Of oil spills, then and now

I mentioned it briefly last week, but in light of the weekend's events, a reminder that the past is often prologue.

Before the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico, there was the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska, at the time the nation’s largest oil spill.

The 987-foot tanker, carrying 53 million gallons of crude, struck Bligh Reef at 12:04 a.m. on March 24, 1989. Within hours, it unleashed an estimated 10.8 million gallons of thick, toxic crude oil into the water. Storms and currents then smeared it over 1,300 miles of shoreline.

For a generation of people around the world, the spill was seared into their memories by images of fouled coastline in Prince William Sound, of sea otters, herring and birds soaked in oil, of workers painstakingly washing crude off the rugged beaches.

I was living in Midland, Texas at the time, and the reaction there was as predictable as you can imagine.  "It's not Exxon's fault, it was that drunk captain"... and besides, when are you going to park your car and ride your bike, you dirty hippie?  Socratic Gadfly also remembers.

Per Wikipedia's story on the disaster, when in the original suit, eXXXon was hit with $5 billion in punitive damages, it got a $4.8 billion line of credit from J.P. Morgan. To insulate itself, Morgan created the first modern credit default swap.

In other words, eXXXon's Alaskan oil slick helped crap on the American economy nearly 20 years later. That said, why would anything about any unholy alliance between Wall Street and Big Oil surprise you? See: "Bros., Koch" for more.

The more things change, the more they remain the same. 

 

The Houston Ship Channel remained closed to marine traffic Sunday as efforts continued to remove up to 168,000 gallons of heavy oil that spilled into Galveston Bay on Saturday afternoon, inciting concerns about potential widespread economic impact and closure of the eight refineries that make up the world's second-largest petrochemical complex.

The 52-mile Ship Channel, connecting the country's largest exporting port to the Gulf of Mexico, will not reopen until the water is clear of the fuel oil that spilled after a ship and barge collided near the Texas City Dike, which officials said Sunday could take several days, if not weeks.

The barge leak in the HSC won't be, thankfully, as bad as the Exxon Valdez disaster.  It's just that the oil industry and its consumers haven't learned any lessons in the past generation.

"This is devastating," said James Stork, 46, a Galveston native who owns a medical staffing company. "I think cleanup is going to be a lot more than they expected. It's really going to affect the economy for people who depend on fishing and shrimping,"

The spill also comes at the "worst time" for tens of thousands of shore and seabirds, an estimated 50,000 of which roost at the Bolivar Flats refuge only about two miles from where the spill occurred, according to Richard Gibbons, conservation director for the Houston Audubon Society.

"We're at the peak of the birding season. In a couple weeks, there's a birding festival," said Anna Armitage, a professor at Texas A&M University's Galveston branch who is an expert on marshes and marine habitats. "This is one of the worst times for birds to be potentially exposed."

Experts said it is too soon to say how extensive the environmental and economic damage will be. But fishermen said they were already throwing back oil-covered catches.

Most of the comments on social media over the weekend focused on inconvenienced cruise line passengers.  Coming in a close second were the sport fishermen with the means to rearrange their charter excursions.  A distant third were the conspiracy theorists declaring that there would be an increase in gasoline prices to follow soon.  Community "leaders", meanwhile, are wringing their hands over the impact to the economy.

Harris County Commissioner Jack Morman, whose Precinct 2 encompasses a large portion of the Ship Channel, said a closure lasting a day or two is not a big deal, but that he was told by Port of Houston Authority officials this one could last longer.

"It is concerning when you start getting closures of multiple days in a row," he said. "I think one day, like I said, is not unheard of and certainly wouldn't be too disruptive but multiple days you start really having an impact on our local economy, and regionally and nationally as well ..."

Port of Houston Authority Chairman Janiece Longoria said Sunday it is "unclear at this point how long the channel may be closed or the financial impact to industry stakeholders, and to POHA and its customers," but that a Ship Channel closure is "always of concern to the Port of Houston Authority and to all Houston Ship Channel users."

'Industry stakeholders, the Port of Houston, and its customers'.  Well, I guess that covers everybody.  Everybody that matters, anyway.  Right?

Go ahead and fry up some of those delicious Gulf oysters and shrimp, folks.  The cooking oil is already included.

Update: Wonkette adds their special spice to the stirfry.

If you are still receptive to hopeful sentiments on the issue of the environment, the last paragraph of NPR’s fish hearts piece is nice:

Discovering the mechanism that makes oil toxic to fish is like a coroner pinning down a mysterious cause of death — but taking 25 years to do it. And, as in a criminal case, this knowledge could give scientists evidence to hold companies responsible for long-term damages no one ever knew oil spills were causing.

