The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance celebrates the vernal equinox today with the latest blog post roundup.

A whiff of the Eighties -- specifically Geraldo Rivera and Al Capone's vault -- accompanied Rachel Maddow's big reveal and subsequent letdown of Trump's tax returns last Tuesday evening, at least according to PDiddie at Brains and Eggs.  And Socratic Gadfly also took Maddow's fluffery (and Maddow herself) to the cleaners.

John Coby at Bay Area Houston publishes Dan Patrick's response to the Texas men's masturbation bill: "I will beat this bill off with both hands!"  And speaking of self-abuse, Neil at All People Have Value said that the Trump budget is a pornography of self-mutilation and cruelty for his supporters. (APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.)

Off the Kuff covers the redistricting decision and what it all means going forward.

Dos Centavos implores Texas liberals to stop SB4 (the anti-sanctuary cities bill).

CouldBeTrue at South Texas Chisme links to the story about the four international bands scheduled to play at SXSW who were denied entry to the US, and other performers who had their visas revoked.

Easter Lemming reminds people that Pasadena, Texas has a chance to put voter discrimination behind them in their upcoming mayoral election.  He is busy working for Pat Van Houte's campaign.

MOMocrats follows up on the story that former US attorney Preet Bharara was investigating HHS Secretary Tom Price's stock trading at the time Bharara was fired.

Texas Vox reports that the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission is extending the comment period for its environmental impact statement on the proposed expansion of Waste Control Specialists' facility in west Texas, in response to public requests.

And Leopold Knopp at the Lewisville Texan Journal thinks you should just stay home and watch the original 'Beauty and the Beast' instead of the latest version in theaters now.

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More Texas news and blog posts!

Anna Tinsley at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram writes about state Rep. Ina Minjares' bill intended to spare the canine and feline subjects of research and testing from euthanasia by offering them for adoption.

Jay Leeson at Burkablog has the backstory of Rep. John Smithee's bill to honor Nelda Laney, the wife of former Speaker Pete Laney.

Ashton P. Woods at Strength in Numbers explains how the Trump budget could affect you.

Somervell County Salon ruminates for the easily amused about MAGAmericans.

Nipuni Gomes deconstructs conservative author Dinesh D'Souza after he spoke at Trinity University in San Antonio earlier this month.

Rice University professor Dan Wallach offers some practical advice for buying “Internet of Things” devices.

Johnathan Tilove at First Reading has some highlights of Will Hurd and Beto O'Rourke's bipartisan road trip, while Melissa del Bosque at the Texas Observer notes Henry Cuellar's slam against Trump's proposal to take border residents' land for the wall he wants to build.

Beyond Bones identifies seven native Texas bugs that you don't want to touch.

Shari Biediger at the Rivard Report found it not too difficult to cope with SXSW mobility without Uber or Lyft.

And Pages of Victory observes that even Fox News recognizes (by their own recent poll) that Bernie Sanders is the most popular politician in the country.

Sunday Funnies

Rick Casey looks behind the scenes of the Texas redistricting ruling

Via the SAEN, Rick Casey writes at San Antonio public television KLRN's blog, Texas Week (added links for background):

Last week’s ruling by a three-judge panel in San Antonio that the Texas Legislature racially discriminated in drawing three congressional districts is being hailed as a major civil rights triumph in some legal quarters.

“This is a huge victory for voting rights plaintiffs,” wrote nationally-recognized elections law expert Richard Hasen in his Election Law Blog. He predicted the 2-1 decision was unlikely to be overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court because “it closely tracks Justice (Anthony) Kennedy’s views of the issues in this area.”

Kennedy is often the swing vote on the closely divided court.

Hasen said the ruling was especially important because it could lead to Texas once again being required to pre-clear redistricting and other election matters with the Justice Department, as was required before the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013. This is because Judges Rodriguez and Orlando Garcia found intentional discrimination in the case.

The Justice Department under Attorney General Jeff Sessions is not likely to be much of a watchdog on voting rights matters, but that would likely change if a Democratic president is elected in 2018. (sic)

The three judges who decided the case include one Democrat and two Republicans. Ironically, the decision may have gone the other way if one of the judges hadn’t been punished for joining in an earlier ruling in the case. Here’s the back story.

Judge Xavier Rodriguez, a graduate of Harvard University and the University of Texas law school, was first appointed to the Texas Supreme Court by then-Gov. Rick Perry. He lost in the Republican primary, however, when he had to stand for election. He returned briefly to private practice before being appointed to a federal district bench here by President George W. Bush.

Back in 2013, Rodriguez was asked to fill out the voluminous paperwork to be considered for promotion to the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. President Obama had selected a Democratic judge from Corpus Christi, but the two Republican senators reportedly made it clear they would block her nomination. So the Obama Administration lit on Rodriguez — a non-ideological choice who had been appointed to important benches by two Texas Republican leaders.

But the appointment languished until 2015 when, a friend of Judge Rodriguez said, he was told his name was withdrawn because of a lack of support from the two senators. The reason: His previous rulings in the redistricting case.

Had Rodriguez been elevated to the appellate court, he might well have been replaced with a more conservative Republican on the three-judge panel hearing the redistricting case. The 2-1 decision could have gone in the other direction with Rodriguez’s replacement joining the very conservative third member of the panel, Judge Jerry Smith of Houston.

Smith, a Reagan appointee, issued a bitter dissent. He was especially hostile toward lawyers from Obama’s Justice Department.

“It was obvious, from the start, that the DOJ attorneys viewed state officials and the legislative majority and their staffs as a bunch of backwoods hayseed bigots who bemoan the abolition of the poll tax and pine for the days of literacy tests and lynchings,” Smith wrote. “And the DOJ lawyers saw themselves as an expeditionary landing party arriving here, just in time, to rescue the state from oppression, obviously presuming that plaintiffs' counsel were not up to the task.”

A postscript: The seat on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals for which Rodriguez was considered remains vacant. In fact, two seats reserved for Texas judges on the appeals court are vacant. So, going back as far as 2011, are 11 seats on federal district courts around the state.

It appears that Republican refusals to grant President Obama his Supreme Court nominee last year wasn’t the sum total of Republican resistance, at least here in Texas.

Next week begins the confirmation hearings for Neil Gorsuch to be elevated to the Supreme Court, to fill at last the seat left vacant by the demise of Antonin Scalia fourteen months ago.  Senate Democratic resistance to Gorsuch is reportedly impotent.  Scalia oversaw appeals to the SCOTUS from the Fifth Circuit; that will likely also be Gorsuch's beat upon his confirmation.  As for the rest of these federal bench vacancies, it remains to be seen whether Chuck Schumer, et.al. will have the skilz to play the stalling game as well as Mitch McConnell, etc. until 2020.

No bets taken.