Beto is in

Or will be officially, tomorrow.  Jon Tilove at the Statesman:

U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke’s political operation has sent an email to supporters Wednesday promising a “big announcement” on Friday, an almost certain sign that the El Paso Democrat will be announcing his candidacy for the U.S. Senate seat held by Republican Ted Cruz.

“Beto’s been traveling across Texas for the past four months, meeting with people in communities big and small. The energy and passion he’s seen have been inspiring. Together, we can do something really big, and really powerful for the state of Texas — and for this country,” the email read. “Congressman Beto O’Rourke has a big announcement to make on Friday.”

U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, also has been considering entering the race and promised a decision by the end of April.

“It’s no secret that Joaquin is heavily weighing a Senate run, and he will continue to have those discussions with his family, friends and supporters across Texas,” Castro’s political director, Matthew Jones, said in a statement Wednesday. “He plans to make his decision in the coming weeks.”

If he entered the race, Castro would have distinct advantages in name ID and organization over O’Rourke. But he has been considered a less likely candidate. Both O’Rourke, 44, and Castro, 42, are in their third terms in the House. O’Rourke has promised not to serve more than four terms while Castro has a potentially longer, brighter future there. He serves on the House Intelligence Committee which is investigating potential Russia ties to the Trump campaign and Trump administration.

I wouldn't care for a contested primary (Democrats need less divisiveness, not more) and would rather Beto than Joaquin, as O'Rourke is somewhat to the left of Castro.  I say 'somewhat' because Justice Democrats, another organization trying to pull the Donkeys to the left, has a graphic that shows neither man has signed on to Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All bill, so there's an opportunity to take a stand for something that Hillary Clinton said would 'never, ever happen'.  I'm also no fan of the manner in which the twins perform this Hamlet-esque rumination over their political futures -- or perhaps more accurately, the way they allow and encourage reporters and bloggers and supporters and opponents to do so.  It's a little annoying.  Be that as it may ...

O’Rourke, little known outside his district, would be a long shot in a state that remains reliably Republican. But the Trump presidency adds an element of uncertainty to political calculations everywhere in 2018, and O’Rourke’s recent bipartisan road trip with U.S. Rep. Will Hurd, R-Helotes, demonstrated a talent for winning positive notice and using social media to engage a large audience.

O’Rourke, a fluent Spanish speaker who lives on the border and says that it is the safest and best place to be, would offer a stark contrast to the politics of Cruz and Trump.

The key to victory for O'Rourke -- and not Castro -- won't be the money but the enthusiasm he is able to generate.  That, and Matt Dowd running.  Notable among his otherwise cipher-like qualities, Dowd predicted in September of 2015 that Trump would be the GOP nominee, which was a couple of months after Michael Moore did so, but was certainly a narrow limb to be perched on at that point in the 2016 cycle.  Now he wants to bid for the Senate as an indy, and that will IMO take more votes from Poop Cruz than it will either Democrat.  There is an Evan McMullin quality to Dowd that represents his greatest threat to the status quo today, and by virtue of the outcome of extremist conservative developments like the bathroom bill in the Lege, he may be able to parlay a chunk of unmeasurable anti-Trump/anti-Dan Patrick sentiment into something significant enough to tip the scales in a general election.  It would have to be at least ten percent of the vote, probably higher.

Debates between Dowd and O'Rourke would definitely not be at lowest-common-denominator intelligence level, and whether I'm right or wrong about the participants -- after all, Michael McCaul could still primary Cruz and defeat him -- a three-way race makes for some fun in 2018.

Gadfly has a good take and so does Kuff.

And starring Devin Nunes as Shemp Howard

I'm not as old as the Stooges, but I'm old enough to remember when Republicans in Congress had some dignity.  Why, they weren't all lickspittles to the president, even.

The evidence is now clear that the White House and Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, have worked together to halt what was previously billed as a sweeping investigation of Russian interference in last year’s election. “We’ve been frozen,” Jim Himes, a Democratic representative from Connecticut who is a member of the Committee, said.

