Good detail on the Texas story - it looks like NRO (with your article) has the lowdown. I wonder how you get such detailed accounts from both Texas and Maryland - good stuff.

You’re not sitting in an office with a cell-phone, using stringers and an overactive imagination are you?

Just kidding - that’s the nice thing about facts - they can be checked.

Good stuff, glad I found your blog.

Good research. It wasn’t all that many years ago when outlaws nested in Indian Territory and made raids into Texas; older Texans may remember that tendency in connection with these Dems.

Lately I find myself wondering whether gerrymandering is necessarily bad. The job of a congressman is to represent the interests of his district; that job is considerably easier when the district is shaped so that it contains politically similar people. Yes, that tends to insure incumbency, but isn’t brand loyalty a sign that the brand is serving its consumers well?

Gerrymandering itself is an old practice and has been a tool for both parties. In my own opinion, it’s main danger is in its abuse, as in Texas. The Democrats are by every conceivable measure the minority party in the state, yet they still retain a majority of its House seats, which translates into a strengthened position for the Dems in the House as a whole. That’s wrong, and undemocratic, no matter what other good things gerrymandering may accomplish. It’s a distortion of the true Texas sentiment. It’s also incumbent insurance, and that’s just bad on its face. Gerrymandering makes it harder to throw the bums out at regular intervals.

As for research, Damien, note that I didn’t byline the story as being reported from Austin or anywhere in Texas. I did talk to people in Texas and Washington, and did quite a bit of independent research. Thank goodness for the web. I also relied on my own experience covering Texas politics back in the early 90s for a radio station (I knew and liked both Rep. Thomas and Rep. Oakley, the two reps mentioned in the piece, and co-hosted a public affairs radio show with Thomas).

No stringers were harmed or even used in the production of this story.

Great piece on the Democratic flight to Ardmore. Have you attempted to get that in The Dallas Morning News? People need to see that background.

Your piece is compelling, but I can’t say that the behavior of the Democrats to protect turf is all that surprising. In politics, one would expect no less - from either party. While the behavior of the Democrats does seem cowardly, I do notice that you refrain from discussing how Texas Republicans handled the situation. I know this wasn’t the point of your peice, but it is a relevant part of the full story. Even Rod Dreher has been reporting critically in NRO’s “The Corner” on the Texas GOP’s behavior. I agree with you that voters will remember this incident next election time, but the question is will they remember the cowardly Democratic “run for Red River” or the sneaky Republican use of the Feds to hunt them down.

One of the reasons I wrote the piece was to set the record straight. Absent knowledge of what the Dems did in 1991, the Tx GOP’s current actions look heavy-handed and hubristic. But they aren’t, not at all. This is just one more case where the Dems did something shamelessly undemocratic and wrong, and when the GOP tries to redress it, they’re the ones that get cast in a negative light. Rod Dreher, whom I respect, has been in Texas for all of a month—how would he know what happened 12 years ago? He wouldn’t unless someone sets out to document the origins of the whole situation. Hence, the NRO article.