Now, that’s classic. A month or so after the Texas House Democrats hightailed it to Oklahoma to 
prevent the Tom DeLay re-redistricting, a state court ruled that the attempt to use the Department of Public Safety to track them down had in fact been illegal.
Since Gov. Rick Perry (R) and crew insist on knocking down every precedent in the state to get it done, the state senators have now gone to New Mexico in replay of the earlier saga. (New Mexico was apparently the choice because one of the abscondees recently had a heart attack and there were better or more convenient medical facilities nearby.) The most recent precedent down the drain is the one which requires a 2/3 vote in the state senate to bring a bill up for debate — thus the senators’ departure.
In any case, without the ability to use the state police, Republican state officials are now considering sending bounty-hunters across state lines to bring them back — an idea you can certainly understand since bounty-hunters are such an upstanding and constitutionally-minded group of characters. Attorney General Greg Abbott (R) has helpfully obliged by issuing an opinion okaying the bounty hunter idea.
Bill Richardson, Governor of New Mexico, has provided the Dems with a state police detail to protect them and, reportedly, has vowed to press kidnapping charges against any bounty hunters who try to take them into custody.
Meanwhile, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, the ultimate author of all this ridiculousness, is off on a tour of the Middle East where, one would imagine, he’ll fit right in.
