Thursday, September 20, 2007

Republican State Legislator Kirk England switches to Democrats

According to this morning's Fort Worth Star-Telegram Texas State Representative Kirk England of Grand Prairie has announced his switch from Republican to the Democratic Party. The district leans Democratic, as was shown when Kirk England, as the incumbent, only defeated the Democratic challenger in 2006 by 250 votes.

The 150 member Texas House of Representatives will thus be 79 Republicans and 70 Democrats, with one normally Republican district not represented at the moment. This is Kirk England's reaction to the dictatorial behavior of the Republican Speaker of the House Tom Craddick in the most recent house session. Craddick has been Speaker of the House since the Tom DeLay-financed Republican take-over of the Texas House in 2002, which led to the well-known runaway Democratic legislators as the Republicans used three month-long special sessions to redistrict the Texas Congress persons.

There may be hope for Texas yet, particularly with the national Republican Party dissing the Hispanics and all immigrants, Republicans everywhere dissing the African-American vote, and with Congressman Peter King (R-NY) who is an advisor to the Rudy Giuliani campaign announcing "Unfortunately we have too many mosques in this country." The Republicans seem to be getting frustrated or something and are letting their authoritarian, anti-Liberty and anti-minority opinions surface in the media.

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