Today's redistricting hearing

What Greg missed, I caught. Which was a grilling of the state's legal advisor, Jeff Archer of the Texas Legislative Council, by Rep. Trey Martinez Fisher. It was just a prelude to what is happening now (which you can follow over at G's O).

Martinez Fisher asked how many of the briefs and emails Archer had read, how much of the hearings he had witnessed, and other questions that essentially established Archer was fairly well out of the loop throughout this session on the topic of redistricting. Archer often looked helplessly at the chair, Drew Darby, to be bailed out, and Darby occasionally obliged him by nodding -- or shaking -- his head. After about 30 minutes of skewering, committee member Rep. Linda Harper Brown tried to short-circuit the cross-examination of Archer by Martinez Fischer (and succeeded).

Dutiful long-time followers of l'affaire redistricting may recall that Archer's deposition two years ago was barred by the state. (You can watch more of Archer speaking at an LBJ School of Public Affairs symposium. He's in the opening ten minutes.)

Update: I sat with a Fort Bend election law attorney at this hearing and he has a more nuanced and favorable view of Archer's testimony.

The most interesting thing at this hearing was the fact that Jeff Archer of the Texas Legislative Council provided some advice in public to the Committee. Archer's advice or opinions were actually very helpful to the upcoming litigation in that Archer did not believe that the interim maps being considered were intended to be final maps and that the approval of such maps would not help the Texas GOP in the next round of redistricting litigation.

I talked to Archer during the break and he basically told me that he agreed with my analysis of the interim maps and the legal effect of the Texas legislature adopting these maps. The Senate Committee approved the interim maps without change and I have no doubt that the House Committee will (do the same). However, these hearings will be helpful in the litigation that is going to occur with regards to these maps.

Frankly I was of the opinion that this hearing was going to be just another Republican kangaroo court, particularly after the one in Dallas was so contentious, and certainly in the wake this morning of the Texas Senate rubber-stamping the interim maps. My low expectations were met. Eye on Williamson...

Texas is ruled by one party. It’s unaccountable and arrogant and sees the state government as its playground. None of what happens in this special session will do anything to make the lives of Texans better. But it will allow those who run our state to score political points.

That pretty much nails it. Greg's got the rest of the fireworks at the hearing, but it sounds like they're mostly sparklers. Burka, meanwhile, eviscerates the governor, lieutenant governor, and especially the attorney general for the way this is all going down.

More speculation: I suspect Perry is furious with Abbott about this ham-handed redistricting play, which is rapidly developing into a fiasco. It really makes one wonder whether Abbott knows what he is doing and whether he is adept at the law. The triangulation among Perry, Abbott, and Dewhurst has turned in Dewhurst's favor; it looks as if Abbott has been isolated and Dewhurst has Perry's back now.

Abbott, emasculated by Perry, with Dewhurst twisting the shiv? Just too rich.

Update (Monday 6/17): Greg is covering the hearing in Austin -- probably the last of these -- and Archer is getting raked over the coals again.

Texas or bust for the GOP

Good piece at the top of the Great Orange Satan this morning, so I'm going to duplicate some of it and add a little of my own thinking at the end.

On Tuesday, the Senate voted overwhelmingly to debate comprehensive immigration reform. The amendment-o-rama begins! The actual 84-15 vote isn't indicative of much...

[...]

Aside from (Illinois' Mark) Kirk and Iowa's Chuck Grassley, the other 13 obstructionist votes all came from solidly red states. Among them? Texas freshman Ted Cruz.

This is interesting because Texas, by its lonesome self, should be the only excuse Republicans need to support genuine immigration reform.

Want some crazy math? How about this?

Mitt Romney carried Texas by a margin of 15.8 percent over President Obama in 2012. If Latino citizens had voted at the same rate as non-Hispanic whites, Romney’s victory margin would shrink to 5.4 points.

Or this?

If current demographic trends continue, Democrats would whittle about 5 ½ percentage points off the 15.8-point margin of victory won by Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in 2012 in every subsequent presidential cycle. That would transform Texas - the center of Republican resistance to Obama's agenda - into a competitive state at the presidential level by 2020 and a toss-up state four years later.

Let's be clear about this: If Latinos voted at the same rates as whites, Texas would already be purple.[...]

How important is Texas? If Republicans lost it, they could win Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin and still lose the election. In other words, lose Texas, or even be forced to defend that expensive-ass state, and Republicans are screwed.

So the math is clear—Texas would be purple if Latinos voted. But they don't, so who cares, right? Well, Republicans should, because even with the same existing shitty turnout rate the growth in the Latino and Asian communities will erode the GOP's base by about 5 1/2 points every four years, or about 1.4 points per year.

