Texas Republican overreach slapped down hard by feds

The maps drawn for the 2012 elections by the three-judge panel are a huge win, and in some cases are eye-popping.

Democrats could gain a half-dozen seats in the Texas House under an interim redistricting map a federal court released Thursday. [...]

The biggest changes in the proposed Texas House map, which was endorsed by two of the three judges meeting in San Antonio, appear to be focused in the Houston area and could cost the Republicans as many as three seats. Rep. Beverly Woolley's district was largely combined into Rep. Jim Murphy's, Rep. Ken Legler's reconfigured district is heavily Hispanic and Rep. Sarah Davis' new district was won in 2008 by President Barack Obama.

The two judges would also give Democratic state Reps. Hubert Vo and Scott Hochberg districts to run in, undoing the Legislature's combination of their districts. The U.S. Department of Justice said in a legal filing that combining the two districts violated the Voting Rights Act because it would reduce opportunities for minority representation.

Several Republicans got paired. Harvey K:

Under the House map proposed by the San Antonio judges, 12 districts will pair incumbents -- all Republican on Republican contests with the exception of two districts pairing an R with a D. No Democrats are paired in the interim map. It should also be noted that several incumbents on this list have either announced they are not running for re-election or running for a different office.

HD 2: Cain (R), Flynn (R)

HD 21: Hamilton (R), White (R)

HD 32: Hunter (R), Morrison (R)

HD 33: Scott (R), Torres (R)

HD 69: Hardcastle (R), Lyne (R)

HD 80: Aliseda (R), King, T. (D)

HD 85: Chisum (R), Landtroop (R)

HD 91: Hancock (R), Nash (R)

HD 109: Anderson, R. (R), Giddings (D)

HD 113: Burkett (R), Driver (R)

HD 114: Hartnett (R), Sheets (R)

HD 133: Murphy (R), Woolley (R)

Meanwile, here are the open House districts under the proposed interim House map:

HD 3, HD 14, HD 30, HD 35, HD 43, HD 57, HD 68, HD 88, HD 93, HD 101, HD 106, HD 107 and HD 136

Warrne Chisum is running for Railroad Commissioner, Will Hartnett and Beverly Woolley are retiring, and Joe Driver caught a felony indictment, so this isn't as bad as it looks at first blush for the Repugs.

More from Greg:

Some particulars of interest: Woolley’s old district (she’s retiring) is essentially folded into Jim Murphy’s. Scott (Hochberg) and Hubert (Vo) each have their own district. (Ken) Legler is toast. (Dwayne) Bohac would go another decade with a bullseye on his back. And HD134 (Sarah Davis) got bluer on the Obama numbers, so it looks like that one could come back to the D column. HD136 is outsourced to Waller County, so it’s a 24-district map for the county.

Even more impressive is a just-below 50-50 district in Fort Bend County that’s over 30% Asian. Beyond that, I’ve seen at least a couple of WD40 districts that might be regained. No time to get into Dallas, but I’m hearing three seats from there could come back.

And Wendy Davis gets her Senate district back.

All three judges agreed on what changes to make the Texas Senate map, essentially restoring the district represented by Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, to the configuration it had when she ran for election in 2008.

The redistricting plan transformed Davis' district, which was seen as heavily competitive, into a Republican-dominated district.

Frankly, I'm slack-jawed over these changes. If the Texas House had included Democrats in the cartographic process during the last session, the D's could not have done themselves this much good.

And Photo ID skids out of the turn and slams into the wall, bursting into flames:

The Texas voter ID law, one of Gov. Rick Perry's top priorities during the 2011 Legislature, has been stalled by the U.S. Justice Department, which is insisting on demographic information about voters that state election officials say is virtually impossible to provide.

Texas Republicans expressed dismay Thursday after Justice Department officials said they need voter information about race and ethnicity before they can approve the controversial law, which is scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2012.

The ruling raises the possibility that the law will not be in place by the March 6 primary.

Information that Texas election officials have provided "is incomplete and does not enable us to determine that the proposed changes have neither the purpose nor will have the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race, color or membership in a language group (required under the Voting Rights Act)," T. Christian Herren Jr., chief of the Justice Department's Voting Section, said in a Wednesday letter to Texas elections director Ann McGeehan.

