore, Oklahoma, and that a news conference was planned for Tuesday.

Republicans took control of the Texas House in November for the first time since Reconstruction. With 88 Republican members in the 150-member body, they still need at least a dozen Democrats present for a quorum. Just three Democrats remained at the Capitol on Monday, the newspaper said.

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Patrick M
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Postby Patrick M » Thu May 15, 2003 1:50 pm

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0514-07.htm

Published on Wednesday, May 14, 2003 by CommonDreams.org
Homeland Security Department Used to Track Texas Democrats
by Glenn W. Smith

Republicans in Washington and Austin, Texas apparently used a Homeland Security Department agency to track Texas Democratic legislators who left the state to block passage of a GOP-backed Congressional redistricting bill.

This is the same Homeland Security Department that is supposed to be making America safe from foreign terrorists. It's the agency we were told would never be used for domestic political purposes.

But today's edition of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports that the Air and Marine Interdiction and Coordination Center, in Riverside, California, became involved in the Republican search for 51 Democratic state representatives who went to Ardmore, Oklahoma to break a quorum of the House and block action on the redistricting bill.

Here's what the Star-Telegram reported: "The agency received a call to locate a specific Piper turboprop aircraft. It was determined that the plane belonged to former House Speaker Pete Laney." Laney is one of the Democrats who is fighting against the redistricting bill.

The newspaper said, "Laney's plane proved to be a key piece of information because, (Republican House Speaker) Craddick said, it's how he determined that the Democrats were in Ardmore. 'We called someone, and they said they were going to track it. I have no idea how they tracked it down,' Craddick said. 'That's how we found them.'"

The Interdiction and Coordination center "falls under the auspices of the Homeland Security Department," the Star-Telegram reported.

Republican Craddick, at the request of U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay, is pushing a redistricting plan that would eliminate five Democrats from the U.S. Congress. Currently, the Texas delegation contains 17 Democrats and 15 Republicans.

While saying they "called someone," Craddick denied making calls to any federal agency, but DeLay confirmed that Republicans sought the assistance of federal law enforcement.

The action by the House Democrats, dubbed the "Heroes of the House" and the "Killer D's" (a reference to a similar quorum-busting action by Texas Senate Democrats in the late 1970s), has gained national attention. Their action has also received a surprising amount of support from Texas newspapers, which have criticized the deeply partisan actions of Texas Republicans.

Republican leaders in Texas and Washington are furious. They have called the Democrats, holed up in a Holiday Inn in Ardmore, "cowards" and "terrorists."

State troopers have followed the Democrats wives, parents and children. Troopers even staked out a hospital where one lawmaker's premature twins are being cared for. Staffers have been harassed. All this has happened after the location of the Democrats was known.

Now, in a chilling revelation, we discover the Homeland Security Department was apparently used to try and track the Democrats' whereabouts.

It was no doubt a ham-fisted, incautious and bungled attempt (like the Watergate burglary) by Republicans to use all the law enforcement they could find to overcome the Democrats' temporary advantage.

But the use of the Homeland Security Department for partisan political purposes should alarm all Americans. It deserves a full, complete and independent investigation.

The warnings of civil libertarians appear to have been justified. Even if it turns out that some half-crazed Republican staffer or independent investigator called the Air and Marine Interdiction and Coordination Center, it raises disturbing questions about the operations of Homeland Security and the lengths Republicans will go enforce their will.

Americans deserve to know the details of this scandal. And they deserve to know them now.

Glenn W. Smith is managing director/consultant to the progressive Rockridge Institute of Oakland, California. Smith lives in Austin, Texas. His email is glenns@affinitydynamics.com.

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Postby Rspaight » Thu May 15, 2003 2:28 pm

Republican leaders in Texas and Washington are furious. They have called the Democrats, holed up in a Holiday Inn in Ardmore, "cowards" and "terrorists."

State troopers have followed the Democrats wives, parents and children. Troopers even staked out a hospital where one lawmaker's premature twins are being cared for. Staffers have been harassed. All this has happened after the location of the Democrats was known.


Those two paragraphs one after the other says about all that needs to be said, I think.

Ryan
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Grant
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Postby Grant » Thu May 15, 2003 3:41 pm

What? a Democrat can't take a little "vacation" now? :lol:

Gee, i'm wondering how the next elections are going to shape up...

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Postby Patrick M » Thu May 22, 2003 12:10 am

http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centreda ... tstory.jsp

Posted on Wed, May. 21, 2003



Texas agency destroyed records related to search for Democrats

BY JAY ROOT
Knight Ridder Newspapers

AUSTIN, Texas - (KRT) - 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, documents obtained Tuesday show.

A one-sentence order sent by e-mail on the morning of May 14 was apparently carried out, a DPS spokesman said Tuesday. The revelation comes as federal authorities are investigating how a division of the federal Homeland Security Department was dragged into the hunt for the missing Democrats - at the request of the state police agency.

