Texas House breathes life into bathroom bill

I am as mad as a hornet about Houston's latest assault on homeless people, but that rant is still being formalized, so here's a little fresh outrage at the Lege and the bathroom bill.

Oh, but they do. They really do.

(Texas) House lawmakers will debate a so-called "bathroom bill" next week that supporters hope will be less worrisome to business interests concerned the measure could hurt the Texas economy.

The decision to debate the House bill, and to set aside a more severe version passed last month in the Senate, marks the latest split the two chambers have endured during a particularly divided legislative session. The House bill will probably get the backing of the Dallas Cowboys, their lobbyist said, but the state's largest business group is withholding its support at this time.

"It's a bill that's trying to strike a balance between all the interested parties," Rep. Ron Simmons, the bill's sponsor, told The Dallas Morning News on Thursday. "It's our belief that discrimination issues related to privacy should be handled at the state level."

House Bill 2899 will be debated in the State Affairs Committee (next) Wednesday. The amended bill would ban cities, school districts and any other "political subdivisions" from passing local laws that protect certain people from discrimination in an intimate space. This would render local nondiscrimination ordinances that protect the rights of transgender people to use bathrooms that match their gender identity unenforceable.

Guess what this bill is modeled on.

While the language isn't an exact match, Simmons' bill looks quite a bit like the revised bathroom law recently passed in North Carolina. Both ban local governments from regulating use and access of restrooms, changing rooms and locker rooms.

Unlike the North Carolina law, Simmons' measure would not affect colleges campuses. It also would not restrict bathroom use based on biological sex, which the Senate Bill does. The House bill is co-sponsored by Republican Reps. Dustin Burrows of Lubbock, Cole Hefner of Mount Pleasant, Jodie Laubenberg of Parker, Valoree Swanson of Spring and Terry Wilson of Marble Falls.

I'm going to expect that Speaker Straus is going to hold fast his coalition of sane business and corporate types inside and outside the Dome, and is just accommodating the rural and exurban back-benchers aligned with their extremist counterparts in the Senate by giving this bill a committee hearing.  And nothing more than that.

Too much to expect?

Bill O'Reilly takes a vacation

Let's hope he's on an overbooked United flight.   To nowhere.

In the midst of an ongoing scandal surrounding Bill O’Reilly in the wake of a NY Times report that he’d paid out $13 million in sexual harassment settlements, O’Reilly is going on vacation. O’Reilly, however, insists that it is not a suspension, and that he had been planning the vacation since last fall. It is merely a coincidence that the vacation falls in the middle of the week. After over 60 advertisers have dropped his program. 

Could it have happened to a more deserving cad?

New York Magazine, however, is reporting that (Tuesday night)’s show may be his last. Fox News is conducting its own investigation into sexual harassment allegations against O’Reilly, and there is a battle between Rupert Murdoch and his son, 21st Century Fox CEO James Murdoch, over whether to keep O’Reilly around. Rupert wants him to stay, while James does not.

More from Think Progress.  Watch for news about Billo and Roger Ailes getting a new conservo-news network going with Steve Bannon (as soon as Trump fires him).