Cue the whining.

The requested information will be virtually impossible to gather, said state Rep. Patricia Harless, R-Spring, House sponsor of the voter ID bill, SB 14.

"I am disappointed," she said. "I don't know that the Secretary of State can provide the information in the format that they want. I am not sure that we will be able to satisfy them. I think it's ridiculous."

World's tiniest violin playing beside the River of Tears and all that.

"I am pleased that DOJ is asking the probative questions, which indicates they suspect the real issue is voter suppression," (state Sen. Rodney) Ellis said.

That's MY Senator. More in brief from TPM. Charles' rejoinder is best:

It’s amusing that the DOJ slapped down the SOS again the same week that Republican State Rep. Patricia Harless, who had said that the DOJ’s initial request for more data was “reasonable” and that the SOS should be able to respond quickly, published a lame pro-voter ID op-ed that essentially boiled down to “it won’t suppress as many votes as the critics say” and “it polls well”. I mean, Free Ice Cream Day would probably poll well, too, but that doesn’t mean it would be good public policy. Notably, Harless snuck in a bit about how voter ID would protect us from “fraud”, but nowhere in her piece did she document any actual examples of fraud that voter ID would protect us from. We all know the reason for that, of course, but then Harless can’t exactly come out and admit that the actual purpose of voter ID is to make it harder for some people to vote, as that might sound scary. But a discriminatory law by any other name would still discriminate.

Good Friday, everybody.

Occupy Dallas got their turn last night

Here is a compilation of minute-by-minute updates from the Occupy Dallas encampment as scores of Dallas police officers moved in late Wednesday and early Thursday to evict the protest group. There was no violence and 18 protesters were arrested.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 17

4:05a Dallas police arrested 18 Occupy Dallas protesters during the overnight sweep to close the organization's campground near City Hall. Dallas police planned a 10 a.m. news conference to discuss the operation. - Jason Whitely, WFAA

1:49a The police sweep of the Occupy Dallas campground appears to be complete. The peaceful operation took about 45 minutes. Many police officers are now leaving, but dozens will remain through the night.

Entire live-blog here, in reverse chronological order.

Same MO: middle of the night, media restricted, hyper-aggressive use of force.

I'm guessing that it's only a matter of time before Occupy Houston gets the police state treatment. HPD is just waiting on Annise Parker's authorization. And if this were happening in Libya, or Egypt, then people like John McCain would be imploring the United States government to intervene militarily.

Today is a day of action in New York, Houston, and around the nation. Even as Occupy comes in for criticism from previously sympathetic circles, the movement expands.

We are at a necessary evolution point in the Occupy movement. I say "necessary" for two reasons: one, because of the hard truth that cities around the nation simply cannot tolerate camping as a form of free speech, thus necessitating a response to "putting tents up" that is increasingly relying on tear gas, riot gear, and mass arrests.

Two, because they aren't listening. The government, Wall Street, the media: they simply aren't listening yet. Most press coverage revolves around which cities beat the holy hell out of which protestors on any given day or which senior citizen posed such a damn threat to the riot-gear-laden police that they needed to be pepper sprayed, but the underlying messages of income inequality, corporate corruption and a captured government are, unsurprisingly, still being stonewalled.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg (and other mayors around the country) doesn't want people camping in his park anymore. Fine, then: he will push the protests into taking another form. That's probably good for the movement, and probably going to be worse for him.

You cannot evict an idea whose time has come.

"When the mayor — and a mayor who's a billionaire, by the way — sends a police force to guard Wall Street and use force against peaceful protesters, that plays right into the hands of this movement's narrative," (Fordham University sociology professor Heather) Gautney said.

Only a small part

... of what's twirling around in there.

De-Occupy efforts by cities will only grow the movement

Dorli Rainey, 84, reacts after being hit with pepper spray during an Occupy Seattle protest on Tuesday.

Over the past ten days, more than a dozen cities have moved to evict "Occupy" protesters from city parks and other public spaces. As was the case in last night's move in New York City, each of the police actions shares a number of characteristics. And according to one Justice official, each of those actions was coordinated with help from Homeland Security, the FBI and other federal police agencies.

