Facecrooks

Is Facebook an accomplice, though, or just the getaway car?  Do we prosecute the guns used in a shooting ... or do we regulate them more strongly so that the "bad guys" can't get them?

The news keeps pouring in about the illegal data operations of the firm Cambridge Analytica, which used a Facebook personality quiz app called “thisisyourdigitallife” to mine the data of millions of users, most of whom never actually used the app. The mined data went on to be used by Republican campaigns in 2016.

The Washington Post reported Tuesday that a large part of the effort to mine data on American voters was overseen by Steve Bannon, the former Breitbart executive chairman and Trump strategist who recently utterly failed to lead a radical right-wing insurgency in the Republican party.

Bannon used Cambridge to test phrases like “drain the swamp” used in the campaign of Donald Trump and the phrase “deep state,” which became the name of the all-consuming right-wing conspiracy theory over the past year. These phrases were tested by Bannon and Cambridge more than three years before they entered the popular political discussion.

Cambridge was part of Bannon’s effort to build a right-wing populist machine on the right. But a former research director and founding force of Cambridge Analytica, Chris Wylie, made the depth of this connection apparent Tuesday in an interview with the Post. Wylie said that Bannon approved the $1 million operation to acquire Facebook profiles and other data in 2014.

Wylie’s account was one of several connected to Cambridge Analytica that Facebook suspended for its failure to comply with destroying the ill-gotten user data.

There are certainly some First Amendment issues at stake: people willingly, if not entirely wittingly, hand over their personal information, which becomes Facebook's property virtually forever, even if you delete your account.  Nefarious intentions of Facebook or those who purchase its data aside (a massive 'if'), has Mark Zuckerburg simply lost control of his creation, as with Dr. Frankenstein?  Should we let the invisible hand of the free market -- that would be us, since we're the merchandise and not the customer -- slap the crap out of this kid (more harshly than a $35 billion 'market correction', that is)?

How to use Facebook while giving it the minimum amount of personal data

How to delete Facebook

Maybe we should just praise Jeebus that the conversation has finally (maybe) turned away from "the Rushins hacked thuh elekshun"...

Here's your reading.

-- From the end of the GritPost link (excerpt at top):

The gravity of the legal and ethical questions about Cambridge’s actions might overshadow the practical consideration: did it even work? It’s unclear if there was much actually gained from the firestorm-generating and dubious data mining operation, with Trump digital director Brad Parscale saying the data wasn’t actually useful.

Parscale was recently tapped to run Trump's 2020 re-election campaign.  If there is one; for a variety of reasons I have my doubts as to whether that happens.

-- Washington Monthly (link from excerpt below within):

Here’s the part that stood out to me:

The company says their work with data and research allowed Mr Trump to win with a narrow margin of “40,000 votes” in three states providing victory in the electoral college system, despite losing the popular vote by more than 3 million votes.

That is likely a reference to their efforts at voter suppression among Clinton supporters in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. I suspect we’ll be hearing more about that story at some point.

-- Facebook and all of us are not alone on this Titanic disaster, as we know.  Our data, everywhere it is stored online, is being hacked, leaked, misused, etc. on a daily basis by every kind of bad actor.

"It’s not just the Cambridge Analytica debacle. Ethics don’t scale," Paul Ford writes in Bloomberg Businessweek's cover story.

The big picture: "What’s been unfolding for a while now is a rolling catastrophe so obvious we forget it’s happening. Private data are spilling out of banks, credit-rating providers, email providers, and social networks and ending up everywhere."

"So this is an era of breaches and violations and stolen identities. Big companies can react nimbly when they fear regulation is actually on the horizon — for example, Google, Facebook, and Twitter have agreed to share data with researchers who are tracking disinformation, the result of a European Union commission on fake news."

"But for the most part we’re dealing with global entities that own the means whereby politicians garner votes, have vast access to capital to fund lobbying efforts, and are constitutionally certain of their own moral cause."

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance takes alarmed note this morning of the fourth bombing in the minority communities of Austin, and wonders when President Trump might Tweet about them.

Here's the blog post and news roundup from last week.

Covering his ethnic base, Beto O'Rourke appeared on Bill Maher's HBO show the night before Saint Patrick's Day, and both men agreed that Ted Cruz is a giant asshole.  Relative to that ...



... Progress Texas reveals its "Humans Against Ted Cruz" website and swag.