In other words, demographics alone will make Texas purple by 2024. And if Latinos decide to start voting, years sooner.

Markos finally sees what those of us who worked on elections here in Deep-In-The-Hearta have known for at least the last ten years: break the spine of the Republicans in Texas, and they don't get back up for a generation.

Said it before, but it needs sayin' again: if Hillary Clinton goes for the presidency in 2016 and taps a Castro, or another Texas Latino -- it has to be a man for gender balance -- as her running mate, then the GOP doesn't get a decent sniff at the White House until 2032.

(That would be the Republican party in its current iteration, of course. It could always fall apart, split up into Whigs and Teas, and in any event maintain Southern regional strength in places like Columbia, SC and Montgomery, AL.)

Oh yeah, and Texas turns blue. Not just in the electoral college, either. Absent unknowable future events like terrorist attacks or scandals, the nation's first female president -- and then its first Latino one -- don't get defeated for re-election.

But it's what happens here at home that's the most encouraging.

No longer will the future of Texas be decided in the Republican primaries exclusively. We can kiss Rick Perry, Greg Abbott, and all their associated lackeys and lickspittles goodbye. And we can finally start moving down the road toward a more just and equitable Lone Star State. That's what Battleground Texas exists for. The TX GOP brain trust, such as it is, understands this dilemma implicitly, and it's what motivates their ongoing gerrymander of Congressional and statehouse districts, while at the same time pushing all in on wiping out the VRA at the SCOTUS.

Speaking of that, I'll be at the hearing this afternoon, and I hope to have more to be encouraged about afterwards.

Update: My hopes about the hearing were false. But Joe Scarborough and Michael Steele spoke the very next morning about their party's problems... because GOP Congressmen are talking about rape and pregnancy again.

Scarborough noted reaction he’s seen from Republicans “out and about” who are outraged by remarks like (Rep. Trent) Franks’ — and he questioned why such individuals want to damage the party.

“The national party right now really has to find a better voice,” Steele noted. “Or maybe it should just find a voice.”

A voice that will “tell the idiots out there to just shut up,” Scarborough agreed. “Because you know what? Before I pass away, I would like to have a Republican in the White House again.”

But alas, Steele lamented, “that day is looking further and further away.” Diagnosing the problem, Scarborough added, “We are so undermined by so many of the shrillest voices in our own party. That has nothing to do with conservatism.”

They can't help themselves. It's self-destructive behavior at its most classic, and no amount of carnage to their electoral future can get them to stop.

6 in 10 sheep don't mind being shorn

Once again I find myself in the minority of public opinion.

The first polling on the National Security Agency surveillance leak is out, and despite almost unanimous cries of outrage from the press and civil-liberties advocates, the rest of America seems decidedly "meh" on the matter.

(Pew)

Over half of us—56 percent, to be exact—think that serving phone companies with a secret court order to surrender customer phone records is an "acceptable" way to fight terrorism, according to a new survey from the Pew Research Center.

While 41 percent oppose the NSA surveillance program specifically, a much broader swath of the country is generally willing to sacrifice privacy for security.

Sixty-two percent say they'd rather the government intrude on their privacy if it means making it easier to investigate terrorist threats.

You have to wonder how these lambs feel about being led to the slaughterhouse. They probably are thinking the same thing as, you know, actual mutton.

But the survey also reveals some fascinating demographic information. Out of the age groups surveyed, young people are both the least likely to be following the surveillance news closely and the most likely to say they highly value their privacy. Predictably, Democrats say they're supportive of the policy more often than Republicans do—and Republicans were far more supportive of the NSA's warrantless wiretapping back in 2006 when President Bush was in the White House, compared with today.

On the whole, only 27 percent of Americans are even paying close attention to the revelations. That's roughly the same share of the country that in late May was tuned into the IRS targeting scandal and Congress's investigations into the Benghazi attack.

The key part of this news -- to me, anyway -- is that Democrats favor NSA snooping over Republicans, which is precisely the opposite of what it was during the Bush years. In other words, my party's president before the Constitution.

The pushback against the whistleblower -- which some are refusing to even call that -- is a blizzard of smears and personal attacks.

"If you don't have anything to hide..." you say?

So your bank or credit card company has never made a mistake on a check or a deposit or a debit or a credit? You've never been rooked, gypped, or defrauded, or had your identity stolen and your credit report damaged as a result?

