It now seems clear, from all that we know, that the Department of Homeland Security was probably guilty of nothing more than being duped into getting involved in Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick's effort to track down and arrest the Democrats in the Texas House. Homeland Security's refusal to release the transcript of the call from the Texas state trooper which got Homeland into the act doesn't inspire a great deal of confidence. Nor does the fact that they're holding back the transcript so that the matter can be investigated by, to quote the Times, the "agency's acting inspector general, Clark Kent Ervin, a Houston Republican 
who is well known among some of the same state lawmakers in Texas who wanted the plane tracked down." (Tom DeLay's district is in the Houston suburbs.)
But let's drive down to the real issue here.
What the Speaker of the Texas state House of Representatives does is a matter for Texans to deal with. But what the House Majority Leader of the federal Congress does is a matter of national concern. And it seems quite clear that Tom DeLay had some role -- probably the leading role, but certainly some role -- in pushing for federal law enforcement officials to get involved in the manhunt. (In a run-down of the incident on CNN, Bill Schneider said "that Texas authorities had followed up on DeLay's suggestion and asked the feds to help round up lawmakers on the lam.") For a slew of different reasons, that should be investigated -- not least of which is that the fact that this stunt raises real questions about the man's balance, sense of propriety and, frankly, respect for constitutional government.
Who did he talk to at the Justice Department? DeLay's spokesman said DeLay spoke to someone at Justice. Who? What did he ask them? And what did they say? What role did he have in getting the leadership of the Texas state House to bring in the Feds in the first place?
--Josh Marshall
Many of those who are defending -- professionally or otherwise -- the DeLay power-grab are arguing that courts simply should not be involved in drawing congressional maps, period. This raises a practical question since legislatures often get deadlocked and can't come up with a map -- and the election cycle won't wait. But, more to the point, it's beside the point. We could make any number of innovations in our political system: strike courts from redistricting, outlaw gerrymandering, gerrymander every two years, whatever. The point is that we have an established system and DeLay & Co are changing it in the interest of immediate partisan, even personal advantage. And in any case, the courts-out-of-elections mantle hangs rather heavy on a crew whose president owes his office to a judicial ruling.
--Josh Marshall
Here's the article on Hezbollah setting up a branch office in Baghdad. The bigger story is that everybody else is forming a militia.
--Josh Marshall
Noted for future reference and discussion ...
"The new men of the villages, who feel they have already lost so much, find their path blocked at every turn. Money, development, education have awakened them only to the knowledge that the world is not like their village, that the world is not their own. Their rage --- the rage of pastoral people with limited skills, limited money, and a limited grasp of the world --- is comprehensive. Now they have a weapon: Islam. It is their way of getting even with the world. It serves their grief, their feeling of inadequacy, their social rage and racial hate."-- V.S. Naipaul
Among the Believers, p. 227.
More soon ...
--Josh Marshall
"We got a problem, and I hope you can help me out. We had a plane that was supposed to be going from Ardmore, Oklahoma, to Georgetown, Texas. It had state representatives in it, and we cannot find this plane ..."
Those are the words of a Texas state trooper calling a division of the Department of Homeland Security to help locate a missing plane with government officials on board, according to a partial transcript of the conversation released yesterday by the Department of Homeland Security and excerpted here in Friday's Dallas Morning News.
As reports in various Friday morning papers make clear, the Texas Department of Public Safety, tricked the folks at Homeland into thinking that they were looking for a missing aircraft that might either have crashed or fallen victim to a terrorist attack when in fact they were just trying to track down those Democrats who refused to make a quorum call. "From all indications, this request from the Texas DPS was an urgent plea for assistance from a law enforcement agency trying to locate a missing, lost or possibly crashed aircraft," said Dean Boyd, spokesman for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Now, House Speaker Tom Craddick -- the guy who ordered the troopers to track the Dems down -- made great efforts yesterday to distance himself from the whole fiasco, telling reporters he'd instructed troopers to find the fugitive Dems but had not involved himself in any way in how they did it.