Brains and Eggs completed his analysis of the state legislative and Harris County results, with some predictions for the May runoffs and the November general election.  He also noted the start of the ballot access petition-gathering effort for the Texas Green Party.

Off the Kuff examined the relationship between primary turnout and victory in November, Greg Jefferson at the San Antonio Current reviewed some of the many victories won by women in the primaries, and Bonddad poured a little cold water on Democratic midterm enthusiasm.

Stephen Young at the Dallas Observer explains how just two votes in the Texas Senate -- flipping the seats of Konni Burton (SD-10, D challenger Beverly Powell), Don Huffines (SD-16, D challenger Nathan Johnson) or Joan Huffman (SD-17, D challenger either Rita Lucido or Fran Watson, determined in May runoff) would tip the balance of power.

The fates of the three Republican incumbents in those races ... won't swing the partisan balance of the chamber. If all three keep their jobs, Republicans will have the majority of seats. Same goes if voters decide to remove all three. If any of the three GOP incumbents loses, however, that could make a dramatic difference in the ability of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick to set the agenda for the Senate, which he presides over as president.

Burton, Huffman and Huffines are the most vulnerable Republicans up for re-election to the Senate ... Huffman and Huffines both represent districts that voted for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election. 

A Fifth Circuit panel of three judges upheld most of the sanctuary cities law, and RG Ratcliffe at Texas Monthly interprets that as unfavorable for the plaintiffs challenging its legality.

Texas Freedom Network sees that the LGBTQ community -- despite US Supreme Court rulings upholding their freedom to marry -- is still forced to fight the state of Texas for those rights.

A federal lawsuit filed by Ty Clevenger at Lawflog seeks FBJ and DOJ records relating to the murder of DNC employee Seth Rich.

Grits for Breakfast blogs about the culture of cover-up at the TDJC.

After yet another chemical plant explosion, this time in Cresson (outside Fort Worth), Texas Vox wonders again why there is no statewide chemical emergency alert system in place.  It would be as simple as duplicating existing weather or Amber Alerts for missing children/seniors.

With the reported sale of the Austin American-Statesman, SocraticGadfly offers up a game of post-primary Texas mainstream media bingo.

In other media news, San Antonio-based iHeartMedia, once known as Clear Channel Communications before a bewildering swirl of spinoffs and rebranding (but still nominally controlled by the in-laws of Cong. Michael McCaul) declared bankruptcy due to crushing debt and weak radio advertising revenue projections.  Texas Standard reported that their problems began ten years ago, in a leveraged buyout engineered by Bain Capital, of Mitt Romney repute.

The Lewisville City Council is expected to voice support for the Texas Central Railway, the Dallas-to-Houston bullet train project, and other items in its meeting tonight, reports the Texan Journal.

David Collins, an IT guy, blogs about the other IT (inverted totalitarianism).

Gus Bova at the Texas Observer introduces the socialist metalhead stumping for single-payer.

In rare bipartisan agreement, Houstonia notes that the Right and the Left are both up in arms about a puppy that died in an overhead bin on a United Airlines flight.

Leah Binkovitz at the Urban Edge points to a new study out of Houston that suggests that the benefits of homeownership are also ensnared in a discriminatory appraisal process that perpetuates racial inequality.

Houston Justice covered the protest at the Texas Education Association's Austin headquarters of the proposed plans to either privatize or close several of Houston's historic minority high schools, and Raise Your Hand Texas reported from the recent public school finance commission hearing.

As always, Neil at All People Have Value attended the weekly John Cornyn Houston office protest.

And Harry Hamid, at a funeral for a friend, points out that people live on in our stories about them.

Sunday Funnies

Harris County results, projections for runoffs, and November

This will be the last of these until shortly before May 22 (the primary runoff election date).  And what a relief.  As I've heard it said, the nation's third-largest county in terms of population has a civil and criminal court system larger than several small countries, and getting through the primary ballot -- where some civil and judicial races are left vacant -- is no small feat for the voter.

Sidebar: In the '90's I was a poll worker at a Republican primary voting location in River Oaks -- this was when ballots were still paper, and voter rolls were six pages of varying colors that the clerks had to separate into piles after the poll closed - and one overly-bejeweled woman turned around from the counter where she was marking her ballot and said with an indignant tone: "Why can't I just vote a straight Republican ticket?!"  I carefully explained that all the folks running were Republicans, and that she needed to pick her favorite.  For some reason this did not mollify her.

