Live from Dallas

Just barely (alive, that is). Here's the view from my room at the Omni.

Really. And from the Sixth Floor Museum...

They don't want you taking pictures, so this was surreptitious. And Dealey Plaza.

Maybe some descriptions and accounts later; I understand ATT's WiFi is spotty and expensive. Follow the #TDP14 hashtag on Facebook and Twitter for more. Here's the advance from the local CBS affiliate, and here's the convention website with the schedules and speakers and whatnot.

Thank God for Mississippi

Senatah Thad Cochran of Mississipeh defeated his Tea Pahty challengah, Chris McDaniel, only by the grace of the Flying Spaghetti Monster... and black Democrats voting in the GOP primary.

And not only did Cochran survive, but he did so after an explicit and overt campaign to win the support of African American Democrats. You can see some of that work product below the fold, a campaign flyer headlined "The Tea Party intends to prevent blacks from voting on Tuesday." Conservatives flipped their lids, but the nastier their rhetoric, the more determined those black voters apparently became. And in the end, a white southern Republican was able to do what Democrats have such a hard time accomplishing: getting base Democrats to the polls. More seriously: African Americans respond to threats to their voting rights. Attempts to suppress the black vote in 2012 ended up goosing their participation. Cochran was clever to highlight the Tea Party hostility toward non-white voters.

They voted for what they thought was the least worst option.  Instead of strengthening the Democrats' hand with the nomination of the freakishly-extreme-even-for-a-TeaBagger McDaniel (who so far angrily refuses to concede) blacks voted for the lesser of two shitbirds, aka the devil they know.  The truth is that's really their only option.  Although African Americans comprise 37% of the Magnolia State's population  -- the largest of any state in the Union -- whites make up 59%, and over 50% of all Mississipians call themselves conservative.

Oddly, the blackest, poorest and most federally-dependent state in America is also the most conservative state, according to a Gallup poll taken earlier this year. With a 50.5 percent conservative self-identification rate, Mississippi is the first state to surpass the 50 percent barrier in the three years the poll has been in existence. [...]

The reality in Mississippi poses a major obstacle for any Democratic and black candidate running statewide in this reddest of red states. In the 2008 presidential election, John McCain won Mississippi with 56.5 percent of the vote, to Obama’s 42.7 percent.

Ahem.  No wonder it's also the birthplace of the blues.  But Kos, the omniscient Democrat, still thinks Travis Childers (the Democrat in the fall contest for the US Senate) has a chance.

So what now? Clearly, (party) Democrats were hoping for a McDaniels victory to put Mississippi in play this November. Cochran's surprising victory changes that calculus. But this is a reshaped political landscape. Base conservatives are furious with Cochran. He's a traitor to their cause. Sure, Democratic nominee Travis Childers voted for Nancy Pelosi in the House, but Cochran won with the support of black voters. They're livid.

They're already talking of a write-in campaign on behalf of McDaniels. And right now, they're so angry that they'd rather walk across flaming broken glass than pull the lever for Cochran in November. The big question is: will that anger survive all the way through November? Aside from that Pelosi thing, Childers should offer little to scare conservatives. He's all but one of them. And if those black voters who turn out today turn out in November, and the conservative base sits things out, then who knows, we've got a race after all.

Ah, no.  Sorry.  Just no.

But it will be fun reading what Catherine Englebrecht of True the Vote has to say in the coming days.  Her crews were on the Delta scene trying to stop what happened from happening.  Once again, Catherine was looking for voter fraud in all the wrong places.

Update: More on what was learned from Booman.  And more freakout from Limbaugh and Palin and Drudge and Erickson, and many, many more.

HERO continuing skirmishes could influence 2014 election

Especially if Jared Woodfill & company succeed in getting a resolution on the November ballot.

Time is running short for opponents of Houston’s recently passed equal rights ordinance, which supporters call HERO, to gather signatures on a petition to try to overturn it. Opponents led by longtime – and now former because he was recently ousted – Harris County Republican Party Chairman Jared Woodfill are working to turn in at least 17,000 signatures of Houston residents by next Monday. If they can do that and the signatures are verified, the issue will be on track to cause all kinds of additional heat in Houston with potential statewide implications.

On the surface, this would seem to be a classic liberal versus conservative argument playing out at the local level. But one possible statewide consequence has do with Woodfill’s role in the fight coupled with speculation that he’d like to be the next Republican Party of Texas chairman. Meantime, the placement of what’s been framed as a gay-rights issue on the November ballot could be used by Democrats to push their voters to the polls in the state’s largest city during a non-presidential year.

The conservative Christians want to use it to energize their base turnout, but since Republicans are all running against the evil Obama already, I predict that there's no greater gain to be had for them.  In fact I believe it will boost the fortunes of those who stood and fought for equality. 

Woodfill and others ominously call it a “sexual predator act.” As he and other opponents put it on this website: “It will by government decree open thousands of women’s restrooms, showers and girls locker rooms in the city to biological males! Predators and peepers can use it as cover to violate our women and children!”