That’s right, sue their pants off! Sue ‘em so hard the price of oil goes up. Yes, this would suck in its own way, but there is no “boy, that was easy!” solution here, and a sure way to spur the development of renewables is to make fossil fuels cost more. Finally, here’s a nice piece about a judge telling BP to pay up for all the delicious fish they murdered. That’s great! Now we just need the coal industry to start paying for the 13,000 people they kill every year. That’s our Exxon Valdez Day wish, what’s yours?

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance has no idea what's so hard to understand about the concept of equal pay as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff wonders why the decline in GOP primary turnout, especially in strongholds like Collin County, has generated so little attention.

Horwitz at Texpatriate eulogizes Robert Strauss, who could teach us all a lesson about bipartisanship.

If we are to win the battle on issues, we must win the battle of language. EgbertoWillies.com emphasizes these points with Bill Maher’s most recent New Rule.

Libby Shaw at Texas Kaos notes the Republican war on women is real and it is relentless. Greg Abbott says he is for equal pay, but would veto a bill requiring it.

Greg Abbott's bad week has stretched into a bad month, as the AG keeps stepping in (that's not insensitive, is it?) messes of his own making. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs links to Harvey Kronberg, who declares that "all bets are off" in the Texas governor's race.

When the political debate is about issues that are central to the lives of poor, working and middle class Texans, that's a bad day for the Texas GOP and a good day for everyone else. WCNews at Eye on Williamson says that's what we need as a A Democratic Alternative.

Neil at All People Have Value took a long walk in Houston on the first day of spring. Neil said that just as the work of freedom is up to each of us, so is the task of seeing the value in the everyday things around us. All People Have Value is part of NeilAquino.com.

As more Houstonians discover public transit, they are also beginning to expect a higher level of transit service. A sincere attempt to address this void is Houston METRO's T.R.I.P. App -- a geolocation tool that provides real-time arrival information to anyone with a smart phone. The app is potentially a game-changer, which is why Texas Leftist decided to test it out on a couple of routes. Does it really work?

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

And here are some great blog posts from elsewhere around Texas.

Texas Election Law Blog takes a deeper look at rationality and voting behavior.

Nonsequiteuse connects the dots on anti-abortion rhetoric and violence.

Juanita Jean uses the word "haboob" in a sentence. It probably doesn't mean what you think it means.

The Lunch Tray revisits that study that claimed to find a large decrease in childhood obesity.

Better Texas takes a look at how states are handling the coverage gap.

Grits for Breakfast notes a sharp rebuke of Greg Abbott by the Court of Criminal Appeals.

Burkablog also eulogizes Robert Strauss.

BOR profiles SD17 challenger Rita Lucido.

Concerned Citizens examines alternatives to streetcars in San Antonio.

And Beyond Bones has some awesome True Facts about The Princess Bride.

Sunday Funnies

The incomparable Silly Rabbit, with the weekly Talking Heads roundup.

Call me crazy, but...

I don't think it's just a coincidence that: the ⁹11th anniversary of the Iraq War; the fourth anniversary of Obamacare; Twitter's eighth birthday; Republicans' first re-birthday; the start of the NCAA basketball tournament; the end of Fred Phelps; and, the Vernal Equinox, all occurred this week.

If I was a religious person, I'd be building an ark right about now.

Disclosure: I am not a marine biologist, and I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night; I don't claim to know exactly who and/or what is behind this neo-confluence of events, or what it all means.

That being said, it would be irresponsible not to speculate.

My sixth sense is telling me that Barack Obama's explosion onto the scene at the 2004 Democratic National Convention caused a ripple in the space-time continuum, and sent shockwaves through our young Earth.

Everything you need to know

-- The reason CNN can't talk about anything else but the missing Malaysian plane is because it's paying off for them.

The news that wreckage from the missing Malaysia Airlines jet may have been spotted in the southern Indian Ocean was enough to create a surge in news viewing late Wednesday night and, for the moment anyway, stave off potential flagging interest in the two-week-old story.

CNN continued to show enormous audience increases, though as of Wednesday it was no longer topping the perennial leader, Fox News, anywhere in prime time. Fox News had always won in terms of total viewers, but CNN had been doubling its usual audience among the group favored by news advertisers, viewers between the ages of 25 and 54, and topping Fox News in some isolated hours.

CNN still posted greatly increased numbers with that group Wednesday night, but Fox maintained a lead in every hour from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. (It won the ratings for the total day, as well.) CNN’s 10 p.m. hour, which had been doing especially well with the format of asking aviation experts questions texted in by viewers, faded somewhat, dropping behind Sean Hannity’s show on Fox by the biggest margin of the night in the 25-to-54 group, 291,000 viewers to 410,000 viewers.