It's extremely difficult to make a determination beyond party affiliation about whom to select for any particular bench without knowing much about the attorneys running.  Because of the length of the ballot, many voters quit early, resulting in a high number of "undervotes", or races in which the voter picks no one running.  There's always a small -- usually tiny, in fact -- number of "overvotes", or persons selected in more than one race, which happens not on an e-Slate but on a paper 'absentee' or mail-in ballot, mostly used these days by non-ambulatory seniors.

So if you choose to examine the Harris County Democratic primary final results with me -- this is not the canvass, which certifies the election -- you can click on harrisvotes.com, then 'election results', then pick the Democratic primary from the pull-down menu and then your format (I use the .pdf and zoom in to fill my screen because it's easier on my eyes).  You can follow these results as they update live on election night, but Stan Stanart is very slow to update them, thus the #FireStanStanart hashtag on Twitter.  I've previously blogged that his predecessor, Beverly Kaufman, had this process down to a science, and Stanart has never been able to replicate her efficiency.

I've already blogged statewide and Congressional races in two parts, so what you're seeing from page 1 to the bottom of page 8 are the numbers on how those candidates performed in Harris County only; some Congressional districts are entirely within the county, some are not.  I consult the Texas Secretary of State's office for those multi-county contests, which posts statewide tallies, which are transmitted to them by county clerks and election administrators across the state on election night.

Notice that the last two statewide races, at the bottom of page 8, for Presiding Judge of the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals -- Maria T. (Terri) Jackson -- and Judge, Place 7, of the CCA (Ramona Franklin) had an undervote of nearly 38,000, against about 138K cast, or 17%.  Compare that to the undervote in the US Senate race: under 11,000 versus 156.6K, or 6.44%.  Eighteen thousand Democratic voters in Harris County have already stopped voting.  This premise isn't absolute; some people vote just for the judge, or state rep, or Congress person they know, or like, or for that matter against one they don't.  Generally speaking in a primary election, the top races are known to the voters and many downballot candidates aren't, and a couple of hours of research prior to, and a good 15-20 minutes casting their ballot -- not including time spent waiting on queue -- isn't something they have budgeted time for.

Skip on with me to page 17, but note as you do -- if you're clicking page by page -- the very small number of votes and undervotes associated with the state representative races.  All politics is local, and there's the proof.  Again as example, Hubert Vo (HD 149) had 427 undervotes, or a bit over 10% of the 3,777 cast in his race.   But Gordon Goodman, the first countywide judicial on the ballot after all those other ballot lines, was almost double that as a percentage (135.5K voted, 31.9K didn't; a 19% undervote.  Compare to Jackson and Franklin above).

And so it goes.  As with everybody else who voted, made predictions about outcomes, and so forth, I won a few and lost a few.  Notable outcomes included ...

District Judge, 185th: Jason Luong, who squeaked past Brennen Dunn by around 1300 votes out of 138.6K cast, or 50.48-49.52.  There were 28,500 undervotes (and 64 overvotes).  Virtually every card, slate, blogger, person I talked to, etc. mentioned Luong as best or most qualified, so I was surprised the race was this close.  This is where you start to wonder if the first position on the ballot, not to mention the easiest name for people to understand, is worth something at the polls.  A topic to be explored in a subsequent post.

District Judge, 189th: Scott Dollinger prevailed over my choice, Fred Cook, by slightly more than 2500 votes, very close to the same total and undervote.  Dollinger seemed to have the higher online and offline profile to me.

Again, because you don't have much to go on in selecting who might be best for these benches, it really comes down to a handful of subjective factors for many -- I would say most -- voters.  Is this a problem for our judicial system, this partisan election of our judges?  It's probably better than letting the governor pick them, which is what happens now when there's a vacancy.

My point made and my future blogging teased, click on to page 32, where you'll find the beginning of the Harris County executive contests.

County Judge: Lina Hidalgo.  I've written from early on that she was the best choice for Democrats; when she briefly had a primary opponent, to when David Collins found her worthy (Collins himself was a county judge candidate in 2014, representing Harris County Greens, and earned 16.6% of the vote when the Democrat abruptly quit and endorsed incumbent Ed Emmett).  Hidalgo is going to run vigorously against Emmett, who has a couple of strikes against him with Harris County Republicans: one being he's a moderate in a county full of right-wing freaks; two being his efforts to rehabilitate the Astrodome into something useful.

