More developments breaking bad for Texas conservatives

-- Battleground Texas won in court yesterday, and the loser was James O'Keefe.  (He's one of life's losers, as we know, and this is confirmation of that.)

Two special prosecutors have rejected public complaints that Battleground Texas violated election laws while registering voters in San Antonio last year.

Three people had alleged that a Battleground Texas staffer violated state election law by mining voters' personal data. The Democratic group has steadfastly denied the allegation as a fiction from conservative activist James O'Keefe III, who's been criticized for dubious and even criminal tactics.

After reviewing a YouTube video based on hidden-camera recordings from O'Keefe's Project Veritas, the prosecutors — one Democrat, one Republican — described it as “political disinformation.” The lawyers said there was “no applicable criminal offense for the alleged act and insufficient evidence to suggest potential offenses.”

Based on their finding, a state district court judge dismissed the case on Friday, officials confirmed Monday.

My emphasis above.  More from KXAN and Media Matters.

-- UT regent Wallace Hall likely committed impeachable offenses, an investigation by the Texas House of Representatives reveals.

A report summing up a House investigation of embattled University of Texas regent Wallace Hall states Hall possibly violated state and federal laws and may face impeachment for abusing his office, according to a San Antonio Express News report.

The report states Hall exposed private student data, was “manipulating” the legislative investigation and “coercing witnesses,” according to the Express News. You can read the report here.

Hall is, obviously, Rick Perry's appointee.  Nick Anderson had this primer of Hall's crony thuggery last year.  Texans keep getting the government they deserve, not the one they (don't) vote for.

-- Houston's city council appears to be one vote shy of passing Mayor Parker's human rights ordinance.  Lone Star Q...

Parker’s fear, according to reports, is that if the ordinance covers employment in the private sector, it won’t have enough votes to pass the City Council.

The proposed ordinance would prohibit anti-LGBT discrimination in housing and public accommodations. But as currently written, it would only cover municipal employees and city contractors when it comes to employment, leaving out the private sector.

It was Texpatriate's post that revealed the whip count.

As I currently understand it, there are eight supporters of the private employment provision (Annise Parker, Stephen Costello, David Robinson, Jerry Davis, Ellen Cohen, Ed Gonzalez, Robert Gallegos and Mike Laster) and five opponents (Jack Christie, Brenda Stardig, Dave Martin, Richard Nguyen and Oliver Pennington). The remaining four Councilmembers (Michael Kubosh, C.O. Bradford, Dwight Boykins and Larry Green) are somewhere in the middle.

Green, Bradford, and Kubosh got a phone call from me this morning asking where they stand.  I'll update here if and when they respond to my request.  I expect this watered-down version to pass, but it needs to be stronger, as Texas Leftist has noted.

Why can't this first version of the ordinance include private employment? In short, the answer is simple politics. Sources say the Houston ordinance will lose votes on Council if it affects private employers. It's true that any step is a step forward, especially in these times of heightened contention in politics. But if a Council Member wants to allow discrimination to continue, they deserve to be put on record with a vote. Instead of protecting them, Parker and her administration should let them deal with the Progressive community's ire.

Lone Star Q cited both TPA blogs in their report, and also TransGriot.

You know as a native Houstonian I believe it's past time we do so, and have already spoken to Houston City Council twice urging them to pass such an ordinance. 

I'm betting the conservahaters lose this one.  Just wish the mayor would stiffen her spine and fight the good fight, and not settle for these half-loaves.

Update: Lord of Entropy in the comments provides a link that shows that Boykins, Green, Bradford, and Christie all said -- during the HGLBT Caucus candidate screenings last year -- that they would support a non-discrimination ordinance.  (None of the three whom I called this morning have yet returned my call.)

Update (4/9): CM Bradford called shortly after 9 a.m. to say essentially the same thing he told Noah at Texpate and John Wright at LSQ; he is supportive but wants to see what the ordinance says (it is still being drafted by the mayor's office).  No callback yet from Larry Green -- my district council member, by the way -- nor Kubosh.  I'll shoot them an e-mail and see if that gets a response.

-- Last, Greg Abbott loses again in federal court.

By way of an eight-page order [.pdf] issued late last week, U.S. District Court Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos has directed the State of Texas to serve the U.S. Department of Justice with documents that relate to the question of whether "state legislators, contrary to their public pronouncements, acted with discriminatory intent in enacting" the Lone Star State's polling place photo ID restriction law.

That law had previously been found to be discriminatory against minority voters in Texas, and thus rejected by both the DoJ and a federal court panel as a violation of the Voting Rights Act. It was then re-enacted by the state of Texas almost immediately after the U.S. Supreme Court gutted a central provision of the VRA in the summer of 2013.

As reported by the BRAD BLOG last September, the DoJ and Rep. Marc Veasey (D-TX) filed separate federal lawsuits (now consolidated into a single case, Veasey v. Perry) in which they allege that the photo ID law enacted by the Texas legislature (SB 14) violates another section of the VRA, Section 2, as well as the U.S. Constitution.

