Rebel Texas Democrats to Hold Conference

What were they looking for?

Texas Deleted Documents About Search for Democrats
By KATE ZERNIKE


HOUSTON, May 21 — The fight over the flight of Democratic legislators intensified yesterday as the Texas Department of Public Safety admitted it had destroyed documents that were collected last week as state troopers searched for the missing lawmakers.
What started out as a local partisan dispute about redistricting escalated into accusations of a cover-up and abuse of federal power.

Indeed, federal authorities are investigating how the Department of Homeland Security became involved in the search for the lawmakers.

Today's uproar began after The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported that a commander at the Department of Public Safety issued an e-mail notice instructing that all "notes, correspondence, photos, etc." concerning the search "be destroyed immediately


"It just doesn't smell right," said State Representative Garnet F. Coleman of Houston, a leader of the move by 51 Democrats to go to Oklahoma to deny House Republicans a quorum for a vote on redistricting.

"Clearly, there's some people trying to remove information, or delete information, that is damaging to their reputation," Mr. Coleman said. "We question the motive on the destruction. And what we really want to know is, who told the Department of Public Safety to do it?"

Democrats in Texas and in the state's delegation in Washington have asked for an investigation into why the federal Department of Homeland Security was called in on the case.

The security department has begun its own inquiry and said it got involved only because it had been told that a plane carrying the lawmakers was missing or had crashed.
The Democrats in Washington demanded their investigation on May 14. That was the same morning a commander at the Department of Public Safety sent the e-mail notice.

A copy of the notice shows that it was forwarded to the lieutenant identified by the office of the Texas House speaker as the public safety officer who had called the Homeland Security Department about the plane. The aircraft belonged to Representative James E. Laney, a Democrat who had been the House speaker until Republicans gained control after last year's elections.

Democrats today seized on that addressing, saying it suggested that the police lieutenant, Will Crais, was being instructed to erase his communications because they were the subject of an investigation.
The Department of Public Safety said in a statement today that it was under a federal obligation to erase the documents.

"We can maintain intelligence information only if there is a reasonable suspicion that the individual is involved in criminal activity and the information is relevant to that criminal activity," it said. "This was not a criminal matter, so we could not legally maintain that information."
The Department of Homeland Security did not order its investigation until Friday, two days after the e-mail directive was sent.
The Texas redistricting plan could have shifted several Democratic Congressional seats to Republican control. Republicans in Washington were eager for its passage, so much so that Democrats in Texas said the plan had been drawn up by Representative Tom DeLay, who is the majority leader of the House and a former Texas legislator.

Only 4 of the Texas House's 62 Democrats showed up on May 12 for the redistricting vote. Representative Tom Craddick, the Republican who is speaker, asked the Department of Public Safety to search for the missing legislators and set up a command center in a conference room near his Capitol office.
Fifty-one of the Democrats were at the motel in Ardmore, Okla. They blocked the vote with puckish delight, watching "The Fugitive" and "Catch Me If You Can" on the bus trip to Ardmore. They stayed away until Thursday, when the redistricting bill died on procedural grounds.
Upon their return, the lawmakers accused Texas state troopers of harassing their spouses, even of tracking one down at a neonatal clinic where her twins were born prematurely. They insisted that Mr. Craddick had directed the search efforts from his command center.
Mr. Craddick denied putting inappropriate pressure on public safety officials. He may have passed along tips, he said, and walked through the command center, but only because it was between his office and an apartment he keeps in the Capitol.

Late today, he issued a statement that ended by saying, "I'm afraid that those who are pursuing a conspiracy are drilling a dry well."


Hubris is a funny thing. It's not restricted to one side or the other. This report shows a party willing and eager to indulge in the illegal and bordering on the illegal to get their way. Of course, republicans have a long and convoluted history with this, going back to all the denials about wrongdoing in the Watergate scandal. And that started with what they thought was a small thing - breaking and entering. With disclaimers about the legality of their act, and stories about what the democrats were trying to do. In the end, hubris brought them down.

The search has now led to the Governor:



Houston Chronicle

PD - One point that seems to be being glossed over in all of these articles, and one that seems quite pertinent to me, is whether or not TX officials knew the status of those legislators at that time. The legislators were missing and had gone to lengths to conceal their intentions and their whereabouts. If TX officials did not know what the legislators were up to, taking extreme measures to find them would not be unreasonable.

I do not know that answer to this one way or the other. I only know that it is a piece of the puzzle that is notably absent from these Democrat-friendly media reports.

Pray tell, Scrat, why?

There was a great op ed piece in yesterday's NY Times. Mentioned Tom De Lay's sense of how the rules do (and don't apply to him). When told by a staffer that he couldn't smoke his cigar in a gov't building in DC, he replied, "I am the federal government." Nuff said, Tom!