This is another reason why the Democratic Party won't see any benefit from attempting to co-opt the Occupy movement.

The FBI has so far failed to respond to requests for an official response, and of the 14 local police agencies contacted in the past 24 hours, all have declined to respond to questions on this issue.

But in a recent interview with the BBC," Oakland Mayor Jean Quan mentioned she was on a conference call just before the recent wave of crackdowns began.

"I was recently on a conference call of 18 cities who had the same situation, where what had started as a political movement and a political encampment ended up being an encampment that was no longer in control of the people who started them."

I'm certain that every mayor in the nation, from Michael Bloomberg to Annise Parker, is thinking that Jean Quan is a real dumbass. Among the concerns that coordination is designed to address is the 'criminal element'.

Don't set a midnight deadline to evict Occupy Wall Street protesters — it will only give a crowd of demonstrators time to form. Don't set ultimatums because it will encourage violent protesters to break it. Fence off the parks after an eviction so protesters can't reoccupy it.

As concerns over safety and sanitation grew at the encampments over the last month, officials from nearly 40 cities turned to each other on conference calls, sharing what worked and what hasn't as they grappled with the leaderless movement.

 A media blackout is also part of the coordinated strategy.

New Yorkers awoke to front-page stories and photographs in both the New York Post and the New York Daily News. Coverage by the two papers was supportive of the mayor and the police actions but disparaging toward the protesters. An AlterNet reporter, arriving on the scene at 1:30am, shortly after the raid began, could get nowhere near Zuccotti Park due to police barricades (and was subjected to pepper spray while attempting to report on events). How did the friendly reporters gain their access? Was there advance coordination to allow certain media outlets access and block the rest? Why was press access restricted? Were some reporters' credentials confiscated? How will reports of unwarranted force on the part of police toward the press be addressed?

More on the constitutional implications of Mayor Bloomberg's actions here. Calling tarps that shield food and medicine from the weather a 'tent', which is 'illegal', appears to be part of the coordinated strategy.

A dispute over what constitutes a tent led to the arrest of an Occupy Houston protester Tuesday at a downtown encampment at Tranquility Park, members of the group said.

They said several Houston police officers came to the park about 2:30 p.m., ordering them to remove tarps that were covering tables.

Occupy Houston members said the tarps were only brought out because of Tuesday afternoon's rain.

Protesters said police told them that placing tarps across tables — even as a temporary measure to protect supplies from the rain — made it a prohibited tent.

Some of the protesters questioned the timing of the decision to send Houston police into Tranquility Park on Tuesday.

"They waited until it was raining when they knew everything was going to get damaged," Diedrich Holgate said.

In New York, police took knives and slashed the heavy-duty Army tents that OWS had brought in to shield demonstrators from the bitter winter on its way.

So besides exasperation, why are coordinated attacks occurring on Occupy encampments now?

(T)he timing's very interesting -- and, for some people, very convenient. The nation's expecting a deficit package from the undemocratic super committee, anticipating another possible free trade deal, and waiting to see whether Wall Street will go unpunished for its foreclosure crime wave. All that makes this a very good time for dissident voices to suddenly disappear.

Go to that link to read more about the coming Catfood Super Committee's austerity bargain, the Free Trade with Asia deal going down right now, and the Obama DOJ's immunity-from-prosecution agreement with the Wall Street gangstas. Probably a good time not to have angry people in the streets already when those things come down.

Or so they think.

The one good thing about the violent responses from police departments trying to put down the Occupy movement is that they will fail. Just as those same government crackdowns failed throughout the Middle East.

Violence against peaceful protestors brings even more people into the movement. This is the hydra of revolution; cut off one head and two more sprout. The more they try to knock it down, the stronger it will grow.

Occupy has already grown past the point where repression will stop it. The only thing that will stop the movement now is for those in power to address the issues that the people demand.

License plates and dog whistles *updates and responses*

(This post originally appeared last August, and was OSD's rejoinder to Progress Texas' effort to prevent the Confederate license plate design from being offered among the options for vanity plates in the state. In light of the defeat of the proposal, I present Mark Corcoran of Progress Texas' response, received today via e-mail.)