Perhaps the audience lost some interest when the CNN anchor Don Lemon asked one expert if it was really preposterous, after all, to ask if Flight 370, which vanished on March 8, may have been swallowed by a black hole. The plane, which carried a total of 239 passengers and crew members, took off from Kuala Lumpur in the early hours of March 8, bound for Beijing, and disappeared from ground controllers’ screens 40 minutes later.

I'm weeping for the future.  How about you?

-- Ted Cruz runs a new scam on the conservo-rubes.

“It is time to Draft Ted Cruz for president,” says RedState diarist “razshafer,” and to that end, Raz has established RunTedRun.com, and an affiliated Draft Ted Cruz for President PAC. Raz is, Dave Weigel explains, Ted Cruz’s (now former) regional director Raz Shafer, and not just some person using Cruz’s name to convince conservatives to send along their lucrative email addresses.

Here is part of Shafer’s pitch:

I know there are other candidates who may run as conservatives, but I believe Ted Cruz has demonstrated that he’s the only consistent conservative who will do what it takes to roll back Barack Obama’s agenda. He’s the only one who has the passion, principles, and courage needed to deliver real results for Americans.

I’ve never spoken to Ted about him running for president and I honestly don’t know if he will do it, but I do know he won’t succeed unless freedom-loving Americans like you and me begin organizing this effort now.

Ted Cruz is the people’s candidate and we need to be the ones driving the effort to elect him.
So if you’re ready to be proud of your vote again and you agree that Ted Cruz should run for president, please do three things:

1. Go to RunTedRun.com and sign the official Draft Ted Cruz for President petition.
2. Urge your friends and family to join you.
3. Donate whatever you can to help us spread the word and build support.

My advice, even if you do support Ted Cruz and think he should run for president, is don’t do any of this. It is a waste of your time and you will be exploited. Your name and contact information will be sold. You will have no effect whatsoever on Cruz’s decision to run for president or not. Your monetary donation will have no effect whatsoever on Ted Cruz’s potential 2016 electoral chances.

They'll do it anyway.  Conservatives are sheep for the fleecing.  It would be so cool if the GOP nominated Ted in 2016, wouldn't it?

-- America needs welders.  Houston especially needs technical labor.

-- Obama warns Democrats again that midterm elections are historically bad.

"But in midterms we get clobbered -- either because we don’t think it’s important or we’ve become so discouraged about what’s happening in Washington that we think it’s not worth our while," he said, according to the transcript.

Low Democratic turnout during non-presidential elections is one reason the deck is stacked against the party going into Nov. 4. Obama has repeatedly urged Democrats to focus on state-level races this year even though they're less "sexy" than national contests, and has reportedly offered to stay out of races where his appearance with a vulnerable candidate could do damage.

I talked to some people exactly like this in calling my precinct earlier this month.  In particular, a middle-aged white woman with a Democratic voting history who said she was "taking a pass" this year.  Quote unquote.

No, I didn't ask her why.  You can't fix stupid, and there are plenty more people to help.  "Next," as God might say (if there was a God).

Why did the 500-lb. chicken cross the road?

A. It could do whatever it wanted, because it was also eleven feet long and had five inch claws on its hands.  And please don't disturb it with your silly questions.

-- John Coby found Greg Abbott exposing himself on television.  Ew.

-- Boehner rejects 'bipartisan breakthrough' on jobless aid:

After months of effort, a group of senators from both parties announced last week they’d reached a deal on extending unemployment benefits. Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), one of the lead negotiators, called it a “bipartisan breakthrough.”

And by most measures, it was. The agreement would extend jobless aid to nearly 2 million Americans, without increasing the deficit. It’s a popular, election-year measure, backed by a Senate supermajority, and the compromise is poised to pass the chamber next week.

That House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) announced yesterday, however, that the Senate shouldn’t bother – House Republicans won’t even consider the “bipartisan breakthrough.”

“We have always said that we’re willing to look at extending emergency unemployment benefits again, if Washington Democrats can come up with a plan that is fiscally-responsible, and gets to the root of the problem by helping to create more private-sector jobs. There is no evidence that the bill being rammed through the Senate by Leader Reid meets that test,” Boehner said in a statement Wednesday.

That the Republican leader doesn’t want to extend unemployment benefits is predictable. But what mattered yesterday was the weakness of his excuse.

I got nothing.

-- This is going to be a little rough on you Christians out there.



Sometimes the truth is brutal.  And harsh.

-- Twenty-five years ago, the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound off the coast of Alaska. Even though I worked in their Beaumont refinery in the summer of 1980 before my final senior semester, I never bought any of their gas after that environmental apocalypse.  The permanent loss of my business hasn't slowed 'em down too much, though.

