Twin Posts of Politics and War

Molly Ivins on the Texas Democrats vs. Republicans...righteous, LOL! No one does it better than our Molly on Texas politics. It seems that the Democrats in the Texas legislature unanimously fled the state to prevent a quorum attendance where the Republicans planned to vote in gerrymandered re-districting all through the state, but particularly in Austin, the state capital. One new boundary for the new plans for districts would have included a 200 mile long strip of land to "connect" Austin to southern Texas near Brownsville. This would have gotten a predominantly-Republican neighborhood to be physically next to a southern stretch of Texas where there were also many Republicans! The plan would have as many as seven brand new Republicans as representatives to the US Congress! Will be back to tell you "what happened" when the week ends...

Bucking the Texas Lockstep

By Molly Ivins
Thursday, May 15, 2003; Page A29
Washington Post article

A snippet from the column: "Since all of y'all in the North think Texas is eternally screwed up, I'm not going to try to defend this lunacy (although it has causes), I'm just warning you: This is about to happen everywhere. A good country song says, "Lubbock on Everythang." Make it bigger, expand that. "Texas on Everythang." The whole country is being turned into the state whose proudest boast is that sometimes we're ahead of Mississippi.

When our governor, Rick "Goodhair" Perry (that's a head of hair every Texan can be proud of, regardless of party), asked New Mexico to arrest any escapees lurking there, the state's attorney general, Patricia Madrid, said, "I have put out an all-points bulletin for law enforcement to be on the lookout for politicians in favor of health care and against tax cuts for the wealthy."

And the "Flawed" Story of Private Lynch
from the BBC: why am I not surprised? To think that is was "STAGED"??? Oh those spinmeisters

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/correspondent/3028585.stm
Thursday, 15 May, 2003, 08:50 GMT 09:50 UK
Saving Private Lynch story 'flawed'

A snippet from BBC reporter in the BBC website today about the surprised witnesses to the US raid to free Jessica:

Witnesses told us that the special forces knew that the Iraqi military had fled a day before they swooped on the hospital.

Dr Uday was surprised by the manner of the rescue
"We were surprised. Why do this? There was no military, there were no soldiers in the hospital," said Dr Anmar Uday, who worked at the hospital.

"It was like a Hollywood film. They cried 'go, go, go', with guns and blanks without bullets, blanks and the sound of explosions. They made a show for the American attack on the hospital - action movies like Sylvester Stallone or Jackie Chan."

There was one more twist. Two days before the snatch squad arrived, Harith had arranged to deliver Jessica to the Americans in an ambulance.

But as the ambulance, with Private Lynch inside, approached a checkpoint American troops opened fire, forcing it to flee back to the hospital. The Americans had almost killed their prize catch.

Some brave souls put their lives on the line to make this happen