Is that enough for the HCRP to abandon him in November?  I sure am excited to find out.  Hidalgo is going to make Harvey's devastation in the west end of Harris County a campaign topic.  In particular, the horrendous decision to allow developers to build homes in the Addicks and Barker Cypress floodplains (that began in the Eighties, long preceding Emmett's tenure), the subsequent failure of the reservoirs coming under the deluge, and most specifically the decision to release water from those dams to relieve the pressure behind them that flooded out tens of thousands of Houstonians.  Lawsuits to that effect are pending.  Quick digression: for you legal eagles, the argument is related to inverse condemnation rather than negligence.  But read this from the Houston Press.

... in 1996 a report from engineers with the Harris County Flood Control District found that Harris County's reservoir system was not cutting it, a problem that put thousands of home in jeopardy. At that time the proposed solution was a $400 million underground system that would pipe water from the reservoirs to the Houston Ship Channel. However, the advice was never heeded and the report was forgotten.

"My embarrassment is that I knew enough that this was going to happen," Arthur Story, the then-head of Flood Control, told the Dallas Morning News. "And I was not smart enough, bold enough to fight the system, the politics, and stop it."

Hidalgo received 10,000 more votes than Emmett did last Tuesday.  Bad pun: it will still take a perfect storm to oust the incumbent.  Not just a large number of sour conservatives who, at the very least, stand away from him by undervoting the race or voting for the Libertarian Eric Gatlin, but including a wave of Latin@ voters showing up in the fall.

Skip to page 40 for ...

District Clerk (runoff): Marilyn Burgess (49.23%) versus Roslyn "Rozzy" Shorter (23.42%).  The most qualified candidate to take on incumbent Republican Chris Daniel in the fall is Burgess.  Shorter has been my SDEC representative and run for a few other offices, but really doesn't have enough experience to handle the district clerk's responsibilities.

County Clerk (runoff): Diane Trautman (44%) and Gayle Young Mitchell (almost 41%) split what was left after Nat West, also my Senate District chair, came in third with 15%.  Democrats MUST fire Stan Stanart, and I think that can only get done by nominating the very capable Dr. Trautman.

County Treasurer (runoff):  Dylan Osborne (38%) against Cosme Garcia (almost 37%).  Nile Copeland ran third with 25% and just under 35K votes.  There were 29,000 undervotes.  I voted for Garcia and will do so again in May.  Probably only Garcia stands a chance to defeat the incumbent -- also a two-time loser for Houston mayor -- Orlando Sanchez, in a test of which Latino is most popular.  Democratic candidates in the past have run on a campaign of abolishing the office (to no traction from Republican voters).

Democratic Party County Chair: Lillie Schechter ran unopposed; almost 38,000 voters, or 22.65% of the total, either didn't make it all the way to bottom of the ballot ... or declined to vote for her, like me (scroll all the way to the end here for the reasons why I didn't).  I don't see that there was any backlash against her (appearance of) ethical impropriety in those undervotes; the numbers were about the same as -- even less than -- some of the judicial races above her line, including statewide judicials Jackson and Franklin mentioned above, so there's that.

I may profile some of the GOP primary runoff races if anybody cares to read my take on them, so share your thoughts about that, and anything else, in the comments.

Update (3/24):  Aubrey Taylor has some profiles of of GOP and Democratic runoff participants.  Taylor discloses that he is no longer making endorsements, but still takes ads that describe the purchasers as "duly qualified" -- see the ones from Scott Dollinger (D), Linda Dunson (D), Adrian Garcia (D), Loyd Wright (R), Latosha Lewis Payne (D), and others, in the right hand column.  There is nothing that I can glean that these candidates have done (from Taylor's posting) that demonstrates how or why these folks are "duly qualified" beyond their purchase of the advertisement on his blog and his newsletter.  Since almost all of them are judicial candidates, this re-emphasizes the problems mentioned above that I have with how we elect our judges.

Texas Greens ready to begin ballot access work

The first step -- for anyone who did not vote last Tuesday -- is to find your precinct nominating convention, consolidated in the counties listed here across the state, and happening this evening.

Organizing this duty belonged to David Collins until recently, but he got mad and quit because the Harris County Greens finally succeeded in clearing out their dead wood.  You can pick up petition forms at the convention, or you can print them from the link here, or below.

