GOP opens new front in culture wars in Houston

After Mayor Parker announced her support last week of a resolution (signed by more than 70 other mayors across the USA) supporting same-sex marriage, the pastor of a Houston megachurch was quick to condemn.

Pastor Steve Riggle of Grace Community Church, site of next month's county Republican Party convention, sent a letter to Parker late last month calling for her to resign if she will not stand down on gay marriage. He spent nearly an hour Sunday expounding on his feelings during his 10 a.m. sermon to roughly 3,000 congregants.

"Respectfully, if you cannot uphold the Texas Constitution, then you should do the honorable thing and step down," Riggle told his congregation, who responded with the first of numerous ovations.

"When you speak for us as the mayor of Houston, when the people of Houston have overwhelmingly expressed their will and you speak about this issue without their expressed will, I do have a problem with that," he continued.

Pastor Riggle, with
minority representatives
all behind him in the shot

Let's get caught up here if you're unfamiliar.

Mayor Annise Parker's determination to be known as a competent leader who happens to be lesbian is being challenged by political opponents promulgating the idea that she's becoming a gay activist to the detriment of the city.

In the first two months of her second term, Parker helped deliver a call by mayors nationwide for the legalization of same-sex marriage, proclaimed Valentine's Day as Freedom to Marry Day in Houston and said on cable radio that President Barack Obama needs to "evolve" toward support of marriage equality.

Emboldened by Parker's poor showing in November in which she barely avoided a runoff and by the victories by two opponents of gay marriage who became the first challengers to unseat City Council incumbents in 12 years, social conservatives have gone on the attack. They accuse Parker of reneging on a campaign promise to put the city first and social issues advocacy second, and they charge her with violating the Texas Constitution by advocating for a change to it.

"What they're saying is, 'We smell blood,'" said Rice University political science professor Bob Stein, whose wife previously served as Parker's agenda director.

Let's also refresh our memory about Pastor Riggle's complaint: in 2005 Texas codified wedding discrimination into the state Constitution.

Even the Houston Chronicle's cadre of mostly conservative commenters has gone on the offensive, demanding that Graceless Community Church give up its tax-exempt status. All of them, I presume, from the local drainage assessment to federal taxes on their income. For most of those folks it seems to be less about the US Constitution's First Amendment or DOMA and more about separation of church and state... which, some are quick to point out, isn't actually in the Constitution. I wonder if they will feel more strongly, or less, when they learn that the church is hosting the 2012 Harris County Republican Party convention. (Even though that information is in the lead graf, the CCC* -- or KKK, as I have commonly referred to them -- typically don't read the articles in the paper, they just knee-jerk a reaction to the headline in the comment box.)

Pastor Riggle wants Mayor Parker to either shut up about gay marriage or resign her office. That's an unreasonable demand. As Charles has noted, everybody has the right to voice their opinion, especially when it is both a legal minority and a moral imperative.

Pastor Riggle is just ginning up extra outrage among the TaliBaptists -- as if any more were possible or even needed -- to turn out the vote for Republicans in '12. Like the rest of the ultra-conservative flock, he misses the fact that these Christian jihads against gay marriage, abortion, and more recently contraception have the same mobilizing effect on his opposition.

I have evolved to be no great fan of Mayor Parker's for a variety of reasons, but this sort of thing will always bring me to her defense. Parker's style and policies associated with governing are separate from her support of any cause she chooses; as separate as the one between church and state ought to be. For his part, Riggle is just following the lead of Rick Warren and James Dobson and Richard Land and Tony Perkins, who followed Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell before them, in a long-con game. Keep the sheep nervous, before and after the shearing.

Remarkably, many non-social conservatives are jumping that fence now.

*Chronically Conservative Commenters.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance would never have made the mistake of advertising on the Rush Limbaugh show in the first place as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff connects the Republican war on women's health to the 2012 legislative elections in Texas.

BossKitty at TruthHugger has decided that the Devil is in the words spewing from the mouth of GOP wannabe Rick Santorum, who says that "suffering is good".

BlueBloggin thinks that Planet of the Apes escapee Rush "Rusty" Hudson Limbaugh III should be handed over to the Amazon Women on the Moon and hits him below the belt.

The truce in the redistricting skirmishes last week produced lots of controversial results, and also one which cheered the hearts of non-Democrats and Republicans relating to third-party and independent candidates. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs has elaboration.

Let there be no doubt; the health care system in Texas is a mess. WCNews at Eye On Williamson has the details in this post: By almost any measure, Texas has one of the worst health care systems in the nation.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme notes another Texas university raises tuition and the Santorum Republicans smile. Why not? Only the rich should go to college in GOPland.

Neil at Texas Liberal was in Cincinnati this week. Neil's blog has a number of photos and observations from his trip.

