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The Texas goose step. Adventures in procedural fascism continue in the Texas redistricting crisis. Story from the Houston Chronicle:

A Democratic crowd in the gallery pelted the Republican leadership with jeers of "Nazis" as the Senate adjourned quickly to deny boycotting senators a chance to re-enter the Senate triumphantly while it was in session.

[...]

The other 10 boycotting Democrats walked into the Senate chamber at 12:07 p.m. A ring of television cameras and boom microphones surrounded them. The gallery crowd cheered wildly.

"Thank you, Texas!" Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, shouted back to the crowd.

Van de Putte, chairwoman of the Senate Democratic Caucus, said the boycott was about more than partisan politics. She said the Democrats wanted to make certain the Republicans did not stifle the voices of rural Texans and minorities with redistricting plans harmful to their interests.

Sen. Mario Gallegos made fun of the Republicans for adjourning so quickly.

"If they were so eager for us to come back to work, where are they?" said Gallegos, D-Houston. "If they were so eager for us to make a quorum and make the issues on the floor, where are they?"

At the center of the storm is Republican Texas Speaker Tom Craddick who, with Tom DeLay, was a conspirator in the craven illegal abuse of the federal Department of Homeland Security just to shore up Craddick's petty fiefdom in Midland, West Texas.

{ 9:15 AM }

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