This petition sheet is your tool for expanding and enhancing democracy in Texas. Make multiple copies (legal size!) of page 1. Read the instructions on page 2 very carefully. Talk to friends, relatives, and total strangers about its importance. If they are eligible to sign, convince them to sign.

In order to be valid, a signature must be gathered in the 75 days, beginning March 14th, from:

• a registered Texas voter
• who did not vote in any primary election this year
• and did not sign any other party's petition or attend any other party's conventions.

Those who gather signatures need not meet these criteria. They need only be of legal age to sign their petition sheets. Each petition sheet has space for 10 signatures. A signature line contains places for the voter's full name, street address, home county, birthdate, and (optionally) voter registration number. Yes, the birthdate is required for verification.

All petition sheets submitted to the state must be signed by the signature collector in the presence of a Notary Public. The actual deadline for submitting petition sheets to the Secretary of State's office is the Tuesday following Memorial Day, or May 29, 2018.

For more detailed information about the petition drive, see this page at txgreens.org.

Candidly, if I knew a week -- more like two -- ago what I know today, I would not have voted in the Democratic primary, and instead helped the Greens try to get on the ballot.  The factors for that change of heart include:

-- Bernadine Williams' H-Town takeover of the Greens.  After we -- she, I, others -- failed to do so a year ago, I didn't think it could be done this year.  I was wrong.

-- The extraordinarily shabby treatment of progressive candidates by the Texas Democratic establishment.  Two examples, one from this Truthout piece regarding Sema Hernandez ...

... The Texas Democratic Party push backed against Sema Hernandez, a Bernie Sanders-inspired progressive activist challenging O'Rourke for the nomination.

"When I arrived to Texas Democratic Party headquarters in December 2017, I was asked if I was sure I wanted to run because there was already two other people in the race," she said.

When Hernandez paid in cash the $5,000 fee to be put on the ballot for the Democratic primary, she said that the Democratic Party official who accepted the fee jokingly asked if it was drug money. The Texas Democratic Party did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

... and the other, this reply to Tom Wakely on Twitter.

Because running from the left worked so well for you.

— Notorious RKGM (@PaggieVixen) March 12, 2018

Hover your mouse over "Notorious RKGM", or click on her name, and take note that she appears to identify herself as a Tarrant County Democratic Party official.  What did I just blog the other day about Tarrant County Democrats (scroll to CD-12, Vanessa Adia).

-- And then there's that whole nasty business regarding the DCCC and Laura Moser that I won't rehash at this time.

I'm ready to #DemExit again.  Sure didn't take long, did it?  There are some cold, hard realities associated with this circumstance and the effort needed to accomplish it.

Let's be honest about this: Given the political climate and the current state of the Green Party in Texas, the prognosis for success in 2018 is not great. GPTX has undertaken five ballot access drives. It was successful in 2000 and 2010, but fell short in 2004, '06, and '08.

Even in a state where 85% of voters skip the primaries, finding willing signatories can be difficult. People who desperately want a third option on the ballot may still have trouble thinking beyond the two-party paradigm. They may also be reluctant to give anybody their addresses for fear of being sold to mailing lists.

Typically, the number of signatures gathered should exceed the requirement by 50%. Historically, about one-third of signatures collected in these drives do not satisfy all the criteria.

Even if the Greens get their ballot line back, at least one candidate must top 5% to keep the party going in 2020. However, difficult though it may be ...

... with enough volunteers and enough enthusiasm, this is entirely feasible!

The numbers are daunting.

In order to qualify (for ballot access), the Green Party of Texas must collect 47,183 verified signatures, equal to 1% of the total votes cast in the last (2014) gubernatorial election, from registered voters who did NOT cast a ballot in either primary election within a 75-day period beginning March 14th ...

If you can do something more than blog -- like me -- in helping the Texas Greens get back on the November ballot, it will be worth it to send a message to these toxic neoliberals that their party cannot, will not win a goddamn thing if they choose to keep shitting on the FDR/Bernie Sanders wing of the Donkey Party.  Twenty-sixteen's lesson was not learned, so we're gonna hafta rub these Blue Dogs' noses in their own shit again.  Maybe they'll get it in time for 2020.

