The Civil Rights Game

As an Astros hater, I sure picked a good night to go to the ballpark.

“I haven’t heard this place this loud in a long time,” said Robbie Grossman, who had the game-tying hit in the seventh inning, right before Jonathan Villar’s go-ahead double bounced into the home bullpen at Minute Maid Park.

The Astros haven’t had a win streak this long since July 27-Aug. 3, 2010, which shouldn’t come as a shock. Since May 11, they’re tied for the second-most wins across the majors, and their 15 wins this month are their most in May since tallying 17 in 2008.

The Astros didn’t even have a hit off Orioles starter and losing pitcher Miguel Gonzalez until the sixth inning, and nonetheless pulled it out.

And that was just the baseball.

l to r: George Foreman, Berry Gordy, James Brown.

Missing from this year's Beacon honorees was Dr. Maya Angelou, who passed just Wednesday.  She did record a video, shown on the stadium's big board, thanking Major League Baseball for the honor.  Her words ring so clearly in a week when Houston approved a non-discrimination ordinance, and in the 50th anniversary year of the 1964 Civl Rights Act, and the 60th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision desegregating public schools, Brown v. Board of Education.

“There are none so blind as those who will not see. There are people who go through life burdened by ignorance because they refuse to see. When they do not recognize the truth that they belong to their community and their community belongs to them, it is because they refuse to see. When they do not accept their oneness with their fellow man and fellow woman, it is because they refuse to see. When they choose to live sheltered in their own personal universes, oblivious to the plights that face our brothers and sisters and their brothers and sisters, it is because they refuse to see to see what is in front of them.

“We have been through trying times. We have borne witness to many who felt that the establishment of superiority outweighed the need for human compassion, and yet somehow we have persevered. We have stood firm in the face of outrage. We have held tight to our dignity against a sea of strife. We have adhered to our convictions and our beliefs and the equality of all people. And all the truths we hold to be self evident have persevered. And it is to our great joy that we can say we have persevered.

“Our world today is in many ways better than it was 50 years ago and perhaps not as good as it will be 50 years from now. I pray that we will grow. But we must never lose sight of what is truly important. We may encounter many defeats, but we must not be defeated. In fact, it might be necessary to encounter the defeats so we can know just who we are."

Truly, to live one's life by those words is the real honor.

There was an awards luncheon, there was a roundtable discussion, there was baseball where the players wore throwback unis from the Negro Leagues.  Hell, even the local TV blackout was lifted (so I hope you watched it if you weren't there, because you know they'll be looking at the ratings).  The only damper on the evening was the rain, which canceled the postgame fireworks show.

If I never go to another game, I can be happy.

Price to change Greg Abbott's mind: $350K

And Republicans say he's a Christian.  A moral man.

In a surprise legal about-face, Attorney General Greg Abbott on Thursday ruled that state prison officials no longer have to tell the public where they obtain drugs used to execute condemned criminals.

Abbott's decision falls in line with other states that have sought to keep secret the source of their lethal drugs, to keep death-penalty opponents from pressuring suppliers to quit selling to execution chambers. His decision reversed three rulings since 2010 that had mandated the information about the suppliers be made public.

Abbott, the Republican nominee for governor in the state that operates the nation's busiest death chamber, said in his five-page decision that he was swayed to allow secrecy by a "threat assessment" from Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, that disclosure of details could endanger suppliers.

In arguing for the secrecy, officials with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which conducts the executions, insisted pharmacies supplying the drug pentobarbital used in executions could be subject to death threats if their identity was known -- an assertion an Associated Press investigation could not validate as true.

How's that old joke go?  "We already know what you are, now we're negotiating the selling price."  So I wonder if $350,000 is the MSRP, or if there's a little wiggle room.

Campaign contributions totaling $350,000 to Attorney General Greg Abbott from the owner of a Conroe compounding pharmacy drew criticism from a government-watchdog group on Friday, at a time when Abbott is involved in two issues with the lightly regulated pharmacies nationally: Tainted drugs and executions.

In a new report, Texans for Public Justice questioned the contributions by J. Richard "Richie" Ray, who heads Richie's Specialty Pharmacy. According to the report, Ray is Abbott's sixth largest campaign donor between January 2013 and January 2014 in his campaign to become Texas' next governor.

"The $350,000 that Ray gave Abbott in the past year catapults him from obscurity into the ranks of this year's Governor's Cup," the report states.

Let's review.

"For 350 large, I'll change my mind.  We ain't gonna tell no more about how we're killin' these killers, 'cause somebody mighta said they would kill us if we did.  'Cause killin' is wrong, but potential threats against us killers is wronger.  I'm pro-life, and don't you fergit it."

Last word to Mother Jones.

Given the massive conflicts between his current job and one of his biggest campaign contributors, Abbott can only hope that defense lawyers manage to drag out the legal battles over lethal injection long enough for him to get elected in November.

That's the perfect summary of the Abbott campaign's election strategy: stall.  Avoid all uncomfortable questions, duck the media, don't debate your opponent.  Stay hidden and out of sight as much as possible.

That's the only way Greg Abbott can get elected governor.  Because if enough people would ever learn the truth about him, he would have never been elected a single time.