The Great Texas Escape

Moving with exceptional stealth and tactical coordination, more than 50 Democratic state lawmakers in Texas packed their bags and quietly slipped out of the state under cover of darkness late Sunday and early today.

Republican Gov. Rick Perry immediately dispatched police to track down the missing legislators, arrest them and bring them back to do the state's business -- even asking neighboring New Mexico if the Texas Rangers were empowered to make arrests there. (New Mexico's attorney general -- a Democrat -- said no.) But all signs were that the legislators were on the lam -- some, perhaps, fleeing to Mexico -- putting them beyond the reach of Lone Star justice and of GOP ambitions.

And thus the Onion-ing of America continues. Read this whole story and I guarantee you'll laugh at least three times; Once at the high covert-ops drama, once at the Repubs sputtering indignation, and once for the irony of the Dems finding a backbone by turning tail and running.