Addressed to "Captains," the order said: "Any notes, correspondence, photos, etc. that were obtained pursuant to the absconded House of Representative members shall be destroyed immediately. No copies are to be kept. Any questions please contact me."

It was signed by the commander of the DPS Special Crimes Service, L.C. "Tony" Marshall.

The head of a state House panel looking into law enforcement's role in the search expressed outrage at the order, obtained by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram under the Texas Open Records Act.

"That's unbelievable," said state Rep. Kevin Bailey, chairman of the House General Investigating Committee and one of the 51 Democrats who fled to Ardmore, Okla., during the walkout last week.

"I'm appalled. It would appear as though there is something to hide," Bailey said. "And based on some information we've been told inside DPS, it just concerns me more that there were some overzealous people inside the agency. The question is who was driving them so hard. I really am shocked that they would be destroying any internal information."

Bailey said the destruction of records "probably is a crime."

A Republican member of the House committee, state Rep. Dan Flynn, said he found word of the document destruction disturbing but took a dim view of conducting a legislative investigation of the incident.

"If there is something that's being destroyed that's a public record, yeah, that would disturb me," Flynn said. But he said probing DPS' role in the search for the Democrats would be a "political football" best left to others.

"Of course if the speaker tells us to do it we'll go after it, but it just doesn't seem to be an issue that would be in the purview of what we're doing," Flynn said.

House Speaker Tom Craddick, a Republican, recently said the investigating committee could look at the issue if it wanted to. It was Craddick who originally ordered the DPS to find the Democrats and return them to the state Capitol so that the House could achieve the quorum necessary to bring up a congressional redistricting bill. The boycott successfully killed that bill and others.

DPS spokesman Tom Vinger could not say Tuesday who, if anyone, gave Marshall the order to destroy records, but he said there was nothing inappropriate about it.

"The investigation was complete. Since this was not a criminal investigation, we feel it would be inappropriate to keep any files," he said. Asked if all the records created during the hunt for the missing Democrats were indeed destroyed, Vinger said, "To the best of my knowledge, yeah."

State law generally requires that records be kept for a certain period of time, but it was unclear late Tuesday how those guidelines would affect DPS' actions.

Angela Hale, spokeswoman for Attorney General Greg Abbott, a Republican, said it would be a crime to destroy records that had been requested under the Texas Open Records Act. It could not be determined late Tuesday if there was a standing request for the records before they were destroyed.

Hale said destroying records before state guidelines allow it would not be within the purview of the attorney general.

Rob Wiley, past president of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, said it may not be a crime, but it is not how state agencies typically handle records.

"As a general rule, government agencies don't destroy records this quickly … that is very unusual," he said.

"A reasonable person would certainly believe that somebody thinks something ought to be hidden," Wiley said. "The likelihood was there was some kind of attempt to use the governmental processes for what was clearly a partisan political issue."

The destruction order first went out to the DPS captains at 9:39 a.m. May 14, a day before runaway Democrats began returning to Texas.

At 1 p.m. that day, the e-mail order was forwarded to an officer lower on the DPS command chain - Lt. Will Crais. Federal officials and published reports have named Crais as the law enforcement officer who called for federal help in locating a plane owned by one of the missing Democrats.

The DPS would neither confirm nor deny that Crais was the one who called in the Air and Marine Interdiction Coordination Center, a division of Homeland Security based in Riverside, Calif. The federal agency, which normally tracks drug smugglers and terrorists, made some phone calls but never found the plane.

In a statement last week, the customs enforcement agency that oversees the interdiction center said it only became involved after the DPS indicated the Piper Cheyenne belonging to former Texas House Speaker Pete Laney may have gone down.

More recently, the Homeland Security Department has declined to release tapes or transcripts of the conversations between DPS and the federal interdiction center.

In Washington on Tuesday, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge - in an appearance before the House Select Committee on Homeland Security - was asked why the information had not been released as requested by several Democratic members of Congress.

Ridge said he would review the denial to release the tapes but pointed to an investigation of the matter being conducted by the department's internal watchdog.

"We thought it was very appropriate, based on the multiple inquiries that we received from members of Congress … that we deploy the means with which Congress has given us, and that's an inspector-general within our department," Ridge said.

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(Knight Ridder Newspapers correspondent Maria Recio contributed to this report.)

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© 2003, Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Visit the Star-Telegram on the World Wide Web: www.star-telegram.com.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

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Ed Bishop
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Postby Ed Bishop » Thu Jun 05, 2003 6:31 am

On one level, a comical story; on another, almost surrealistically absurd. One party, with more power than the other, attempts to thieve away still more power. The other side, in a masterstroke of perverse genius, figures out that if they cross state lines and don't vote, they can win, since the rules don't include a codisil for crossing state lines. The more I think about it, the funnier it is. But, having said that, it's no way to run any form of government. State politics are always a bit wilder than the national type, which tends to skew toward obvious, universal issues. State politics involve fiefdoms, cliques, regional prejudices, and odd political couplings.

ED 8)
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