Now working alongside Steve Hotze’s Conservative Republicans of Texas, Woodfill told Quorum Report on Monday that his group is confident they’ll have enough signatures in time to meet the deadline. “We can't afford to wait. Lives are at risk," Woodfill said. “It’s about the safety of our wives and daughters and kids.”

Woodfill declined to comment on growing speculation that he may be using the issue to position himself as the “conservative choice” for the next chairman of the Texas Republican Party. He stepped down as Harris County Chairman earlier this month after losing to challenger Paul Simpson. Voters in Houston could be forgiven, though, for not noticing Woodfill is no longer chairman given the amount of email blasts he is still sending out regularly about the ordinance. “This isn’t about anybody’s personality,” Woodfill said. “This is about the issue.”

I just can't see anything that could be better for increasing turnout among liberals and progressives than this.  It would in fact be a godsend.

And wouldn't that just be hilarious.

Another loss in court for Abbott

Judge Dietz will stay on the school finance case.

State District Judge John Dietz will remain the presiding judge in the long-running Texas school finance case after a motion by the attorney general to oust him was rejected on Monday.

State Judge David Peeples of San Antonio dismissed allegations that Dietz engaged in improper communications with attorneys for school districts suing the state. At a hearing on Friday, lawyers for the attorney general’s office said Dietz exchanged multiple e-mails and coached school district attorneys while he was working on his final judgment in the lawsuit.

“The circumstances shown by the evidence do not justify recusal (removal),” Judge Peeples said in his order. He added that the evidence indicated the state had agreed to the “ex parte” communications.

“This court emphatically rejects any suggestion that Judge Dietz intentionally or knowingly engaged in ex parte discussions without thinking that (all) the parties had agreed to allow this,” he said in his nine-page ruling.

It is common practice in civil suits for a judge to receive input from attorneys on the prevailing side in writing a final judgment in the case.

Dietz is now expected to resume work on his estimated 350-page decision on whether the current Texas school finance system is constitutional.

Quorum Report picks up on the mocking tone Judge Peeples used in denying the state of Texas' request.

In his brief opinion sent to lawyers and media alike (late Monday evening), Peeples opined that correspondence indicated the state clearly understood the communication between Dietz and plaintiff attorneys, even if the state didn’t recognize the extent of that communication. The extent Dietz’s procedure might be considered rare, if not possibly unique, but it did not meet the legal threshold for impartiality.

“The State knew that the ISD plaintiffs would be drafting proposed (findings of fact and conclusions of law) and sending them to the court,” Peeples wrote in his opinion released tonight. “Submissions from a prevailing party cannot be expected to be neutral and dispassionate, especially in a case like this one. It seems implicit that this procedure contemplated some feedback in each direction, some back-and-forth discussion. All parties must have understood that there would be some give and take, such as: “Let’s keep A, omit B, and modify C. Why do you suggest D? E seems better, but I am interested in your explanation for preferring D.” Is it the better practice to be explicit when deviating from usual procedures? Absolutely! But, as said above, the inquiry in this recusal proceeding is not best practices but whether a judge’s impartiality can be reasonably questioned.”

Greg Abbott is a shit lawyer, and apparently he hires other shitty lawyers to work in the OAG.  Having to argue a losing case is one thing.  Having an extreme partisan political bias in arguing a losing case is another; being wildly incompetent is something else further.  He's not stupid so much as he is obstinate about thinking he's right when he's so wrong.  (I grant that some people might consider that stupid.)

It just never ceases to amaze me that Abbott can repeatedly demonstrate his lack of understanding about the law, about legal strategy, about essentially everything necessary to conduct oneself as a competent attorney and never be held to account for it.  It's not greatly different from the massive ineptitude demonstrated by other nominees on the Texas Republican ballot, like Glenn Hegar and Sid Miller and so forth.  But it seems as if the mission of Republicans all across the country is to govern in the least effective manner possible... in order to demonstrate how useless government can be.

You know, the joke goes: "Government is broken! Elect me and I'll break it into smaller pieces".

It has a whiff of anarchy about it.

Update: More on Abbott's continuing misfortunes from Socratic Gadfly.  And the fallout from the ruling, via the Austin Chronicle.

It's far from good news for Abbott. The generous interpretation is that, as attorney general, he has been stuck with defending a piece of legislation and a funding situation. Now he is the Republican contender for governor, and so his first act in the mansion could be handing court-mandated instructions to the new legislature to create a new system and properly fund it. He may still appeal Peeple's ruling, and even if Dietz stays on the case, Abbott could also appeal any ruling to the Texas Supreme Court. But this is not necessarily the kind of issue that he wants hanging over his head during an election cycle.

On the other hand, it could well be good news for his opponent, Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth. She actually rose to prominence in Democratic circles, not through her 2013 reproductive rights filibuster, but her 2011 fight against the Shapiro-Eissler compromise. She has already called on Abbott to end the state's challenge to the lawsuits. Today she applauded Peeple's ruling, saying that "every day, Abbott is proving he's more interested in working for his political insider friends than protecting Texas public schools, and his request to remove Dietz shows just how far he'll go to protect those interests."