Sunday Funnies

"Gas prices are so high that Mitt Romney's wife can only afford to drive one Cadillac."
-- Jay Leno

“Rick, I'm sorry that hearing that JFK speech on religion makes you throw up. But if it makes you feel any better, if JFK were alive today, knowing you were running for President would make him shit his pants.” -- Jon Stewart

"Newt Gingrich said we should use covert operations to assassinate Iran's nuclear scientists. Gingrich also said the key to covert operations is announcing them on the campaign trail." -- Conan O'Brien

As Friday Filing Week begins...

... here's a summary of things I'm reading that have nothing to do with Texas politics.

-- Obama to Israel, Iran: "As president of the United States, I don't bluff".

At the White House on Monday, President Obama will seek to persuade the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to postpone whatever plans he may have to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities in the coming months. Obama will argue that under his leadership, the United States "has Israel's back," and that he will order the U.S. military to destroy Iran's nuclear program if economic sanctions fail to compel Tehran to shelve its nuclear ambitions.

-- 'Man sues Google over Street View urination photo, says it has made him a laughingstock.' And if you haven't seen the compilations of some of these street-view photos, here's a good one. Just don't be eating or drinking anything when you click over or else you'll need a new computer.

-- Obama waives rule allowing indefinite military detention of Americans. This would be in regard to the fairly nefarious NDAA legislation he signed last year. Money graf:

Advocates for liberties will likely find the new rules for implementing reassuring, at least while President Obama is in office. But one of their big complaints with his signing of the law is that his policies only last so long as he is in office, and they will likely step up attempts to repeal it.

-- 25 people who Tweeted that Obama had Breitbart assassinated. This is pretty much all I will have to say on this topic.

-- 'Silence Gun: Strange weapon of the future immediately quiets you, whether you like it or not'. Between this thing and this law, the era of the public protest is drawing to a close.

The gun operates based on the concept of delayed auditory feedback. An attached microphone picks up the sound being made by the target and plays it back 0.2 seconds later. The effect is incredibly confusing to the human brain, making it all but impossible to talk or hold a conversation. The device doesn't cause the person it's being used on any physical harm — it simply messes with their head.

When the human brain hears its own speech perfectly in sync during normal speech, it easily processes the input and allows you to largely ignore the sound of your own voice. However, by offsetting the response just a bit, the brain hears your mouth speaking as well as the strange echo effect produced by the gun. This unusual combination is confusing enough to effectively shut down the part of your brain responsible for managing speech, and you fall immediately silent.

-- Speaking of guns, the Texas Department of Public Safety now has its own navy: six speedboats with multiple machine guns each patrolling the Rio Grande.

The 34-foot-long boats, each powered by three, 300-horsepower outboard engines, will have bulletproof plating and six machine guns apiece, not unlike the river patrol boats the U.S. Navy used during the Vietnam War.

The Lewsiville Texan Journal has video. The Texas Observer observes...

So is DPS going to start blazing away at women and children crossing illegally on inner tubes? Do they need six machine guns to nail some dope smugglers crossing kilos of marijuana? Also, the area of Falcon Lake where (DPS trooper) David Hartley was allegedly killed was on the Mexican side of the lake. DPS can't patrol in Mexico.

Ah, but who cares -- have you seen the bad-ass machine guns?

-- Our oceans are acidifying rapidly.

The world's oceans are turning acidic at what could be the fastest pace of any time in the past 300 million years, even more rapidly than during a monster emission of planet-warming carbon 56 million years ago, scientists said on Thursday.

[...]

Quickly acidifying seawater eats away at coral reefs, which provide habitat for other animals and plants, and makes it harder for mussels and oysters to form protective shells. It can also interfere with small organisms that feed commercial fish like salmon.

The phenomenon has been a top concern of Jane Lubchenco, the head of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who has conducted demonstrations about acidification during hearings in the U.S. Congress.

Oceans get more acidic when more carbon gets into the atmosphere. In pre-industrial times, that occurred periodically in natural pulses of carbon that also pushed up global temperatures, the scientists wrote.

Damn those elitist snob scientists and their gloom-and-doom. Let's just pretend it's not happening.

-- Speaking of oceans, seventy years ago the USS Houston went to a watery grave in the Pacific after being shelled by a Japanese fleet near Jakarta, Indonesia. Two of its surviving sailors, now in their 90's, were in Houston yesterday to commemorate the anniversary. Both men survived not only the sinking but also three years in Japanese internment, where they participated in constructing the actual "Bridge on the River Kwai".

-- OK, OK. One Houston political mention. "Montrose, here's your new Congressman: Ted Poe."

Redistricting settlements change ballot access for minor parties, indy candidates

With the maps settled, there are numerous developments regarding the timing of Texas primary elections, who is eligible to run, and what requirements and stipulations are changing. But to me, this is the most remarkable development, if these interpretations are clear (and yes, legal translations are still to come).

