Ah, the Washington Post finally picked up the DeLay use of federal resources for partisan advantage.
Still a Bad Idea
washingtonpost.com
TEXAS GOV. RICK PERRY (R) has called a special legislative session to revive a dangerous redistricting plan that state Democrats managed to kill earlier this year. Prodded by U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Texas Republicans are attempting a mid-census-cycle congressional redistricting. The goal is to augment their party's presence in Washington now that Republicans control both houses of the Texas Legislature. In the first round, Democrats in the state House of Representatives took off to Oklahoma. By staying there, they managed to prevent the legislature from having a quorum until a key deadline had passed and the redistricting bill died. Now, however, it's back. Redistricting normally takes place once a decade, and given how ugly and partisan a business it typically is, its rarity is a good thing. A state's congressional districts certainly shouldn't change whenever one party has the raw power to redraw the lines. The Texas plan, if not defeated, risks creating a dangerous new norm by which redistricting wars go on continuously.
Meanwhile, serious questions remain unanswered about how the last round was fought. The Office of the Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has issued a report reassuring Americans that the department acted appropriately when it became briefly involved in the partisan brawl. But the report is inadequate. The inspector general's office has deemed off-limits the concerns that prompted calls for an inquiry in the first place, while reporting no wrongdoing in a corner of this weird affair where wrongdoing never seemed likely. If the IG's office is right that the rest of the matter is not its business, then a different investigation must be conducted.
While the Democrats were missing, House Speaker Tom Craddick called in the Texas Department of Public Safety to arrest them. The department in turn called in a small component of the Department of Homeland Security -- a unit that tracks airplanes -- to help locate a plane owned by one of the Democratic leaders. Records of the search were then destroyed, ostensibly because federal rules prohibit the retention of intelligence information in noncriminal matters. All of which raises real questions: Did Texas officials employ federal authorities for partisan political purposes on the pretext of an aviation emergency? If so, who was responsible?
Unfortunately, these are not the questions the inspector general's report addresses. The office did not examine the destruction of the notes or why Texas authorities claimed to be searching for a missing plane. Rather, the report merely clears the Homeland Security office that took the call of any wrongdoing in giving 40 minutes of assistance in response to the grossly misleading request. The sort of help the unnamed employee gave, the inspector general finds, is routine in response to law enforcement inquiries. The employee clearly believed he was looking for a lost plane, and his work involved only a "nominal" use of federal resources. End of story.
Yet if the department was duped, who duped it? Texas public safety officials "declined to provide any information identifying the person or persons who requested they contact [Homeland Security] for assistance," the report says. The officer who made the call, Texas police Lt. A. William Crais, testified in a recent deposition that Mr. Craddick himself gave him the tail number of the plane along with a tip that it was ferrying state representatives. Lt. Crais called the feds, he said, when the plane did not show up where it was supposed to. Even if nobody at Homeland Security did anything wrong, federal authorities presumably have an interest in discouraging false reports to federal authorities about airplanes in distress, and in making sure that federal enforcement resources are not drawn into partisan political slugfests through trickery. The public still deserves an explanation -- and mid-cycle redistricting is still a terrible idea. |