Amazing to me it is that a simple blowjob is worth a 50-60 million dollar investigation with a special prosecutor ...

Gross misconduct and misuse (unlawful ?) of Federal Authority is just ducky!!

I'm always amazed at how the Republican mind works !!

Anon

Knowing only that legislators were missing and had expressed to no one an intent to be missing, officials would be forced to at least consider the possibility of foul play. Given that, extreme measures would certainly be warranted.

The Republicans' concern for the welfare of their Democratic colleagues is truly touching. Too bad I have no confidence at all that this is what motivated the search.

Did they think UFOs had swooped down and taken the Dems away en masse?

Dart - That you assume the worst of Republicans does not make your assumptions valid. I, on the other hand, am assuming nothing. I am simply pointing out something I do not know; a point on which liberal reporters are mute and a point which could clearly bear on the motives of those involved. It may well be that everyone knew full well what was happening, but if they didn't, they had an obligation to respond based on a worst-case assumption and using any and all available tools.

Yes, thak God for the diligent DPS, who barged into one representative's home and cornered his teenage daughter, and the other troopers who rushed to the neonatal unit at John Sealy Hospital in Galveston looking for another wayward Dem, only to find just his wife, who had prematurely delivered their twins.

Great joke, Scrat. Tell us another.

OK, Scrat, time to take the gloves off and tell it like it is. Tom De Lay is a thug in trying to achieve his goals, and I don't think even he would dispute that assessment. He was behind this whole Texas initiative.

I rest my case.

Nope...still doesn't include involving the DHS. Under any circumstance whatsoever. Their bodies weren't snatched; they weren't kidnapped. The Republicans knew exactly why 53 Democrats didn't show up. Everybody except you seems to understand what happened here, and your attempts to spin it to the right are ridiculous, comical, and typical of the way I have watched neoconservatives twist facts, reality and the truth until it would choke Dubya.

Is there some training school you people attend? "The Fleischer/Rumsfeld Academy for Advanced Conservative Prevarication"? From what poisoned spring does this groupthink flow?

Please give it up. Your train of logic derailed a few whistlestops up the line.

Well, you want the NUTS? You can't handle the NUTS!" Doesn't that, in a way, say it all? Replacing TRUTH with NUTS indicates a way of thinking here - rigid, boxed in, brainwashed - and, when you get right down to it, most squirrels are too dumb to remember where they buried their nuts, as most people who have dealt with squirrels can attest to.

How I wish I had the time to add my two cents in here now. But this will have to wait. I've loved reading the thread, however and it's kept me up on the subject, which I had lost track of, due to other pressing activities. I'll be back soon enough. In the meantime, you guys are keeping up the good work.

Really Scrat............your criticism of the Dems in this case is the same one the Dems had about the Republicans in the Monica Lewinsky scandal events. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, is it not? In any case, I think it's hilarious and am over joyed. The thing about this case is that the Dems had only to leave the state for a few days. The Republicans had to spend real money to dig up dirt on Clinton so they could say, "it's not the crime, it's the cover-up, stupid." They bent over backwards to manipulate the situation to this point. Republicans are such easy marks if one sets their mind to it, or at least they were in this case. It looks like they did themselves in with very little help from the Democrats. Well, maybe it's too much credit to believe the Democrats managed this on purpose. It's like, if through some frantic effort on my part to control the ball in a racquetball game, I roll the ball out and I make a big point. I always wish to say I did it on purpose. But really, it was just fate. :-) The lessons and dilemmas of Watergate live on. But whatcanwedoaboutit?

Please, D'art, PDiddie, Lola and all you good folk -- please don't shut Scrat up! Why? Because he's one of the many members of the Limbaugh army who make the whole Republican party look bad, make many Republicans very uneasy. The more they carry on in this manner, the more those decent old-fashioned Republicans are made wary by the civil liberties issues, by the lack of evidence to justify the invasion of Iraq, by Tom DeLay's behavior and statements (not to mention Santorum, who makes the Reps I know feel REALLY uneasy), they more they will drift in our direction. They are already drifting, the ones I'm acquainted with hereabouts... So please, let all the Scrats do their thing! They are the best self-destruct mechanism we could have wished upon the Republican party!

Never fear Tartarin, we're not scaring them. For their particular culture, this is a technique which is very like "herding." Stampede!!!!!!!

No problem, Tartarin. I find Scrat entertaining, and really, he never snarls at others. At least I haven't noticed it. And he's so loyal to the Bush party line--I'd rather hear it from him than from someone like Ari or Rumsfeld

:wink:

I unceasingly operate under the delusion that Scrat et al will one day wake up and smell the coffee.

I suppose I'm the one who should stop it...

I think Texas is just jealous of California getting all the negative press coverage. They got big heads in Texas.