On February 29, the Texas Republican Party and Texas Democratic Party submitted a joint proposal to the 3-judge U.S. District Court that is hearing the redistricting case. The two parties advocate these policies for minor party and independent candidate ballot access for 2012:

1. Petitions for newly-qualifying parties, and for independent candidates for President, and independent candidates for all other office, will be due June 29.

2. No primary screen-out will exist in 2012 for these petitions.

These ideas represent a huge improvement for ballot access compared to the statutory law.

Michael Li with more:

The order also addressed independent candidates by changing the deadline for such candidates to file applications for a spot on the ballot to June 29, 2012 and waiving provisions of the Texas Election Code that invalidated signatures collected for independent candidates if they were collected before the date of the Texas primary.

Here is a copy of the order. Jim Riley's comment has elaboration.

This opens a new world of possibility for third parties, their candidates, and independents (which, if you have been following me lately, is my new cause). More parties, more choices, more democracy. Anything that threatens the old way of doing things is something I am all in favor of.

Romney gets his groove back

Just the mental image of R-money getting his groove on is enough to make a person shudder, isn't it?

"We didn't win by a lot, but we won by enough, and that's all that counts," Romney told a crowd gathered at his victory party in Novi, Mich.

In Michigan, Romney held a 3 percent lead -- 41 percent to 38 percent over Rick Santorum -- with 99 percent of precincts reporting. Ron Paul received 12 percent of the vote and Newt Gingrich received 7 percent. In Arizona, with 90 percent of precincts reporting, Romney led with 47 percent, Santorum was in second with 27 percent, Gingrich third with 16 percent and Paul fourth with 8 percent.

Someone else also declared victory.

In an optimistic speech during which several news networks declared Romney the winner of Michigan, Santorum said, "A month ago they didn't know who we are, but they do now."

Oh, we've all known what you are for quite a long time now.

Though Arizona and Michigan have almost the same number of delegates, AZ was winner-take-all while MI awards proportionately. Thus R-money was going to have a good night even if he had lost the Wolverines. But the media spin has been all about him not surging, so last night's results are gold-star worthy.

Santorum, for his part, seems to recognize now where he went off the rails.

"We came to the backyard of one of my opponents, in a race where people said, 'You know, just ignore it, you're going to have no chance here.' And the people of Michigan looked into the hearts of the candidates, and all I have to say is, 'I love you back.'"

The crowd was enthusiastic, with one man shouting, "I love you," but there was a sad tone in the air that began even before they took the stage, as the theme song to the "The Natural" played.

Santorum mentioned his 93-year-old mother, something he hasn't in previous speeches, and he told the audience in what seemed to be a pitch to female voters who might feel put off by some of his previous comments about women in the workplace, that his mother made more money than his father.

So... his parents both went to "indoctrination mills". And then they went to work for the gubmint. Damned liberals. It gets worse, though; so did his wife, that horrible woman who had a partial birth abortion.

The former Pennsylvania senator also touted his wife's work experience, saying she was a "professional" as well, and thanked his daughter, Elizabeth, who has been on the campaign trail with him since the early days in Iowa.

"[Karen] worked as a nurse, but after we got married, she decided to walk away, yet didn't quit working. She was a mother, and also wrote two books," Santorum said, in what also seemed to be an appeal to female voters.

He spent most of his speech repeating the themes he does on the stump, including his mention of the Declaration of Independence, but this evening there was a twist on that, too.

"The men and women who signed that declaration wrote the final phrase, 'We pledge to each other our lives, our fortune, and our sacred honor," Santorum said.

There were no women who signed the Declaration of Independence.

Note to Santorum: work in some praise of Martha Washington and Abigail Adams. Try to avoid talking about Sally Hemings or Benjamin Franklin's various indiscretions.

By the way, Ron Paul isn't giving up either. Newt Gingrich just has Georgia on his mind at this point. All this, as you can imagine, is a bit tiring for some people.

"Everyone can breathe a sigh of relief and Romney gets a little momentum heading into next week, but it doesn't change much," Republican strategist Ron Bonjean said. "This is going to be a long, drawn-out marathon. It feels like a political death march."

That's not a sad trombone, that's a dirge.

Update: More "experts" -- in this case unemployed Republican political consultants -- rain on R-money's parade.

“A loss to Rick Santorum [in Michigan] would have been a shock to his heart, but he’s going into Super Tuesday with some blood on him,” said GOP strategist Dan Schnur, who is not aligned with any of the candidates.

“In order for Romney to get some kudos, he needs to win a state where there aren’t a lot of Mormons [Arizona] or Romneys [Michigan],” Schnur added.