The Dallas Morning News, however, was able to find out who the trooper in question was, identifying him as Lt. Will Crais, a "veteran fugitive-hunter" assigned to the DPS's Special Crimes Division. Now, the interesting detail is that Crais "was working on the hunt for the missing lawmakers, an effort that was run out of a conference room next to Mr. Craddick's office [emphasis added]."
If this was all going in a conference room adjoining Speaker Craddick's office, that makes it a bit less credible that he didn't know anything about what they were doing.
And what about Tom DeLay? The Dallas Morning News article quotes DeLay aids saying that there was "no contact between his office and the Homeland Security Department or the FBI." But a DeLay aide told the Washington Post that the Majority Leader "did pass along to the Justice Department Craddick's inquiry on whether federal law enforcement could assist in the manhunt."
So DeLay had "no contact" with Homeland or FBI but he did "pass along to the Justice Department" a request from his man in Austin, Tom Craddick, asking the Feds to "assist in the manhunt." (Presumably, the reason to involve the Feds would be to bring them back across state lines.) Frankly, I don't think you've got to be too big a DeLay-o-phobe to think that, pretty much by his own admission, DeLay was involved in trying to get federal law enforcement involved in 
arresting those state Democratic legislators and hauling them back to Austin. In this context, the difference between 'passing along a request' and making a request really doesn't pass the laugh test.
Just draw back for a moment and ask the question: what on earth is a House Majority Leader doing passing on requests from a state House Speaker to the Justice Department, asking for federal officers to arrest members of his own legislature? Add to that the fact that none of the stories match up. Craddick says he made no effort to pull in the Feds. But DeLay says he passed along Craddick's request to pull in the Feds. All of which lends tremendous credence to the notion that Lt. Will Crais, shall we say, acted alone.
--Josh Marshall
The new States-Rights?
White House spokesman Scott McClellan refused to say whether he believes it would be appropriate for Homeland Security to be used to round up Texas Democrats."This is a matter that is being addressed in the state of Texas," McClellan said.
Courtesy of the Associated Press.
--Josh Marshall
Some pretty ugly stuff and some pretty unconvincing non-denial-denials.
Let's go to the tape, or rather, to Christopher Lee's very clarifying piece in Friday's Washington Post.
It seems state law enforcement officials, working under orders from Texas state House Speaker Tom Craddick, went to a branch of the new Department of Homeland Security to try to track down a plane owned by one Texas state legislator. An odd use of the new Department of Homeland Security, especially since they seem to have put in the request for help at exactly the same time the new al qaida attack was going down in Saudi Arabia (Monday afternoon/evening).
Here, according to Lee, is what happened ...
On Monday, Craddick and other Republicans dispatched state troopers to round up the legislative fugitives and bring them back to the Texas Capitol.State police officials, in turn, called in federal help as they pursued a rumor that Rep. James E. "Pete" Laney, a former Texas House speaker, had ferried fellow Democrats out of state aboard his Piper turboprop airplane. A state investigator called the Air and Marine Interdiction Coordination Center in Riverside, Calif., part of the Homeland Security Department, to ask officials there to use their nationwide radar network to help locate the plane.
The call from the unnamed investigator came as an "urgent plea," describing a plane with state officials aboard that was overdue, according to a statement issued yesterday by the Homeland Security Department's Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
"We got a problem, and I hope you can help me out," the statement quoted the officer as saying. "We had a plane that was supposed to be going from Ardmore, Okla., to Georgetown, Tex. It had state representatives on it, and we cannot find this plane."
Believing they had an emergency on their hands, agency officials called the Federal Aviation Administration in Fort Worth, and airport officials in two other Texas cities, but were unable to find the plane.
(The Post piece implies the investigator was unidentified; but the Austin American-Statesman says he identified himself by name and rank.)