It's mainly the e-mail between legislators they want to look at it.  More from HuffPo.

The United States argued that the emails could be the only existing candid evidence about the purpose of the legislation because Texas Republicans coordinated their talking points on the bill and refused to publicly engage with the concerns of minority legislators. If any of the emails reveal discriminatory intent, the U.S. will still have to argue to get them admitted as evidence during the trial phase of the lawsuit.

Only if the GOP Lege members were stupid enough to make racial comments in their e-mail about the law would this stand a chance of destroying their case.  That's a relatively low standard for them to meet.

Davis presses on education while Abbott hides from media

"Talk by conservative scholar (sic) Murray draws ire at Rice":

A talk at Rice University by libertarian political scientist Charles Murray, whose controversial views have been called racist, drew ire from student organizations Monday, while administrators urged people to gather and protest.

"I really want to pack the auditorium with people who can discredit this white nationalist lunatic," Catherine Clack, associate dean for student life and director of multicultural affairs, wrote in an email to numerous people in the Rice community obtained by the Houston Chronicle.

Much more -- all of it bad for Greg Abbott -- if you can get over the paywall.

Abbott failed to appear at his own press conference yesterday afternoon, probably because of the exploding scandal around his association with Murray.  As with Ted Nugent's remarks, Abbott is forced into running away from the media again (is that insensitive? Should I have typed 'rolling away'?).  Meanwhile Wendy Davis drew a crowd of a couple of hundred for her speech on her education proposal, and a couple of thousand at last night's rally, both here in Houston.

She's right, (the conservatives in) Texas don't seem to have a clue about what's coming.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance welcomes President Obama to Texas -- for commemorations that are both happy and sad -- as it brings you this week's roundup of the best lefty blog posts from last week.

Off the Kuff analyzes precinct data in Harris County from the Democratic and Republican primary elections.

Libby Shaw at Texas Kaos learns Greg Abbott has not only invited creeps to advise his campaign, but he has also brought a Tom DeLay-minted crook on board.

Too many Texans who need health insurance are intentionally being kept from getting it. WCNews at Eye on Williamson wants to make sure everyone knows that if you don't have health care in Texas, blame Rick Perry and the Texas GOP.

The social policies of Charles Murray, whom the Southern Poverty Law Center has identified as a white nationalist, serve as inspiration for Greg Abbott's education reform proposal. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs is shocked and awed that Abbott is making so many critical mistakes in his gubernatorial campaign.

Texas Democrats haven't claimed a statewide elected office in 20 years, but after a rousing bus tour Texas Leftist is convinced that pharmacist, state senator extraordinaire, and lieutenant governor candidate Leticia Van de Putte has the prescription to change that.

Neil at All People Have Value offers the view that courtesy and a sense of self-worth without a feeling of superiority is a form of resistance in our society. All People Have Value is part of NeilAquino.com.

Kingwood Area Democrat Karen Menke wrote a timely op-ed in the Kingwood Observer about women's rights, reprinted at EgbertoWillies.com.

Texpatriate releases an April Fool's day issue of The Houston New Post.

============================

And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

Texas Redistricting charts the components of population change in twelve Texas counties.

Scott Braddock reports that some legislators are concerned that schools will not have the funds to implement some mandated reforms.

Jason Stanford explains how Texas women can win on equal pay.

Juanita Jean can't help but see the face of Tom DeLay in today's Congress.

Dutch Small celebrated at the wedding reception of Houston Mayor Annise Parker and her wife Kathy Hubbard.

Christopher Hooks tries to pierce the conservative persecution complex that surrounds Republican SD-02 candidate Bob Hall.

M1EK has a simple suggestion for where to locate a rail line.

Sunday Funnies

News that's not breaking

Between the Supreme Court's decision on McCutcheon and the shootings at Ford Hood, a lot of other important developments got drowned out this week.   If you want to read something about those two things, there's plenty elsewhere; you can click away now.  We'll catch up on some lesser news here today.

-- The new CEO of Mozilla was forced out by public protests over his support of the anti-gay marriage initiative in California.  This is another example of the rapid evolution of tolerance in American society, and the haste with which it has happened.  This, and the same evolution of attitudes about marijuana legalization -- not just decriminalization, mind you -- are among the very few things that give me great hope about progressivism in this country.

-- Nate Silver seems to be hearing the critics of his hire of a climate change skeptic for FiveThirtyEight.  But his response is also tepid; he's going to air "both sides" of the issue.  He's already apologizing for the man, and that apology does not include the flawed data that underlie the opinions the man was employed to write.

Silver has growing problems with his "data-driven" analysis model of news outside of polling data.  This summarizes the dilemma.

