The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance is wearing a hoodie this week as it brings you the blog roundup.

Many groups and organizations provide guides telling you who to vote for. This year, Off the Kuff has a guide of who not to vote for in the 2012 Harris County Democratic primary.

BossKitty at TruthHugger is angry that Republicans are all about manipulating personal liberties and imposing their specific religious rules on America, while allowing a real crisis to get worse: GOP Candidates Ignore Water Crisis, Prefer Religious Culture Crisis. On top of imposing their narrow religious interpretations to the general public, Republicans want a dumber America: Corporate Religion, Corporate Education and the Mental Devolution of America.

BlueBloggin sees that Trashing Texas Is BIG Money For Republican Donors and Rick Perry.

We've moved so far to the right, as a state and a country, it's hard to see how we move back. WCNews at Eye On Williamson points out that A Budget for All is the place to start.

At TexasKaos, Libby Shaw explains the Texas version of the Republican assault on women. Check out Rick Perry's and the Texas GOP Unrelenting War on Women.

Annise Parker is quite possibly the best mayor Houstonians could have ever hoped for, if you consider her actions from a moderate Republican point of view. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs breaks it down.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme knows Republicans just pretend to like the troops. Words are cheap, just like them.

Neil at Texas Liberal continued to focus on the fact that the Texas forced sonogram law is state-mandated rape. In the week ahead Neil will post a letter he co-authored asking Amnesty International to come to Texas to investigate this human rights abuse.

Bay Area Houston comments on the GOPs' 'Don't Re-Nig' bumper sticker.

More Sunday Funnies (Etch A Sketch edition)

Greg Abbott tries to obstruct both DOJ and justice itself

The Austin American Statesman, via Socratic Gadfly.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott this week asked a federal court in Washington to prevent 12 state lawmakers from giving depositions in the state's voter identification case.

The U.S. Department of Justice, which is facing off against Abbott's office in a case to allow Texas' voter ID law to go into effect, has asked to depose — or question under oath — the author of the voter ID bill, Sen. Troy Fraser, R-Horseshoe Bay; its House sponsor, Rep. Patricia Harless, R-Spring; and other lawmakers.

In addition to deposing lawmakers, the Justice Department is seeking copies of written communications among members of the Legislature, communications between legislators and staffers and communications between legislators and their constituents.

Abbott's rationale?

The filing says, "If litigants can depose individual legislators and traipse through every communication of those legislators simply by alleging that a state law was enacted with an impermissible purpose, then state lawmakers will be chilled from engaging in the communications necessary to perform their jobs properly."

SG's take:

Anybody else in Texas mouthed bullshit like that and Abbott would call it obstruction of justice.

I don't have anything to add to that.

Sunday Funnies, "Stand Your Ground" edition

Parker backs off her ordinance outlawing sharing

Mayor Annise Parker on Tuesday canceled a scheduled vote to regulate the feeding of homeless people in Houston following an outcry from people and groups that the proposed rules would criminalize simple acts of charity.

The rules had caused a fury from the moment they were introduced early this month. On Tuesday, the backlash continued as dozens of speakers criticized the regulations at City Council's public session. A coalition that included clergy, a tea party activist, a longtime property rights advocate, an immigrants rights leader and volunteers who feed the homeless held a news conference behind City Hall to criticize what they said were the rules' infringement on religious and personal liberties.

"To be told when and where and what time we can feed people goes directly against our creator. When the spirit moves us to go ahead and feed people, to check with the city first before we can go ahead and do that (is unacceptable). We're really opposed to this ordinance," said Manuel Sanchez, outreach director at Ecclesia Church in Montrose.

So there's a few Bible verses that address this: "I was hungry and you fed me", etc. I don't want to go all Godly about it though. I just want to note something that I have been considering for awhile about what motivates our mayor to take up all these conservative causes.

From my observation it appears Mayor Parker is imbued with that good old "pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps" mentality. I perceive that she is one of those people who feels as if the fruits of her success are the direct result of her having worked hard for them (no luck, favoritism, or charity was ever involved) and correspondingly those whom she perceives as not working very hard, or hard enough, draw no sympathy from her.

This would explain why she 'nudged' those lazy, filthy Occupants out of Tranquility Park; it's why she would choose to aggressively over-regulate feeding homeless people much like Republicans have passed laws restricting voting because they think there's voting fraud.

In her public attempts to sell the changes to city ordinance, Parker had spoken of the need to protect the homeless against food-borne illness, but had no data to indicate it was a persistent problem. She emphasized that it would promote coordination of charities so that several groups would not converge at a park by chance and have to throw out food for lack of takers.

Just as Republicans would take the route of hyper-regulating women's reproductive choice out of legal existence, so Mayor Parker believes that if you make things harder to get, the people who need them will move along and look elsewhere for them.

It helps us understand why she would rather terminate the employment of park workers and garbage collectors -- and essentially refuse to fund the pensions of firemen -- than raise taxes to address the city's budget deficit.

It reminds me of the time in college when I first heard this band play this song.

Hard times in the land of plenty;
Some got it all and the rest
ain't got any.



The difference these days, of course, is that the "some" don't want "the rest" to have any. And they want to make certain they don't get any.

Really and truly, I am of the mind that Annise Parker is one of the best, most moderate Republican mayors this city could ever hope for.