In any case, if Homeland Security's statement is to be believed, they got tricked into tracking down Laney's plane on the false pretense that they were investigating either a plane crash or a terrorist incident. Now, who ordered it? Craddick? Not so, says his flack:
"He called them [state police] in and let them do their job," said Bob Richter, the spokesman. "There was an effort made to find out if they could get some federal help in that. It was either turned down, or they found out they couldn't do it. By the end of the day Monday, it was a dead issue [because the lawmakers were found]. . . . I think Craddick is getting credit for a lot of things other people did. He may have said, 'Let's do what we can to find them.'"
What do Richter say exactly? I'm not sure either. 'There was an effort made ...' Passive voice is never a good sign in false denials. (Also, see this follow-up in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram about Craddick's story.)
And DeLay?
DeLay spokesman Jonathan Grella said DeLay did not seek federal help in forcing the Democrats back to Austin. DeLay did pass along Craddick's inquiry to the Justice Department on whether federal law enforcement could assist in the manhunt, Grella said.
So DeLay never sought federal help, except when he did seek federal help.
Gives a whole new meaning to constituent service ...
--Josh Marshall
"I am deeply troubled by recent news reports that the Department of Homeland Security wasted scarce resources to search for a Texas state legislator ..." I'd been thinking for the better part 
of the day that Tom DeLay's wild, wet-lipped zeal had gotten the better of him on this Texas redistricting issue, that he'd 'overreached' as the mushy Beltway phrase has it. Now the other shoe has dropped. Those lines are from a letter Joe Lieberman just sent to Tom Ridge. And since Lieberman's basically the canary-in-a-coalmine for safe consensus opinion, it's now official. It's now safe for Broder, Russert ... hell, maybe even Matthews to get into the act. Hopefully, the scary goon tactics employed by DeLay's minions will get people to take a second look at the underlying issue: upending at least half a century of established tradition in which redistricting takes place just once a cycle -- absent voting rights lawsuits. This is part of a much bigger story of which the redistricting power grab is only a part.
--Josh Marshall
Postcards from the edge ...
"Once our wives tell them they don't know where we are, that should be the end of it and once they know where we are that should be the end of it," said Craig Eiland of Galveston, one of 51 Democrats holed up in an Ardmore, Okla., motel.He and others there said state House Speaker Tom Craddick, R-Midland, used Texas Department of Public Safety officers to intimidate their families and staffs.
Eiland said a Texas Ranger questioned nurses late Monday night at the University of Texas Medical Branch-Galveston neo-natal intensive care unit, where Eiland's premature twins are patients. The Ranger later went to Eiland's home to question his wife.
...
Denise Pickett, the wife of El Paso Democrat Joe Pickett, said she received a call on her cell phone about 8 p.m. Monday from her 17-year-old daughter, who reported that officers were at the Pickett home questioning her about her father's whereabouts.
When she arrived back home, she said officers emerged from the front door.
"I have a lot of respect for police officers so I was just trying to answer their questions as well as possible," she said. "However, reflecting back I do wish I would have asked them, `What are you doing in my house without my being there?' "
Houston Chronicle
5/14/03
Reports that federal law enforcement officials may have helped look for the missing Democrats led all but one of Texas' congressional Democrats to demand that Ashcroft, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and FBI Director Robert Mueller disclose whatever help was provided.
U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, the driving force behind the Texas redistricting effort, said Tuesday that he consulted an attorney in his office to determine for the Texas House speaker whether FBI agents and U.S. marshals could be used to arrest the Democrats.
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said Monday he wants federal authorities to pursue Texas Democrats dodging a vote on a plan he authored to increase Republican seats in Congress.The Sugar Land Republican told reporters that bringing in either U.S. marshals or FBI agents is justified because redistricting is a federal issue, involving congressional seats.
Houston Chronicle
5/14/03
One federal agency that became involved early on was the Air and Marine Interdiction and Coordination Center, based in Riverside, Calif. -- which now falls under the auspices of the Homeland Security Department.The agency received a call to locate a specific Piper turboprop aircraft. It was determined that the plane belonged to former House Speaker Pete Laney, D-Hale Center.