-- And speaking of protests...

A federal judge has ordered the FBI to explain why it withheld some information requested by a graduate student for his research on a plot to assassinate Occupy Houston protest leaders.

Ryan Noah Shapiro, a doctoral student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., filed a lawsuit April 29, 2013, against the U.S. Department of Justice in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

U.S. District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer issued her order, with an accompanying memo, on March 12.

The FBI, as part of the Department of Justice, controls the records Shapiro wanted for his study of "conflicts at the nexus of American national security, law enforcement and political dissent," the plaintiff's complaint stated.

Houston was among hundreds of U.S. cities where protesters occupied outdoor spaces as part of the Occupy Movement that started in New York's Zucotti Park on Sept. 17, 2011.

"The movement has sought to expose how the wealthiest 1 percent of society promulgates an unfair global economy that harms people and destroys communities worldwide," the complaint stated.

Kind of a big deal, if we can ever learn the truth about that.  Oh, and don't miss reading some of the comments to discover what our local conservatives really think about Occupy.  It's far too late for them to keep it classy; that oil tanker has sailed.

"All bets are off"

Harvey Kronberg, in his weekly Austin teevee appearance.

“We are seeing something none of us has anticipated, and that is the Abbott campaign is on the defensive. First, they had the Ted Nugent experiment... which was supposed to be about the Second Amendment and ended up being about child predators. The second event was the Lily Ledbetter Act, which is about equal pay. They want to talk about process. But the message that is breaking through now anyway is about equal pay for women. If you have a series of additional issues like that that seem to put the Republicans on the wrong side of women, then all bets are off as to how this election will actually turn out.”

Republican women pinch-hitting for Abbott that are saying women are too busy to be concerned about their pay inequality -- or need to be better negotiators -- is just digging his hole deeper.

Abbott has always been a lousy lawyer and an even worse human being, but now it appears his vaunted political instincts are failing him.  The ladies doing the talking for him this week must have been trained by Todd Akin, or maybe Ralph Reed.  I am amazed that Abbott is making these kinds of mistakes because he's never, ever made them in his political career before.  Like Noah and Charles, I didn't believe that Emerson College poll had enough of a track record to be legitimate, but if another one that does reports a similar tightening of the race, there will be a massive surge in momentum to Davis.  Her press shop is now firing on all twelve cylinders, and that -- as much as Abbott's stumbling (is that insensitive to a man in a wheelchair?) -- has moved her campaign forward in the past week.

Abbott's failings in policy and tactics have been clear to those of us who follow these things closely for some time, and now they're getting more attention, such that the low-interest, low-data, low-participation voters might begin to take notice.  None of this addresses the Democrats' historical turnout problem, but Battleground Texas keeps grinding away on that also.

Now if Senate and Congressional Democrats will just stop running away from Obamacare, November prospects might really brighten up.  Here's their clue on how to turn a negative into a positive, courtesy Dave Weigel.  Nancy Pelosi, in Houston yesterday, reiterated the message: run on Obamacare, and run hard on expanding it (and Medicaid).

Texas Democrats report to their Senate district conventions this weekend, and with stinky options like David Alameel and Kinky Friedman as least worst choices looming in the May runoff, Wendy Davis and Leticia Van de Putte are going to have to do the heavy lifting for the fall slate.  It's a good thing they both have years of experience in doing dirty jobs left to them by the men.

Income inequality, debates for the 1%, and abortion clinic bombers

-- Paying women the same as men is hard work, to paraphrase a previous Texas governor (who fell upward).  And the national media is all over it.  Charles beat me to this, but it's worth repeating.

On equal pay, Texas GOP PAC sends a "busy" signal

Houston Chronicle / Siobhan O'Grady

Just one week after Greg Abbott, Texas' attorney general and the GOP's nominee for the state's gubernatorial race, skirted around a question on equal pay, the executive director of the Lone Star State's newest Republican PAC stumbled through her response to a similar question in a television interview on Sunday.

Red State Women Director: Texas Women Too 'Busy' For Equal Pay Law

Talking Points Memo / Catherine Thompson

Cari Cristman, the executive director of Red State Women PAC, was asked in an interview with Dallas TV station WFAA about Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott's (R) position on equal pay laws. Abbott, who is running for governor against state Sen. Wendy Davis (D), previously told the news station that existing law was sufficient to protect women's pay.

Are Ladies Just Too Busy for the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act?

