T'was the work week before Christmas Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance is tracking reports of sugar plum sightings as it brings you this week's blog roundup.

Off the Kuff reminds you that expanded gambling is still doomed in the next legislative session.

The EPA Imminent and Substantial Endangerment Order to Protect Drinking Water in Southern Parker County has spawned a media frenzy but news sources only tell part of the story. TXsharon has a short timeline of events surrounding the water contamination that should change the conversation, at BLUEDAZE: Drilling Reform for Texas.

Led by the so-called "professional left", Texas Democrats locked Aaron Pena in the virtual town square stocks and hurled rotten tomatoes at him until he cried. "Call Out Aaron" Day was the social media hit of the holiday season, by all accounts (except Pena's). See PDiddie and Brains and Eggs for details.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wants to know how deluded you have to be to pick Dick Armey as Texan of the Year.

Neil at Texas Liberal ran the Dan Patrick family Christmas sugar cookie recipe that the senator posted on Facebook. In addition, Patrick announced an update on the Tea Party caucus in the Texas Legislature. After you eat enough of the Patrick cookies loaded with butter and sugar, you can go and die because the Tea Party Caucus made sure you had no health insurance.

Mean Rachel got really pissed off at Aaron Pena.

TexasVox went absolutely crazy covering the sunset hearings on the TCEQ and Railroad Commission this last week, and if you missed it, you can get caught up here.

Bay Area Houston has a message. Dear Aaron: Hispanics do not like cowards.

Jingle all the way Funnies

DADT done but DREAMs dashed

In a historic vote for gay rights, the Senate agreed on Saturday to do away with the military's 17-year ban on openly gay troops and sent President Barack Obama legislation to overturn the Clinton-era policy known as "don't ask, don't tell."

Obama was expected to sign the bill into law next week, although changes to military policy probably wouldn't take effect for at least several months. Under the bill, the president and his top military advisers must first certify that lifting the ban won't hurt troops' ability to fight. After that, the military would undergo a 60-day wait period.

Among the strongest voices in favor: Joe Lieberman. I'll give credit where it's due since I disagree with the man on virtually everything else. Oh, and the enigmatic Ben Nelson (NE) also.

Repeal would mean that, for the first time in American history, gays would be openly accepted by the armed forces and could acknowledge their sexual orientation without fear of being kicked out.

More than 13,500 service members have been dismissed under the 1993 law.

"It is time to close this chapter in our history," Obama said in a statement. "It is time to recognize that sacrifice, valor and integrity are no more defined by sexual orientation than they are by race or gender, religion or creed."

The Senate voted 65-31 to pass the bill, with eight Republicans siding with 55 Democrats and two independents in favor of repeal. The House had passed an identical version of the bill, 250-175, earlier this week.

No Democrats voted against the measure; the 31 nays included both Texas senators Cornyn and Hutchison.

The 65 ayes included independent Lisa Murkowski and Republicans Scott Brown (MA), Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, John Ensign, Mark Kirk (IL), George Voinovich, and Richard Burr.

Deserving of specific reproach is West Virginia's Joe Manchin, who skipped the vote. Though Oregon's Ron Wyden -- just diagnosed with prostate cancer -- postponed some pre-surgical tests to cast a historic vote, Manchin had a Christmas party to go to.

Supporters hailed the Senate vote as a major step forward for gay rights. Many activists hope that integrating openly gay troops within the military will lead to greater acceptance in the civilian world, as it did for blacks after President Harry Truman's 1948 executive order on equal treatment regardless of race in the military.

"The military remains the great equalizer," said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. "Just like we did after President Truman desegregated the military, we'll someday look back and wonder what took Washington so long to fix it."

Sen. John McCain, Obama's GOP rival in 2008, led the opposition. Speaking on the Senate floor minutes before a crucial test vote, the Arizona Republican acknowledged he couldn't stop the bill. He blamed elite liberals with no military experience for pushing their social agenda on troops during wartime.

"They will do what is asked of them," McCain said of service members. "But don't think there won't be a great cost."

McCain's response is a profile in disgrace. I particularly like how he transmogrifies an issue supported by 70% of Americans as belonging to "liberal elites".

John McCain has reduced himself to Captain Queeg -- rolling ball bearings in one hand, mumbling about strawberries.

Also today, no DREAM will come true for the children of undocumented aliens.

Senate Republicans on Saturday doomed an effort that would have given hundreds of thousands of young illegal immigrants a path to legal status if they enrolled in college or joined the military.

Sponsors of the Dream Act fell five votes short of the 60 they needed to break through largely GOP opposition and win its enactment before Republicans take over the House and narrow Democrats' majority in the Senate next month.

President Barack Obama called the vote "incredibly disappointing."

