During my 6 1/2 year in Suburban DC, I think I could think of 2 major snowstorms, 1 on George Washington’s birthday in 1979(I was just over a 1 1/2 yrs so I wouldn’t remember it other than my dad relaying it to me) and 1 in early January 1985 around the second inauguration of Ronald Reagan(I really remember that). This seems like one of those.

The whole thing was over redistricting. Texas has a majority of Republican voters approaching 60% but the Democrats had gerrymandered the districts in 1990 so that they kept control of the legislatures by something like 1 55% to 60% margin.

The Republicans finally had a bare majority in 2000 and drew up a new map that showed the correct representation of voter registrations by making the districts more representative of the state as a whole. The Dems fought in court and the Federal Courts over turned it in favor a map that maintained somewhat the status quo. As I recall it, the court made clear the fix was meant to be temporary until the control of the legislatures could be better determined. in 2002 Republicans done the legislatures decisively and set about creating a permanent map.

I’m fuzzy on some of the details up to this point, but that’s pretty much what happened into the lead up to the great escape of Democrats from Austin.

The debate started on the bill to approve the new map in the Senate and when it came time for the vote…the Dems called fro a quorum call and of course the majority of them were nowhere to be found. Half or more of them fled north of the TX OK border and held a press conference in front of a Hotel. Perry sent out the State Police to round up the Dems still in Texas to return them to Austin for the vote and asked for help from Federal Law Enforcement to get those from out of state. There was subsequently a bunch of squawking from the Dems about possible collusion between GW Bush and Perry and the usual tripe about abuse of power but as far as I know…nothing ever came from that. The Dems eventually returned…a quorum was finally reached…and the maps were redrawn and the new map accepted along with several more fights in Federal Court with the Dems claiming the second map was unconstitutional because the Constitution doesn’t allow for redistricting out side the 10 year census…despite the original court’s making it clear the first map was to be temporary. I don’t recall how those late cases turned out but I think we won that fight and ended up with 10 more Republican Congressmen from Texas as a result.

The “Big Tent” analogy isn’t the correct one…the correct one is a MAGNET…we need to be a MAGNET that draws these independents in who are sick and tired of what’s going on in Washington—Fred Thompson

Deal is not in. But they are working Nelson hard and he sounds like a different guy.

But who knows. Maybe Joe going home and celebrating his holiday day with his wife will free him up from all that peer pressure.

And if they give Nelson too much, maybe Bernie Sanders walks.

It aint over till its over.

last night @ 10:30 and will be voting for cloture.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/12/schumer-weve-reached-agreement-with-nelson.php

The weasel.

Stupak and the rest of the lying, linguini-spined Blue Dogs will be faced with holding strong to the stricter language of the House bill or agreeing to Nelson’s ‘compromise’ language.

I can hear it now…”Well, we didn’t get everything we wanted re: abortion but we got most of it and this was just too historic to not accept 90% of what we wanted.”

I personally believe that the whole Nelson gig was nothing more than an elaborate charade and part of a kabuki dance to enable them to ping this thing back from the House and give cover to the ‘pro-life’ Blue Dogs. That’s why Boxer was in the room…so that she can go to all of her pro-murder House brothers and sisters and say “Pssst…hey…I was in the room, this really doesn’t make any difference so just ping it back to us.”

Disgusting. Whores.

Nelson some cement shoes???

The line moves closer…..