Jezebel / Kelly Faircloth

Salon reports (see next) that this fascinating line of argument comes via Cari Christman, who heads Texas's Red State Women PAC. Local ABC affiliate WFAA asked whether her organization believes Texas needs an equal pay act. This has become an issue in the state gubernatorial race, as Wendy Davis faces off against former attorney general Greg Abbott. In his last gig, he convinced the Texas Supreme Court that the Lily Ledbetter Act-which gives women longer to file gender discrimination claims after leaving a job-didn't alter Texas's statue of limitations.

Head of GOP PAC targeting women: GOP doesn't support equal pay laws because "women are busy"

Salon / Katie McDonough

As Laura Bassett at the Huffington Post points out (see below), Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis has been making Republican opponent Greg Abbott's record on equal pay a focus of her campaign. As attorney general, Abbott successfully argued before the Texas Supreme Court in a lawsuit brought by a female professor that the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which extended the statute of limitations in such cases, didn't change Texas' state statute of limitations.

Awkward: GOP women's PAC leader says women too "busy" to need equal pay laws

Raw Story / David Edwards

During a Sunday interview with WFAA's Inside Texas Politics, host Jason Whitely told RedState Women Executive Editor Cari Christman that Democrats had accused Republicans of "hitting the panic button" and launching the PAC in the final months before the 2014 elections after gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott was criticized for campaigning with Ted Nugent. Whitely also pointed out that Abbott had recently said that Texas did not need new laws to protect women against pay discrimination.

Red State Women leader says Texas doesn't need equal pay law

Dallas Morning News / Christy Hoppe

Last week, on the same show, GOP nominee Greg Abbott declined to answer whether he also would have vetoed the equal pay act, called the Lilly Ledbetter Act, named after the federal version of the law. Three years ago, Abbott's office successfully argued before the Texas Supreme Court that federal equal pay protections do not apply in Texas. The 2012 decision determined that a female college professor did not have the right to sue because she discovered the alleged discriminatory pay more than 180 days after she was hired. The Lilly Ledbetter Act provides that a suit can be filed within 180 days of a woman discovering the pay discrepancy.

Head Of GOP Women's PAC Flubs Equal Pay Question

Huffington Post / Laura Bassett

Democratic candidate Wendy Davis has been going after Abbott on equal pay in recent weeks. In addition to dodging the question of whether he supports equal pay, the Davis camp points out, he actively fought against it during his career as Texas Attorney General. Abbott successfully argued before the Texas Supreme Court in Prairie View A&M University vs. Chatha that federal equal pay protections did not apply in Texas, so a female college professor who was paid unfairly did not have the right to sue more than 180 days after the discrimination began.

To quote a really smart woman: "If you have a vagina, and you vote Republican, you are a moron."  I would add: "If you have a vagina, and you don't plan on voting in 2014, then that's the same thing as voting Republican."

-- And just so everyone understands precisely who the Republicans on the ballot answer to, witness the development of a proposed debate between Dan Patrick and David Dewhurst over the weekend, to be held at the 'C' Club in River Oaks.  Except now it's not.  Follow Quorum Report's bulletins, beginning late Friday afternoon...

A LITE GUV DEBATE BEHIND CLOSED DOORS

Dewhurst and Patrick to make their case to some of Houston's business elite

"It's a sign of what kind of government we have," said one observer after hearing the news Friday afternoon that Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and Sen. Dan Patrick will debate behind closed doors in a room with some of Houston's business elite. 

The debate, first reported by the Houston Chronicle, will be held at the River Oaks Country Club and is being hosted by the C Club of Houston. No press will be allowed.  

Then on Monday morning...

A PUSH ALLOW THE MEDIA TO ATTEND TUESDAY'S CLOSED-DOOR LITE GUV DEBATE 

Patrick tries to pressure business group; Dewhurst says he wouldn't mind if C Club debate is open to the press

Sen. Dan Patrick on Monday asked that the business-friendly C Club of Houston allow the media to attend tomorrow's planned Lite Guv debate at River Oaks Country Club. More than a few eyebrows were raised on Friday when it came out that Lt. Gov David Dewhurst and Patrick have agreed to debate behind closed doors in front of some of Houston's business elite. 

Then, after 5 yesterday... 

PATRICK TAKES A PASS ON CLOSED-DOOR DEBATE IN RIVER OAKS, DEWHURST WILL STILL SPEAK TO C CLUB 
Patrick had asked for forum to be open to the press; Dewhurst will speak to them regardless of Patrick's decision

A spokesman for David Dewhurst indicated the incumbent will appear before the business group, despite Patrik's decision to pull out. "Yes. Lt. Governor Dewhurst appreciates any opportunity to speak to groups of Texans and looks forward to debates and forums that are open to the press in the near future," spokesman Travis Considine said. 

