Texas voter fraud cases in past eight years can be counted on two hands

Sometimes I really like it when Karvey Kronberg screams.

OUT OF MORE THAN 20 MILLION GENERAL ELECTION VOTES, LESS THAN 300 VOTER FRAUD REFERRALS HOUSE COMMITTEE TOLD

Actual instances of voter impersonation prosecuted with state involvement can be counted on two hands

House Elections (ed. note: this would be the Texas House committee on Elections) held another hearing today on voter fraud and as in previous hearings on the topic, state officials told lawmakers that reported instances of voter impersonation (the kind that a photo ID bill is designed to catch) constitute a tiny fraction of the number of voter fraud cases that are investigated at the state level.

A witness from the Attorney General’s office told the panel that since August 2002 nine cases involving illegal voting have gone through the complete indictment process and were fully resolved either through a guilty verdict, plea deal or a dismissal of the case.

Nine closed cases. Out of more than twenty million votes cast. Over the past eight years.

And how many legitimate votes do you think were NOT cast, because overzealous Republican precinct election judges violated the law by demanding ID at their polls?

This is the only purpose of a voter ID bill; to suppress turnout. To keep people that they don't like voting FROM voting. Because Republicans LOSE when more people vote. And they know it.

Update: Voter ID fight appears certain

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance salutes that grand old high-flying flag as it brings you this week's blog roundup.

Off the Kuff takes a look at an alternate universe in which the DeLay-engineered re-redistricting of 2003 never took place.

Captain Kroc at McBlogger is not at all impressed with all the cross-Atlantic chatter regarding British Petroleum and their oopsie in the Gulf.

Bay Area Houston has photographic evidence that the Republican party convention was invaded by dickheads.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wonders why a Hidalgo election is allowed to stand after so many fraud allegations.

The Republican Party of Texas is either under siege or on a crusade, depending on the POV of Dave Mann at the Texas Observer and Wayne Slater of the DMN. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs just thinks they're a bunch of gun-and-Bible-clinging bed-wetters.

TXsharon has a video of water from a private well that was contaminated from hydraulic fracturing a Devon Energy Barnett Shale gas well, at Bluedaze: DRILLING REFORM FOR TEXAS.

WhosPlayin has been analyzing discipline data obtained via open-records request from Lewisville ISD, and find finds that the data reported to TEA through the PEIMS system regarding fights and assaults might be vastly under-reported. (0 reported last year, but 750 so far this year by mid April.) TEA explains that districts may choose to report some of those incidents as "violation of local code of conduct".

Three Wise Men takes another look at the current outlook of national and state races in the midterms.

Libby Shaw over at TexasKaos shines a light on an article that really should get more attention. "....37 of the 64 judges in the Gulf region from Texas to Florida, have financial ties to big oil and gas." Check out the rest : Most Judges in Gulf Region Have Financial Ties to Oil and Gas.

Neil at Texas Liberal wrote about Renew Houston. This proposed ballot initiative for the 2010 Houston ballot would dedicate money for wastewater removal. Yet it is funded by regressive means, and appears to add no progressive green solutions to Houston's wastewater removal strategies.

Jimmy Dean 1928 - 2010

Jimmy Dean, a country music legend for his smash hit about a workingman hero, "Big Bad John," and an entrepreneur known for his sausage brand, died on Sunday. He was 81.

His wife, Donna Meade Dean, said her husband died at their Henrico County, Va., home.

After we were married in 1986, my wife and I lived in Plainview for a bit over two years. I was the advertising director for the Plainview Daily Herald and she was an assistant to the coordinator for special projects for Central Plains MH/MR.

Born in 1928, Dean was raised in poverty in Plainview, Texas, and dropped out of high school after the ninth grade. He went on to a successful entertainment career in the 1950s and '60s that included the nationally televised "The Jimmy Dean Show."

In 1969, Dean went into the sausage business, starting the Jimmy Dean Meat Co. in his hometown. He sold the company to Sara Lee Corp. in 1984.

I never met Dean but did meet many people in Plainview who knew him and his family well, and he was a big favorite of the country and western music fans in my household growing up. The facility that Dean and his family first opened to make sausage became a popcorn factory while I was there, churning out a variety of flavored popcorn in decorative tins.