That prize is Ohio, the key blue-collar battleground on the 10-state Super Tuesday slate — but it’s a state where Romney’s corporate raider background and elitist-sounding verbal stumbles will undoubtedly be used against him by his rivals.

“Has he regained that aura of inevitability? That’s an open question,” said GOP strategist Keith Appell of the bipartisan firm CRC Public Relations.

“He spent $4 million on attack ads in Michigan against a guy who didn't have the money to fight back,” added Appell, who is also not working for any of the candidates.

“This was supposed to be over after Romney won New Hampshire, then Nevada and Florida. But it isn't over. Maybe Super Tuesday voters won't be impressed by Romney winning his home state.”

That reads like hideously sour grapes considering the sources. Look at the total delegate counts after last night, and the number of delegates at stake next Tuesday, and note that all the Not-Romneys put together add up several delegates shy of Romney's current total. Even with many states selecting proportionately through the end of March (as well as several non-binding caucuses), at this point the Not-Romneys are contending for ego status, prime time speaking slots at the convention, and 2016.

ThenewmapsarehereThenewmapsarehere!

Said in my best Steve Martin "The Jerk" imitation.

After a months-long set of legal battles spanning three courtrooms in two cities, Texas may finally have a set of interim redistricting maps that could keep the primary election on May 29.

The new maps, released by the San Antonio federal court today, appear to be nearly identical to the compromise maps negotiated between Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott and the Latino Redistricting Task Force, which were rejected by other minority and Democratic groups.

Like that compromise, the court's congressional map would create two new minority congressional seats and preserves the Republican-dominated Legislature's decision to split Austin into five districts, likely forcing U.S. Rep Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, to run in a new, heavily Hispanic district that stretches from San Antonio to Austin.

Harvey K has links to the maps viewer and this "first blush":

(T)he blobs on the map would seem to show that the AG's compromise maps held up pretty well. On the Congressional plans, the fracturing of Travis County from the state's enacted map has been restored. That means for the interim map at least Lloyd Doggett is being forced to run against a San Antonio Democrat in the new CD 35. Also, the CD 33 in the DFW Metroplex that was drawn into the Abbott compromise map to favor a minority candidate remains in place.

On the House map, Ken Legler's HD 144 (Pasadena area) remains unchanged from Abbott's compromise map but the court made some changes to HD 137 (inc. Scott Hocheberg, retiring) and HD 149 (inc. Hubert Vo) in Harris County. Judges had warned in the status conference that Abbott's treatment of HD 137 had minority retrogression issues. Finally, it looks like the court made some adjustment to John Garza's HD 117 in Bexar County, another flashpoint from the status conference.

I'm back in Culberson's 7th Congressional, but still in Borris Miles' HD 146 and Rodney Ellis' Senate District 13. The Startlegram's Aman Batheja, on Twitter:

Joe Barton won't represent Cowboys Stadium under court-drawn cong. map. Ends up in new Dem-leaning Dist. 33.

Batheja also notes that Tarrant County remains as the Legislature drew it, with a minority district in which two Democratic statehouse incumbents are forced to contend.

With the exception of the hosing of Smokey Joe, these maps are the suck -- unless you're Greg Abbott. They were pushed out early by the judges in order to save a May election day, but as Nolan Hicks at the SAEN observes...

The May 29 primary could still be in jeopardy if any of the groups that sued appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to block the new maps.

More updates as they roll in.

Update I: Burnt Orange laments Travis County's 5-way split.

The 10th remains largely unchanged, the 21st narrows to a skinny swath of Central Austin, and the 17th (the green area on the map) reaches down from Burleson County to stick a finger into north Austin and Pflugerville, just below the Williamson County border. The bad news is that CD-25 now runs from East Austin to Western Travis County, and then all the way up to Tarrant, while the 35th encompasses eastern Travis County and skips alongside I-35 down to San Antonio.

Sorry, y'all, we Austinites are apparently incapable of handling the rigors of selecting a Congressman whose constituents are primarily in Austin. We need the rest of the surrounding region to do it for us. But good news, Austinites and Pflugervillans, because some of you are about to be represented by Republican Bill Flores! He will care a lot about your concerns. Not really. #sadtrombone

Update II: Matt Angle, Lone Star Project.

Most of the plaintiff groups who challenged the Republican congressional plan hoped for a better interim map. These hopes were undermined, however, when Congressman Henry Cuellar and one of the Latino plaintiff groups – the Latino Task Force – agreed to a compromise proposal that gave up at least three, and perhaps all four, of the additional Texas seats to the Republicans.

Next month, the Federal District Court in Washington, DC is expected to release its decision detailing all of the violations in the State’s originally enacted redistricting plan. Ultimately, the DC Court’s decision will guide the redrawing of new maps when the Legislature meets again in 2013.

Update III: Michael Li.

