Republicans 'used anti-terror agency' to find political foes

Fifty-one Texan Democrats who skipped town in the dead of night to defeat a controversial piece of legislation were tracked down after Republicans reportedly used a federal anti-terrorism agency, it emerged yesterday.

The group of state representatives were found holed up at a Holiday Inn in Ardmore, Oklahoma, on Tuesday by Texas Rangers with orders to arrest them.

They fled Austin to prevent the Texan house of representatives from reaching a quorum in time to vote through a bill which would redraw electoral boundaries, along with other proposals for spending cuts which they argued would harm the poor.

The law allows for the arrest of quorum-busting legislators - though they face no civil or criminal penalties - but it does not apply outside Texas.

Now it has been alleged that the Democrats were only found after the Republicans asked the air and marine interdiction and coordination centre - part of the homeland security department - to trace an aircraft belonging to one representative, Pete Laney.

"We called someone, and they said they were going to track it," the Texas Republican house leader, Tom Craddick, told a Fort Worth newspaper. "I have no idea how they tracked it down _ That's how we found them."

Mr Craddick had locked the house of representatives on Monday night, apparently in an effort to make sure that legislators already inside could not leave. The members are said to have spent the night in the chamber playing with toy balls and whistling the national anthem.

Yesterday Democrats accused their foes of using intimidatory tactics. In one case, police allegedly ques tioned nurses at an intensive care unit where a lawmaker's prematurely born twins were being cared for. Another said his wife was trailed for the duration of a 200-mile journey from Austin to Jacksonville.

Republicans, with no legislating to do, produced a set of playing cards featuring the missing legislators, mimicking those portraying wanted members of Saddam's regime.

"These folks are not stupid, they're like members of some weird cult," the leftwing Texan journalist Molly Ivins wrote of the state's Republicans in yesterday's Washington Post.

She cited recent comments made by one representative, Debbie Riddle, in a legislative committee: "Where did this idea come from that everybody deserves free education? Free medical care? Free whatever? It comes from Moscow. From Russia. It comes straight out of the pit of hell."