In the late '60s, Dean entered the hog business — something he knew well. His family had butchered hogs, with the young Dean whacking them over the head with the blunt end of an ax. The Dean brothers — Jimmy and Don — ground the meat and their mother seasoned it.

The Jimmy Dean Meat Co. opened with a plant in Plainview. After six months, the company was profitable. His fortune was estimated at $75 million in the early '90s.

Don't forget that his biggest hit became something of a parody two years ago, thanks to John Cornyn.

More recently, a scrap with Sara Lee led to national headlines.

The Chicago-based company let him go as spokesman in 2003, inciting Dean's wrath. He issued a statement titled "Somebody doesn't like Sara Lee," claiming he was dumped because he got old.

"The company told me that they were trying to attract the younger housewife, and they didn't think I was the one to do that," Dean told The Associated Press in January 2004. "I think it's the dumbest thing. But you know, what do I know?"

Sara Lee has said that it chose not to renew Dean's contract because the "brand was going in a new direction" that demanded a shift in marketing.

Courtesy Erik Vidor, here's audio of a caller complaining to the Jimmy Dean Meat Company about the size of their sausage package (some profanity).



Update: Entertainment Weekly notes that Dean was the pioneer of country music television; before Hee Haw, and before even Johnny Cash, there was The Jimmy Dean Show. That link has some great videos, including one of Rowlf the Dog (the first Muppet to make it big on the country scene).

Repubs boot Adams, go with Munisteri | Libs pick Glass | Greens go with ...

A little news made by the GOP, the Libertarians, and the Greens yesterday. First, from the freaky deaky confab in Dallas ...

Texas Republicans on Saturday ousted their firebrand leader, conservative activist Cathie Adams, in favor of Houston businessman Steve Munisteri.

Delegates chose Munisteri to be the new state party chairman during their convention in Dallas.

Munisteri focused his campaign on the party’s $500,000 debt. The retired lawyer says Republicans should be in better financial shape since they control both houses of the Legislature and all statewide offices.

The internal struggle spilled onto the floor of the Dallas Convention Center, prompting a sometimes chaotic roll call vote of the delegates. Once officials announced Munisteri had won, Adams backers then proposed that she be selected as the party’s vice-chairwoman. Delegates picked Houston-area Republican activist Melinda Fredricks instead.

Adams is known as a take-no-prisoners conservative. The former leader of the Texas Eagle Forum had often criticized senior members of her own party, bucked business leaders by opposing their cherished lawsuit reform efforts, called global warming a “hoax” and used the specter of Adolf Hitler to warn of perceived Obama administration excesses.

Adams had not been in the job very long. She was chosen to lead the party in a special election in October after Tina Benkiser stepped down. Munisteri won a two-year term, which will expire when the Republicans meet at their next state convention in 2012.

Adams, head of the Texas wing of Phyliss Schafly's Eagle Forum and heavily involved early on Perry's re-election campaign, was the incumbent insider with allegations of "too much debt" against her. So she got teabagged -- even though her opponent had to work hard to appear as crazy as Adams. He obviously succeeded.

The Libs met in Austin and made their pick for governor:

Kathie Glass, a Houston attorney, has won the Libertarian Party nomination for Governor of Texas. She will face incumbent Governor Rick Perry and former Houston mayor Bill White in November.

"This is our time. We will leave this convention as a united party," said Glass. "Texans want smaller government and more freedom. This is the message that we bring."

"Regrettably, our current governor seems intent on running our state "Washington D.C." style instead of Texas style. Runaway taxes, exploding spending, escalating debt, ever-growing government, and confiscation of property so he can give it to foreign interests -- where will it end?" asked Glass.

"Kathie was nominated by our convention because of her strength, knowledge of the issues, and her sense of what's right for Texas," said Executive Director Robert Butler. "She knows the Libertarian answer for today's issues and she can explain it well for every audience."

Oh yeah, Kinky Friedman was the keynoter at their convention. Wasn't it just a few months ago he was telling us he'd always been a Democrat?

