John Garcia wrote:
On Monday, July 28, 2003, at 09:26 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
In a message dated 7/27/2003 6:43:54 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
And its unclear that "arrest" is even the proper word to describeCan we get real here. Once again this is not the 19th century. We are
what the
Chairman tried to do - since I don't think that even if the Chairman's
request had been carried out that the Democratic Representatives
would have
been detained, placed in jail, or had charges filed against them.
At any rate, caning another Congreesman, literally nearly to death, on the floor of Congress is far worse.
talking about a congressman of one party trying to have congressmen of
the other party arrested. This is outragous behavior. It is not some
little prank
Y'know, the Dems should have let themselves be arrested. Its not as if
they were going to spend even an hour in a DC holding cell, and the
adverse publicity for the Republicans would have been beneficial to the
Democrats.
But the police sent to arrest them might have realized that there were no good grounds for arrest, and didn't do it for that reason.
I was reading something earlier this month where the legality of DPS
troopers in Texas arresting lawmakers to force a quorum was brought into
question. Not sure when, though, and I'm hazy enough on the laws
regarding elected officials and their duties to wonder if that's one of
those things that would have to go through the courts to be settled, at
least here. (Things can get a little weird in Texas politics....)
Julia
And the Capitol Police probably knew they couldn't arrest the Democrats. OTOH, had the police tried, I think that would have handed the Democrats a big stick to beat on the Republicans with. Assuming of course that they wanted to do so.
john
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