The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance is sneezing a little as we fill out our brackets and prepare for our fantasy baseball drafts. Oh, and here's the blog post roundup from last week.

Off the Kuff reports on the last (we hope) special legislative election of the year.

Libby Shaw, writing for Texas Kaos and contributing to Daily Kos, is both outraged and embarrassed by the 47 GOP U.S. Senator saboteurs: The Snow Made Them Do It.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme is terrified that private entities are controlling are access to water. Oligarchy is the Republican way.

From WCNews at Eye on Williamson: The GOP in Texas used to be for local control, now they're not. Why is that? They're For Local Control As Long As They Control The Locals.

A tale of letters, email, and self-inflicted wounds was told by PDiddie at Brains and Eggs.

Neil at All People Have Value visited the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo.  He hopes that any race of super-smart alien cows who visit us have mercy on our souls. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

jobsanger celebrates his ninth blogging birthday today.

Bluedaze reported on state Rep. Phil King's "Fracking Nanny" bill, which was tabled in committee.

Texas Leftist, also tracking state legislative developments, blogged about Big Oil's efforts to subvert local control, specifically Houston's regulating pollution from their refineries along the Ship Channel.

And John Coby at Bay Area Houston posted twice about how to drive in Texas.

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Here's more great Texas liberal blog postings from across the Lone Star State.

Texans for Public Justice wants the Lege to understand that public integrity depends on prosecutorial independence.

Grits for Breakfast noted the attempt by state legislators to scale back the statute of limitations for rape, and collected more criminal justice bill filings from Austin.

Trail Blazers posted about Rand Paul's SXSW boasting about his Snapchat skills, and his sniping at Hillary Clinton.

Socratic Gadfly wrote about Harry Truman and healthcare, while The Makeshift Academic reminds us that Obamacare is about people, not states.

Austin Contrarian illustrates the problem of disconnectivity in the streets.

The TSTA blog previews a couple of bad education bills, and Raise Your Hand Texas testifies that an A-F grading system for schools and school districts is a bad idea.

Texas Vox calls for renewables to push out coal.

Mean Green Cougar Red supports doing away with Daylight Saving Time.

Rafael McDonnell recalls a meeting and interview he had with anti-gay pastor Flip Benham 20 years ago.

The Quintessential Curmudgeon wonders if those Kiwanis "American Flag" flyers fall under the definition of ethical fundraising.

Prairie Weather wryly observes that what intellectual poverty looks like is exemplified in that Apple wristwatch.

Houston Matters provides an update on the spring bale of sea turtles that the NOAA Fisheries Service is raising and releasing in Galveston.

Juanita Jean caught us up on that "Jinx" TV star named Robert Durst.

Fascist Dyke Motors pens a murder mystery.

Last, The Texas Observer eulogizes former Texas land commissioner Bob Armstrong.

It's mutiny, not treason.

Here's where I need to say "IANAL", and that I know nothing about the Uniform Code of Military Justice (which applies more to Sen. Joni Ernst as a military reservist and signatory to Sen. Tom Cotton's letter than it does him), but it certainly seems as if someone who holds both a Bronze Star and a Harvard law degree should know better than to have stepped on the line of the Logan Act, or demonstrated what a US Army general refers to as mutiny.

“I would use the word mutinous,” said (retired Major Gen. Paul D.) Eaton, whose long career includes training Iraqi forces from 2003 to 2004. He is now a senior adviser to VoteVets.org. “I do not believe these senators were trying to sell out America. I do believe they defied the chain of command in what could be construed as an illegal act.” Eaton certainly had stern words for Cotton.

“What Senator Cotton did is a gross breach of discipline, and especially as a veteran of the Army, he should know better,” Eaton told me. “I have no issue with Senator Cotton, or others, voicing their opinion in opposition to any deal to halt Iran’s nuclear progress. Speaking out on these issues is clearly part of his job. But to directly engage a foreign entity, in this way, undermining the strategy and work of our diplomats and our Commander in Chief, strains the very discipline and structure that our foreign relations depend on to succeed.”

The consequences of Cotton’s missive were plainly apparent to Eaton. “The breach of discipline is extremely dangerous, because undermining our diplomatic efforts, at this moment, brings us another step closer to a very costly and perilous war with Iran,” he said.