In case you didn't buy a program, challenger Patrick is the Buc-ees populist standing up for the TeaBaggers little guy, and wounded, bleeding incumbent Dewhurst is the elitist grubbing for five- and six-figure checks.  This is the most perfect representation of what the Republicans have devolved to than anything you will ever see.

Wayne Slater at the DMN in his Friday story linked to the 'C' Club's site listing their members, but now the club has pulled it down... which is why I took a screenshot.

Yes indeed, we already knew that was how Republicans roll.

-- Last, the abortion clinic bombers are making a comeback.  I wonder if these terrorists will be prosecuted this time.  Eric Holder, I'm not looking at Greg Abbott.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance is filling out their brackets as they present the best of the Lone Star State's lefty blogs from last week.  And a big "Howdy" and welcome to our newest member, Egberto Willies, who leads off this week's Wrangle.

Every opponent of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) should watch the Daily Show’s Aasif Mandvi and his interview of Fox business commentator Todd Wilemon posted at EgbertoWillies.com.

Off the Kuff analyzes the primary performances of Wendy Davis and Bill White.

Horwitz at Texpatriate presents a novel idea to start getting students voting.

WCNews at Eye on Williamson once again points out Texas' unfair tax system, in No one is offering an alternative to the raw deal Texas taxpayers are getting.

Libby Shaw at Texas Kaos reminds Greg Abbott that no means NO: Greg Abbott tries to spin no into yes.

A Fort Bend Republican wrote an article for Houston Style magazine about "Democrat" Kesha Rogers. You can imagine how ridiculous that was. Well, no you can't, because it's even worse than you can imagine. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs called BS on it about five times. But nobody involved bothered to correct the record.

Neil at All People Have Value said we should self-edit our lives in the same way that time has edited the works of the Ancient Greek poet Sappho.  All People Have Value is part of NeilAquino.com.

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

And here's more from other great Texas blogs.

The Denton fracking ban initiative has exceeded the number of signatures necessary to put the measure on the ballot in November, reports TXSharon at Bluedaze.

Dan Patrick is bad for Texas, but would be particularly bad for Texas education, as Socratic Gadfly observes in sampling and expanding on an op-ed in the Waco Herald-Tribune.

Prairie Weather sounds the alarm for Democrats (in Texas and across the country) as voter turnout levels for the primary are abysmal, and Senate Dems on the ballot this year start running away from the president, his policies, and his appointees.

Stace at Dos Centavos seems a little irritated about President Obama's review of the federal deportation policy.  Not as irritated as he is at the GOP's standing position, however.

Burnt Orange covered Wendy Davis' East Texas tour.

The Inanity of Sanity notes that it's going to be a long hot summer for ALEC here in Deep-In-The-Hearta.

Cody Pogue calls the state's new abortion restrictions what they are: a threat to women's health.

Michael Li at Texas Redistricting charts our civic engagement crisis.  And the Texas Observer's Christopher Hooks amplifies that -- linking to another of Li's posts -- in describing the not-so-democratic party primary system (that both Texas Republicans and Democrats practice).

Texas Watch wants private insurers to pay their fair share before any rate hikes are considered.

Juanita Jean at the World's Most Dangerous Beauty Salon predicts Tom DeLay's next career move.

Keep Austin Wonky advocates for using Austin's budget surplus on universal pre-K.

Grits for Breakfast laments the "dystopic no-man's land" created by the RGV border fence.

John Coby at Bay Area Houston recaps the frustrating process of choosing the best electricity provider, and got some ink in the Pearland Journal with an op-ed about the man-made disaster that is the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association.

Lastly, In The Pink explains what the movie "Frozen" is really about.

Sunday Funnies

Wendy Davis' new communications director

Appears to be just what she needs.

Democratic Sen. Wendy Davis’ campaign for governor has hired U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s former communications director.

Zac Petkanas, Davis’ new communications director, most recently was senior communications adviser for the Nevada State Democratic Party.

Before that, Petkanas was Reid’s communications director, and he was deputy communications director for Reid’s re-election campaign.

Not the 'Harry Reid' part.  This 'smashmouth' part.

In just the last few days, some members of the Capitol Press Corps have noticed a shift in how the Davis campaign is interacting with us. It also seems, for the moment at least, that the Davis folks are more nimble than before in reacting to events and seizing on chances to drive their narrative in the press.

[...]

After joining the Davis team, one of Petkanas’ first online statements about GOP nominee for governor Greg Abbott was that after the AG “campaigned with sex predator & fought equal pay for women, no wonder new GOP PAC hitting panic button in Texas." That’s apparently a reference to a new political action committee called Red State Women. As the name suggests, it’s an effort aimed at women here. It is also, one could argue, an attempt to counter any chance Davis might have at convincing GOP women to cross over and vote for the Democrat in November.

