“Why can’t you just admit that Barack Obama is one efficient, steely-nerved, multitasking, black ninja gangsta president?”

Voter fraud, sanctuary cities, and unicorns

The Texas House is debating whether or not to require local police to enforce federal immigration law.

Gov. Rick Perry declared the ban on so-called sanctuary cities an emergency matter. He says all Texas law enforcement agencies should tackle the problem of illegal immigration.

Police chiefs across the state oppose the bill because they say it will make their jobs more difficult. Illegal immigrants will not report crimes if they think police will check their immigration status, and police say they already have a full plate without adding immigration enforcement.

The following excerpt is from the March 2, 2011 House State Affairs Committee meeting. The exchange can be found from the committee’s broadcast archives, at the 44:11 point of the video.

(Rene) Oliveira is a Democrat. (Burt) Solomons is one of the top Republicans in the Texas House, and also chairs the House committee on redistricting. Bold emphasis is mine.

Rep. Oliveira: I will be crystal clear with you, too. I am opposed to sanctuary cities, but I still don’t know if one exists. If you find one that exists, I’d love to hear it.

Rep. Solomons: Based on what I’ve read, we don’t have any, so I don’t know what the big deal is.

Rep. Oliveira: Then we don’t need the bill, I guess.

Rep. Solomons: No, I think we need the bill because enough people perceive that this is a problem, and so in context, we probably ought to ensure that we have a uniform consistent policy in the state of Texas about this.

"Sanctuary cities" -- which legions of Texas conservatives wailed and thrashed about during the gubernatorial campaign of 2010 -- don't exist, according to one of the leading Republicans in the Texas House.

I'd like to repeat that so it sinks in: "Sanctuary cities" DO NOT EXIST.

Next "emergency" for the Texas GOP: outlawing unicorns. But only if  "enough people" object to their non-existence, like they do voter "fraud" and "sanctuary cities".

There's also monsters under your bed, conservatives. Shouldn't there be a law against those?

Update: Oops. I was mistaken. Rick Perry's next emergency is corporate immunity from the consumers they injure or damage. What a country (if you're corporation, and not a person). Harvey Kronberg wrote "How To Blow Up a Session" just before 1 a.m. Saturday morning.

Apparently the inmates are running the asylum and they are being bullied by a half million or so hard right Republican primary voters in a state of twenty five million.

Yesterday, with the Senate capitulation, it looked like the budget was all but done and the only possible special session might be over congressional redistricting.

Since then (Rick) Perry has decided “loser pays” is an emergency item the House must take up in its final five days of hearing bills on second reading. Dewhurst has told Associated Press that he is abandoning the 2/3s rule, which he may or may not realize undermines his own power going forward. Meanwhile, the House is tied up in knots over points of order on such silliness as sanctuary cities as the clock keeps ticking.

To date, the Governor has failed to identify a single sanctuary city in Texas.

Here is where we are as the must-pass HB400 melted down tonight on what appears to be a fatal point of order. (HB400 is the school district bill that allows flexibility in hiring, firing and compliance with mandates and is reportedly worth billions in the budget) ...

Little Rock, Memphis, Shreveport

We'll shift gears into travel and leisure mode for this post.

Over the Easter weekend mi Cubana loca and I took a little road trip to the cities listed in the headline. I'd wanted to go back to LR and the Clinton presidential library ever since I made a similar trip with my mother in the fall of '07, when we ambled our way up to Fayetteville to watch my niece and her granddaughter play a weekend volleyball series with Georgia and Auburn in her senior season. (Sidebar: I don't like to write about my out-of-town traveling before it happens any more, or take photos while on vacation and post them to Facebook or Twitter. Some people will leverage information like that to your disadvantage, you know.)

We departed H-Town around 7 Thursday morning, dropped off the dogs at the kennel, and took off up US 59 north. We had lunch at Bryce's Cafeteria in Texarkana around 1 p.m. and made the Arkansas capital by 4. It's an easy 7-hour drive at slightly above posted speed limits, eight or nine depending on how many stops you make. That evening we bumped around the River Market district, ate at the Flying Fish, had a cocktail at the Underground. It was cool and rained on us a little but we had slickers on so we weren't bothered. That was the only inclement weather we experienced. Somehow we managed to dodge all the tornados in Arkansas and elsewhere that roared through about the same time we were there.

