Posted by Dan Ewert : 8/09/2003 01:09:00 AM (Archive Link)
This article is from early July. You have to get about 2/3 of the way down before you get to the really entertaining part. There’s a big brouhaha going on right now in Texas politics. The legislature is supposed to redraw the Congressional district map based upon the latest census data, but it isn’t going so well. The Democrats are up in arms about the map that the Republican ted congress has come up with. They’re accusing the Republicans of gerrymandering when really they’re just upset that the new map would eliminate the gerrymandering they committed after the 1990 census when they had control of congress. In Texas, all the statewide offices are held by Republicans, yet Democrats hold a disproportionate share of the U.S. Congressional seats. It makes sense that’s something’s amiss.

The whole mess has resulted in some truly childish behavior on the part of the Democrats. First, the Democratic representatives in the House skipped town… skipped the entire state… and hung out in Oklahoma so that they could prevent a quorum. Eventually they came back to their jobs. Ok, here’s that entertaining part. It occurred when the map’s sponsor, Rep. Phil King took the floor.

“As King began his argument for the new congressional boundaries Monday afternoon, about 30 Democrats in the gallery donned white socks as hand puppets to mock King. Every time he spoke, the little white mouths flapped.”

Good heavens. These are grown men and women. s. Elected representatives. Officials of the state. Supposedly mature and responsible individuals. And here they are, mocking a man with sock puppets. Ms. Lambchop Goes To Washington? Or Austin, as the case may be? Honestly… this just goes beyond absurd. These people should be impeached just for being colossal idiots. Of course, if that were a qualification for impeachment, we wouldn’t have much of a government left.

The Democrats’ games don’t stop there, however. Currently, the Senate Democrats are AWOL in Albuquerque, New Mexico, playing the same tricks as their twits-in-arms in the House. They don’t want to act on the new district map so they’ve just decided to leave and not do their jobs. I wish I could do that