We took (Open Source Dem's) criticism seriously because we believe that online actions, when done right and properly combined with earned media strategies and offline actions, can be extremely effective.

Over the last few months we collected 25,000+ petitions signatures and had 5,000+ people directly contact the TxDMV opposing the Confederate flag proposal, generating hundres of earned media stories. Last Thursday, the TxDMV unanimously voted down the Confederate license plate after previously being tied 4 - 4.

Johnny Walker, a board member who switched his vote from yes to no said - “I listened to the comments, the feelings and emotions of people before the board and what they think is best for the state.”

We understand that other organizations have given online organizing a bad name. We don't do actions to simply grow an email list. All of our actions have a purpose and goal - some are long term, some are short term.

Open Source Dem's original post from August 11 follows.

===========

Texas has privatized production and distribution of license plates. There is already a “Bonnie Blue Flag” vanity plate reminiscent, notably, of battle ensigns favored by Confederate regiments from Texas:

I do not know if neo-Confederate yahoos understand this and use the existing Texas plate as a signaling (or fund-raising) device. Most KKK and Aryan brotherhood types prefer the “Southern Cross” (figuring in the design discussed below) to the “Hardee Pattern” device (above).

More important may be the “T for Texas” series of plates. I think these may be a Tea Party, True the Vote, or Christianist signal. It may be used to raise funds not just for Rick Perry cronies but for a battery of far-right political organizations. The new license plate regime seems to be a multi-level marketing arrangement, probably not just outrageous but actually illegal.

Tacit communication -- dog whistles -- are a salient part of the "politics as war" practiced by the far right. This is very effective relative to the brain-dead Methodism of our state party, including Progress Texas' attempt to emulate the right-wing outrage machine in order to raise money. The Texas Democratic Party and its partners, allies, whatever in Austin are breaking any semblance of message discipline and cranking out "pink noise" with no coherence or effect at all. This is consuming precious resources on make-work for hangers-on in Austin and generating spam.

Fake petitions and non-binding referenda signal political weakness and indecision to potential Democratic voters, something else to waste their time and money. This is stupid on steroids.

(Ed. note: This is what OSD is referring to in the previous.)

Pink noise and a mish-mash of campaign finance and non-profit enterprise are really dangerous in the hands of people with little proficiency in anything but bipartisan cronyism.

BIRGing and CORFing (but not with our politicos)

A crowd of Penn State students in school sweatshirts huddled together near an old university building to listen to a call for unity, healing and peace. They wiped away tears, rested their heads on friends' shoulders and reflected on a week that stained the place many of them see as a second home.

"We are what makes the university thrive," said T.J. Bard, student body president, the day after his peers rioted in the streets to defend the firing of coach Joe Paterno. "And we are the ones who must restore glory to Penn State."

Why them? What happened on their campus wasn't their fault. Most didn't even know Joe Paterno, Jerry Sandusky and Matt McQueary. Usually in society, when something as horrific as child molestation happens, people around the alleged perpetrators cut all ties. They reject. So why not protest Sandusky preying upon children instead of rioting against the board for firing a football coach? Why not feel satisfaction in the punishment of an old guard that collectively made serious leadership errors, rather than oppose the rightful dissolution of a system that protected evil?

"If they were completely objective, they would say, 'These people did something terrible and I can't support them, I cannot be in their corner.'" says Dr. Don Forsyth, a psychology professor specializing in group dynamics at the University of Richmond. "But they aren't objective."

I've been amused by this oddity of "We won", "we're going to the championship game", "we are the champions" for a long, long time. The (fairly recent ) phenomenon of wearing jerseys to the game -- or to the bar to watch the game on teevee -- feeds into the ego-stroke.

You never hear "we lost", or "we choked", it's always "they".

What's happening to the students in Happy Valley is a common psychological phenomenon. The rest of the country watches the students and thinks they're missing the point. But in the students' minds, the story is happening to them. After all, "We are Penn State."