We stayed overnight at the Courtyard by Marriott, which is within both sight and walking distance of the library at the eastern edge of downtown. But one-half block away there's an executive golf cart that will pick you up in front of the Clinton Museum Store and whisk you the five blocks or so to the front door. The old train trestle in front is undergoing renovation to a walk/bike pedestrian bridge, so there's some construction to navigate.

As presidential libraries go, it's the best I have ever been in (LBJ's and GHWB's are fine archives but the architecture is stale and conservative at both). The Clinton is modern and gleaming and soars figuratively and literally. Some cattily compared it to a mobile home when it opened ... but those are mostly the same people who still think Obama was born in Kenya. The exhibits tell not just the president's and the nation's political and social history but also the world's from 1993 - 2000, and the displays seem more accessible and personal. The restaurant is amazing, both the food and the atmosphere. We toured the library on Good Friday morning and had lunch there before shopping a bit at the Museum Store and then driving the 2 1/2 hours on to Memphis.

We made a reservation at the Westin one block off Beale Street before we knew we were going on Easter weekend, and before the NBA scheduled the Grizzlies to play their first-ever home playoff game against the San Antonio Spurs right next door at Fed-Ex Center. So while at first we thought it might be a good contrarian stay (you know, when everybody else isn't) we came to realize we would be in the thick of the action (Beale plus basketball). It turned out grand, even with the Spurs checking in about the same time as us (through the back door, of course).

What is there to say about Beale that hasn't already been said? Just go. It's much the same yet totally different from Sixth in Austin. Think ribs and blues instead of Tex-Mex and rockabilly; it's all good either way. We had the babybacks -- dry rub for her, wet for me -- at Blues City Cafe before taking our ghost tour Friday night. We walked up to the Peabody and heard a scary story, then headed south on Main to the Orpheum, took note of Gus' Fried Chicken (we came back for lunch Saturday), paused at the Lorraine Motel (where MLK Jr. was assassinated) and on into the Arts District and past the Voodoo Fields, ending at Ernestine and Hazel's -- read this also from Rathbone and Tully -- before catching the trolley back uptown. Walkin' in Memphis on a cool night was just marvelous.

Saturday morning we drove out to Graceland. Again, how much could I add to the narrative? I'm not even what anyone would consider an Elvis fan. Liked him, liked his music, but that's about it ... until I arrived. His home just outside of town has been converted into both museum and shrine, and it does the job of preserving and extending the man's legacy. It's over the top in some ways just like Elvis himself, but also has a special and happy karma; at times glorious and at others vain and excessive. It holds literally everything Elvis: the charisma, the clothes, the cars, the gold records ... even him. He's of course buried there, between his mother and father and near his infant twin brother and grandmother. All together in life and death, as that generation was so fond of doing. This two-minute amateur video made me dizzy but will give you a sense of his enduring popularity. The flowers and memorials still pour in from around the world, and are all placed at his gravesite (until they start to wilt, then removed).

Besides the mansion, the Graceland park across the street sprawls across several acres and has half a dozen exhibits -- the autos, motorcycles, snowmobiles, golf carts and other toys make up one, another consists of his fleet of two airplanes which you can climb into, one is dedicated just to his impact on fashion (a video playing there has a rap artist noting that "Elvis musta had some gangsta in him because he was the first dude to do 'bling' big"), another to his comeback in 1968 ... on it goes. There's his music playing unobtrusively in the background seemingly everywhere, scenes from his movies and clips from TV shows like Ed Sullivan showing on monitors frequently. There are eleven gift shops, all full of mostly the same kitsch and junk and junk food (just as Elvis would have wanted).

The best time to go is early in the morning before the crowds and the heat arrive.  We were there with a couple of the wife's high school friends, and they were quick to agree that 9:30 a.m. Easter Saturday was much better than 4 p.m. July Fourth weekend, when they had been the last time. We saw everything and finally left -- a little bit Elvis'ed out -- around 1 p.m. and had lunch at Gus', waiting about 45 minutes to be seated. The chicken is as good as everybody says, but I wouldn't go again because of the wait ... and because I'm diabetic and shouldn't be eating fried chicken and all the starchy sides anyway.