Even better is seeing the press releases this week also.

-- "Davis: Abbott took huge pay increase but fights equal pay for equal work" (on March 12, the same as his Tweet linked above)

-- DAVIS CAMPAIGN SLAMS ABBOTT’S SILENCE ON POTENTIALLY UNETHICAL BEHAVIOR ON CPRIT BOARD (yesterday)

The campaign Tweeted this to emphasize the first one, and Wayne Slater at the Dallas News wrote this in response to the second one.  So I would say Zac is off to a fast start.

Davis is in Beaumont today pumping up her volunteers, and my mother wants to go, so maybe I'll get a word or a photo with the candidate.  If I do, you'll hear about it.

Ted Cruz blames missing Malaysian jetliner on Obamacare

I'm sure there's more important headlines -- like Rick Perry getting booed on Jimmy Kimmel's SXSW remote, or Buc-ees desperately working to insure that the .1% of their customers who are registered to vote clearly understand that they are bipartisans, or even that the NSA has pretended to be Facebook as they tricked you into downloading malware -- but as winter finally breaks into a lovely spring (locally, at least), we'll go with this news.

BEIJING—The mystery surrounding the disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines jet over the weekend took a sinister turn today, as Sen. Ted Cruz (R—TX) revealed that two of the passengers on board had recently signed up for insurance under the Affordable Care Act.

“Although we cannot prove that this tragedy was caused by the White House’s misguided efforts at health-care reform, the math doesn’t lie,” said Cruz at a combined Tea Party/lobotomy convention. “Experts have said that the probability of two people getting Obamacare insurance and boarding a plane, and then having that plane crash, is less than one in a million.”

Cruz said it would be inappropriate to speculate on the exact mechanism by which health insurance could have caused the disaster, but noted that “crash” and “healthcare.gov” had appeared together in news articles more than ten thousand times in the last six months. “Everywhere we look, we see the President’s fingerprints on this,” he added.

In related news, the White House offered its condolences to the families of those presumed dead on the missing jet. “What makes this tragedy even worse,” said spokesman Jay Carney, “is that one of those passengers was supposed to make the final decision on the Keystone XL pipeline.”

Find more riveting stories like that here, and now in the perpetually updating blogroll at the right.

The CIA can't cover their tracks

Nothing really bothered me more -- in the early blogging days -- than to come to the realization that the United States, represented by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, was kidnapping and torturing people in the wake of 9/11.  And close behind that, what we came to quaintly call warrantless wiretapping of American citizens.

A decade has passed and there remains no proper accounting for either of those atrocities.  The NYT op-ed board presents the state of that union today. (My emphasis throughout.)

It was outrageous enough when two successive presidents papered over the Central Intelligence Agency’s history of illegal detention, rendition, torture and fruitless harsh interrogation of terrorism suspects. Now the leader of the Senate intelligence committee, Dianne Feinstein, has provided stark and convincing evidence that the C.I.A. may have committed crimes to prevent the exposure of interrogations that she said were “far different and far more harsh” than anything the agency had described to Congress.

Senator DiFi, both long and recently a staunch defender of the surveillance state as it evolved over the past 12 years, has flip-flopped.  Her transformed thinking came about as a result of her discovery this week that yes, the CIA spies on senators too, just like it does the rest of us.  David Corn at Mother Jones immediately recognized the constitutional crisis, but you can read about that in a moment.

Feinstein’s speech detailed the lengths to which the C.I.A. had gone to hinder the committee’s investigation, which it began in 2009 after senators learned the agency had destroyed videotapes of the interrogations under President George W. Bush. Under President Obama, prosecutors exonerated the officials who ordered those tapes destroyed.

Feinstein said that when Senate staff members reviewed thousands of documents describing those interrogations in 2009, they found that the C.I.A.’s leadership seriously misled the committee when it described the interrogations program to the panel in 2006, “only hours before President Bush disclosed the program to the public.”

When the Senate staff compiled a still undisclosed 6,300-page report, it described these acts and also concluded that the C.I.A. had falsely claimed that torture and other brutality produced useful intelligence. The report has been going through the snail’s pace review and declassification process since December 2012. The C.I.A. disputed some of its findings. But Feinstein publicly confirmed on Tuesday that an internal review by the C.I.A. had reached conclusions similar to those in the Senate staff report. 

Almost flushed down the memory hole, but like a massive dump in a low-flow toilet, the CIA couldn't plunge fast enough.