“I think Senator Cotton recognizes this, and he simply does not care,” Eaton went on to say.

If you'd rather have it illustrated, then here you go.

When in doubt, pull out your trusty pocket copy of the US Constitution -- every true conservative carries one, you know -- and turn to the 14th Amendment, Section 3.

"No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability."

Cotton's letter and the 46 other senators who signed it aligned themselves with their counterparts in the Iranian government: hard-boiled, war-mongering conservative extremists.  Both of those wish to derail the nuclear non-proliferation proposal under discussion between Iran and the United States, negotiating on behalf of the United Nations Security Council.  Some critics want to call those talks 'aid and comfort to the enemy'.  Prosecutorial discretion aside (ham sandwiches and indictments, as they say), that charge really doesn't hold any water.  The letter's contents do not reveal anything resembling aid or comfort to the people of Iran, and that nation is not even quite our enemy, as they are our ally -- not just at the moment  but for some months now -- against ISIS/ISIL/Daesh/whatever we're calling them this week.

But that's where people get the idea that Cotton's letter is treasonous; that "aid and comfort to the enemy" phrase, which is also mentioned in Article 3, Section 3, Clause 1 of the Constitution.

"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court."

If you're still asking, "WTF does all this mean, PDiddie?" then here's a good interpretation (of the 14th Amendment, Sec. 3):

This section is stating that no person who has previously taken an oath into office (Congress, presidential, vice presidential etc) is allowed to engage in activities against or in harm to the state (country). So if someone is found to have engaged in a rebellion or is found to have aided enemies of the United States they are not able to hold office. This can, however, be ignored by a two thirds vote in Congress. (Emphasis is mine.)

So even if someone in Congress were found to have committed mutiny -- or treason, for that matter -- US Senators and Representatives can nullify that by a 2/3rds vote.  That's what happened in the late 1970s, when Congress removed the ban of CSA president Jefferson Davis from serving his re-unified country in public office (a little late for him to take advantage, to be sure).

But the best example of why there will be no consequence to Cotton or the others is that there are accused international war criminals named George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, et. al., and a confessed war criminal and brazen, declared intentional recidivist named Dick Cheney who roam America wild and free today, more than a decade since they committed their war crimes.  Prosecutorial discretion, as they say.

Nothing of significance is going to come of Cotton and his in-Obama's-face disgrace beyond apoplectic indignation... with the exception of petitions and Democratic fundraising letters, of course.  And every political consultant worth his salt will tell you that you can't raise nearly as much money using the word 'mutiny' as you can 'treason'.

Update: Don't believe me?  Would you believe Sean Penn?

Sunday Funnies

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Of letters and email and self-inflicted wounds

Who has cut themselves the worst, Hillary or the 47 Cotton-picking morons?

I checked in with my alter-ego, Saul Relative -- whom the RNC is still soliciting -- and his response was: "meh, it's all relative".  It's certainly possible that aspiring presidential nominees Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio gained standing among GOP primary voters by trolling the Logan Act, but will ultimately lose the war, i.e. a November 2016 general election that has independents and moderates as the key to victory (as if those three guys had any chance of winning to begin with).

Potential but as yet undeclared contenders like Rob Portman may have injured his prospects because he's from purple Ohio, and Lindsey Graham helped his because he's from South Carolina.

So as it may go down in twenty months -- the economy, stupid notwithstanding -- to who's got the maddest foreign policy ballin' skilz, let's check in with the Iranian mullah who gets the last word in the matter of the pending, possible nuclear agreement between his nation and the US (and the other UN Security Council states, it should be emphasized).

Iran's supreme leader said Thursday that a letter from Republican lawmakers warning that any nuclear deal could be scrapped by the next U.S. president is a sign of "disintegration" in Washington.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called the letter a sign of "the collapse of political ethics and the U.S. system's internal disintegration," according to the official IRNA news agency. It was the first reaction to the letter by Khamenei, who has the final say over all major policies.

Khamenei said states typically remain loyal to their commitments even if governments change, " but American senators officially announced the commitment will be null and void after this government leaves office. Isn't this the ultimate degree of the collapse of political ethics and the U.S. system's internal disintegration?"

Oops, he nailed it.

Khamenei called the letter “stupid” and “disgusting” and said he was negotiating with backstabbers.

