Houston Democrats

Tom DeLay and Greg Abbott and all of their minions basically said "screw the law, we're doing it anyway".

And this is unusual how?

A court document regarding the redistricting lawsuit, with some interesting points made.

This is not unusual at all.

The sad part here is some Democrats -- Process Liberals like the County Chairman -- who think the Department of Justice, the Elections Division of the Secretary of State's Office, the County Elections Administrator, and various other "bi-partisan" or "non-partisan" clap-trap constitute refuge or salvation for our party or our republic today.

No, the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice today is just another right-wing frat-house prank operation. You gotta bet the GOP just love sticking it to the damn Liberals with their own rod.

So, we have to fight back, not plead.

What are the models for that? The left-wing protest model is not, I think, a useful model. It is, in fact, just a different style of pleading. My friend, Stan MERRIMAN loves protests, but I think he is wrong.

Theater, like Jim RINE's moving displays, yes, baiting the HPD, no.

The model -- a hybrid of two models -- we need is an older part of our party's tradition: It is organize, organize, organize.

We have two such historic styles of organization:

One, embedded in Texas law and tradition, might be called the county militia style. It goes back to the very early foundations of this state, formerly a republic in its own right, and had its last, best expression during the late nineteenth-century when, not rural but rather small-town Democrats, gave us women's suffrage and common carriage regulation but, also, racial segregation.

The other tradition we have, now, is the labor organization style derived from Irish and German Union Army regiments that went on to become the labor movement, then, the civil rights movement, and that, still, for instance, can successfully organize mostly hispanic janitors in Houston, Texas.

Between the two of those, we ought to be able to get things right.

The central institution of that kind of party is the convention.

It is voluntary, egalitarian, but also disciplined. As I say, both these styles are derived from the experience of militia-type armies during a whole sucession of wars. Henry Martyn Robert, of Robert's Rules, was a Union Army officer, a Brigadier General, later, and the District Engineer in Galveston. He was not a lawyer, not a segregationist Democrat.

But, Wars! We are against wars!

Yes, but not their moral equivalant. And, that is what a strong party with a capacity for political formation, mobilization, discipline, and action can be -- the moral equivalent of war.