"I really think the Democrats and the Republicans have become the same guy, admiring themselves in the mirror," Friedman said. "Rick Perry and Bill White — it's like the lesser of two boll weevils. This is the classic choice between paper or plastic. I think the day has come for the Libertarians."

And the Greens, also convening yesterday in Austin, selected ...

... well, I'm still waiting to hear who they selected between Deb Shafto and Bart Boyce. There's video here of both candidates (the second of two on that page). I have made some inquiries and searches but there seems to be no word officially that I can find. I'll update here when I know.

Update: kat swift late last night reports that Deb Shafto was selected by Green delegates as their gubernatorial candidate. Here's a bio page from her bid for Houston city council last year and another video from that campaign as well.

Update II: More on Glass and Shafto, via jobsanger, from the Fort Worth Star-Tel.

The Texas GOP: fighting scared, and loving it

Dave Mann thinks they're on a crusade:

You can always tell a politician's desperate to win reelection when he or she describes an election as good vs. evil, us vs. them, the fight of our lifetime. Or, as Gov. Rick Perry put it last night, "a struggle for the heart and soul of our nation."

Perry unleashed that beauty in a speech to the Texas Eagle Forum, as The Dallas Morning News reports.

It amazes me how candidates must over-hype elections these days to ensure their loyalists turn out. Sure, elections are important, but it's a damn midterm, people. Let's not go mistaking it for Antietam.

By my count, I've lived through the "most important election of all time" at least three times in this decade alone: the 2000 election was supposed to be the great struggle for the soul of America. So was 2006. Then, 2008 was billed as the most important election of our lifetime... or the next two years, whichever comes first, I guess.

Meanwhile, the governor was in rare form last night, casting this fall's election in stark religious terms:

"We will raise our voices in defense of our values and in defiance of the hollow precepts and shameful self-interests that guide our opponents on the left....

"Who do you worship? Do you believe in the primacy of unrestrained federal government? Or do you worship the God of the universe, placing our trust in him?"

I'm surprised they came out from under their bed long enough to have a convention. Of course, maybe the stench of the soiled mattresses from all that bed-wetting just forced them out.

Wayne Slater thinks they're under siege:

For a party in power, there seem to be a lot of martyrs in the Texas GOP.

Rush Limbaugh says Democrats are the party of victims. But it was the Republicans at their state convention in Dallas this weekend who clearly saw themselves as the oppressed and mistreated.

“The fox is in the henhouse,” said congressional candidate Stephen Broden of DeSoto of the myriad enemies bearing down on conservatives. “And they have one thing in mind — fried chicken salad.”

For all the Republicans’ success in Texas, the barbarians are apparently at the gate: liberals, atheists, socialists, Hollywood, the media, a White House at work on wrecking the country and ruining their lives.

Everywhere you looked at the Dallas Convention Center, people were wearing their victimhood.

Republicans in Texas as the persecuted minority. Victims. Martyrs. That is just classic, isn't it?

At the Voice of the Martyrs booth was a map of Christians persecuted for their religion. The John Birch Society was selling a book, Inside the Terror Triangle, in which Washington, Moscow and the Middle East have collaborated against hapless American families.

Even Gov. Rick Perry, in a speech to delegates, complained of unfair treatment.

“This administration,” he said of the Obama White House, “has a target on the back of Texas. I don’t think he likes us.”

The tea-party movement is mobilized around fear of government and resentment of elites that it believes looks down on conservatives. Aggrievedness is built into the blueprint.

“Conservatism is an oppressed minority today,” Limbaugh said on his radio show last year. “If ever a civil-rights movement was needed in America, it is for the Republican Party.”

You couldn't make this shit up if you were taking Oxycontin and hydrocodone in doses strong enough to kill a horse. Unless you're Limbaugh, of course.

At Saturday morning’s prayer rally in advance of convention business, Pam Faraone, who heads a support group for border sheriffs, called on something higher.

Faraone prayed for divine intervention to seal the US-Mexican border to stem the tide of illegal immigration: “Because of iniquity, the United States-Mexican border is shrouded in spiritual darkness.”

Still, pending God’s help on the border, there are some things the victims on this side can do, she said — noting in her prayer the sheriff of Hudspeth County, who is urging Texans on the border to arm themselves.