Buzz that the proposed reopened filing period will be Friday, March 2, through Tuesday, March 6 (which would be somewhat fitting since then the filing period would end on Super Tuesday - the date of the original Texas primary).

For now, everything appears to be on track for a May 29 primary and July 31 (or early August) runoff.

Last update: This DK diary has "full analysis", some of which is even accurate. BOR asks and then answers: "Who likes the way redistricting went? Almost no one, apparently."

Michigan today

A day of reckoning for the so-called front-runner.

On the eve of the unlikeliest showdown of a dumbfounding campaign year, the bitter Republican primary battle in Michigan has turned into an all-out class war.

Rick Santorum, flaunting the fieriest populism in years by a Republican presidential contender, is waging a determined challenge against Mitt Romney, heir to a Michigan political dynasty. Romney had once been expected to cruise to victory in the state his father governed, and that he won four years ago.

But Santorum was aiming for an upset that, as he says, would “shock” the Republican world. In the first industrial-state primary of 2012, he has cast himself as a fighter for working men and women against the “elites in society who think that they can manage your life better than you can.”

Ah, fiery is a good word to describe how things might end for Rmoney.

The class competition played out visibly Sunday at Daytona International Speedway, which was to have opened NASCAR’s season until rain forced a postponement.

Romney flew to Florida from Michigan and put on a public display of affinity, strolling the NASCAR pits in a bright red Daytona 500 jacket and blue jeans. At one point, he walked past a car emblazoned with Santorum’s campaign logo. (Out of public view, Romney also had a private breakfast with the billionaire founders of the auto racing operation and was introduced at a meeting of racing teams, corporate sponsors and celebrities.)

Yeah, the NASCAR thing turned out well.

And with Operation Hilarity adopted by the Frothy Mixture campaign and put into full effect, tonight's results will make for lively discussion among the talking heads.

As the GOP primary race comes down to the wire in Michigan, Rick Santorum’s campaign has a last trick up its sleeve.

The campaign has launched telephone robocalls throughout the state slamming rival Mitt Romney for opposing the auto industry bailout in late 2008 and early 2009, and urging Democrats to show up for Tuesday’s Republican primary and cast ballots for Santorum.

“Michigan Democrats can vote in the Republican primary on Tuesday. Why is it so important?” the voice on the call says. “Romney supported the bailouts for his Wall Street, billionaire buddies, but opposed the auto bailouts. That was a slap in the face to every Michigan worker, and we’re not going to let Romney get away with it.”

The call urges listeners to “send a loud message” to Romney by voting for Santorum, even though Santorum, too, opposed the auto industry bailout. It ends with the line: “This call is supported by hard-working Democratic men and women and paid for by Rick Santorum for president.”

Tune in to your favorite news channel this evening for all the fiery details.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance dressed in its finest evening attire, strolled down the red carpet as flashes blinked, and carried home the golden statue with this week's blog roundup.

Off the Kuff conducted interviews with Democratic Senate hopefuls Paul Sadler and Sean Hubbard.

BossKitty at TruthHugger is appalled at the disinformation and outright lies that the oil and gas industry pays advertisers and politicians to say in order to mislead voters. While some voters depend on mainstream media to be objective when reporting about drilling and injection consequences, others rely on their religious leaders to put a theological spin on their vote. So the result is The Earth is Flat and Fracking is Safe. BossKitty is also really alarmed at the infiltration of the US military by religious extremists: US Military Infiltrated By Christian Crusaders Desecrate Toward Apocalypse.

BlueBloggin is disgusted that Newt Gingrich has gotten away with condemning the president for not making excuses for the childish vandalism of Holy Books. Gingrich and other GOP candidates are pandering to the most extreme Dominionist element of people who call themselves Christian. Read more in GOP Presidential Candidate nut case, encourages Holy War.

As we wait for the Texas primary to be set, WCNews at Eye On Williamson reminds us that there's still time for candidates to enter races.

The long delay in determining the new redistricted parameters affects not only Democrats and Republicans but also the other political parties, who can't begin to collect petition signatures until after the primary elections. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs has that and more third-party news in this update.

Bay Area Houston updates the saga of Michael Berry, the right wing talk show hypocrite caught in a gay bar.

Neil at Texas Liberal took a look at some homemade fliers for shows from back in his punk rock days, and was reminded yet again that taking action is up to each of us.

At TexasKaos, Libby Shaw warns us that if you are upset about rising gasoline prices, "whatever you do, don't ask a Republican politician to tell you the truth about why prices are increasing. For the party of right wing mullahs has socio-pathological issues with women's rights. The pre-historic neanderthal cave dwellers will just lie to you and blame the rising prices on Obama." Read the rest: GOP Scamming People on High Gas Prices.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme joins the chorus pf people pointing out that Texas Republicans really, really hate women.

Sunday Funnies

Third party updates

I have previously published news about third parties and their presidential candidates here and here. At the risk of repeating myself...

