Houston: Home of the brave

Let's just sample liberally from CultureMap.

OK, Halloween is still a month away, so it probably wasn't some horrific-idea costume that the gent was wearing when he walked into a Jason's Deli in Houston with the ISIS logo emblazoned on his shoulder. Social media is going wild with the image of a man in robes sporting the ISIS emblem that says only one thing — be afraid, be very afraid.

"You don't believe they're here? Look who was just found at Jason's Deli in (sic) at West 34th and 290 in Houston," Mike Kasper emailed friends after taking the photo. "That's the black standard ISIS emblem on his shoulder. Share the hell outta this. — Mike."

I must be friends with all the wrong conservatives.  This was the first I had seen or heard.

The folks at Jason's have received an earful. A Jason's customer service representative at the chain's toll-free number tells CultureMap, "We have gotten plenty of feedback about that... There was someone there but he is not a Jason's employee."

"He's not one of ours!" was Jason's first response.  Well, he does look like a customer to me.  If the photo hasn't been Shopped.  (More pics at the link.)

Kasper went so far as to inform the FBI. After their interrogation of the intrepid smartphone photographer, the FBI went dark on him. Won't return his emails. Won't return his phone calls.

Or so Kasper tells KTRH radio personality Matt Patrick. That interview is posted on the Christian rescue website shoebat.com, which is all over the sighting reporting not only Kasper's story but also claiming that another man wearing an ISIS logo was arrested in H-Town.

Matt Patrick, for the uninitiated, is one of the two Rush Limbaugh-wannabees on your local AM dial.  He's been looking up at Michael Berry for years.  Maybe he just got his big break.

This episode touches all the hot red buttons: Muslim terrorists like Obama pouring over the "boarder" with the rest of the Ill Eagles, etc.  Why is it that the people with the most guns and all the ammo are the biggest scaredy cats?

Do you think this will help boost turnout in the upcoming elections?  Honestly, I don't.  These people stay so perpetually frothed up about nothing that there's just no more juice to be squeezed out of that lemon.

Keep calm and carry on, even in the face of terrified Republicans.

Texas' voter ID motives questioned in two areas

In the state legislature...

More than a week ago, Texas Senate Democrats put Texas Secretary of State Nandita Berry on notice: They wanted her office to get more mobile units on Texas streets to give voters without an acceptable photo ID a chance to get one before November's election.

One week later, there's been no movement to do so, says state Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin.

The problem, he says, is that there are not one but two state agencies in charge of putting more mobile units out in the community. The Secretary of State's office (SOS), which includes voter registration, has to coordinate where the mobile units will go. The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) actually owns the mobile units which can issue the new Texas election identification certificates, or EICs.

After trying to get the two entities to agree on how to do it — and to do it quickly — Watson said late Tuesday that it "appears to me it is a breakdown on both ends."

Ah, the Department of Public Safety. Their scheme is revealed in the courthouse, where the state's photo ID legislation is on trial.

Emails from a Department of Public Safety official raised questions Tuesday in federal court about the sincerity of the agency's voter qualification efforts.

"Zero's a good number," Tony Rodriguez, a senior DPS manager wrote in a email presented as evidence in the ongoing voter ID trial. Rodriguez was responding to a subordinate's report that no election identification certificates had been issued the day before at a DPS location.

The rest is behind a paywall, but there's more context for it at the Brennan Center's liveblog.  Note that this courtroom drama -- which included testimony from Sen. Wendy Davis -- came last Friday morning, and the Corpus Christi Caller-Time's story (first linked; apparently the only news coverage, if you can believe Google) appeared last night.

What an appalling lapse on the part of the Texas media.  To be even-handed, there was some other breaking news late last Friday that must have simply overwhelmed our tired corporate news gatherers.  All the way into Thursday.

The Texas Secretary of State, as we all know by now, is Mrs. Michael Berry.  So when you hear it said over and over again that Texas is a non-voting state, you also need to understand that this is no accident on the part of Texas Republicans.  That is exactly the way they want it.

It's the only way they can stay in power.

Here's my opportunity to repeat myself: do what you have to do in order to make sure you can vote in the next few weeks, and do it now.  And then help your family, friends, and neighbors do so.

Texas Leftist has more.  Update: And Charles climbed over the firewall and got more of the Caller-Times story.   It's worth reading just for DPS official Rodriguez' defense of his 'zero is a good number' comments as sarcasm.