Sunday Funnies

Of FISA and diverticula

The BooMan with the executive summary:

Paraphrased (and disguised) from a Capitol Hill source:

1. There will be no FISA votes before recess.

2. We will have the FISA vote on Tuesday July 8th, which will feature an up or down vote on Dodd/Feingold amendment to strip out retroactive immunity.

3. Senator Dodd will be controlling the 2-hour debate time leading up to the debate on the Dodd/Feingold amendment with Senator Leahy getting 10 mins.

4. Following the votes on amendment(s) there will be another cloture vote.

5. Prior to the cloture vote, there will be up to 60 minutes for debate equally divided and controlled between the Leaders or their designees, with Senator Leahy controlling 10 minutes. Senator Feingold will control an additional 30 minutes and Senator Dodd will control an additional 15 minutes.

Between now and July 8th we must work a miracle. We have won a temporary reprieve. Now is not the time for complaining but for organizing. Suggestions?

Well, Tuesday July 8th is my 50th birthday, so my suggestion is that we all celebrate it this way:

So here's a fantastic opportunity to talk to your Senators, when they're home for the most patriotic of all holidays, about what this bill means to you as a constitutent. If they're having town meetings, please attend and bring up the bill, or try to schedule individual meetings with them.

Senator Tamaulipeca Jacket -- 202-224-2934 -- and Senator Perjury Technicality -- 202-224-5922.

In other 50-year-old news, I had my colonscopy yesterday morning, causing me to miss the TexBlogPAC event, complete with VIPs. (Had I attended I would've urged Chris Bell to run for state Senator.)

But instead I enjoyed a little Demerol -- it really relieved the lingering pain in my shoulder from the adhesive capsulitis I have been suffering from -- and looked at teevee pictures of the inside of myself. The colon (well, mine, anyway) is not gray or blue but actually orange, which is why, as part of the preparations for the event, I was instructed not to eat anything red or orange in color. It's bad enough being limited to clear broths, but green Jell-O? The grape popsicles were good though.

Because my maternal grandfather died of colon cancer, in his sixties -- he passed away three weeks before I was born, which if you've been keeping up is almost precisely fifty years ago -- it's been a good idea for people in my family to have this routine screening performed, as suggested by the medical advisors, at age 50 and at subsequent intervals thereafter as determined. Sure enough, I had one small polyp which was removed and two diverticula, which earned me a scolding about fiber in my diet. I'll call in about a week after they biopsy the polyp for results.

The most painful thing was actually the MoviPrep taken before and the bloating immediately after. The procedure itself was unremarkable.

We're good to go for the Red Sox-Astros this weekend, and the special Boston buffet being served at the ballpark. It's going to take a lot of eating to refill that 23 feet of lower intestine, after all.

Now go back and click on all those links up there, and read them each thoroughly.

Revealed: Texas' most endangered Republican

Vince:

What makes John Davis the most endangered Republican in the Texas House? It's a good question, and we've got the answer.

John Davis is out of touch with HD 129, a district that includes El Lago, Nassau Bay, Seabrook, Shoreacres, Taylor Lake Village, and Webster and parts of Friendswood, Houston, La Porte, League City, Pasadena, and Pearland -- all in Harris County.

A common misconception is that HD 129 is a "silk stocking" district full of wealthy folks. That's not true, however. While a majority of families do have an annual income of over $50,000 according to the 2000 Census (the most recent numbers broken out by House District), the population of HD-129 is more middle-class than anything else.

And Davis' voting record is pretty shoddy when it comes to the needs of middle-class families.

Davis voted for tuition deregulation. It doesn't take a genius to tell you that middle-class families have been impacted significantly by the Legislature's decision in 2003 to deregulate college tuition. It has become very difficult for middle-class families to afford to send their kids to college because tuition costs are skyrocketing. Clearly, tuition deregulation is not a middle-class value that the people of House District 129 support. Davis has even put the interests of one of his big supporters, Houston home builder Bob Perry, above middle-class students who want a college education when it came time to cast votes on the Appropriations Bill on the House floor!

He's for dirty air. Once again, it doesn't take a NAS scientist to tell you that the air quality in Harris County is lacking. Heck, even the American Journal of Epidemiology has taken note of the fact that lung cancer mortality in Harris County is high--and that isn't because more people in Harris County enjoy the occasional Marlboro, either. Yet John Davis -- time and time again -- has voted against improving the air quality in his own district. Here is some of what Davis actually has to say about this topic:

"It's much cleaner than it was 20-30 years ago. I believe we are on the right track. I don't want to choke off industry.

You can watch a YouTube of Davis actually making that statement here.

Davis also voted for raising taxes on small businesses. Even though Republicans are typically pro-business, Davis is surely no friend of small business. Even others in his own party call the tax John Davis supported an "abject failure." Taxing small businesses out of business isn't exactly a middle-class value, either.

And there is plenty more where that came from: Davis voted to disenfranchise minorities and the elderly (Voter ID), to waste taxpayer dollars on state-funded lobbyists (more than once), and even allowing the state to seize homes of Medicaid patients (HB 2922).

Does Davis share his district's values? We think not.

Davis' failure to reflect the values of his district alone, however, doesn't make him endangered. It is, rather, a variety of factors.

One of the key factors that makes Davis terribly endangered is the quality of his Democratic opponent, Sherrie Matula, and the campaign she is running down in HD 129.

Sherrie Matula is one of my favorite Texas House candidates this cycle, and you can meet her in person at tomorrow's TexBlogPAC function.