He blamed the letter on the fact that they had been recently addressed “by a Zionist clown,” referring to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

He complained that the Senators had accused Iran of supporting terrorism, which, he said, “is laughable.” (Iran sees Hizbullah and Hamas as legitimate resistance movements). He countered that it was the United States that created ISIL (Daesh), the world’s worst terrorist organization by its invasion of Iraq. He also accused Israel, which he said that the US backs to the hilt, of being a terrorist state.

He said that when an administration concludes an agreement with someone, the next administration is bound to honor it, but that in the US this principle has been discarded. The GOP senators had pledged, he said, to make any agreement with the Obama administration “as though it never existed.” “This is the utmost in the decline of political ethics … that is, this system is a system on the verge of oblivion, such that a person sees these things in it… They actually said they want to give Iranians a lesson so that we would understand their laws. We don’t need the lessons of those people!”

Indeed.

Do those 47 senators actually hate Obama more than they love their country?  More than they fear nuclear war?  I report; you decide.

On the other hand, this next cartoon may be a perfectly cringeworthy illustration of everything we have to look forward to with respect to the Democratic party's primary debates.

This may not seem absurd to the people who gathered last night in Houston to get themselves ready, but I can assure them that it certainly does to many others.

Tonight, Houston Democratic establishment declares they are @ReadyForHillary in event hosted by @GeneforTexas. | https://t.co/loAYOtJfQR
— Teddy Schleifer (@teddyschleifer) March 12, 2015

Paging Elizabeth Warren, Martin O'Malley, Bernie Sanders, Jim Webb, and/or Joe Biden to the red courtesy phone at Gate 411: you have an emergency clue holding.

Here's the deal with Hillary Clinton's email

A couple of deals.  Okay, a few deals.

Chris Cillizza:

The problem for Clinton (or at least the problem I see) is that we won't ever be able to check whether the judgment used by her lawyers was the right judgment. I'm not suggesting that she should have been required to publicly release every e-mail -- professional or personal -- she sent during her time at State. There's plenty of private things that she has every right to keep private. But the decision to destroy all of those e-mails means that the possibility of having an independent review of them by some trusted figure (or figures) is entirely impossible.

The "just trust me" approach is tough in any part of life but especially when it comes to a person running (or about to be running) for the nation's highest office. That goes double when at issue is primary source documentation of the most recent position Clinton held before the one she plans to seek. I don't think Clinton is lying about the nature of the e-mails that were withheld from the State department and then destroyed. But I do think that the line between personal and professional communications -- especially via e-mail -- is a very fine one. And simply saying that you drew that line yourself and expecting everyone to nod their heads and move on is decidedly far-fetched.

Gadfly.

Talking Points Memo has Hillary Clinton's nine-page press release, which has more lies. One? That she emailed all government employees on ".gov" accounts, when we know that Huma Abedin had an account on the Clinton server.

It also notes she is turning over 55,000 pages of emails, not 55,000 emails. She's actually turning over only half of the emails of the account, claiming a full one-half are private.

As for why Clintonistas cite Colin Powell for using a private email account but don't cite Condoleezza Rice, who followed him? A 2005 State Department policy manual update said private email accounts could be used only if those emails were turned over to the government, and specified narrow exceptions for private use. That's probably why Condi used a government account.

Meanwhile, ignore the fact that your chief female political fixer had an email on the same private domain and that your JP Morgan moneybags for your $25 million of investments runs the domain server.

My step-sister.

Ed Snowden, please undelete Hillary's emails, and send them out for review. She said she never put any classified information in her emails, so no worry about national secrets. Isn't it funny that she feels very secure that her deleted emails are deleted. Is there even such a thing as deleted emails? I think they live forever -- like on the other party's server, at the Google headquarters, in cyberspace somewhere. She used her iPad. Did she use it in foreign countries? Does she not know that the Koreans, Chinese, Russians, and many others tap everything in their countries and in ours if they really want to know, just like we do -- at the NSA?

That's bingo.  I still don't understand why Trey Gowdy or Darrell Issa or whoever's turn it is to drive the House Scandal Bus this week doesn't just ask NSA for whatever they need.  Seems like the easiest way to find out if there is actually something scandalous or not.

This is hopefully -- VERY hopefully -- the last thing I need to blog about this topic.

