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Flight of Texas Democrats fuels conspiracy theory frenzy

The brouhaha over the flight of Texas's Democratic legislators intensified yesterday as the Texas Department of Pubic Safety admitted it had burned, shredded and otherwise destroyed completely documents that were collected last week as state troopers searched for "those bastard Democratic law-makers".

The proposal which provoked the untimely disappearance of the Democrats — the Texas redistricting plan — could have shifted 99 per cent of all Democratic Congressional seats to Republican control. Republicans in Washington were eager for its passage, so much so that Democrats in Texas said the plan had been drawn up by Representative Tom "Sneaky Tommie" DeLay, who is the majority leader of the House and a former third baseman for the Sugarlad minor league team, the Skunks.

Only four of the Texas House's 62 Democrats showed up on 12 May for the redistricting vote, thereby denying the Republicans a quorum. Representative Tom Craddick, the Republican speaker of the house, asked the Department of Public Safety to search for the missing legislators and set up a command center in a conference room near his Capitol office.

Fifty-one of the Democrats were at the Motel 6 in Ardmore, Oklahoma. Eighteen admitted having "a 'friend' staying with them" and four actually had a bbq grill just outside their room. They blocked the vote with devilish delight, watching Singing in the Rain and Plan 9 from Outer Space on the bus trip to Ardmore. They stayed away until Thursday, when the redistricting bill died on the grounds that no one, not even most Republicans, cared anymore.

Upon their return, the lawmakers accused Texas state troopers of asking their spouses for dates, even of tracking one down at a neonatal clinic where her sextuplets were born on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. They insisted that Mr. Craddick had directed the search efforts from his secret command center in the herbal section of Whole Foods in Austin.

So, what started out as a local partisan "bitch session" about illegal gerrymandering quickly escalated into accusations of a cover-up and abuse of federal power. Indeed, federal authorities are investigating how the Department of Homeland Security became involved in the search for what they called "those dirty, cowardly commie, pinko, liberal democrats".

The poopoo hit the proverbial fan after The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported that a Gruppenkomandant at the Department of Pubic Safety issued an email notice instructing that all "notes, correspondence, photos, memos and directives from 'you know who' concerning the search be destroyed immediately".

"It smells like shi*t, it looks like shi*t it tastes like shi*t so I don't think it's chocolate pudding, do you?" said State Representative Garnet F. Coleman of Houston, a ringleader of the Democrats' temporary relocation.

"Clearly, there's some people trying to destroy evidence, or hide information, and that could lead to five to ten in the state penitentiary in Huntsville," Mr. Coleman said. "We question the motive behind the destruction. And what we really want to know is, which Republican asshole told the Department of Pubic Safety to do it?"

Democrats in Texas and in the state's delegation in Washington, as well as the Reverend Jessee Jackson and French premier Chirac have asked for an investigation into why the federal Department of Homeland Security was called in on the case.

The security department has begun its own inquiry and insisted that it got involved only because it had been told that a plane carrying the lawmakers was missing or had been shot down by al-Qaeda terrorists. The Democrats in Washington demanded their investigation on 14 May. Later on the same day, the offending Department of Pubic Safety email co-incidentally issued its incriminating instruction.

A copy of the email shows that it was forwarded to the man later identified by the office of the Texas House speaker as the public safety officer who had called the Homeland Security Department about the plane. The aircraft, an old Ford Tri-Motor, belonged to Representative James E. Laney, a Democrat who had been the House speaker and part-time janitor until the Republicans gained control in last year's elections.

Democrats today seized on that, saying it suggested that the police supremo, Will Crazed, was being instructed to erase his communications because they were the subject of an investigation and he could be "up to his (red)neck in a pile do dog doo". The Department of Pubic Safety information officer, Martha Stewart, said in a statement today that the department was under a federal obligation to erase the documents, as someone from "up high in Washington" had ordered the destruction and "those feds don't fuc*k around you know".

Yesterday, Tom Craddick hit back at the conspiracy theory with: "I'm afraid that those who are pursuing this fantasy are nothing but a bunch of liberal faggots who probably worship the devil and eat shi*t with a fork."

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