I figured I'd better paste the story before Yahoo updates its pages. My comments are in italics; bold added for emphasis.
=====From Yahoo News=====
Top Stories - Reuters
Texas Democrats Flee State, Paralyze Legislature
Tue May 13, 6:07 PM ET Add Top Stories - Reuters to My Yahoo!
By Jim Forsyth
AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - Renegade Democratic Texas legislators hunted by state police made their stand against a Republican congressional redistricting plan and holed up in a hotel across the border in Oklahoma on Tuesday.
The Democrats claim the redistricting plan would unfairly favor Republicans in U.S. congressional elections.
The walkout by more than 50 Texas House Democrats effectively shut down the Legislature on Monday by denying Republicans a quorum of 100 -- enough legislators present to conduct business in the 150-member chamber.
"This is the last weapon available to us. It is used once in a generation. This is our Alamo stand," fugitive Democratic Rep. Ruth Jones McClendon said from Ardmore, Oklahoma.
Fifty-one Democrats set up shop in the Holiday Inn in Ardmore, just a few miles km over the state line, to protest a redistricting plan engineered by Texas Republican Tom DeLay, the majority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives.
"We have a message for Tom De Lay: Don't mess with Texas," Rep. Jim Dunnam, one of the walkout's leaders, told reporters gathered outside the Democrats' refuge. That same quote was used by Will Ferrell on Saturday Night Live when he impersonated the President!
Texas police, including the famed Texas Rangers, were powerless to do anything other than offer to escort the legislators back to Austin. The Democrats rejected that idea.
House Speaker Tom Craddick ordered police on Monday to track down the runaway legislators and return them to the House floor, forcibly if needed. But Craddick's order holds no legal force outside of Texas, since the legislators are not technically accused of a crime. What about abandonment of their constituents? If I was a citizen of Texas, I'd be itching for the next election to come around.
A spokesman for Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry, a Democrat, said police in that state would not remove the legislators without an Oklahoma court order. None was forthcoming.
HOLDING OUT
The Democrats plan to stay in Oklahoma until a key voting deadline passes on Friday or until Republicans take the redistricting plan off the table, which Craddick has refused to do. In a way, I'm kind of glad to see them refuse to accept the yoke of a dominant party, but at the same time I can't help but wonder why the Republicans are so adamant about the redistricting plan. Something doesn't seem right there.
Dunnam said the DeLay plan, which would change a U.S. Supreme Court-approved redistricting plan, had derailed discussion on more important issues -- a nearly $10 billion budget deficit, school funding and health care problems. Wait a minute, so the Republican leader is defying a Supreme Court decision? Now I'm really suspicious of the Republican motives.
DeLay criticized the fugitive Democrats and said he hoped federal agents could be called in to bring them back.
"You ought to stand and fight for what you believe in and not turn and run," DeLay told reporters at his weekly briefing in Washington. "It's just so contrary to what Texas is all about, to turn tail and run."
On Tuesday, plainclothes state police investigators nabbed Rep. Helen Giddings as she got into her car in Austin.
"We picked her up outside of her apartment and we escorted her to the House chambers to the sergeant-at-arms," Texas Department of Public Safety spokesman Tom Vinger said.
Three other missing Democrats, not part of the walkout, returned to the Capitol on Tuesday. Democrats hold 62 seats in the legislature and the Republicans 88.
This is the third time Texas legislators have resorted to denying quorum to defeat legislation. The last time was in 1979. (Additional reporting by Susan Cornwell in Washington and Jon Herskovitz in Dallas) Anyone know what the issue was back then?
