Perry declined border briefing from Napolitano

The man is is just an ass.

(Rick) Perry greeted Obama at the foot of the stairs from Air Force One, clapping for the president as he descended. The two shared a hearty handshake before Perry pulled the letter out of his suit pocket and handed it to senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, who was standing behind the president.

A White House official said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano sent Perry a letter last week describing the administration's border security efforts and offered him a "top-level NSC briefing." The official said Perry declined.

What a jackwagon. Let's dispatch him to the border with his Coyote Special  -- after we boot him out of the $10 grand-a-month rental governor's mansion in November.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance is pretty sure its invitation to President Obama's events in Texas were lost in the mail, and we will keep saying that to ourselves as we bring you this week's blog highlights. (Regular -- or more frequent, at least -- posting to resume here in short order.)

Off the Kuff continued his interview series with Congressional candidate Ted Ankrum and State Representatives Senfronia Thompson and Garnet Coleman.

Staggering levels of formaldehyde in Barnett Shale air and the attempted cover up, breaking news by TXsharon on Bluedaze: DRILLING REFORM FOR TEXAS.

This week on Left of College Station, Teddy reports that the Republican electoral strategy is to conceal their policy agenda, and notes that Congress should do nothing because the Bush tax cuts should be allowed to expire. LoCS also covers SMUT and says Texas Dominates the Recession at a price.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wonders why Republicans like John Cornyn want to take us back to pre-Civil War days when blacks were not full citizens of the United States.

What part-time governor is also a real estate genius or maybe instead a sleazy grifter? Read Libby Shaw's take at TexasKaos in Rick Perry Stuffed His Pockets with $500K from Murky Land Deal.

NatWu at Three Wise Men says that however bad the economic news seems these days, things are actually much worse.

WhosPlayin stepped in it this week by pointing out how the local school district is giving an across-the-board raise to all administrative personnel, many of whom are already highly paid, while some highly-experienced teachers could go without raises this year.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has been skewing the child support statistics to his favor, reports PDiddie at Brains and Eggs.

On a day trip to Galveston, Neil at Texas Liberal took a picture of a portion of the seawall mural that showed workers in hazmat suits cleaning up muck from the sea. While Galveston is a great place to spend a day and spend a few dollars, the folks there are long acquainted with toxic spills.

Friday toons: rights edition

Prop 8 declared unconstitutional

It's been a real bad go-round for conservative attempts to codify discrimination. Last week, Arizona's SB 1070 mostly nullified; this week, a New York city commission approved the location of an Islamic community center near the site of the former World Trade Center, and California's Prop 8 is rendered a massive fail at the hand of the Ninth Circuit's US Judge Vaughn Walker.

Proposition 8 cannot withstand any level of scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause, as excluding same-sex couples from marriage is simply not rationally related to a legitimate state interest.

Rather, the evidence shows that Proposition 8 harms the state's interest in equality, because it mandates that men and women be treated differently based only on antiquated and discredited notions of gender.

Moreover, the state cannot have an interest in disadvantaging an unpopular minority group simply because the group is unpopular.

A private moral view that same-sex couples are inferior to opposite-sex couples is not proper basis for legislation.

Here, the purported state interests fit so poorly with Proposition 8 that they are irrational. … What is left is evidence that Proposition 8 enacts a moral view that there is something "wrong" with same-sex couples.

The evidence at trial … uncloaks the most likely explanation for its passage: a desire to advance the belief that opposite-sex couples are morally superior to same-sex couples.

Moral disapproval alone is an improper basis on which to deny rights to gay men and lesbians.

I would really like to see how a conservative SCOTUS argues to overrule this decision. And if it should dare to do so, the corresponding outrage and backlash.

As my friend Neil noted elsewhere...

Yes to birthright citizenship. Yes to the "mosque" in NYC. Yes to gay marriage. Yes to universal coverage. Yes to an inclusive, decent society.

Houston Votes

Last week I lunched with Houston's political blogger nation -- Kuff, Neil, Stace, Martha, David and also Big Jolly -- and the traditional media, Rick Casey -- as well as representatives of the League of Women Voters (Christina Gorczynski) and Texans Together's Houston Votes project (Fred Lewis, Maureen Haver, Sean Caddle). Their goal is to register 100,000 modest- to low-income citizens of Harris County, and then get at least 50,000 of them back to the polls in November. A vigorously non-partisan affair, their mission is to give voice to the historically disengaged.

In Harris County, as you may already now, this is a sizable problem: the best estimates are that 600,000 eligible adult citizens are not registered to vote, and they are mostly disadvantaged minorities; Asian-American, Latino and younger voters along with those in the lower-income strata. Houston Votes conducted this work for the first time here in 2008, registering 24,000 and turning them back out to vote at a 65% clip (without any allegation of impropriety).

The door-to-door-canvassing is happening now. This mobilization is an added effort to their storefront registration drives (which was their only point of contact two years ago, thus the more ambitious registration goal this cycle). The HV project extensively trains all deputy voter registrars, carefully checks collected voter reg cards,  and otherwise closely monitors the process. Once the registration deadlines passes they will call or contact at the door every person registered, encouraging them to vote and providing poll location information.

A couple of events around this effort:

-- Tonight, Thursday August 5, the Kickoff Party at Pearl Bar.

-- Saturday September 18, at the George R. Brown: the LWV will co-sponsor with the ASCE a candidate meet-and-greet for the public. Every single candidate on the Harris County ballot, from governor to precinct constable -- Democratics, Greens, Libertarians and Republicans -- have been invited to attend. After an early evening reception there are two debates currently on tap: candidates for county judge and tax assessor/collector will square off.

(Thanks to Big Jolly David Jennings for the comprehensive post -- despite his obvious misgivings -- as well as for many of the links I used here. His post on the LWV event is worth a click also.)