"A minority of senators prevented the Senate from doing what most Americans understand is best for the country," Obama said. "There was simply no reason not to pass this important legislation."

Dozens of immigrants wearing graduation mortarboards watched from the Senate's visitors gallery, disappointment on their faces, as the 55-41 vote was announced.

"This is a dark day in America," said Jorge-Mario Cabrera, a spokesman for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles. "The Senate has ... thrown under the bus the lives and hard work of thousands and thousands of students who love this country like their own home, and, in fact, they have no other home."

Helping send the bill to defeat were five Democratic senators: Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Jon Tester of Montana, Max Baucus of Montana, David Pryor of Arkansas, and Nelson. Manchin, as previously mentioned, had other priorities. Three Republicans -- Bennett of Utah, Lugar of Indiana, and Murkowski -- voted in favor.


Lindsay Graham earns his dishonorable mention:

"To those who have come to my office — you’re always welcome to come, but you’re wasting your time.

We’re not going to pass the DREAM Act or any other legalization program until we secure our borders. It will never be done as a stand-alone. It has to be part of comprehensive immigration reform."

Go fuck your bigoted self, Senator.

Jon Stewart puts on his man pants

I came down pretty hard on him when he dodged responsibility for his influence on the national conversation, so I need to give him mad props for this.

Some have questioned why the Republican effort to block a bill to fund health care for 9/11 first responders hasn't received more coverage on the cable news networks. And one of the cable news industry's best-known tormentors on the subject -- "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart -- spotlighted the issue on last night's show,  interviewing a panel of first responders afflicted with grave health difficulties to flesh out what he sees as the media's blatant disregard for the heroic municipal workers at the center of the controversy.

Stewart has been hitting the general media silence around the first responders and the pending legislation that would help to alleviate their health and financial difficulties for much of the past week. Last night's panel discussion took more direct aim at congressional inaction on the measure -- and the Senate Republicans' filibuster in particular. This marked one of the only occasions the satiric cable show featured a panel discussion, and through most of the nine-minute segment, Stewart's demeanor was uncharacteristically somber, as he sought to give the bulk of the airtime to his guests.

This link has the video.

It's a profound shift in Stewart's intent here to skewer the worthlessness of the American corporate media in a serious way, instead of his usual satirical. And I applaud it. Stewart's effort was underscored by another significant critic (emphasis mine):

(F)ormer "Good Morning America" producer Eric Ortner -- who worked as a medic at the site of the devastation on 9/11 -- had some choice words for media colleagues who "will be jockeying to outdo one another on 10th anniversary coverage" of the attacks next year.

"The sad thing will be that the wall to wall coverage will be little more than window dressing with little true consequence," Ortner told the New York Times. "They'll make us feel patriotic and tearfully grateful as they sidebar a piece or two on the plight of the rescue workers who still seem to be dying broke, ill, and in need of basic benefits. When that happens, this is the moment that I'll remember. It’s when the press was needed most, when sunlight truly could disinfect, and my colleagues just aren’t there. This is not a partisan issue… this is a clear case of right and wrong, and basic responsibility. It’s the reason many of us got into the business to begin with ... expose injustice and question those who allow it to exist."

When Bill O'Reilly would rather fight his annual War on "Happy Holidays", when Neil Cavuto and the rest of the Fox freaks spend hours a day on things like the Ground Zero mosque or Julian Assange's broken condom but wrap themselves in the Stars and Stripes and call each other "patriots" for not wanting to pay any taxes ...

... you should remember it, too.

More here.

"Call Out Aaron Pena" Day is finally here!

It's the social media event of the season!

Because Pena has been a big Twitterer and blogger himself, his flip-flop to red earlier this week has unwittingly left him wide open for ridicule.

And so we must exploit his soft, expansive, weak underbelly.

Here are your action items:

1. Defriend him on Facebook (if you are his friend, of course), and unfollow him on Twitter (if you do).
2. Call his office -- (512) 463-0426 or send a fax to (512) 463-0043 -- and tell him to resign and run for his seat as a Republican.
3. Contact his campaign contributors and ask them to request a refund of the money they donated to him. (Pena and fellow turncoat Allan Ritter have both indicated they would return them if they were asked to do so.) But John Coby lists a compelling reason why they won't: they're mostly Republicans themselves.
4. Tweet something using the hashtag #CallOutAaron
5. Write something on your social medium of choice.

Needless to say, just about everybody in Texas is aware of this public flogging/humilation. Even Keith Olbermann piled on (indirectly, in this excerpt that puts the shame of the Lone Star State on full display):

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Don't be left out of the holiday festivities! Join the fun!

Update: See Mean Rachel and Burnt Orange for more.