Once more, consolidated precinct conventions in these counties tonight, 7p.m.:

Bell County - Killeen Fire Station #1, 3800 Westcliff Road, Killeen, TX 76543
Bexar County - Bill Miller's Restaurant, 1004 San Pedro, San Antonio TX
Collin County - Market Place, 6100 Eldorado Pkwy, McKinney, Texas 75070
Denton County - Agua Dulce Mexican Kitchen, 115 S Elm St, Denton, TX 76201
Harris County - Havens Center, 1827 W. Alabama, Houston, TX 77098
Tarrant County - Root's CoffeeHouse, 9101 Boulevard 26, North Richland Hills, TX 76180
Travis County - Green Party Space, 1105 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78741

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance didn't have a vote in the Bracketville primary, but is picking some favorites anyway.  It's not just NCAA tourney week; it's also spring break, and there's even baseball in Florida.  What a time to be alive.

Here's the progressive blog post and lefty news roundup from last week's whirlwind of primary elections and the aftermath.

Stephen Young at the Dallas Observer thinks the biggest election in Texas is next January, and that perhaps a hundred or so Republicans may be the only ones voting in it.  In that vein, the Lewisville Texan Journal says that area state Rep. Tan Parker has thrown his hat into the ring for Speaker of the Texas House, joining extremist Phil King on the far right side of the GOP caucus, and in opposition to the more moderate Rep. John Zerwas.

Three TPA bloggers offered their post-primary thoughts: Off the Kuff, Socratic Gadfly (the Senate and gubernatorial races), and Neil at All People Have Value (focusing on Harris County).

Grits for Breakfast analyzed Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and county district attorney primary outcomes, and DBC Green Blog saw mixed results for progressives in the Democratic primary.

Ted at jobsanger doesn't believe that Elizabeth Warren isn't running for president in 2020, and is carrying a torch for her in hopes she will stop a repeat of 'Bernie's fiasco'.  Now that's what you call a sore loser.

While Ted sucked on his lemon, Sanders came to Texas and spoke at South by Southwest, at Trinity University in San Antonio (the Current and the Rivard Report were there), and in Lubbock, accompanied by Our Revolution chief Nina Turner and political satirist Jim Hightower.  It was a  rousing experience for listeners at all three locations.



The Rivard Report also watched as the Bexar County district attorney's race -- with incumbent Nico LaHood moved to the sidelines -- shifted into a more civil phase.

The Hayride, a conservative website devoted to Southern politics and culture, went to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo (aside to Bethany Blankley: they're trying to rebrand -- har har -- with a corporate name) and videotaped the animal rights activists protesting the treatment of the horses, steer, calves, and mutton being terrorized by rednecks.

The Texas Tribune chose to devalue the 23.7% of the vote Democratic US Senate candidate Sema Hernandez received last Tuesday, alleging that many of those votes were due to her surname.  Meanwhile, Vox covered the "raging controversy" of Rafael Cruz making fun of Robert O'Rourke's nickname, without the slightest hint of irony (or implied racism).  And Truthout reported on Hernandez's filing experience.

"When I arrived to Texas Democratic Party headquarters in December 2017, I was asked if I was sure I wanted to run because there was already two other people in the race," she said.

When Hernandez paid in cash the $5,000 fee to be put on the ballot for the Democratic primary, she said that the Democratic Party official who accepted the fee jokingly asked if it was drug money. The Texas Democratic Party did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

With respect to O'Rourke's 'problem' in South Texas, Stace at Dos Centavos doesn't think he has one.  And he also addressed the topic of Latin@s on the ballot (or rather, people with Latin@ surnames).

In Tarrant County, the Texas Standard reports on a state district judge who ordered stun belts to be attached to an uncooperative defendant in his courtroom.  That defendant has subsequently been granted a new trial.  But the question -- as with the unprofessional conduct of Harris County Judge Michael McSpadden -- remains: when defendants are pre-judged too harshly, or mistreated in court ... who polices the judges?

A federal lawsuit filed in Amarillo charges that the city is forcing homeless persons out of their gathering place on the outskirts of town and into shelters against their will, according to Christopher Collins at the Texas Observer.

Zachery Taylor sees a trade war as a massacre for the middle class.

The Rag Blog advanced the International Women's Day Music Fest in Austin last Thursday.

And Texas Vox collected signatures on an open letter to Mayor Sylvester Turner of Houston, requesting partnership in the battle against pollution and climate change.