What the BLEEP Happened to Hip Hop? (Updated, this weekend)

I promise that I don't fix current events around my blog posts.  So let's stop blaming white racism on black rappers, mmkay?  Because when you do that, you expose yourselves as ridiculous fools.

David Cobb, the 2004 US Green Party presidential nominee and now one of the leaders of Move to Amend, makes an appearance with Shamako Noble and everybody else in Houston who isn't going to the rodeo Saturday and Sunday.  You should check it out.

“They mine metals for the phones killing trees for the loose leaf
I write raps on both to tell you what it do, g”

-- Mike Wird, Soul Pros, Regenerative Lifestyles and Hip Hop Congress

Do you know what the 1996 Telecommunications Act and how has it influenced culture in the United States?

Have you ever heard of Lyric Committees, and the story of how record labels try to control artists money?

Why haven't artists truly been successful in organizing as a labor force when so many of them are working in our schools, youth centers, prisons and organizations?

And most importantly, what the (bleep) happened to Hip Hop?

Hip Hop Congress and Move to Amend and are partnering to present “What the Bleep Happened to Hip Hop?”, a public education campaign seeking to raise awareness of the dangerous power corporations currently wield over the hip hop industry specifically, and over our society in general.

We invite you to join us on March 14 and 15, 2015 when this unique collaboration arrives in Houston. On Saturday, we will have educational panels and participatory conversations, with an artists showcase that evening. We will close with a People's Movement Assembly on Sunday afternoon that connects to the United States Social Forum.

The cultural terrain of society is a crucial battlefront in the struggle for social justice. Culture retains its dynamism by reflecting and creating consciousness. Exploitation and oppression have always been synonymous with popular culture, from D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation to the struggle of the media justice movement in the late 90's. The United States of America, long heralded as a melting pot, has also been acknowledged as virtual factory for the commodification of culture and the production of a facsimile of culture that greatly resembles the McDonald's of thought, art, music, and humanity.

Hip Hop Congress is an international grassroots organization dedicated to evolving hip hop culture by inspiring social action and creativity within the community. Move to Amend is a national campaign to amend the US Constitution to abolish the court-created legal doctrines of corporate constitutional rights and the legal premise that money equals speech. Both organizations are explicitly committed to anti-racist and feminist organizing principles, and challenge us to organize, create and assert our humanity.

For more information on the agenda, locations, times, or to RSVP for the Educational Forum or the PMA, go to the Facebook event page and register via e-mail contacts there.

Musical artists include Don Claude, Mic Crenshaw, Shamako Noble, Faithful Five, and others.  Open mic and cypher.

#WhatTheBleep Happened to Hip Hop? is brought to you by Hip Hop Congress, Move to Amend, Global Fam.org, Houston Peace & Justice Center, Healthy Habitz, S.H.A.P.E. Community Center, Multi-Media Center, Harris County Green Party, For Our House at Project Row Houses, Civil Rights Law Society, Thurgood Marshall School of Law and The US Social Forum.

Houston PD tracks your cellphone without a warrant, and that's okay by the DA

I don't know why these things shock me any more, but they do.  Maybe it's because they keep saying, "Don't worry; trust us".

Back in September, HPD officer James Taylor lamented how the Edward Snowden leaks had spooked the public into thinking that even local law enforcement agencies were part of a broad, indiscriminate surveillance dragnet that gathers data on unsuspecting Americans.

"We are not the NSA nor the federal government," the HPD officer told members of a Senate State Affairs Committee. A PowerPoint slide he'd prepared for the occasion flashed up on the screen: "STATE AND LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT DO NOT 'SNOOP!'"

Maybe, maybe not. The problem, privacy advocates say, is we don't know. What we do know -- actually, what we've known for quite some time -- is that HPD has the technology to sweep up cell phone data in real time, deploying a device that essentially mimics a cellphone tower and tricks your phone into communicating with it. And, according to local prosecutors -- who, it should be noted, admit they don't know how local cops are using the technology, either -- HPD doesn't need a warrant to use it.

So Stingray.  Which has been mentioned here and by others a few times in the recent past.

Careful going forward; this gets a little complicated.  Michael Barajas at the Houston Press has done an excellent job breaking it down, though, so I'm going to roll out a heavy excerpt from his piece.

