The (still hot) Weekly Wrangle

Your grass turned brown? Water rationing keeping you from saving it? Is your air conditioning unit in its last throes, if you will? Well sit back and relax; you'll always have the best of the Texas Progressive Alliance to keep you cool.

President Obama, Bill White, and John Sharp are all in the same sinking DOMA boat. The Texas Cloverleaf comes off of hiatus to tell you why.

CouldBeTrue from South Texas Chisme cheers the impeachment of Judge Kent. Four articles passed without a single nay. Let's hope the Senate is through with him by August.

BossKitty at TruthHugger finally signed up for Twitter to get updates on the Iran protests. What a day of drama and emotion it brought: Icons and Martyrs: All Day On Twitter Watching Iran. But he was really meaning to highlight the regressive influences causing upheaval in personal lives, especially in Texas: Immigration Policies and Gay Rights Contradictions.

Unlike Nevada Republican Senator John Ensign, Neil at Texas Liberal makes a promise he'll keep -- He'll never cheat on his wife! Also, Neil sings the Damned's Wait For The Blackout at the Houston Ship Channel.

Off the Kuff takes a look, then a second look, at the bills Governor Perry vetoed.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson knows in order to solve big problems it takes leadership. Who is willing to lead, who has enough LBJ in them?

Castle Hills Democrats heard candidates Tom Schieffer, John Sharp, Bill White, and Neil Durrance speak at the two-county Fish Fry in north Texas. The blogger reviews their messages -- and reports on feedback from the Dems in the audience.

WhosPlayin investigated the claim by a former Lewisville mayoral candidate that the city is hiring illegal aliens for its road projects because one of its contractors doesn't yet use the E-Verify program.

Teddy at Left of College Station writes about escorting at Planned Parenthood and how what happens in Kansas doesn't stay in Kansas. Also a report from the T. Don Hutto Residential Detention Facility and the protest on Saturday (including exclusive photographs).

Big Gas wants you to believe that regulating hydraulic fracturing is a state's rights issue. The truth: Only one state in the US regulates hydraulic fracturing. TXsharon busts the Big Gas bubble again on Bluedaze: DRILLING REFORM FOR TEXAS.

Citizen groups opposed to new coal plants being built in Robertson County and near Victoria were given a chance to intervene last week when two of the 12 newly proposed coal plants in Texas had preliminary hearings for their waste water permits. Check out the video over at Public Citizen's Texas Vox.

Over at TexasKaos, Libby Shaw tells us that Dumb, Self-serving Politicians Make Dumb, Self-serving Decisions. What a surprise that Governor Goodhair takes the starring role in this little drama. Check out the details.

Do you love the Real Housewives on Bravo? Were you a little less than impressed by the NJ version? So was Barfly over at McBlogger.

Sunday Funnies (yes, on Wednesday)

I enjoyed my time away, did you? As always, click on the toon for a bigger, more readable view:

The (hot) Weekly Wrangle

That would be the temperature as well as the quality of information contained in the best of the Texas Progressive Alliance blog posts for the week.

TXsharon can't choose one post this week! It's a toss up between the aerial video view of Barnett Shale Industrial Wasteland Texas or the Barnett Shale drilling-induced earthquakes or Erin Brockovich does Midland or the governmental warnings about defective pipeline materials on Bluedaze: DRILLING REFORM FOR TEXAS.

Xanthippas at Three Wise Men blogs about how utterly ridiculous it is for us to pay a tiny South Pacific nation to take Guantanamo Bay detainees because we are a nation of bed-wetting, pearl-clutching morons.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson analyzes what might possibly happen in the upcoming special session in Perry calls a special -- what gets done is up to him.

Off the Kuff looks at a Lone Star Project report on state rep. Dwayne Bohac and his questionable relationship with an employee of the Harris County tax assessor's office.

BossKitty at TruthHugger sees a growing pandemic of hate that erupts in violence. See the diagnosis: Scapegoat Lessons: Holocaust Museum ‘Act Of Cowardice’.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme is glad that Judge Kent is going to jail. Too bad his sentence wasn't longer. CBT can hardly wait to see his impeachment hearing in the senate.