The freeze started after last Monday’s hearing, where James Comey, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, revealed that the F.B.I. has been investigating possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia since last July. Comey also said that there was no evidence to support Trump’s tweets about being wiretapped.

(Yesterday) the House panel was scheduled to hear from three top officials who had served under the Obama Administration: Sally Yates, the former Deputy Attorney General, who briefly served as acting Attorney General, before being fired by President Trump; John Brennan, the former head of the C.I.A.; and James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence. But last week Nunes cancelled today’s hearing.

“The Monday hearing last week was, I’m sure, not to the White House’s liking,” said Himes. “Since Monday, I’m sorry to say, the chairman has ceased to be the chairman of an investigative committee and has been running interference for the Trump White House, cancelling hearings.”

So much for checks and balances.  How many times must the same lesson be learned?  "It's not the crime, it's the coverup".  What are you hiding (or trying to help Trump hide)?

Since then, Nunes and the White House have kicked up a cloud of peripheral issues that have distracted attention from Comey’s testimony and that of Michael Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency; Nunes and the Trump Administration have essentially shut down the investigation. Last night, Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, called for Nunes to recuse himself from the investigation. “All of this has cast such a cloud on the public perception of his impartiality that I think it would be in his interest as well as the committee’s” ...

Since last Monday’s hearing, Nunes, who was a member of the Trump transition team, has spoken repeatedly about the issue of incidental collection, the intelligence community’s term for the communications of innocent Americans that can be swept up when the N.S.A. or other agencies legally spy on a foreign target. The Russian ambassador, a legal target of surveillance, was recorded talking to Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national-security adviser, who was a victim of incidental collection.

The White House and Nunes were clearly coördinating this strategy. A few days before the hearing, Trump seemed to offer a preview of it. In an interview on Fox News, the president said that he “will be submitting things” to Nunes’s committee “very soon,” and “perhaps speaking about this next week,” adding that “you’re going to find some very interesting items coming to the forefront over the next two weeks.”

Last Monday morning, shortly before the start of the hearing, a senior White House official (said), “You’ll see the setting of the predicate. That’s the thing to watch today.” He suggested that (author Ryan Lizza) read a piece in The Hill about incidental collection. The article posited that if “Trump or his advisors were speaking directly to foreign individuals who were the target of U.S. spying during the election campaign, and the intelligence agencies recorded Trump by accident, it’s plausible that those communications would have been collected and shared amongst intelligence agencies.”

Go read that piece in The Hill.  And keep in mind two things: when Nunes ran to the White House to tell Trump this, Cheetolini felt 'somewhat vindicated' for his allegations of being wiretapped by Obama, and he went somewhere besides Mar-a-Lago to play golf last weekend.  For the first time since he was inaugurated.

The White House clearly indicated ... that it knew Nunes would highlight this issue. “It’s backdoor surveillance where it’s not just incidental, it’s systematic,” the White House official said. “Watch Nunes ...”

Sure enough, at last Monday’s hearing, Nunes asked in his opening statement, “Were the communications of officials or associates of any campaign subject to any kind of improper surveillance?” He continued, “The Intelligence Community has extremely strict procedures for handling information pertaining to any U.S. citizens who are subject even to incidental surveillance, and this committee wants to insure all surveillance activities have followed all relevant laws, rules, and regulations.” Nunes made it clear that Trump’s wiretapping claim was false, but he seemed intent on offering the President a fig leaf for the explosive claim. “It’s still possible that other surveillance activities were used against President Trump and his associates,” he insisted. The overwhelming majority of questions from Republicans at the hearing revolved around this issue.

Dunes set off these smoke bombs to protect his president at great loss to his reputation, whatever it may have been prior to his fully compromising it.  A hallmark of any Republican administration, but especially this one, is fealty.  Even if that means you fall on your sword when you are caught engaging in an obvious and perhaps criminal deception.  Like W Bush (Scooter Libby) and Reagan (Oliver North) and Nixon (Robert Bork, et. al.) before him, Trump and his ilk believe there is nothing they cannot do.  The difference -- and to be clear, this evolution began with Bush -- is that Congressional Republicans simply don't care if it breaks the law.

