Approaching meltdown ...
Emotions are flaring again on the House floor. Anti-Craddick members want to get a vote on something -- anything -- relating to the speaker's shutoff of challenges.
Pro-Craddick members want to work on passing bills.
After dissident Republican Jim Keffer of Eastland and some other of the insurgent candidates for speaker sought elaboration on last night's actions by the speaker, the acting speaker at the moment, pro-Craddick Democrat Sylvester Turner of Houston turned away all their attempts to vote on ousting Mr. Craddick.
Dissident Republican Jim Pitts of Waxahachie: "I move that the office of speaker of the Texas House of Representatives be declared vacant."
Turner: "The chair will not recognize you for that motion."
Pro-Craddick Republicans Phil King of Weatherford and Will Hartnett of Dallas tried to get Mr. Turner to proceed with naming conference committee members on bills, but the dissidents kept up the attack at the back microphone.
After Mr. Turner insisted there have been no official "rulings" by the chair on anything related to the speaker's survival in the past 18 hours, anti-Craddick Democrat Craig Eiland of Galveston shouted:
"Wait, wait, wait! What was that if that was not a ruling, a determination, a decision? ... I appeal that decision ... whatever you want to call it."
We're now tangled in points of order ....
Comments
Just because people keep talking when they've been asked to state the reason for which they have risen, does not mean that such words count. They must wait until the Speaker recognizes them for the purpose for which they had risen.
Merritt and others just talk and consider that to be de facto recognition. Clearly under the rule it is not.
Posted by: Robert Pratt | May 26, 2007 1:09 PM
The "speaker" is, of course, not making any of these determinations. Rather, an unelected trial lawyer who lost his race for judge and has known conflicts of interest is running the Texas House for his own ends, and can be heard audibly dictating word-for-word the terms and rulings to a visibly addled "speaker."
Posted by: T. Lassiter Jones | May 26, 2007 1:24 PM