Social psychologists use two terms: BIRGing and CORFing -- Basking in Reflected Glory and Cutting off Reflected Failure. In the first, fans of a football team, for example, want to identify with the players' success. Decked out in team gear, they'll say, "We had a great win. We were awesome," when in reality the fans had no part in the win. Cutting off Reflected Failure happens when a team makes a mistake or loses, and fans blame it on an external factor to distance themselves from the defeat. "The refs were biased. The weather's bad." The true blame doesn't lie with the team.

"This is clearly a case of collective identity," says Dr. Forsyth of the Penn State reaction. "Students leave home, leave their family and they want to identify with their school. Their school has always been a place of tradition and honor, and that has been tarnished. So when they lose that identity, they panic."

And the cognitive dissonance gets worse.

Many students see JoePa as a victim, and their strong identity with him means they feel like victims, too. So they blame the media or the legal system. Is it a coincidence that the only real material damage from the riots was an overturned TV news truck? Respected ESPN reporter Tom Farrey said he was hit by a rock.

Most of us can't truly relate to the most important part of this story; the part that really has nothing to do with football. The part with the kids whose lives have never and will never be the same after such abuse from adults they were supposed to be able to trust. The part with the parents who couldn't save their children from sexual predators. But when you're 18 or 19 years old in State College, football is what you see everywhere around you and abuse (and the victims' faces) are hidden.

"Football runs the social life, it's all about football," Forsyth says. "It's the major source of everything that happens there.

"The actual crimes are very distant from them."

That atmosphere, thankfully, did change fairly quickly ... by gametime Saturday.

Student leaders came together to support victims of sexual abuse by wearing blue ribbons to Saturday's game and selling T-shirts to raise money for the Pennsylvania Chapter of the Prevent Child Abuse America Organization. PSU and Nebraska students joined in prayer before the game.

Not fast enough for some, though. The judge who ordered Jerry Sandusky released on unsecured bail turns out to be a volunteer in the Second Mile charity. And here's where the conversation pivots to politics.

I’m 31, an Iraq war veteran, a Penn State graduate, a Catholic, a native of State College, acquaintance of Jerry Sandusky’s, and a product of his Second Mile foundation.

And I have fully lost faith in the leadership of my parents’ generation.

That's a handful of institutions that have failed his generation right there.

Think of the world our parents’ generation inherited. They inherited a country of boundless economic prosperity and the highest admiration overseas, produced by the hands of their mothers and fathers. They were safe. For most, they were endowed opportunities to succeed, to prosper, and build on their parents’ work.

For those of us in our 20s and early 30s, this is not the world we are inheriting.

We looked to Washington to lead us after September 11th. I remember telling my college roommates, in a spate of emotion, that I was thinking of enlisting in the military in the days after the attacks. I expected legions of us -- at the orders of our leader -- to do the same. But nobody asked us. Instead we were told to go shopping. 
 
The times following September 11th called for leadership, not reckless, gluttonous tax cuts. But our leaders then, as now, seemed more concerned with flattery. Then -House Majority Leader and now-convicted felon Tom Delay told us, “nothing is more important in the face of a war than cutting taxes.” Not exactly Churchillian stuff.

Those of us who did enlist were ordered into Iraq on the promise of being “greeted as liberators,” in the words of our then-vice president. Several thousand of us are dead from that false promise.

We looked for leadership from our churches, and were told to fight not poverty or injustice, but gay marriage. In the Catholic Church, we were told to blame the media, not the abusive priests, not the bishops, not the Vatican, for making us feel that our church has failed us in its sex abuse scandal and cover-up.

Our parents’ generation has balked at the tough decisions required to preserve our country’s sacred entitlements, leaving us to clean up the mess. They let the infrastructure built with their fathers’ hands crumble like a stale cookie. They downgraded our nation’s credit rating. They seem content to hand us a debt exceeding the size of our entire economy, rather than brave a fight against the fortunate and entrenched interests on K Street and Wall Street.

Now we are asking for jobs and are being told we aren’t good enough, to the tune of 3.3 million unemployed workers between the ages of 25 and 34.
 
This failure of a generation is as true in the halls of Congress as it is at Penn State.