In the midst of the booths selling buttons and T-shirts just off the convention floor, Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson struck just the right mood of a people besieged. He draped his campaign space with green camouflage, as if it were something out of Apocalypse Now.

Patterson’s full-page ad in the convention brochure shows him against a pockmarked wall, grim-faced, as if at war.

I think maybe Slater juxtaposed that description of Patterson: his face is pock-marked and the wall is grim. Oh well, he will always have his arsenal to console him after he leaves office at the end of the year.

"Clinging to their guns and Bibles" is a perfect description of the Republican Party of Texas.  They believe that the 2010 statewide elections -- like every other election year -- are a holy war for the future of Texas and Murrica.

And I'm not certain anyone should disavow them of the notion, since when they lose in November it benefits them the most to drop their security blankets and reassess their lives.

Sunday Funnies

RPT Convention crazy is spewing like BP's oil disaster

Thank God the Texas Tribune is there to document the atrocities.

Here's Joe Holley at the Chron with the quotes.

"We embrace fiscal disciplineship." -- Rick Perry

"My husband really does like coyotes." -- Anita Perry

"The world will be right when the Pope is a Texan." -- Rick Perry, speculating on the future prospects of Archbishop Jose Gomez, who recently left San Antonio to head the Los Angeles diocese

The rest read like any of the Chron's comment sections: 'ObamaMessiahsocialistkeepthechange' is your executive summary.

They're brewing some awfully bitter tea in the back of the hall, too.

The San Antonio Tea Party's booth is tucked in the back of the Dallas Convention Center's exhibit hall.

To find it, you must wind your way through a maze of commerce and ideology — power scooter rentals, John Birch Society videos, T-shirts backing hard-rock guitarist Ted Nugent for president in 2012, magnetic therapeutic jewelry and campaign buttons proclaiming “Hot Chicks Vote Republican.”

Don't you wish you were there?

If you were, you could have seen Kay Bailey holding Rick Perry's hand while pinching her nose shut with the other. Or the governor's $18-million-dollar elephant in the room. Or his double-wide.

Parked outside Eddie Deen's Ranch on South Lamar Street was a 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom green-and-white mobile home that the Texas AFL-CIO is generously offering Governor Rick Perry for $1 a month.

It's the same home they offered to Perry in Austin last month, minus the furniture, issues of Food and Wine magazine, a supply of hair spray, and a 50-year-old stuffed German shepherd "that has sentimental value to me," said the group's president Becky Moeller. Those were tossed out to make the home easier to transport here and later to drive to Corpus Christi for the Texas Democratic Party convention at the end of June.

But the pure, unadulterated insanity belonged to one of the lesser lights down the GOP ballot, Todd Staples -- who has chosen to libel Hank Gilbert in a manner so vile it defies description.

Really, it's so unhinged it is incoherent. Rabies doesn't hold a candle to this kind of crazy. This isn't just garden-variety Obama Derangement Syndrome, but some South Carolina strain of shit-that-doesn't-fall-too-far-from-the-bat so divorced from reality that all you can do is point and laugh at it before the men in white coats carry it away in a straitjacket.

Congratulations, Todd. It takes a lot of work to top Rick Perry, Greg Abbott, and even Jerry Patterson. You win the the 2010 RPT Convention's Chock Fulla Nuts Award. And there's a whole 'nother day ahead.

OpenSourceDem on the Green challenge to Texas Democrats

A GOP operative in Arizona has rigged a reported $200,000 in-kind contribution to the Green Party in the form of sufficient signatures to get their candidates -- to be nominated this weekend -- on the statewide and select countywide ballots.

The Democratic Party perceives this as a short-term threat to Bill White’s campaign and is sensitive to a longer term threat to the status quo, particularly if the Green candidate for state comptroller gets enough votes to meet the statutory threshold (5%) for continued ballot access.

The GOP doubtless regards this as a “dirty trick” in the short term. They love such mischief almost as much as Democratic incumbents in Arkansas like vote suppression techniques such as reducing polling locations in a run-off.

