With this week's Texas Progressive Alliance blog post and news roundup, it appears that the War on Christmas is on again ...
and Christmas is losing. Or perhaps it's just
evangelical Christians, burned by Roy Moore and Donald Trump, who are the losers. Wait ... no,
it's Christmas.
In that vein,
Zachery Taylor blogs that evangelical belief in the Apocalypse is influencing domestic and foreign policy. We all lose if our leaders want to
bring on Armageddon.
In lighter political reading,
Off the Kuff looks at the
statewide and
Harris County Democratic primary filings, and
SocraticGadfly takes a look at the
candidate filings and the backstory for the Texas Green Party.
Doug Jones' victory over Roy Moore was made possible by
the surge of African American voters in Alabama, a trend Democrats in Texas and across the country would be wise to duplicate, blogs PDiddie at
Brains and Eggs.
After a shocking Democratic victory in Alabama,
Texas Leftist is also left to wonder if something similar could happen for the Lone Star State. What lessons, if any, can be learned by the Jones campaign, and could they apply to Texas? Here's
Part 1 of that question, with some surprising observations.
DBC Green Blog also had some thoughts about the Alabama special election.
Dos Centavos noticed that Democrats nationally appeared to be folding like a cheap card table on supporting DREAMers, a critical miscalculation if the party wants Latin@ turnout to surge in 2018.
Rick Hasen's
Election Law Blog reports that the private plaintiffs -- but not the US DOJ -- in the voter ID lawsuit before the 5th Circuit asked those justices to
immediately lift their stay of the lower court order blocking the (revised) law's implementation.
Texas Vox covered one of the many conferences talking about the future of the Lone Star State post-Harvey.
Planet Texas 2050 (part of UT's
Environmental Science Institute's 'Hot Science, Cool Talks' series) focused on the environmental stress associated with climate change, a rapidly growing state population, and the effects on our health, economy ... and even
the supply of barbecue.
It's
Big Spring versus Big Oil as the frackers go after the scarcest of resources in West Texas (their water), and Christopher Collins of the
Texas Observer is is ringside.
And in his every-day posting of goofy polling news, Ted at
jobsanger says that 59% of Americans think Santa Claus is a Democrat. (Not sure what this says about a fictitious old white man with a long white beard, or Americans polled, or even Democrats. Maybe it's all just a joke.)
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Elsewhere in Deep In the Hearta ...
In his aggregation of criminal justice news, Scott Henson at
Grits for Breakfast mentions the lack of oversight of 'forensic hypnosis', updates to the appalling report that a TDCJ teacher was raped by an inmate due to chronic understaffing, life sentences without plea bargaining, executing people who didn't actually commit murder (
the law of parties doctrine), and more.
Better Texas Blog reminds you that if you were affected by Hurricane Harvey, your deadline to enroll in an Obamacare insurance plan is December 31.
Nonsequiteuse warns of Republican dirty tricks in HD-134, while
Houston Justice profiled Richard Bonton, the primary challenger to longtime 5th Ward state representative Harold Dutton. In SD-10 (Fort Worth area),
PoliTex hears the war of words flaring up between the Republican incumbent Konni Burton, the Wendy Davis-endorsed Democratic conservative challenger Beverly Powell, and the progressive Democrat, Allison Campolo.
The
Austin American Statesman has news of the Texas GOP filing suit to remove disgraced Cong. Blake Farenthold from the March primary ballot.
A seminar at the Day for Night festival in Houston on art and activism pulled no punches, as
Texas Monthly's Michael Hardy listened to Chelsea Manning and Pussy Riot's Nadya Tolokonnikova talk Trump, Putin, and the Resistance. More on two of Day for Night's lesser-known musical acts from
CultureMap Houston. Meanwhile, the
San Antonio Current gives you the heavy metal Christmas playlist you've been waiting for.
Houstonia spotlighted a northeast Houston institution, Current Cuts, celebrating their 30th anniversary over the weekend.
And
Harry Hamid wrote about Liminal House.
