conchita- don’t forget that the Tx. Dems were tracked by Homeland Security for the Republican party over the redistricting vote in 2003 – the dems left the state to deny the republicans a quorum.
Laney was on his cotton farm, in the Texas panhandle, on May 11th when he and his Democratic colleagues decided to leave the state for the Oklahoma town of Ardmore, just across the border. Most of the legislators travelled from Austin by bus, but Laney flew in his private plane, a seven-seat Piper Cheyenne. The following day, the clerk of the Texas House issued arrest warrants for the missing politicians, and DeLay’s staff decided to find them.
On the afternoon of May 12th, a senior aide to DeLay called an official with the Federal Aviation Administration and asked the agency to track the location of tail number N711RD, Laney’s plane. The staffer didn’t say why he wanted the information, and F.A.A. officials later said that they assumed there was a safety issue involving the plane. According to a subsequent report by the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security, a DeLay staffer also contacted D.H.S. “requesting assistance in determining the location of an aircraft believed to be overdue.” By the end of the day, the F.A.A. had told DeLay’s staff that local officials had traced the plane to Ardmore. (The same day, DeLay’s staff also contacted a senior official at the Justice Department, asking whether federal law-enforcement authorities would assist in arresting the missing legislators…
If Texas turns blue, that would be better than now, hopefully, but LBJ was “blue” and he certainly wasn’t anything to be proud of. But he played Texas politics very well.

Posted by: fauxreal | May 28 2007 16:32 utc | 4

@ faux – Your first link didn’t work for me but I ran across this today.

Posted by: beq | May 28 2007 19:11 utc | 6

From today’s (29.05.07) Daily Telegraph, GB:
Wounded to get millions in compensation
Hundreds of troops wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan are to be awarded millions of pounds in compensation following a ruling by the Government that they are victims of crime not war. (…) Payments will be made on a “sliding scale” of about £1,000, for a small facial scar, up to a maximum of £500,000, for the loss of a limb. (…) This is similar to that run by the Home Office, which makes payments to the victims of crimes such as muggings, rape, burglary and robbery.
link
And, btw, to the victims of ‘terrorist’ attacks. There was controversy in London about the inadequate payments after the London bombings -7/7-, ppl were angry, the US did so much more!
Crime, not war. Unheard of. Not quite: the precedent in recent history was that the victims of 9/11 were paid off by the US Gvmt though many received insurance money as well. The two links – WaPo and CBS – should suffice to give a sketchy overall view.
wapo
cbs
The US declared ‘war’ ‘illegally’ on Afgh(!) and never ever mentioned compensation by any Gvmt. for 9/11.
The British move is a big step towards the ‘privatization’ of war, lining up what is offered to mercenaries, ‘contractors’, who receive high salaries and are always very well insured. The comparison is no longer tenable, some action had to be taken.
A new fighting, military class – globalized – is being created, and bit by bit, trad. armies will be in part engulfed, or co-opted. Patriotic spin still keeps some US impoverished recruits coming in for low pay, lousy conditions, false promises, etc., care of the msm and army/navy spin meisters, but reality on the ground soon puts paid to that dream of allegiance to a country – their pay is about 1/10 – 1/3 what ‘contractors’ get, and the regular military are the first to die, on the ‘front’ line. Vets back home are seen as creepy failures who can be shunted around and short changed.
Int’l law – the rag ends- will remain as a deliberate prop for the comfortable and righteous to scream about. (See geneva conventions, Abu ghraib, etc. What changed?)
Insurgents – terrorists, freedom fighters, criminal young men – have no insurance and draw no salaries. They can’t ‘win’ in any real terms, but they can, and will, halt corporate take overs. But that is possibly an old fashioned, even romantic view point of what is going on Iraq.
Are Iraqi freedom fighters or ‘insurgents’ shooting doctors in the hospitals? I think not. Or not often.

Posted by: Noirette | May 29 2007 16:59 utc | 8