My thoughts on the ineptitude of continuing to support all of the candidates of the leftish member of the two-party duopoly were posted here last week. My argument in favor of third parties is: what have you got to lose? If you're a Republican and the party nominates someone you can't support, your vote for a third party candidate, be it Libertarian or Constitution or some other is a message to the GOP to shape up. Likewise -- and particularly since this is Texas, where your presidential vote isn't going to matter anyway -- you can send a message to the Democrats to get their shit together.

That having been reiterated...

-- First, this from Ballot Access News reveals another delay in the Texas primary that is tipped by RPT chairman Steve Munisteri, and it has ramifications for third party petitioners:

For the last few weeks, virtually everyone who has been following the Texas redistricting trial has assumed that the Texas primary this year will be May 29. However, on February 24, the Texas Republican Party state chair issued a letter, warning that there is a possibility the primary won’t be held until June 26. Here is the letter. Thanks to TexasRedistricting blog for the link.

A June 26 primary would require a major revision to the state’s procedure for independent presidential candidates, because the independent presidential petition can’t begin to circulate until after the primary.

Munisteri's note is headlined "it's up to the courts". That's false. It's up to him and his party to take a settlement they don't like or wait for the courts to make a decision they won't like. If they settle, they can't sue on appeal, so they won't negotiate an agreement.

This mess is all owned by the Texas GOP.

-- The Greens won't have to fight for ballot access in Texas this cycle, and have gotten a great deal of publicity out of Roseanne Barr's declaration for that nomination. Though there are others contending -- the Green Party's Texas state convention is June 9-10 in San Antonio where they will select candidates for state office (candidates must still file but there is no primary voting as with the Rs and Ds), and the national convention is July 12-15 in Baltimore -- the presidential candidate getting the most positive attention is Dr. Jill Stein. The New York Times has posted two articles of late: "Five Questions for Jill Stein" last week, and "Who might run as a third-party candidate in 2012?", yesterday. This would be Dr. Stein's second challenge to Mitt Romney (if he achieves the GOP nomination, that is); she ran against him for Massachusetts governor in 2002.

-- That last NYT link above also mentions Donald Trump and Michael Bloomberg as possible 3rd candidates, for what little that is worth. Aman Batheja at the FWST has a post detailing Trump's potential as the Make America Great Again party's presidential nominee in Texas, along with some extra third party news.

-- Americans Elect, the online effort to nominate a third-party candidate, is taking their game offline with a meetup next week in Austin. It requires an RSVP at their Facebook site (which sort of defeats the purpose of taking your game offline). I have previously detailed the worthlessness of this effort as a playtoy for the idle rich. Buddy Roemer, the former Louisiana governor who drew no interest as a contender for the Republican nomination, has announced he will seek the AE slot as well as that of the Reform Party. It's noteworthy that Roemer has a local supporter in Greg Wythe. Charles has more.

-- The Libertarians' highest profile candidate (if you don't count Ron Paul) is former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson. This article details his efforts to appeal to an unconventional voting bloc: marijuana users.

Johnson’s decision to campaign on legalizing marijuana was based on principle: He’s used it, he thinks it’s safer than booze, and he hates the drug war. It was also based on some hypothetical math: “100 million Americans have admitted to using marijuana,” Johnson told me two weeks before the Florida straw poll. “If they all gave me a dollar, that’s a hundred million bucks.”

In theory, it was a swell plan. In practice, Johnson has “done so many events with marijuana. So many marijuana events. Basically, nothing comes out of it other than for an enthusiasm for what I say. No money comes out of it.”

That’s not to say that marijuana policy reform advocates are broke, or cheap. Progressive Insurance founder Peter B. Lewis has donated half a million dollars this election cycle to Prop. 66, which would reform California’s onerous three-strikes law, and another $159,000 to the Drug Policy Alliance Network Committee. (Lewis’s deep pockets also made the Marijuana Policy Project what it is today.)

But what weed money there is, isn’t flowing to Johnson. So he’s going back to the basics: Cutting the size of government. [...]

Over dinner, I asked Johnson how to make that message...sexier.

“How do you?” he replied. “We talk about this all the time. That’s kind of the crux. It’s not a sexy message, but if we don’t cut Medicare by 43 percent, there’s not gonna be any Medicare.”

For some reason I think he ought to stick with the ganja issue.

-- Lastly, the party and candidate Democrats appear to fear more than the Greens in the 2012 cycle -- Justice Party nominee Rocky Anderson -- continues to plow ahead with ballot access success in states not named Texas.

"The last stage in any paranoid illness"

Matt Taibbi, always cogent, particularly so in this analysis of the Last Republican Debate of 2012.