Saturday night was spent inside the Beale zoo. We watched the Griz top the Spurs at Club 152 but hustled down to Silky's in the fourth quarter to get a good table in front of the Zydeco band before the crowds poured out to celebrate the win. It felt like Mardi Gras.

Easter Sunday we had steak and eggs for brunch with a small gathering of like-minded agnostics at Miss Polly's Soul City Cafe' before hitting the road for Shreveport -- about six hours, backtracking most of the way through Little Rock -- and the Louisiana Boardwalk in nearby Bossier City, with casinos and shops and restaurants and all that. We gambled a little and had the buffet at the El Dorado, neither of which was remarkable (we've had much better luck and grub in Kinder and Lake Charles). But our stay at the Courtyard there was terrific: brand-new, all the latest modern amenities, including a big interactive high-def TV in the lobby which let you touchscreen locations and print out directions. Very classy. We checked out and left LA around 11 Monday and drove about four hours back to Houston, hitting town just before rush hour. We passed through Crockett around 2 or so; tornadoes struck there that evening.

I would take this same trip again in a heartbeat, and stay longer in each town if I could. No, nobody paid me for all of this advertising. They should be, though ... don't you think?

Update: I-40 between Little Rock and Memphis is closed due to flooding from the Big Muddy. Mud Island and South Memphis are threatened as the water rises. Timing is everything, people.

Planned Parenthood of South Texas luncheon with Celinda Lake

Assembled today at the Hotel Zaza near Houston's Hermann Park with Mayor Annise Parker, former county commissioner Sylvia Garcia, city council members Melissa Noriega, Sue Lovell, Ed Gonzales, Stephen Costello and a host of other dignitaries were the defenders of Texas women in the form of the powerful activists united with Planned Parenthood's local chapter. The blog table included yours truly, Charles Kuffner, Julie Pippert, Neil Aquino, Stace Medellin, John Cobarruvias and others.

Nobody who reads a political blog in the United States needs to be reminded about the vicious attacks on the rights of all women to determine their reproductive future. Today in fact was not a day for Texas women in particular to note the maliciousness of those (old, fat, mostly white conservative men) who insist on thrusting their ignorance in women's faces -- and elsewhere -- rather, today was a celebration of a fund-raising record and to prepare for the battles ahead.

Pre-eminent pollster Celinda Lake gave the keynote, and served notice in her thorough research into the thoughts and opinions of voters with some data we were suspecting: that a majority of both Americans and Texans, mostly Democrats and liberals but also a large number of independents -- are appalled at the overreach by Republicans who were elected in 2010 to create jobs and help mend the economy.

So far, as has been noted, they're going hard and fast in reverse on that mission also.

The highlights of Lake's presentation included:

-- Americans not only remain supportive of Roe and against an abortion ban, but they are also tired of the debate around the question.

-- That's probably because Lake's polling verifies that the issue is severely polarized; Democratic voters and independents are pro-choice, Republicans of course are anti-choice.

-- Just three percent of voters said abortion was their single most important issue when deciding whom to send to Congress. Those voters, naturally, were most likely to be anti-choice.

-- Two-thirds of Americans still want to continue federal funding for Planned Parenthood ... but slightly oppose federal funding for abortions.

(In point of fact, federal funding for abortion has been outlawed since 1976 ... when the Hyde Amendment was passed. We were made painfully aware of more of this kind of ignorance recently when Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona absurdly claimed that abortions were 90% of PP's business, and was corrected -- to his profound embarrassment -- by the facts. That didn't stop John Cornyn from repeating the stupidity. In Texas, we know that morons who think like Cornyn come a dime a dozen ... and many of them serve in the Texas Legislature.)

-- While economic concerns were the dominant issue among voters in the 2010 election cycle, Lake's polling revealed a surprise: reproductive freedom played a "strong role" in the closing days of the campaign in a number of close races across the nation ... and "helped swing the results in the progressive candidates' favor".  Specifically cited in Lake's PowerPoint were Maine's 1st (Chellie Pingree) and Virginia's 11th (Gerry Connolly) Congressional tilts.