In September, HPD officer Taylor and Bill Exley, an assistant prosecutor with the Harris County DA's office who works with local cops to help solve (in his words) "blood and guts cases," warned state lawmakers that, under their interpretation of state law, local cops do need a warrant to gather sensitive cell phone data from a phone company (not messages or call contents, but data showing where you've been and logs of your incoming and outgoing calls). This is despite virtually everyone else saying a state appeals court ruling from last summer called Ford v. State cemented the fact that cops don't need a warrant to get your metadata from a phone company.

It's unclear why the Harris County District Attorney's Office would take this rather unique stance -- the state prosecutors association, for instance, has said that, in light of the Ford case, metadata held by a phone company is most certainly not protected by the Fourth Amendment. Exley basically told lawmakers that the current law is complex and that no matter how they read it, cops always come away needing a warrant to get metadata from a phone company. Perhaps. The more skeptical among us might think Exley and Taylor were trying to scare legislators away from passing stricter privacy rules this session that would explicitly add a warrant-for-metadata protection to state law. (Taylor, for instance, told the committee that securing warrants for phone data "results in us not being able to investigate cases, which results in people dying.")

But if HPD wants to gather that data directly from the source, i.e. directly from your phone, no warrant is necessary, Exley says.

There's a whole lot more that you should read there, but let's finish here with this part.

As MuckRock first uncovered last year, police departments buying Stingray devices from Harris Corp. (the manufacturer of Stingray technology, no relation except as vendor to Harris County) must first sign a nondisclosure agreement with the FBI. And as the Houston Chronicle reiterated last week, that nondisclosure agreement means even local prosecutors don't know the specifics of how HPD is using its fake-cell-phone-tower devices.

That doesn't seem to bother Exley much. In emails last week, he told us that police using "historical data" gleaned from cell phone companies is a completely different issue than police tracking someone with "live data" sucked up by a Stingray. Exley says that, according to his understanding (again, this is all relatively speculative since HPD won't talk at all about how they use the devices), HPD only deploys Stingrays in a pretty narrow set of circumstances -- for instance, when police are trying to track down a fugitive with an arrest warrant.

I don't see much point in having a smartphone any longer, unless you just don't mind having NSA and CIA and HPD listen in as you take a dump.  You can probably guess that the nerdy kid down the block has also figured all this out and has mail-ordered the technology from Amazon, had it delivered via their drone, hacked into that and has it hovering outside your bedroom window.

AI ain't got nothin' on any of these.  Yet.

With the news earlier this week that CIA has been working on cracking the security for Apple phones and tablets for years now, you can forget about that alleged security blanket as some protection of your privacy (let's note that this fellow calls bullshit on Jeremy Scahill, Josh Begley, and the Intercept, the first link in this graf).  In reference to the toon above... at the rate we're going, of what serviceable use will drones actually be?  Everybody already knows everything there is to know about you as it is.

Stupid Republicans, Vol. 47

It's only Tuesday but several inmates have escaped the asylum and I need to start getting 'em rounded up.  Let's begin here in H-Town, with a little problem that actually originated in Austin.

The official who oversees more vehicle registrations than anyone else in the state gave the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles a failing grade Monday after another error surfaced in its new inspection and registration system.

"It is having an adverse effect on my ability to do the work of the taxpayers," Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector Mike Sullivan said of the state's administration of the new single-sticker system, which took effect March 1.

The latest error, discovered Friday, involved incorrect bills sent to 321,927 motorists with April registrations coming due. Of those, 83,541 were in the eight-county Houston area, including 56,965 in Harris County.

The confusion led to long lines at local tax offices, frustrated motorists and haggard county staffers.

"I've got people demanding to see me and calling my office," Sullivan said. "This is a state issue, but the county tax assessors are the face of this... (Motorists) are angry and frustrated, saying they'll never vote for Mike Sullivan again. I'm a big boy, I can take it, but I feel bad for the people coming in."

This is not the Republican county tax-assessor's fault, but the people complaining about "never voting for Mike Sullivan again" are the same people who think they can solve the problem by voting for another Republican.  In other words, the definition of insanity.

There are some who want to blame Sen. Royce West (D-Dallas) for introducing the legislation that made this happen.  That's well and good, but unless Republicans in the legislature all abstained from voting for the bill, then they stamped it with their bicameral majority approval.  This is called, in Republican phraseology, 'taking personal responsibility', which Republicans instruct others to do but avoid doing themselves.