(I)t was while watching the debate last night that it finally hit me: This is justice. What we have here are chickens coming home to roost. It's as if all of the American public's bad habits and perverse obsessions are all coming back to haunt Republican voters in this race: The lack of attention span, the constant demand for instant gratification, the abject hunger for negativity, the utter lack of backbone or constancy (we change our loyalties at the drop of a hat, all it takes is a clever TV ad): these things are all major factors in the spiraling Republican disaster.

Most importantly, though, the conservative passion for divisive, partisan, bomb-tossing politics is threatening to permanently cripple the Republican party. They long ago became more about pointing fingers than about ideology, and it's finally ruining them.

Really and truly, the old Republican moderates are going to be missed. George H. W. was one once upon a time, before the zealots blasted him on his support of Planned Parenthood, and then drove him out of office when he compromised on raising taxes. In the modern day, Dick Lugar of Indiana is now certain to be TeaBagged because he's been committing voter fraud for the past 35 years.

I will return to the subject of voter fraud at the end, after sampling Taibbi in the following.

Oh, sure, your average conservative will insist his belief system is based upon a passion for the free market and limited government, but that's mostly a cover story. Instead, the vast team-building exercise that has driven the broadcasts of people like Rush and Hannity and the talking heads on Fox for decades now has really been a kind of ongoing Quest for Orthodoxy, in which the team members congregate in front of the TV and the radio and share in the warm feeling of pointing the finger at people who aren't as American as they are, who lack their family values, who don’t share their All-American work ethic.

The finger-pointing game is a fun one to play, but it’s a little like drugs – you have to keep taking bigger and bigger doses in order to get the same high.

So it starts with a bunch of these people huddling together and saying to themselves, "We’re the real good Americans; our problems are caused by all those other people out there who don’t share our values." At that stage the real turn-on for the followers is the recognition that there are other like-minded people out there, and they don’t need blood orgies and war cries to keep the faith strong – bake sales and church retreats will do.

...(T)hey sit and wait for the return of a world where there was one breadwinner in the family, and no teen pregnancy or crime or poor people, and immigrants worked hard and didn't ask for welfare and had the decency to speak English – a world that never existed in reality, of course, but they're waiting for a return to it nonetheless.

The good old days. Happy Days. The Eisenhower years -- before those tacky things like the Voting Rights Act and the military/industrial complex. Back then they were only scared of the Russkies, the Bomb, and Black People.

Think Ron Paul in the South Carolina debate, when he said that in the '60s, "there was nobody out in the street suffering with no medical care." Paul also recalled that after World War II, 10 million soldiers came home and prospered without any kind of government aid at all – all they needed was a massive cut to the federal budget, and those soldiers just surfed on the resultant wave of economic progress.

"You know what the government did? They cut the budget by 60 percent," he said. "And everybody went back to work again, you didn't need any special programs."

Right – it wasn’t like they needed a G.I. Bill or anything. After all, people were different back then: They didn’t want or need welfare, or a health care program, or any of those things. At least, that’s not the way Paul remembered it.

That's all the early conservative movement was. It was just a heartfelt request that we go back to the good old days of America as these people remembered or imagined it. Of course the problem was we couldn't go back, not just because more than half the population (particularly the nonwhite, non-straight, non-male segment of the population) desperately didn't want to go back, but also because that America never existed and was therefore impossible to recreate.

Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon and even Ronald Reagan -- who raised taxes and ran massive deficits that Bill Clinton cleaned up -- would all be to the left of today's Republican party, mostly as a result of this three-year-old phenomenon called the Tea Party. This condition is so acute, so diseased, so bad that none of the remaining Republican candidates wish to be described as moderate as George W. Bush, like Rick Santorum was last Wednesday. But back to Taibbi.

And when we didn’t go back to the good old days, this crowd got frustrated, and suddenly the message stopped being heartfelt and it got an edge to it.

The message went from, "We’re the real Americans; the others are the problem," to, "We’re the last line of defense; we hate those other people and they’re our enemies." Now it wasn’t just that the rest of us weren't getting with the program: Now we were also saboteurs, secretly or perhaps even openly conspiring with America’s enemies to prevent her return to the long-desired Days of Glory.

"Obama is a Kenyan Muslim Socialist". "Deport all illegals". You get the picture.

In the Clinton years and the early Bush years we started to hear a lot of this stuff; that the people conservatives described as "liberals" were not, as we are in fact, normal people who believe in marriage and family and love their children just as much as conservatives do, but perverts who subscribe to a sort of religion of hedonism.

"Liberals' only remaining big issue is abortion because of their beloved sexual revolution," was the way Ann Coulter put it. "That's their cause – spreading anarchy and polymorphous perversity. Abortion permits that."

So they fought back, and a whole generation of more strident conservative politicians rose to fight the enemy at home, who conveniently during the '90s lived in the White House and occasionally practiced polymorphous perversity there.

