Amid Union Protests, More Democrats Go On the Lam -- This Time in Indiana

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Fox News:

It looks like Democrats have found a new strategy to block Republican majorities from enacting anti-union legislation: fleeing the state.

Taking a page from Democratic lawmakers in Wisconsin, legislators in Indiana have apparently fled the state rather than vote on an anti-union bill, a source told the Indianapolis Star on Wednesday.

And they were headed to Illinois, the same state that Wisconsin Democrats fled to last week to block a bill that would limit the collective bargaining rights of public sector unions while forcing members to contribute more to their pensions and health care plans.

In Indiana, Democrats could force so-called right-to-work legislation to miss a Tuesday procedural deadline for consideration. That bill would prohibit union representation fees from being a condition of employment.

A source told the newspaper that some Indiana Democrats might head to Kentucky. They need to avoid a state with a Republican governor to avoid being taken into police custody and returned to their home states.

Only three of the 40 House Democrats were in the chamber when Republican Speaker Brian Bosma tried to begin Tuesday's session, leaving it with too few members for a quorum. At the same time, hundreds of union members crowd the adjourning hallways in protest of a contentious labor bill.

Rep. Terri Austin of Anderson said her fellow Democrats were studying proposed legislation and couldn't predict when they would return. Bosma says he hadn't heard from Democratic leaders and that he wouldn't negotiate with people not doing their jobs.

The legislation has drawn strong opposition from union groups, who had several hundred members at the Statehouse for a second day after a GOP-led committee voted Monday to send the bill to the full House.

Union members watching from the House gallery and hallway outside cheered as Bosma put off House business until later Tuesday.

Bosma said he hadn't heard from Democratic leader Pat Bauer, D-South Bend, and that he wouldn't negotiate with people not doing their jobs, alluding to the deadlock in Wisconsin over labor legislation that led Senate Democrats there to leave the state.

"He's taken a page out of the Wisconsin Senate playbook apparently and is shirking the job that they were hired to do," Bosma said.
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Democrats everywhere seem intent on subverting the Democratic process. If they thought they got a shellacking last year, wait until 2012.