While the DMV screws everybody up and over, the DPS is warning state senators about glitterbombs.

The first rule about glitter bombs, if you work in the Texas Department of Public Safety, is you do not talk about glitter bombs. "DPS does not discuss security-related matters or investigations," the agency vaguely told us in an email statement. (Subject line:"Inquiry about Glitter Bombs.")

But there appears to have been a minor, glitter-sized leak in the department. On Friday, The Texas Tribune said it obtained an email that a Department of Public Safety official sent to state senators. The email contained an unsigned attachment warning of a glitter-bombing threat among our society's most dangerous groups: the gays and women. "Glitter Bombing: Weapon of Choice for Gay Rights, Pro Choice Advocates," the Tribune said the unsigned attachment was titled. 

Couldn't the legislators just use their newly-installed panic buttons in case they get assaulted with arts and crafts by women and gay people?  And whatever happened to the terrorist threats of jars of poop and pee?

Now I know what you're thinking: the DMV and DPS bureaucrats personnel behind these clusterfucks and conspiracies are not ALL Republicans.  I'm certain that's just as correct as saying that Republicans are not all racists, either.

Let's move on to DC, where 47 Republican senators -- where have we heard that 47% number before? -- have decided that they will not be bound by any nuclear agreement Obama negotiates with Iran, and sent Iran's leaders a letter to that effect.  That's called 'trolling the Logan Act'.

It wasn't enough for a Republican Congress to invite a foreign leader to speak to them -- an appalling violation of diplomatic protocol at best -- over the objections of the executive branch just a week ago.  They had to go a little bit further this week to disrespect and de-legitimize the office of the executive.  They may think they're just dissing Obama, but if a Republican ever manages to get elected president again, there's going to be some payback.  There's going to be payback in some form or fashion no matter what.

When Republicans are saying publicly you have lost, you have probably disgraced yourself.

There has never been an instance in which an organized partisan bloc in the legislative branch disregarded the separation of powers in order to publicly and intentionally undermine US foreign policy. Disagreements over foreign policy have often been bitter, but they have been tempered by an understanding that they can be resolved by elections. I may not like a president, but undermining the office itself will haunt me when my party finally wins.

It seems clear that many Republicans have lost their belief that the party can compete for the Presidency. No other logic explains their willingness to burn down the office itself. The demographic realities are brutal and the Blue Wall looms large. This kind of behavior will only get worse, and more dangerous, in 2017.

The best response, however, came from the Iranian foreign minster, who sees right through the GOP's game.  He was, after all, educated in the United States, and appears to understand US constitutional and international law better than most of these Republican senators.  And just think: Republicans might nominate someone for president in 2016 who does not have a college degree.

Finally, and speaking of Republicans who really don't understand anything at all, why is someone who has never sent an e-mail in his entire life sitting on the Senate technology subcommittee?

You already know the answer: because he's a dumb fucking Republican who got elected by some of the dumbest fucking Republican voters in the nation, that's why.

Cannabis speeds up, passes gay marriage

Kirsten Gillibrand, Rand Paul, and Cory Booker will introduce a Senate bill to legalize medical marijuana under federal law (today), various outlets are reporting. This bill would mark an unprecedented push to legalize medical use drug on a federal level. We've seen a handful of states (and the nation's capital) legalize recreational marijuana over the last two years, and about half the states have a medical marijuana program, but the proposal — called the "Compassionate Access, Research Expansion and Respect States (CARERS) Act" — would be the widest attempt at legalization yet.

You know what's been happening in Texas and other states, but obviously federal law -- which ceased being enforced at the end of last year -- would trump efforts to slam on the brakes.  As with Obamacare and gay marriage, regressive conservatives would have to shift their focus from prohibition to repeal.  From the WaPo, linked above:

The proposal will be unveiled at a 12:30 p.m. (Eastern) press conference on Tuesday, which will be streamed live here. Patients, their families and advocates will join the senators at the press conference.

We'll see how fast the bill moves, but I never thought I'd see the day.  Without the organized Christianist objection movement that marriage equality has spawned, I would expect to see passage and then few if any court challenges after the fact.  To be resolved in the (perhaps hastening) future would be decriminalizing possession by those without medical conditions, and at some point, something that comes close to unfettered legalization.