GOP operatives such as the Club for Growth or intellectuals like the Federalist Society may see this ploy as a new wrinkle in their notion of a “Permanent Republican Majority”. That “majority” actually consists of money-driven pluralities in a mix of ratification elections and plebiscites wherein the lower the turnout, the better. Call this the “Citizens United” plutocracy.

In fact, both party establishments in Texas are plutocratic:

For the Democratic Party establishment (TDP), a “Way We’ve Always Done It!” sort of decrepit plutocracy is based on what was for a long time professional and more recently racial patronage, derived from bi-partisan concession-tending (“Jim Crow”). But, the GOP in Texas has long commanded more money, technology, and concessions. So, “Jim Crow” is just an epithet now, not really the regime here today. And TDP plutocracy is really just nostalgia -- Matt Angle’s wannabe plutocracy.

While profoundly reactionary, the GOP is conforming Texas government to radical privatization, deregulation, and economic discrimination using the state and federal Supreme courts. They now dominate the emerging police state it takes to levy and collect indirect and regressive taxes. But like East German Communists, they run as the anti-government, pseudo-populist party. Thus they innovate just enough in electoral politics and roll out sufficiently clever waves of earthy rhetoric to keep Texas a red state bastion despite its latent Democratic majority.

The GOP prevails by further dividing and demoralizing a Democratic Party already broken by professional patronage and further mediated by racial gerrymandering and quotas. A “green” party consisting of not so much anti-corporate as well-educated but chronically underemployed and mostly white environmental activists may do in the general election what the Tea Party has done in GOP primaries. (The Tea Party appears to be well-educated but chronically underemployed, property-rights and gun-rights-favoring, mostly white activists.)

If the jobless recovery continues, of course, there will be more and more well-educated but chronically underemployed (fill-in-the-blank), with increasingly non-white activists out there raging against both plutocracies.

Still, GOP operatives hope to focus the alienation in Texas right now on well-funded Democratic challengers who they can portray as “liberal” or in any case “corporate” establishment, while GOP incumbents portray themselves as moralistic, “small-government”, “cloth coat”, rubber wader”, libertarians or eat-what-you-catch-or-kill hunter/gatherers like Sarah and Todd Palin.

None of this theatrical politics was new even before Citizens United. The Green Party thing is just another wrinkle in a story now decades old.

It could backfire several different ways:

1. Techno-Legal

The Red-Green petition drive can probably be voided by invalidating individual signatures under the exclusive affiliation provisions of state law using the TEAM and VEMACS voter registration systems. But that will take a tech-savvy lawyer who understands those systems. The Green petitions are probably legal under the state exemption on corporate funding for “party-building” activities. In any case, the GOP Secretary of State cannot be trusted to do the signature validation competently or even disinterestedly. (Note: The SOS has approved the Greens' petition signatures, but the Greens and the Democrats have agreed to a two-week moratorium in order to authenticate the legality of the Greens' benefactor.)

2. Trust and Confidence: Try It For A Change!

The GOP noise machine has reached maximum volume very early and is getting very tiresome. By speaking intelligently and calmly, both Barack Obama and Bill White may well elicit the sort of confidence and trust that may be more important in this mid-term election than enthusiasm, especially fake Astroturf  “enthusiasm” or “rage”.

3. Take ‘Em Head On

While the Tea Party will fall in lockstep with the GOP or stay home and sulk, loyal Oil Patch and Texas Environmental Democrats can compete head on and outnumber Green Party activists in every venue, including the Democratic state convention, taking place in two weeks in Corpus Christi.

4. Hey Diddle Diddle, Straight Up The Middle

Even more importantly, Bill White and Jeff Weems can provide real leadership on environmental issues and energy policy ... provided they can break out from the lame Lone Star Project strategy of empty rhetoric in targeted races underwritten by the TDP.

5. Straight D Plus

Finally, if and only if a few of the big, urban county Democratic Parties can mobilize high-information “surge” voters -- a legacy of 2008 primary and general elections -- then Democrats can co-opt more voters from a would-be Green Party than the other way around. The key will be “straight D plus” voting instructions. It is true that a straight G vote is just another spoiler campaign. But a straight D plus a vote for the Green comptroller candidate (where the TDP left a void) would help Bill White (and Ann Harris Bennett in Harris County) and hurt the GOP. Of course, that assumes Democrats have tech-savvy political operatives, something more than just nostalgia to run on and run with.