This week, McBlogger finds out that the 290E tollway will be built using stimulus dollars. Which means Austinites will pay three different taxes to support this road.

John at Bay Area Houston wonders about the lack of diversity at the Nancy Pelosi event in Houston.

Citizen Sarah at Texas Vox wonders if the specter of Texas losing its leadership role creating clean energy jobs is scary enough to address in a special session.

George at The Texas Blue thinks that forced arbitration with credit card and cell phone companies is fundamentally unjust, but forced arbitration in a rape case is just disgusting.

Teddy at Left of College Station reports on whether or not America is actually becoming more “pro-life” and looks deeper into the polls to find that opinions on reproductive rights are much more complicated, and also covers this week in the headlines.

Neil at Texas Liberal writes about Juneteenth. Juneteeth is June 19th and it has a Galveston origin.

Midland's chromium 6 contamination got more linkage from PDiddie at Brains and Eggs.

Over at TexasKaos, liberaltexan asks, what exactly does the latest abortion survey mean? He answers not much new, since it does a poor job of asking the question and sorting out the nuances of public opinion. See the rest here: Are More Americans Pro-Life?

Justin at AAA-Fund Blog took some time to remember Tim Russert.

Sunday Funnies

Save our CEOs

Coming in October:

Closing ranks behind a scandal

Leo Vasquez, Harris County tax assessor-collector and voter registrar, issued a statement that dismissed complaints that Johnson’s job, which can include approving or rejecting voter applications, conflicts with his side business.

“Ed Johnson is an honorable man,” Vasquez said. “It is slanderous and absolutely reprehensible to suggest without evidence that he is involved in inappropriate activity with regard to voter registration in Harris County.”

Bullshit, Leo. You squeal like a stuck pig every single time somebody shows you the dirt under your fingernails. You're a hack. A token Latin hack, at that.

Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos’ campaign paid more than $7,000 last year to CDS. She said late Wednesday her campaign hired CDS for targeted campaign mailers but she did not know about Johnson’s job with the county.

She insisted she saw no compromise of the elections office’s mission.

“I saw no conflict,” Lykos said.

Now that's the kind of hypocrisy Harris County Republicans are more accustomed to: blind injustice.

Gee, ya think there's any chance Attorney General Greg Abbott will investigate?

Huckabee's "mushy middle"

Great news; the Republicans are still not getting it:

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee warned Republicans Wednesday against moving to the "mushy middle," arguing that only clearly stated conservative policies can bring the party back to power. ...

"I hear people who give advice that the Republicans need to moderate. They need to be a little more to the left," Huckabee said in an interview with The Associated Press. "It sounds like advice that Democrats would give to us so that we'd never win another election ever."

Some argue that Republicans have lost Congress and the White House because they've turned the party over to social and religious conservatives, driving away moderates and independents. Huckabee made precisely the opposite argument.

"It's when they move to the mushy middle and get squishy that they get beat," he said.

Pastor Mike, patron saint of adult onset diabetes, he of the big mushy middle himself -- having lost all that weight -- is readying himself for a run in 2012. He's got to sound as tough as Newt and Dick, though, so he's throwing his own (stir-fried lightly) red meat to the mad-dog base.

You remember the right-wing base; they shoot doctors and museum guards, don't they.

"Historically, the way we've found our way back to winning, having clear convictions that are conservative and then when elected, act like it," he said. "In every election, when Republicans have had clarity of convictions and those convictions were conservative, they win."

He warned that many Republicans have gone astray by buying into President Barack Obama's big-spending effort to stimulate the economy, a move he called "a big, colossal, utterly disastrous mistake.

"Our Republicans have culpability in that," Huckabee said. "There were some people who questioned whether I was really conservative. I don't want to hear, ever, people ever again talk about how conservative they are if they supported that."

Now that last line there sounds like a shot at Kay Bailey.

Which reminds why Governor MoFo is going to whip her next spring, even with one arm in a sling.