The location of Laney's plane proved to be a key piece of information because, Craddick said, it's how he determined that the Democrats were in Ardmore.
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
5/14/03
Hopefully we can democratize Iraq quickly enough that they can come back and democratize us ...
--Josh Marshall
As longtime readers of the site know, well before all the messiness of the lead-up to the Iraq War, I wrote a number of columns and articles on the Democrats' fundamental incoherence and lack of seriousness about national security issues. Here's an example I wrote last year in The New York Post. Bill Clinton began, briefly, to turn this around. But the last two years have shown a sorry regression. The key to solving this problem is to recognize that it is not a cosmetic problem, but one woven into fabric of the contemporary Democratic party and center-left. (If you want to know more about what I think the problem is, take a look at this column.) This evening I'd like to point you to a new website from a new organization: Democrats for National Security. I don't know if they'll be the group that will help bring change. But they're identifying the problem and beginning an effort to grapple with it.
--Josh Marshall
Paul D. Wolfowitz said something extraordinary, and deeply controversial, on Turkish television ten days ago. He essentially said that bringing democracy to Iraq was so important that the Bush administration wished the Turkish military had subverted Turkish democracy to achieve it. I explain the details in my new column in The Hill.
--Josh Marshall
Say what you will about looted nuclear sites, ransacked government ministries, mullahs calling for an Islamic Republic, it's not like Hezbollah is setting up a branch office in Baghdad or anything, right?
Well, guess what ...
I'll be posting the link to the story tomorrow when it goes online.
--Josh Marshall
There's clearly a lot more to say about this re-redistricting controversy. For the 
moment, a couple quick points.
First, Texas and Colorado may not be the only states where this happens. New Mexico, where the Dems are in charge, is considering doing more or less the same thing.
Second, this re-redistricting is every bit as unprecedented as it seems. As noted yesterday, states sometimes redistrict because of voting rights law suits. And there were a spate of court-ordered redistrictings during the middle 1960s, growing out of the so-called one-man-one-vote cases (see Baker v. Carr, 1962). But doing a second redistricting for partisan reasons during one census cycle hasn't been the norm since the 19th century. The last instance of it, according to a redistricting expert I spoke to today, was in Washington state in the 1950s -- and the tactic was unheard of even then.
--Josh Marshall
This post will have to be a preliminary one, as I'm working on editing an article and haven't yet had time to track down all the details. But as nearly as I can tell, almost all the reporting about the legislative logjam in Texas is missing what I think is clearly the real story. It's a telling sign actually of the priorities of most commentators and journalists.
There is a longstanding tradition in this country --- amounting to a firm political precedent --- that redistricting happens once every ten years. There are exceptions in voting rights cases, where districts are changed. But outside of that specific case, the established norm is quite clear. There's a census, a redistricting, and then that's it until the next census.
Sometimes, the state legislature -- or the mix of the legislature and the executive -- can't come to a decision. In that case it falls to the courts, which devise a redistricting plan. This is quite common. And those court-imposed plans are similarly not revisited until the next census.
It wasn't always like this. In the 19th century, redistricting could happen every cycle,as party control shifted back and forth from election to election. But in the 20th century that became increasingly uncommon. And in the last half century or more the 'one redistricting per census' rule has become firmly established. It's not a matter of law, but of one of the many political norms upon which our system is based.
As I said, for the moment I have to leave these points above as preliminary, since I still need to do more reporting to nail down the details. But everything I've seen so far supports this basic history. And I think it's important to raise this issue now.
Now what we have are two states --- Colorado and Texas --- in which state governments newly-unified under Republican control are taking a second bite at the apple, after settled, court-imposed redistricting had taken place. In both cases, the new redistricting laws are being rushed through at the end of a legislative session. And in both cases there is clear evidence that the direction for the move comes from Washington. In one case from Karl Rove, in another from Tom Delay.