With the 60 Minutes report last night that Your Congress has been trading stocks on insider information (which is illegal everywhere else in the country) you can only arrive at one conclusion: it's time to clean house.

And with the police crackdowns on Occupy encampments in Portland and Oakland last night and this morning, is there anybody still wondering what that is all about?

That would have been last week, of course. Next chance comes next year.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progrogressive Alliance is beginning to think fond thoughts of cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, and, um, something else it can't quite recall -- oops! -- as it brings you this week's blog roundup.

Off the Kuff took a tour of Houston elections from the 1990s to see how they compared to more modern matchups.

Following Rick Perry's latest gaffes, Letters From Texas explains why the governor has become such a hopeless band nerd that the crazy girl who can't get a prom date pities him.

Darth Politico commemorates Veterans Day with a discussion about the history of red tape and veterans benefits. Emphasis on 'red'.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson points out that Republicans in Texas are boxed in. They know know taxes must be raised to run our state's government, but can't bring themselves to say it, much less do it: Texas GOP's cowardice.

On the same night Houston Mayor Annise Parker celebrated barely being re-elected, a few blocks away the HPD arrested seven Occupy Houstonians for refusing to move a tarp which the police called a tent. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs doesn't think that's a great way to start a second term ... unless she plans on again representing the 1%, that is.

BossKitty at TruthHugger sees another disappointing campaign season. Inundated with Republican this and Tea Party that, BossKitty is embarrassed by what we are hearing in the post Republican Whack-a-Mole Misses the Point. Some economic guru is writing the script for each candidate to spout as the only way to get back on track, because it is always Obama's fault. We all know it was Obama's fault even before he was born. But some of the solutions totally miss the big picture.

Bay Area Houston is remembering on Veterans Day on how we continue to screw our vets.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme notes that BP wants the government to hide data while celebrating the end of its cleanup responsibility. This week: crony capitalists 2, regular citizens 0.

Lightseeker at TexasKaos gives a brief summary of the GOP voter suppression campaign gearing up for 2012. Check it out: Voter Suppression Update 2011.

Neil at Texas Liberal attended an Occupy Houston press conference about OH participants arrested by Houston police for covering up electrical equipment with a tarp during a rainstorm. If only Occupy efforts across the nation had the same First Amendment protections as large anonymous corporate political donations enjoy under the Citizens United case.

Sunday Brutal Funnies

Let's really honor them this year

Let's bring them home, give them jobs, take care of their medical needs, and above all only put them at risk when it's absolutely necessary.

A picture is worth a thousand words but actions speak louder than that.

At the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month

In the eleventh year.

Stand with Occupy Houston and the 99% on 11/11/11 for a peaceful student walkout and celebration of global resistance at Tranquility Park!

We call on University of Houston students to meet in front of the library building at 11:00am. At 11:30am we march to Tranquility Park in downtown Houston for a day of solidarity and celebration of global protest movements. The festivities start at 2:00pm in the park!

From 2:00pm to 5:00pm we’re holding discussion circles in the park. All topics are up for chat, but we plan to discuss:

• health care
• the homeless
• taking care of our veterans
• spirituality in collective movements
• occupation ideology

Don’t limit yourself to these! Tighten your thinking caps and lets talk about the issues that drive our movement. At 5:00pm we’ll open it up and celebrate art and poetry. We’ll have an open mic, so come on out and rap, sing, or perform. [...]

11/11/11 is a national day of solidarity, and we welcome everyone! We are the 99% and we are finally making our voices heard!

On Friday, November 11, 2011, the City of Houston will show support of our Armed Forces as we celebrate the 13th Annual Houston Salutes American Heroes Veterans Day Commemoration and Parade.

The ceremony begins at 10:00 a.m. on the steps of City Hall. The American Heroes Parade will follow at 11:30 a.m.

• Free parking in the Theater District Parking Garage from 9 a.m. - 12 p.m. (.pdf)

• 2011 Event Press Release (.html)

11:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m. AT&T Veterans Job Fair ... The job fair booths are free for hiring companies. Please contact Susan Bono at susan.bono@houstontx.gov.

11:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m. Walgreens Veterans Health Fair