Taibbi has a summary of the W years, but I just can't live through even a minute of that again. I'll prefer to skip the Gingrich/DeLay/Armey years also -- go back over and get this if you want it -- so fast-forward from about 1994 to 2008.

And when the unthinkable happened, and a black American with a Muslim-sounding name assumed the throne in the White House, now, suddenly, we started to hear that liberals were not only in league with terrorists, but somehow worse than terrorists.

"Terrorism? Yes. That’s not the big battle," said Minnesota Republican congressional candidate Allan Quist a few years ago. "The big battle is in D.C. with the radicals. They aren’t liberals. They are radicals. Obama, Pelosi, Walz: They’re not liberals, they’re radicals. They are destroying our country."

Try to notice how many times a conservative says or writes "destroying our country" or some close variation of that. Just for today, and make sure they aren't referring to the Russians, the Chinese, or even the Syrians or the Iranians.

See how many times you hear that mentioned. Just today.

(A)ll liberals, gays, Hispanic immigrants, atheists, Hollywood actors and/or musicians with political opinions, members of the media, members of Congress, TSA officials, animal lovers, union workers, state employees with pensions, Occupiers and other assorted unorthodox types had already long ago been rolled into the enemies list.

All of the associated language -- the code words and the dog whistles as well as the obvious, blatant bigotry and hate -- that accompany this demonization is designed to do what the Ku Klux Klan used to do in the old days: Harass, intimidate, threaten. Without all of that messy killing and lynching, of course.

Those days, the mythological good old days, were still thriving in the late 1950s -- where today's Republicans, as Taibbi has noted, would wish the country to return. At least that far back, if not farther.

Taibbi has much more of this history and ties it all together, right up to Ash Wednesday's GOP debate in Arizona. I'll leave it to you to finish there. Here I will make my point about conservative paranoia as it relates to Voter ID legislation, the mythical voter "fraud", and our local contingent of Patriots who are taking their crusade across the country.

Once upon a time in this great nation -- I'm so old I remember it -- we encouraged people to vote. Voter registration drives were held at storefronts, a voter registration card came in your welcome-wagon packet, and by golly there was regular refrain from officials of all kinds (even teachers!) that voting should be your priority as a citizen.

The current iteration of the Republican party, however, decided they couldn't have that, though; when more people vote, they lose (see: 2008, and its polar opposite, 2010). So as a matter of survival they are now doing everything they possibly can to suppress voting.

Black box voting -- the assembly and counting of ballots electronically by machines they own, distribute, and sell to municipalities, and are both corrupt and corruptible -- wasn't enough to stem the tide. They had to turn to legislation that would address a problem that does not exist to any significant degree: they call it voter "fraud". It's as rare as unicorns and pink elephants (in fact the most serious voter fraud conviction in history was recently committed by the Indiana secretary of state, a Republican) but the Voter ID laws still passed, as much on the Republican paranoia that Mickey Mouse had cast fifty ballots in every precinct in the nation as the strength of their electoral victories in 2010 in statehouses across the country.

Here in Texas, Attorney General Greg Abbott sent agents from his office to a little old lady's house in Fort Worth to investigate allegations of voter fraud. They even peered in her bathroom window just as she was getting out of the shower, but they still couldn't find any evidence of voter "fraud". Abbott could have found some if he had looked at a Republican state senator Brian Birdwell, who voted twice in the 2004 presidential election... but again, Abbott wasn't looking for wealthy white male voter fraud.

As a result of all this voter fraud that Republicans have committed -- so goes the pretzel logic -- Democrats must be doing more of it, so local Republicans established an organization called True the Vote. What's more, they have weaponized it for 2012. It was born here in Harris County, they held a national summit here in Houston last year, its aim to spread nationwide -- especially through these legislative voter/photo id actions -- is ongoing and strengthening. How this strategy is executed, essentially, is that white people show up at minority-majority precincts and do whatever they can think of to intimidate black and brown voters; taking pictures of them, peering over their shoulders as they cast their ballot, and other discriminatory and illegal actions.

They have a goal for 2012 to stop 50 persons per precinct across the country from voting (those Mickey Mouse votes). They think they can win back the White House if they are successful.

Ultimately the long-term goal is to have only the people of their choosing eligible to vote: aka wealthy white property owners. We used to refer to them as slave masters. In other words, when you hear the words 'follow' or 'restore' the Constitution, what they mean is the Constitution as the Founders intended in 1787 (Google 'Three-Fifths compromise'). Calling themselves 'Patriots', wearing tri-corner hats, US flag shirts and lapel pins -- their gang colors -- is all part of the mental illness as well.

So, to conclude a long post, if you like all of that and want more of it, you know who to vote for. And if you don't like any of that and don't vote, you're doing nothing but enabling the mental illness that consumes today's Republican party.