It was the committee staff’s possession of that internal review — which the C.I.A. has refused to give to the Senate — that spurred what Ms. Feinstein said was an illegal search of computers (provided to the Senate staff by the C.I.A.) that contained drafts of the internal review. 

Ms. Feinstein said that staff members found the drafts among the documents that the C.I.A. had made available to the committee. She said she did not know whether the drafts were put there inadvertently, or by a whistle-blower. The Senate’s possession of the documents was entirely legal, she said.

Are we all caught up now?  This isn't an episode of Homeland, or 24, or House of Cards.  No teevee show can concoct a plot this nefarious.  It would be rejected as too outlandish by the producers.

The Justice Department now has a criminal investigation to conduct, but the C.I.A. internal review and the Senate report must be released. Feinstein called on President Obama to make public the Senate report, which he has supported doing in the past. She said that this would “ensure that an un-American, brutal program of detention and interrogation will never again be considered or permitted.”

The lingering fog about the C.I.A. detentions is a result of Mr. Obama’s decision when he took office to conduct no investigation of them. We can only hope he knows that when he has lost Dianne Feinstein, he has no choice but to act in favor of disclosure and accountability.

Mo Dowd breaks it down for you if you're still not feeling any sense of urgency.

In his mad odyssey through the dark side — waterboarding, secret rendition, indefinite detention, unnecessary war and manipulation of C.I.A. analysis — Dick Cheney did his best to vitiate our system of checks and balances. His nefarious work is still warping our intelligence system more than a decade later.

Barack Obama, the former Constitutional law teacher who became president vowing to clean up the excesses and Constitutional corrosion of W. and Cheney, will now have to clean up the excesses and Constitutional corrosion in his own administration. And he’d better get out from between two ferns and get in between the warring Congressional Democrats and administration officials — all opening criminal investigations of each other — because it looks as if the C.I.A. is continuing to run amok to cover up what happened in the years W. and Vice encouraged it to run amok.

Langley needs a come-to-Jesus moment — pronto.

One last bit.

In June, Brennan had issued a 122-page classified rebuttal to the still-classified $40 million, 6,300-page Senate report. But Feinstein said on the floor that she found the C.I.A. riposte “puzzling,” given that the Panetta internal review admitted to what the C.I.A.’s rebuttal objected to. Given the C.I.A.’s 2005 destruction of videotapes showing the torture of two Al Qaeda operatives, Feinstein said she has now locked up in the committee vault in the Hart Office Building the parts of the (former CIA chief) Panetta review that her staff had printed out before it disappeared. She has also requested in writing that Brennan turn over a complete version of the review to the committee.

She said she has received no answers from Brennan, who is no fan of Congress or the media, to her formal questions about the agency’s actions and no response to her request for an apology. She was clearly appalled by the nerve of the agency’s acting general counsel, Robert Eatinger, in making a criminal referral to the Justice Department suggesting her staff is guilty of wrongdoing.

She noted that Eatinger, whom she identified only by job title, worked in the Bush administration as a lawyer in the C.I.A.’s counterterrorism center, which carried out the notorious detention and interrogation program. She observed archly that Eatinger’s name was cited more than 1,600 times in the Senate report.

In 2007, The Times’s Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane reported that when a C.I.A. official trashed those interrogation videotapes, he told superiors that two C.I.A. lawyers had signed off on it. One was Eatinger. In a Q. & A. at the Council on Foreign Relations just after Feinstein’s floor speech, Brennan told Andrea Mitchell that he is in no way trying to “thwart” the Senate. He denied that the C.I.A. hacked into Senate computers, noting that it was beyond “the scope of reason in terms of what we would do.”

But is anything beyond the scope of reason for the C.I.A. anymore? Shouldn’t someone have gone to jail now besides the guy who blew the whistle on waterboarding? It’s typical that Langley, which has bungled so much for decades, couldn’t even spy on the Senate properly without getting caught. 

Another appropriate question: was the CIA too busy spying on the Senate Intelligence Committee to notice that Vladimir Putin was about to usurp the Ukraine?  To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, we apparently are going to have refight the Cold War with the spies -- and their lawyers -- that we have, not the ones we wish we had.

And I don't trust any of those fuckers one little bit.  To David Corn, as referenced above.

What Feinstein didn't say—but it's surely implied—is that without effective monitoring, secret government cannot be justified in a democracy. This is indeed a defining moment. It's a big deal for President Barack Obama, who, as is often noted in these situations, once upon a time taught constitutional law. Feinstein has ripped open a scab to reveal a deep wound that has been festering for decades. The president needs to respond in a way that demonstrates he is serious about making the system work and restoring faith in the oversight of the intelligence establishment.

We'll stand by patiently as we wait for the president's bold, firm, authoritative response.