The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance is keeping all of the victims of the Arizona shooting in its thoughts as it brings you this week's roundup.

Refinish69 at Doing My Part for the Left has misgivings about the border patrol shooting at teenagers because they are throwing rocks. The hate mongering expressed in the immigration bills for the 82nd Texas Legislature will only add fuel to the fire.

Off the Kuff writes about the upcoming legislative battle over class size limits.

Bay Area Houston gives the bird back to the Harris County GOP. (With video.)

Hydraulic fracturing brings PEAK WATER to the Eagle Ford Shale as residents find their water tables dropping. A resident found Bluedaze: DRILLING REFORM FOR TEXAS and contacted TXsharon about their flammable water.

This week on Left of College Station Teddy covers Texas Congressional District 17's new Republican congressman Bill Flores' first days on the job in Congress. Also, as the 82nd Texas Legislature prepares to gavel into session facing a possible $25 billion budget shortfall, Teddy asks what's the matter with Texas?

BossKitty at TruthHugger is watching with amazement the current events unfolding after the Arizona tragedy. The venom being spewed by extreme groups toward the victims and praise for the shooter is absolutely incredible. BossKitty tries to unravel the reasons these events are now mainstream in this country in the op-ed Wounded America On Life Support.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme sees the republican priority: cronies, cronies, cronies.

nytexan at BlueBloggin looks at who we have become: Arizona Shooting, Political Discord and American Disrespect. Americans should be ashamed of what we have become: gun-toting, hate-mongering Neanderthals. We are continually pointing fingers at each other, continually shouting, continually spewing incorrect information, continually exhibiting disrespect. This has now become a national pastime.

Neil at Texas Liberal posted the fourth annual version of his Martin Luther King reading & reference list. It is the best such reference on the web.

Texas is not like Arizona, PDiddie at Brains and Eggs observes. In Texas we don't arrest people for looking "illegal", or let Medicaid patients die because the governor doesn't want to pay the bill, or shoot Congresswomen in front of supermarkets. Yet.

WhosPlayin is disgusted by a city council that refused to table a vote on 12 gas wells and a wastewater facility when the operator submitted a weaselly P.R. document instead of a real emissions reduction plan. It's time to replace some councilmen, because one is an illiterate fool and the other is unethical enough to push an ordinance backed by his employer.

After the Texas Eagle Forum weighed in on the House Speaker's race, Letters From Texas weighed in on the shenanigans of the Texas Eagle Forum.

Over at TexasKaos, libbyshaw, has a reality pill for Rick Perry and his minions. Check out The Great Texas Failure: A Smoke and Mirrors Economy.

TexasVox has a complete rundown of last week's vote to allow the nation's radioactive waste to come to Texas. Long story short? We got screwed.

No Sunday Funnies today

I'm going to do my part to "tone down the rhetoric", as they say.

But if you want to see how the local conservative contingent is doing in that regard, go here and read the comments. All of them.

Yesterday at our "Blueprint for a Blue Harris County" the fifteen breakout sessions all had a common theme: Pushback. Rapid response to the misinformation and deception and prevarications of the extremist right.

Last November In Harris County we had the most activist network ever assembled to harass, intimidate, and thwart minority voters at their precincts. That won't happen in 2012; among other reasons, the early voting judges will be Democratic.

With the news that yet another organization will organize here to stop the invisible "voter fraud" epidemic, we will need all hands on deck:

Anita MonCrief, a former Project Vote/ACORN employee who testified against the organization as part of a voter registration fraud lawsuit in Pennsylvania, has announced the formation of a new Houston-based Tea Party organization. The Crispus Attucks Tea Party will hold its first meeting later this month.

"We are based in a former ACORN neighborhood represented by Sheila Jackson Lee," MonCrief wrote in an email message. "We have been meeting/planning since late November, and our inaugural meeting is January 18th. The path has not been easy, and though we have been shut out of black churches and community centers, we managed to find a place literally two blocks from Sheila Jackson Lee's home. She is of course invited."

Press release and comments.

I would not encourage the Congresswoman to attend unless she has a contingent of HPD or sheriff's deputies as bodyguards. And wore a flak jacket.

I'll refrain from responding to this and other provocations at least until tomorrow out of deference to the victims of yesterday's tragedy.