Read on through the rest of the developments Ryan Lizza chronicles at the first link.  It sorta feels like a constitutional crisis is coming down the tracks, particularly with a vote on a possible Supreme Court justice coming next week.

More from Jay Bookman, and the moneyshot:

Indeed, Nunes’ strange behavior, his constantly shifting stories and his seemingly panicked management style have made Trump look more guilty, even if he really isn’t. With his behavior, Nunes has also made it clear that we need an independent, nonpartisan counsel to investigate the increasingly troubling links between the Trump campaign, the Trump business empire and Russian intelligence operatives, and to give the American people a definitive account of what has happened.

[...]

It’s a clown act. And instead of dispelling doubts and suspicions about Trump’s campaign, it accentuates them. If Nunes thought that a fair and impartial investigation would clear Trump, why hasn’t he conducted that fair and impartial investigation? Why has he repeatedly acted as if the truth were dangerous?

Update: "(I)t isn’t a good sign when a leading senator from your own party says you’ve lost all credibility and mockingly compares you to Inspector Clouseau."

I'll stick with Shemp.

The Weekly Wrangle

Unlike the president and the Republican Congress, the Texas Progressive Alliance does NOT promise to repeal last week's roundup and replace it with something 'better' and 'cheaper' this week.

Off the Kuff identifies the top legislative districts to target in 2018.

Socratic Gadfly sees Greens and other left-liberals talking libertarian-style about getting rid of the Federal Reserve and offers them a reality check about it, with suggestions for proper reform, while noting its neededness.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme warns Texas Republicans on track to destroy local rule, another anti-democratic war on citizens and on voters.

It was another lousy week to be a Republican as Trumpcare went down in flames, the Russian problems flared up again, and the TXGOP started fighting with each other right out in the open. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs managed to cram all the action into one blog post, with some crow left over for the Democrats.

Neil at All People Have Value has four observations on the failure of Trumpcare.

Teddy Wilson at Rewire investigates the state's contract with the anti-abortion Heidi Group.

The Lewisville ISD superintendent testified in a federal civil trial that he did not believe a 14-year-old student was sexually assaulted, as she alleges, as reported by the Texan Journal.

Texas Leftist repeated the story told in the Texas Observer about one Texan's effort to bring living transgender into focus for members of the Texas Legislature.

Texas Vox has the bulletin regarding the public hearing on the toxic chemical emergency alert system, tomorrow at the Lege.

jobsanger took note of Politifact's report that millions of guns have been sold in the US without a background check.

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More news and blog posts from across the Lone Star State!

Via the Houston Chronicle, Energy Secretary Rick Perry somehow found time in his busy schedule to weigh in on the Texas A&M student body presidential election.

The San Antonio Express News reports that plans for a fracking sand mine in Atascosa County -- near the site of one of the state's historic battlefields, and over the objections of residents -- are moving ahead.

Edinburg Politics reports on Rep. Terry Canales' bill in the Lege that would reform the practice of jailing Texans who cannot pay fines for petty offenses.

The Austin Monitor took pictures of the new MetroRail trains arriving (by tractor trailer) in the capital city, and Streetsblog highlights five good transportation bills in the Lege.

Save Buffalo Bayou sees the private organization in charge of Houston's Memorial Park still determined to make some wrong-headed decisions about the fate of the bayou.

Jennifer Mercieca identifies the real harm of Trump's conspiracy theories.

Michael Li shows what a redrawn CD27 might look like.

Beyond Bones provides a road trip map from spring breaks of yore.

Juanita Jean gets in one last cackle over the Trumpcare debacle.

And congratulations to Somervell County Salon, celebrating her twelfth blogging anniversary.

Sunday "Death of a Salesman" Funnies