-- More things we thought we knew already: the 2010 electorate compared to its 2008 counterpart was older, more conservative, and less ethnically or racially diverse (does this describe any Republican you know? Or all of them?). Texas voters were all those things and more male, too. Democrats suffered due to lower turnout among younger voters, unmarried women and African Americans. The gender gap in Texas is smaller than elsewhere, but 53% of women in the last election still voted GOP compared to 57% of Texas men.

-- A majority of Latinos (61%) and an overwhelming majority of African Americans (88%) in Texas voted Democratic ... but 2/3 of Texans who voted in 2010 were Anglo, and they went Republican 69-29.

-- Younger Texans (18-29) were just 9% of the total and they went against the GOP wave by 5 points (51-46); those from 30 to 44 were split evenly (48% D, 49% R) and made up 23% of all Texas voters; 45-64 year-olds comprised 48% of the electorate and broke Republican 57-41, and Texans 65 and older, 20% of all voters, went 62-36 for the GOP.

-- Independents made up 39% of all voters, compared to 28% who self-identified Democratic and 33% Republican, and the indies favored Rick Perry by 16 points in 2010 (56-40%), This was a shocking statistic to me. Another one: Twelve percent of Texans who voted for Obama in 2008 voted Republican in 2010.

There's more like this, but you get the picture. On the question of women and the right to choose ...

-- A solid majority of Americans (59%) want the next Supreme Court justice to uphold Roe if a case like that came before the court again.

-- There is a great deal of consensus among all voters for moving away from the push-and-pull of abortion and broadening the discussion to reproductive health, including birth control, comprehensive sex education, and improving maternal and childbirth outcomes. And by a slight majority (52-40), Americans disapprove of Republicans adding new federal restrictions to choice for women.

Eliminating funding for Planned Parenthood's family services -- the actual 90% of their work -- means that Republicans will be taking away affordable birth control for poor and unemployed women (think about all the teachers in Texas who are losing their jobs and their insurance), and affordable health services like cancer screenings. Cutting PP's funding will, to put it bluntly, result in more unintended pregnancies -- nearly a million annually now in the US -- and thus more abortions (almost half of that one million). It also means women will contract more STDs and cancers that could have been prevented.

If you now understand the moral crisis being created by the Republican cabal of men who are determined to take women's rights back to the 19th century, contact your Republican representative and tell them to cut it out. And then send an e-mail to your friends and family asking them to do the same. You can easily e-mail this post to them if you have trouble writing a message yourself.

And then make sure you vote in 2012, and that everybody on your e-mail list does, too.

Update: From Neil, regarding yesterday's passage of the Texas mandatory sonogram bill ...

If the state can force one medical procedure on free citizens, why can’t it force any medical procedure on free citizens?

Yet the same people turn around and say it is wrong to compel people to buy health insurance as part of health care reform.

In Texas, “Choose life” appears to mean choose a crappy life with no health insurance, no social security, no steady work, and no quality education.

Will women who refuse the sonograms be arrested? Will they be in some way forced to get the sonogram? Will doctors be forced to detail patient conversations in order to prosecute women who refuse to comply?

This is how the State of Texas defines small government and personal freedom.

And Evan, at Burn Down Blog ...

Ah Republicans, the party of small government except for vaginas. At the rate they want to regulate those things, you would think that vaginas work by trading synthetic derivatives made out of radioactive mercury. After all, what do you think that red dot in the Kotex commercials stands for?

And nonsequiteuse, with this poem by Marge Piercy (just the closing excerpt follows; go read the whole thing).

We are all born of woman, in the rose
of the womb we suckled our mother’s blood
and every baby born has a right to love
like a seedling to the sun. Every baby born
unloved, unwanted, is a bill that will come
due in twenty years with interest, an anger
that must find a target, a pain that will
beget pain. A decade downstream a child
screams, a woman falls, a synagogue is torched,
a firing squad summoned, a button
is pushed and the world burns.
I will choose what enters me, what becomes,
flesh of my flesh. Without choice, no politics,
no ethics lives. I am not your cornfield,
not your uranium mine, not your calf
for fattening, not your cow for milking.
You may not use me as your factory.
Priests and legislators do not hold
shares in my womb or my mind.
This is my body. If I give it to you
I want it back. My life
is a non-negotiable demand.