That would be real progress, but today counts as a big step in the right direction.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance is all about springing forward as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff sadly reminds a fifth-generation Republican who doesn't want to lose her Obamacare insurance subsidies that Greg Abbott doesn't care about her at all.

Libby Shaw, writing for Texas Kaos and contributing to Daily Kos, heard the president give one of the most memorable and moving speeches of our lifetimes.

From WCNews at Eye on Williamson: Dan Patrick wants to bust the spending cap without having to pay politically for busting the spending cap, in GOP Wants To Change The Rules In The Middle Of The Game.

"What the BLEEP happened to hip-hop?" asked PDiddie at Brains and Eggs.

Texas ranks 43rd in the US as a place to live for children. That's what happens when Republicans run the place. CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme says pro-life is just another way to say 'I've got mine, who gives a rat's behind about you!"

Texpatriate shared some thoughts on the Israeli-Iranian question following Netanyahu's speech to Congress.

Egberto Willies quoted T-Dubb-O asking you to see the world through his eyes.

Bluedaze and Dos Centavos have the Texas legislative alerts posted for this week: HB 540 on March 11, and SB 185 this morning.

Texas Vox features the citizen lobbyists who went to the Lege to advocate for local control.

Texas Leftist observes that while the state's coffers are flush, Texas cities are having to go into debt to provide necessary public resources.

 Uber is just payday lending on wheels, according to John Coby at Bay Area Houston.

And Neil at All People Have Value -- who has spent a lot of time looking up at the sky lately -- catches a picture of a plane flying between overhead utility wires.  APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

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And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

Grits for Breakfast applauds Ted Cruz's flop-flop on marijuana, and Trail Blazers wonders if Greg Abbott could be the Texas version of former CA Gov. Pete Wilson.

The Rivard Report documents the crowded ballot that awaits San Antonio voters in May, while Randy Bear does the same for the charter amendments, and worries about trying to make changes in a low-turnout context.

Texas Clean Air Matters echoes the US military's call to diversify our energy options and shift more toward a clean energy economy.

Socratic Gadfly translated Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson's take on future oil prices.

To commemorate March as Women's History Month (and yesterday as International Women's Day), Free Press Houston asks Houston to make a few things happen.  And in that vein, nonsequiteuse asks Free Press Houston to cancel the Summer Fest appearance of R Kelly.

The Lunch Tray would be happy to have celebrities market vegetables to kids.

Paradise In Hell declares that the real threat to marriage in Texas is serial heterosexuals.

BOR highlights the 2014 Texas League of Conservation Voters National Environmental Scorecard.

Better Texas Blog puts Texas' Medicaid spending in context.

Fascist Dyke Motors published her enemies list.

Hair Balls points to Texas Monthly, which says all the things we've been thinking about those terrible Chron.com slideshows.

And Chris Hooks at the Texas Observer would like to remind you that Open Carry Texas -- Tarrant County or otherwise -- are not your father's gun nuts.

Sunday Funnies

Fifty years after

That's Cong. John Lewis, in the right foreground above, getting beaten. And below, in 2010.

The Edmund Pettus Bridge -- which the protestors crossed and where they were greeted by the Alabama state police with billy clubs and tear gas -- was named after a Confederate general and a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan.  He was also a United States Senator, serving two terms at the turn of the last century.  He was a Democrat, of course, before all the racists and bigots moved over to the GOP, a trend which took root in the 1954 Supreme Court decision known as Brown v. Board of Education, and began in earnest after LBJ signed the Voting Rights Act in 1965.  The Southern Strategy was employed by Barry Goldwater in 1964, but weaponized by Richard Nixon and George Wallace in 1968, and accelerated further during Ronald Reagan's terms, helped along by his political strategist, Lee Atwater.

And now you at least understand why there will be no Republican leaders -- well, one current leader, it seems, and a few other members of Congress, and W and Laura Bush --  in Selma today.

There will likely be hundreds, perhaps thousands, who will commemorate and recreate the march across the bridge -- but not the televised police assault at the bottom of it, which shocked a nation into action.  And just an hour to the north of Selma, in Shelby County, they aren't really celebrating.  There isn't much to celebrate in Ferguson, Missouri either -- yet -- nor in Madison, Wisconsin, where another unarmed black teenager was shot and killed by police.  On #BlackOutDay.

How long?  How long must we sing this song?

TransGriot with more.