The downside on Straight D Plus is that the Greens, having gotten on the ballot in service to the GOP in 2010, would be on the ballot in 2012 courtesy of Democrats. That poses a fundamental question for Democrats:

-- Do we want or expect to be the dominant one of two collaborating parties in a bi-partisan plutocracy (“Jim Crow”) ever again, or do we want or have any expectation of ever being a robustly competitive party in a multi-party democracy, not any sort of plutocracy?

That is the sort of historic challenge that a placeholder like Boyd Richie does not recognize and has not faced. It is one Bill White may have to overcome in addition to running his own race if he expects to win statewide, in effect with no more than half a party. If Democrats expect to win elections in Texas, they will have to embrace change as a party. We need to realize that parties which nominate by convention and take unlimited corporate contributions have a huge advantage over parties nominating by primary election and using small donations to leverage corporate contributions and other large donations. That is the way to perpetuate plutocracy without regard to colorful rhetoric or other aesthetic devices to distinguish our brand of plutocracy from the other one. The plutocrats with the most money cannot govern well, but they can win elections dominated by mercenary consultants and mass media.

So behind all the tricks of mercenary political operatives, theirs and ours, there really are some profound questions for Democrats to answer if we are ever to make anything out of our latent majority statewide, our transient one in Harris County, a fairly reliable one in Dallas County, and of course the potentially valuable one in Houston.

Whose ass to kick

Other Ass We'd Like to See Kicked

Kick Peter Sutherland's Half-BP Half-Goldman Sachs Ass
Kick the Supreme Court's Corporations-Are-People Ass
Kick All Lobbyists' Asses Out of Washington, D.C.
Kick Lloyd Blankfein's Ass Into Federal Prison
Kick Monsanto's Genetically-Engineered Ass
Kick Joe Lieberman's Ass Out of the Senate
Kick Congress' Cutting-Unemployment Ass
Kick Jake Knotts' Ass Back to 19th Century
Kick Larry Summers' Ass Back to Harvard
Kick Blackwater's Ass Out of Afghanistan
Kick Dick Cheney's Ass to The Hague
Kick Money's Ass Out of U.S. Politics

http://www.michaelmoore.com

Perry's top politico connected to Greens' Santa Claus

Matt Angle busts Dave Carney.

Documents obtained by the Lone Star Project reveal that Rick Perry’s top political advisor Dave Carney has a long and direct link to the manager of the Texas Green Party/GOP ballot scam. In 2004, Carney teamed-up with Texas ballot scam leader Tim Mooney to gather signatures to put Ralph Nader on the ballot in order to assist the George W. Bush Presidential campaign.

In 2004, Carney worked with a group called “Choices for America, LLC” which was “run” by Mooney – the same Republican operative who collected signatures for the Green Party of Texas in 2010. (Dallas Morning News, August 12, 2004) Both Choices for America, LLC, the shell group used in 2004, and Take Initiative America, LLC the shell group used in 2010, are registered to Charles Hurth III. (Missouri SOS)

According to the Dallas Morning News, “Perry campaign spokesman Mark Miner said the governor's campaign had nothing to do with the petition-gathering effort.” It now appears that statement is likely not true.

That's a hell of a way to open your coronation weekend, Governor. And the Greens will now feel greater pressure to withdraw their petitions.

This just reeks all the way around. It's really a shame that the Green Party got manipulated in this fashion by the Republicans, but it's par for the course for goons like Carney.

Brains surgery scheduled

Much neglected for some time now, this blog will undergo some significant changes here in the coming days as I rework the template, overhaul the blogroll, monetize the site a bit, and re-enable commenting to make it more user-friendly.  You may see some changes that don't stick around for long as I experiment with the look and feel.