This deserves much more attention. And I'll be returning to it when I find out more.
--Josh Marshall
Thankfully, a lower figure -- one in the high twenties or low thirties -- now seems a more probable death toll from the Saudi bombings than that nearing a hundred which was briefly announced today by US officials. But here's another question I have ...
Several days ago a friend who is renowned for his expertise on al-qaida and Islamist terrorism generally told me that there had been a wave of shootings of Westerners in Saudi Arabia recently. But the Saudis had dismissed them as simply criminal incidents arising out of disputes over the illicit trade in liquor. I don't know the precise numbers. I don't think we're talking about that many people. But it seemed to make him wonder whether these might actually be low-level terror attacks which the Saudis were simply covering up, by deceptively categorizing them. Perhaps they were a prelude to what happened yesterday?
--Josh Marshall
Here's a question for you political scientists (or just hardcore political junkies) out there. Aside from cases where voting-rights cases mandated changes, how many times have state legislatures redistricted their federal congressional districts a second time within a single decade. That is to say, you have a census, the state legislature redistricts and then redistricts again before the next census?
--Josh Marshall
What this country needs is a chicken in every pot, a car in every garage, and an AK in every backseat.
Or so says the GOP ... House Republicans are making sure the current ban on AK-47s and eighteen other types of semiautomatic weapons expires next year. And the president doesn't object.
Money quote from the Post ...
Congressional Republicans said Congress will renew the ban only if Bush publicly and firmly insists. "If the president demands we pass it, that would change the dynamics considerably," said a House GOP leadership aide. "The White House does not want us" to vote.
At a certain point you wonder whether the GOP will have to start executing family pets before the Dems find something they can mobilize on.
--Josh Marshall
A quick look at the morning news reports confirms my fears of last night -- about the true scope of the attacks in Saudi Arabia and shoddy deceptiveness of the original reporting. (As I said last night, this isn't a comment on the journalists but the impossible conditions they must operate in there, the fact that so few are even in the country, and the implacable closedness of the country itself.) It's almost a pale shade of Chernobyl.
It was wildly improbable that four coordinated bombings accompanied by fire-fights to get the bombs closer in to their targets would cause no fatalities or just one or two. (Overnight reports had it that Colin Powell had been told by the Saudis that there were no US deaths.) At just after 11:00 EDT, CNN is reporting that the attackers killed 20 people in addition nine terrorists killed. But I suspect even this count will prove low. This report from London's Evening Standard says a "Danish doctor in Riyadh said there were 40-50 bodies in one hospital alone." (After noting the Evening Standard report I just saw this new report from Deutsche Welle that the State Department now says more than 90 people were killed.)
It says a lot that the anecdotal reports from anonymous bystanders are proving more accurate than the official government estimates. This of course is the close to the essence of the problem with Saudi Arabia -- the unwillingness or inability to confront or deal with the problem, the need to deny it, cover it up, pretend it doesn't exist.
--Josh Marshall
Working on deadline this evening, so no time for a long post. But just a quick note on the bombings in Saudi Arabia. On the one hand, it's hard to know what to say at this point since, even hours after the bombings, we know very little about what seems to have happened. On the other hand, this strikes me as perhaps the most revealing, telling part of the story, in as much as it says a great deal about how Saudi Arabia operates, how closed it is, and how we -- the United States -- operate within Saudi Arabia.
As of just before midnight on the East Coast we know that there were apparently four separate, though coordinated, bombings. Three were aimed at heavily guarded residential compounds populated disproportionately by Westerners. Another hit a US-Saudi jointly owned business. The explosions are said to have been massive, yet the casualty figures being reported hover around 50 persons, with an improbably low estimate of one dead. Thus far, there are no pictures, video or otherwise, aside from some pictures of billowing smoke from a distance (decidedly less detailed than those from Baghdad in the early days of the war). And the low casualty estimates are belied by some eyewitness reports like one, for instance, from Britain's Sky News which speaks of "bodies everywhere and blood everywhere." And another: "We heard a huge noise and we saw many ambulances coming and gathering victims." Or this from a Saudi website: "According to Al-Arabiya television channel, security forces exchanged fire with the terrorists inside the compound. The network also reported that many charred bodies were seen being taken from ambulances at a local hospital ... Another resident said that he saw 'scores' of bodies on the ground following the explosion at Al-Hamra compound. 'I do not want to cause panic. The security and police said they will handle the situation,' he said."