It's not that Nate revealed himself to be a climate change denier; he accepts that human-caused climate change is real, and that it represents a challenge and potential threat. But he falls victim to a fallacy that has become all too common among those who view the issue through the prism of economics rather than science. Nate conflates problems of prediction in the realm of human behavior -- where there are no fundamental governing 'laws' and any "predictions" are potentially laden with subjective and untestable assumptions -- with problems such as climate change, which are governed by laws of physics, like the greenhouse effect, that are true whether or not you choose to believe them.

In short... Nate Silver has never been so wrong about so much.  An extremely rare, unforced error on his part.  Stick to the polls, Nate.  Or them and baseball.

-- I wonder what new whine the conservatives will be drinking now that Obamacare has served over seven million?  I mean besides "the numbers are skewed".

(Go back to last Sunday's Funnies for the above to have the greatest meaning.)

If Democrats all across the nation do not run on the success of Obamacare -- and the failure of certain states and their governors not to expand Medicaid -- then the chances to overcome their historical disadvantages in midterm elections will be reduced to nil.

This is the issue all Democrats should proudly own.  This is the issue they can win on.

Yeah, kind of in a bad mood today

Because this.

Chief Justice John Roberts’s majority opinion in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, in which the Supreme Court struck down aggregate limits on campaign donations, offers a novel twist in the conservative contemplation of what Nazis have to do with the way the rich are viewed in America. In January, Tom Perkins, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist, worried about a progressive Kristallnacht; Kenneth Langone, the founder of Home Depot, said, of economic populism, “If you go back to 1933, with different words, this is what Hitler was saying in Germany. You don’t survive as a society if you encourage and thrive on envy or jealousy.” Roberts, to his credit, avoided claiming the mantle of Hitler’s victims for wealthy campaign donors. He suggests, though, that the rich are, likewise, outcasts: “Money in politics may at times seem repugnant to some, but so too does much of what the First Amendment vigorously protects,” he writes:

If the First Amendment protects flag burning, funeral protests, and Nazi parades—despite the profound offense such spectacles cause—it surely protects political campaign speech despite popular opposition.

So pick your analogy: when thinking about people who want to donate large sums of money to candidates, should we compare their position to that of the despised and defeated, like the Nazis in Skokie, Illinois, in the nineteen-seventies, or of scorned dissidents, like flag-burners, trying to get their voice heard with their lonely donations? 

And this.

The opinion was classic Roberts: professing to make a minor adjustment to the status quo, but carrying the seeds of potential destruction for core legal principles settled for decades. To some, it evoked his decision last year overturning the core of the Voting Rights Act — a ruling that also claimed to toss back to Congress an issue lawmakers have little desire to revisit.

Critics saw the chief justice’s arguments about the leaky nature of current campaign finance rules as cynical and disingenuous, effectively punching yet another gaping hole in the law by citing loopholes his court helped to create or enlarge.

“It’s like the definition of chutzpah: the guy who kills his parents and asks for mercy from the court because he’s an orphan,” said Larry Norden of the Brennan Center for Justice, which favors tighter campaign finance regulation. “Look at what the court has done since 2007 after Roberts came on board, one case after another gradually striking down the laws that are in place and then claiming that, therefore, more has to be done. It’s nonsensical.”

And this.

All of which means, in effect, that the more money flowing through the system the better. Those who, from lack of money, are muted or excluded from the process are simply losers in a fair democratic system.

And also this.

ExxonMobil has 25.2 billion barrels worth of oil and gas in its current reserves, it's going to extract and sell all of it, and isn't expecting any meddling climate regulations to get in the way.

That's the main takeaway of a report the company released this week to its investors, examining the risk that greenhouse gas emissions rules in the US and worldwide might pose to its fossil fuel assets. Exxon made headlines a couple weeks back when it promised to issue the report after facing pressure from shareholders led by Arjuna Capital, a sustainable wealth management firm.

[...]

Exxon's report suggests that its planners don't believe serious carbon limits will be on the books anytime soon, leaving the company free to burn through its reserves of oil and gas. That's a disconcerting vision to come just on the heels of Sunday's new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which predicted a nightmarish future if greenhouse gas emissions aren't slowed soon.

"The reserves are going to be able to turn into money, because they're assuming there isn't going to be a policy change," said Natural Resources Defense Council Director of Climate Programs David Hawkins. "They're definitely saying that no matter how bad it gets, the world's addiction to fossil fuels will be so overwhelming that the governments of the world will just suck it up and let people suffer."

And last, this.

It's hard out there for the 1 percent.

Okay, that's not true at all. But they think it is. If you talk to people on Wall Street, most of them—even, in my experience, the ones shopping for Lamborghinis—will tell you that they're "middle class." Their lament, the lament of the HENRY (short for "high-earner, not rich yet"), goes something like this. You try living on $350,000 a year when you have to pay taxes, the mortgage on the house in a tony zip code, the nanny who knows how to cook ethnic cuisine, the private school tuition from pre-K on, the appropriately exclusive vacation, and max out your retirement and college savings accounts. There just isn't that much cash left over each month once you've spent it all!