While the dust settles, enjoy these something old/something new blog brethren and sisteren:

-- The Yellow Something Something (formerly the Yellow Doggerel Democrat, still Steve Bates)

-- The Southern Shift

-- The Existentialist Cowboy

-- Local Texans

-- From Austin to A&M

-- Billiard Cues

-- and Newsy, which provides this video on the ever-increasing amount of money in politics:

Multisource political news, world news, and entertainment news analysis by Newsy.com

Texas Shorts

We're going briefs, not boxers, as we catch up with the news.

-- The Republican Party of Texas opens its state convention this weekend. We'll be posting occasional updates on the free-flowing crazy (hey, there's only so much we can all take). Here's a teaser from the Fort Worth Startlegram; the header is "Texas GOP delegates not keen on 'sensible immigration reform'"; emphasis at the end is mine:

Norm Adams wants Texas to find middle ground in the nationwide immigration debate.

The 65-year-old Houston insurance agent caused a ruckus Tuesday by presenting his "sensible immigration policy" -- a proposal that the Texas Republican Party reverse course and support a path to legalization -- to party faithful gathered in Dallas to prepare for their state convention.

His proposal is designed to secure the borders, deport noncitizens with violent records and give visas to illegal immigrants, who would pay taxes at a higher rate than citizens. In the process, he said, Republicans might regain countless Hispanic voters who shifted to the Democratic Party.

"The Republican Party needs to come together on a sensible immigration policy -- one that is not amnesty, one that is not deportation," Adams told a committee working on party platform issues. "If we get this passed, Texas will set the standard.

"I want this party to come together, folks," he said. "I hope and pray you people give this serious consideration."

Adams' proposal drew heated responses. More than 10,000 Republicans are expected in Dallas for their two-day convention, where they will approve a 2010 platform.

Sara Legvold, a delegate from Keller, was among those to speak against Adams' proposal.

"No compromises, no guest work, until we have our borders under control," she said. "I want to deport everybody who is illegal -- children, dogs, pets, birds.

"My compassion has dried up, just as my tax dollars have dried up."

Your compassion, your tax dollars, your brain, your soul. I hope your God calls you home very soon, Sara.

Update: they've got a three-way of nuts going for the chair.  Get your corn popped now.

-- The Greens made the ballot. Let the lawsuits begin. In Harris County, their candidates for county clerk and statehouse representative in District 144 will very likely be problematic for the Dems.

Update: once again via South Texas Chisme, the Greens won't be on the ballot if it turns out their Republican benefactor has violated the law:

Kat Swift, state coordinator for the Green Party in Texas, said the party's attorney is awaiting written confirmation that an outside group that bankrolled the effort is not a corporation.

Texas law forbids campaign contributions from corporations.

"Unless that paperwork comes through, all of it on the up and up, we're not moving forward with it," Swift said. ...

Swift said if the party gets written confirmation that it can legally list Take Initiative America as the in-kind donor, it intends to move forward and field candidates in the fall campaign. She said the group has until June 30 to make the decision.

-- After seeing Bill White's tax returns, an envious Governor Coyote Killer called for him to quit the race. It's just too funny. The comments in the Chronic are even running against Perry... no small feat.

Still no word on debates.

-- I learned this week that Boyd Richie has an opponent for chairman of the Texas Democratic Party. Talk about David versus Goliath Neck...

-- The Trib also reminds us that there is likely to... well, maybe possibly ... be a contest for Speaker of the Texas House next year, as Joe Straus has managed to alienate several Republicans and most all of the Democrats. Some history here about how speakers never used to serve multiple terms until the 20th century, and that the consolidation of power began with Billy Clayton, who was of course scandalized -- along with dozens of others -- by L'Affaire Sharpstown in the early '70's.

-- Tory Gattis has his post up about the charter amendment petition drive organized by Renew Houston. His conclusion:

So my feelings on the initiative are mixed: I agree with the concept, but have serious concerns about the details - especially the open-ended development impact fees.  Unfortunately at this point, the language is set - and I think that language will bring out some tough opponents in the fall.  In addition, this is shaping up as the year of the angry, anti-tax, Tea Party voter, which does not bode well at all for initiatives like this.  DOA?  Maybe.  We'll just have to see how it plays out.

So he thinks it makes the ballot but gets rejected by the voters. I believe that's a fair handicap of the race today.