I certainly haven't read every report. But I've skimmed around various news sources around the net. And I don't think I've seen any official comment from any Saudi government source on what happened, how many casualties there are, how many deaths, etc. The reports are anecdotal ones from unnamed sources at different hospitals in Riyadh. Another thing I've just noticed is where the stories in tomorrow's papers are datelined: The New York Times (Kuwait), The Washington Post (Amman), Los Angeles Times (Washington), Reuters (London), AP (Riyadh).
In other words, almost no Western reporters seem to be there.
--Josh Marshall
A few notes on books. My copy of Sid Blumenthal's The Clinton Wars finally, finally, finally arrived today. So I'll be eagerly diving into it and reporting back on what I find. I've also just started Fareed Zakaria's The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad, of which I'll be saying more shortly. (My stack of books to read grew quite tall while busy finishing up the dissertation. Finally, let me recommend The Iraq War Reader: History, Documents, Opinions, just out and compiled and edited by Micah Sifry and Christopher Cerf. I think those of a more hawkish disposition may find it ever-so-slightly tilted in the favor of skeptics -- in the sense of counting up selections from each side. But I'm not even sure about that and may change my opinion after further reading and leafing through the selections. It's extremely up-to-date, featuring a number of selections from the weeks just before the war, and probably the best single-volume introduction to the debate I've seen so far, with well-chosen selections from almost every shade of opinion out there. Even if you're an Iraq war aficionado, it's worth picking up a copy.
--Josh Marshall
Just read this snippet from a new article in Newsweek ...
Some of the lapses are frightening. The well-known Al Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center, about 12 miles south of Baghdad, had nearly two tons of partially enriched uranium, along with significant quantities of highly radioactive medical and industrial isotopes, when International Atomic Energy Agency officials made their last visit in January. By the time U.S. troops arrived in early April, armed guards were holding off looters—but the Americans only disarmed the guards, Al Tuwaitha department heads told NEWSWEEK. “We told them, ‘This site is out of control. You have to take care of it’,” says Munther Ibrahim, Al Tuwaitha’s head of plasma physics. “The soldiers said, ‘We are a small group. We cannot take control of this site’.” As soon as the Americans left, looters broke in. The staff fled; when they returned, the containment vaults’ seals had been broken, and radioactive material was everywhere.U.S. officers say the center had already been ransacked before their troops arrived. They didn’t try to stop the looting, says Colonel Madere, because “there was no directive that said do not allow anyone in and out of this place.” Last week American troops finally went back to secure the site. Al Tuwaitha’s scientists still can’t fully assess the damage; some areas are too badly contaminated to inspect. “I saw empty uranium-oxide barrels lying around, and children playing with them,” says Fadil Mohsen Abed, head of the medical-isotopes department. Stainless-steel uranium canisters had been stolen. Some were later found in local markets and in villagers’ homes. “We saw people using them for milking cows and carrying drinking water,” says Ibrahim. The looted materials could not make a nuclear bomb, but IAEA officials worry that terrorists could build plenty of dirty bombs with some of the isotopes that may have gone missing. Last week NEWSWEEK visited a total of eight sites on U.N. weapons-inspection lists. Two were guarded by U.S. troops. Armed looters were swarming through two others. Another was evidently destroyed many years ago. American forces had not yet searched the remaining three.
There are a lot of things happening in Iraq now, about which it's fair to say 'it's a complicated job, it's messy, but it's early, etc.' But I don't see how you can say this isn't pretty bad.
--Josh Marshall
