Encouraging news from Texas

[Gothmog]

I found this news to be encouraging. Several months ago, Rep. Talmadge Heflin, the GOP Chairman of the Texas House of Representative Appropriations committee and his wife tried to steal a baby from their house keeper by claiming that they would do a better job of raising the child compared to the parents. The housekeeper was an immigrant from Africa and had few resources.

At the time, I was afraid the Heflin would get the child in that the Harris County Family Courts are very political and as chairman of the appropriations committee, Helfin had a great deal of stroke. I was pleased to see that mother won and the Heflin gave up their claims to the baby.

Today, I learned the Heflin lost his reelection bid by 30 or so votes to a political newcomer. See http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/2891113 This is the first pickup of a house seat by the Democrats in a number of years. The winner is a complete political novice.

[tk2kewl]

1. Damn, and now that poor child will grow up godless

[JAbuchan08]

3. And the kid of someone from Africa

let's FREEP that judge! Um... am I in the right forum?

[Edmond Dantes]

5. They were probably seeking free child labor.

They had to pay the housekeeper, but wouldn't have been required to pay their adopted child.

Blech! I hope this isn't the coming trend. They no longer send slave ships to Africa. They simply steal the children for free labor.

[Straight Shooter]

2. The shocking part is he lost by only 30 or so votes instead of 3,000

or even more. Something is very wrong with America

:wtf:

[klook]

4. Did Heflin pull a Strom?

Is he the kid's illegitimate father?

[jobycom]

6. We've won a few seats in the past two years

Patrick Rose won in 2002 against a Repub incumbent, and Mark Strama this time beat an incumbent Repub. Rose is from a conservative area around Austin, Strama is from a slightly Repub area in north Austin.

My Repub rep was almost defeated by a newcomer Democrat. Out of 49K votes, she lost by 171, and there are still some provisional ballots to count.

Democrats made some gains. We took back Austin, which had started to slip lately. We won judgeships we weren't supposed to win, too.

[Gothmog]

7. Judge did right thing

The baby is not related to the Heflins in any way. The only ground for custody under Texas law would be that they had "custody" of the child for six or more months. The family law judge ruled that the fact that the child lived at the Heflin's home while the mother was their housekeeper was not the type of custody to satisfy the Texas Family Code. This was the correct ruling and the judge should be praised for making the correct call. BTW, this was a GOP judge ruling against a GOP Chairman of the Appropriations committee.

Rep. Heflin was not the father. The child was six or so months old when he first came to live at the Heflins and the father was a party to the litigation or was mentioned in the news accounts. Mrs. Heflin evidently became attached to the child and thought that she could be a better parent than the actual mother.

The key thing is that this type of outrageous behavior was actually noticed and Heflin is the first GOP to lose to a Democrat in a contested race in several years.

[LisaLynne]

9. It is encouraging!

And I will give kudos to the Judge. I'm sure he was under some political pressure.

[rniel]

8. Is this the moral values they're talking about

Stealing people's babies