The police have never pulled you over for no reason? Never given you a speeding ticket when you weren't speeding... or worse? I don't suppose the law enforcement officers of this great nation have ever gotten an address wrong on a search warrant for drugs. (Certainly, in the United States of America, we have never, ever arrested, charged, prosecuted, convicted, sentenced and absolutely never executed an innocent man, then.)

Ask a lawyer about what a good idea it is to accept a police invitation to stand in a lineup. You know, since you're innocent.

Has your son or daughter ever been in trouble at school? What about that time when your rebellious son was hanging out with the wrong crowd that night and got picked up for criminal mischief -- or worse yet, had a marijuana cigarette in his pocket?

How about the other side of your family? You know, the n'er-do-wells with your same last name? Don't they have a son who goes to all those protests with OWS?

What about that insane neighbor who heads up the Neighborhood Watch? Didn't you piss him off one day by blocking his driveway for five minutes while moving a piano? Did you know that he was filing reports on "subversive" neighbors late at night on his computer?

All of these things -- and more -- will find their way into your file in the new age of Total Information Awareness. These files are permanent. You don't get to read them and correct mistakes. Once something goes in that file, right or wrong, it will be there forever and you won't ever know about it.

Soo...

Can't figure out why you were denied that business loan?

...or why your daughter was denied admission to that prestigious university?

...or why the city wouldn't grant you that building permit?

Do you feel safer yet?

Still not certain about the real threats against your life?

In 2001, the year when America suffered an unprecedented terrorist attack -- by far the biggest in its history -- roughly 3,000 people died from terrorism in the U.S.

Let's put that in context. That same year in the United States:

• 71,372 died of diabetes.
• 29,573 were killed by guns.
• 13,290 were killed in drunk driving accidents.

[...]

Measured in lives lost, during an interval that includes the biggest terrorist attack in American history, guns posed a threat to American lives that was more than 100 times greater than the threat of terrorism. Over the same interval, drunk driving threatened our safety 50 times more than terrorism.

Those aren't the only threats many times more deadly than terrorism, either.

The CDC estimates that food poisoning kills roughly 3,000 Americans every year. Every year, food-borne illness takes as many lives in the U.S. as were lost during the high outlier of terrorism deaths. It's a killer more deadly than terrorism. Should we cede a significant amount of liberty to fight it?

I am appalled at the people who think this kind of spying is just no big deal. And when the rationalizations for doing so get carried to partisan extremes...

... well, it's probably over for our republican democratic experiment. And six out of ten Americans don't have a fucking clue about that, either.

Update: Extra thoughts from jobsanger.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance thinks that we should have tried to get redistricting done right the first time -- instead of waiting until now to involve the public -- as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff gave an updated look at the state of the 2013 elections in Houston.

Over at TexasKaos, Libby Shaw explains that Texas ranks 51st in voter turnout. Another dubious achievement for Governor Oops...Check it out.

Which news item was false but with a ring of truth, and which was true but everyone wishes was false? PDiddie at Brains and Eggs reports... you decide.

Stace at Dos Centavos is a proponent of using Mexican American culture as a means of capturing that demographic's vote. He provides a follow-up to a recent KHOU report by Vicente Arenas on the resurgence of Tejano music. It's a good opportunity for non-Tejano fans to learn a little cultural history about the music genre whose live concerts still attract thousands of eligible voters.

WCNews at Eye on Williamson explains why the Lege putting money back into public education is unlikely to end the school finance court case.

Judge Edith Jones of the Fifth Circuit has the racist Republican vibe down pat. CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wonders why she hasn't been impeached yet.

=========================

And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

Texas Clean Air Matters advocates for stronger ozone standards for a healthier Texas.

Greg Wythe liveblogs the Senate redistricting hearing from Houston.

Texas Redistricting explains what "candidate of choice" means.

The Texas Green Report gives Austin the advantage over San Antonio on green building codes... for now.

Texas Vox has a guest post from the granddaughter of the founder of the oil company that is now ExxonMobil. She asks an uncomfortable question: "How will ExxonMobil adapt to the climate change crisis it helped create?"

Colin Strother points out that campus carry is a conundrum for cops.

BOR cannot believe that a Texas jury acquitted a man for killing an escort that wouldn't have sex with him.

Texpatriate offers its list of Best and Worst legislators.

Texas Leftist makes the connection between the war on drugs and racial profiling.

A hearty "Welcome Back" to blogging to John Coby, who tells us about the trouble (sorry, "twouble") with TWIA.

And finally, Lemon Sweetie asked Sir Patrick Stewart a question about his advocacy against domestic violence when he appeared at Comicpalooza in Houston, and got an amazing answer. Be sure to watch the video as well.