[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 74 (Monday, May 19, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H4223-H4224]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          TEXAS REDISTRICTING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. EDWARDS. Mr. Speaker, before I discuss some comments I would like 
to make about the courageous acts of 51 Texas legislators last week, I 
want to join my Republican colleagues in thanking Congressman Larry 
Combest for so many years of dedicated public service to the State of 
Texas and to our country.
  Those of us who believe that one of the strengths of our country 
comes from the values of rural America, one of the strengths of our 
economy comes from the productivity of our family farmers and ranchers, 
all of us who believe those things owe a debt of gratitude, an 
everlasting debt of gratitude to Larry Combest for his bipartisan and 
strong leadership in our country not only as chairman of the Committee 
on Agriculture but as chairman of the very important Permanent Select 
Committee on Intelligence through which he served our Nation's security 
in so many important ways.
  Mr. Speaker, I do want to talk about the actions of last week where 
we had

[[Page H4224]]

51 Texas legislators who fought to stop U.S. House Majority Leader Tom 
DeLay from forcing a divisive, partisan and unnecessary congressional 
redistricting plan through the Texas House of Representatives. Their 
act of courage was heralded by editorial boards throughout our State of 
Texas. I salute legislators like Jim Dunnam and John Mabry from my 
hometown of Waco, Texas.
  Without their actions on Monday morning of last week, the Texas House 
would have passed a plan that would have split my 100-year-old historic 
rural central Texas district into four different congressional 
districts stretching from Fort Worth to the suburbs of Houston to San 
Antonio, literally covering hundreds and hundreds of miles without a 
single bit of input from one mayor or city council member in our 
district, one school board member, because that plan was only put 
together on Mother's Day afternoon last Sunday with the intention of 
passing it through the Texas House starting at 10 a.m. the next day, on 
Monday morning. That was wrong for that plan to have been pushed and 
right for Texas legislators to stand up not for themselves, not for me, 
but for the right of central Texas citizens in my district and Texans, 
Republicans and Democrats alike throughout our State, to have a voice 
in shaping their congressional districts and the future of their 
communities.
  While the Texas legislators are back in Austin working on State 
priority issues, there are some questions that will not go away and 
some questions to which the American people deserve an answer.
  Outrageously, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the new 
agency with the responsibility to protect American families from 
terrorists here and abroad, that agency used Federal antiterrorism 
resources and personnel to track down Texas Representative Pete Laney 
of Hale Center, Texas, as he flew his private airplane from his 
hometown to Ardmore, Oklahoma. To borrow a phrase from former Senator 
Lloyd Bentsen, ``I know Pete Laney, Pete Laney is a friend of mine, and 
I can assure you Pete Laney is no terrorist.'' Quite to the contrary, 
he is the former Speaker of the Texas House, a respected leader in our 
legislature, respected by members of both sides of the aisle. In fact, 
Pete Laney was the one individual that President George Bush who then 
as Governor Bush asked Mr. Laney to introduce for the first time to the 
public President-elect Bush in his first speech to the Nation and the 
world once he found out he would be President.
  I have some questions for the Department of Homeland Security:
  One, and most importantly, why will you not release the tapes of the 
conversation between the Texas Department of Public Safety and the U.S. 
homeland security agency, the very conversation that led to the 
possibly unlawful and certainly unethical use of Federal resources, 
antiterrorism resources to track down the law-abiding citizen Pete 
Laney?
  Secondly, do you have something to hide? Why is our U.S. homeland 
security agency afraid to let the American people and the press know 
what was in that conversation?
  Thirdly, does the public not deserve to hear the conversation that 
led to what does appear to be a gross abuse of Federal resources?
  Fourthly, to the homeland security agency, our U.S. agency again 
trying to defend us against terrorism, if the tape exonerates you and 
your actions, what are you afraid of? Why are you not willing to 
release that tape now, not weeks, not months from now, not years from 
now? Why are you afraid to release that tape now to Members of Congress 
and to the public?
  Fifth, did Majority Leader Tom DeLay or House Speaker Tom Craddick or 
any one of their staffs or someone speaking in their behalf ask the 
Texas Department of Public Safety to make this request to the U.S. 
Department of Homeland Security?
  We will not know the answer to those questions until the tape of our 
U.S. homeland security agency is made available to the public.
  Mr. Speaker, this is no longer just a Texas issue. It is an issue for 
all Americans who care about defending our families and our 
neighborhoods and our communities from terrorists. How horrible it is 
that during the very week that al Qaeda was preparing the final efforts 
apparently to attack Morocco and American citizens in Saudi Arabia our 
homeland security agency was tracking down former State Speaker of the 
House and present State representative Pete Laney in Hale Center, 
Texas, a community of just over 2,000 people, not known as a hotbed of 
Islamic fundamentalism or radicalism in little old west Texas.

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