Again, only in Texas.
Perry told The Associated Press on Tuesday he needed just one shot from the laser-sighted pistol he sometimes carries while jogging to take down a coyote that menaced his puppy during a February run near Austin.
Perry said he will carry his .380 Ruger — loaded with hollow-point bullets — when jogging on trails because he is afraid of snakes. He’d also seen coyotes in the undeveloped area.
I personally carry a bazooka, as I don’t care for spiders.
The Meth-Lab of Democracy.
Only in Texas would increased security come with extensive clarification about what types of guns you CAN carry into the capitol building.
Under current state law, so-called “long guns” — rifles, shotguns and the like — will remain legal in the domed landmark if they are carried openly, in a non-threatening way.
And, under an exemption approved Tuesday as a part of a new security plan, Texans with a concealed-handgun license will be able to take their pistols into the statehouse as well.
The article goes on to clarify that we should all feel plenty safe as it’s only legal for legislators to carry concealed weapons into committee meetings but not into the public gallery. Oh good.
Oklahoma – making Texas look good (or at least more sane) for 103 years.
Frustrated by recent political setbacks, tea party leaders and some conservative members of the Oklahoma Legislature say they would like to create a new volunteer militia to help defend against what they believe are improper federal infringements on state sovereignty.
Tea party movement leaders say they’ve discussed the idea with several supportive lawmakers and hope to get legislation next year to recognize a new volunteer force. They say the unit would not resemble militia groups that have been raided for allegedly plotting attacks on law enforcement officers.
The Texas State Board of Education meets today to continue politicizing, I mean editing our states text book guidelines, which as one of the largest text-book purchasers in the country go on to impact other states curricula.
Since the last meeting, board member and former chair Don McLeroy — the most aggressive amender of curriculum and a self-proclaimed “religious fanatic” who believes education is “too important not to politicize” — narrowly lost the Republican primary to lobbyist Thomas Ratliff, a moderate who campaigned on a platform of depoliticizing the board. But don’t expect McLeroy, who will serve the remainder of this year, to limp out like a lame duck. Asked whether the election results would affect his plans for the social studies curriculum, he said, “Gosh no. I had some tremendous opposition, and a lot of people working against me, and I still almost won. The fact that I would change would be silly.
“The people who write about there being a tilt to the right in the curriculum never write about the tilt to the left, because they just don’t see it,” McLeroy said. “The reason why there’s so many more amendments to the social studies curriculum than to other subjects is because the balance was lacking. The populists, the progressives, the Great Society, all that stuff is from the left. … This country was founded on conservative, limited-government principles.”
The Texas Tribune has a annotated copy of the last round of amendments – including McLeroy’s attempt to replace Hip-hop as a cultural value with country music – viewable in a fancy data application here.
Update: Not surprisingly, things yesterday continued on a predictable path.
Raising our premiums was not something we wanted to do,” Angela F. Braly, president of WellPoint (parent company of Blue Cross Blue Shield), said. “But we believe this was the most prudent choice, given the rising cost of care and the problems caused by many younger and healthier policyholders dropping or reducing their coverage during tough economic times. By law, premiums must be reasonable in relationship to benefits provided, which means they need to reflect the known and anticipated costs they will cover.”
I love the way the frame it as if they’re just barely staying afloat. I’m guessing they also didn’t “want” to make close to $4 billion last year on the backs of these higher premiums.
In a letter to the White House on Monday, the top two House Republicans, Representatives John A. Boehner of Ohio and Eric Cantor of Virginia, said members of their party would be “reluctant to participate” in the meeting with Mr. Obama if the bills passed by the House and the Senate were the starting point. The American people have “soundly rejected” those bills, they said.
Really it’s getting to the point where the Republicans sound less like a political party comprising half of the government (for better or worse… you know my take), and more like a two-year-old who refuses to clean up his room.
Also for my part, I don’t recall “soundly rejecting” anything. I know I live in Texas guys, but really I don’t want to be part of your hateful little club. Next time say something along the lines of the the “The American people, the ones who didn’t loose their jobs last year in the recession and already have decent insurance have soundly rejected the idea of universal health-care (along with other principles of common decency) for their fellow Americans,” it captures your demographic a little better.
If the financial crisis has taught us anything it’s that money and greed are two powerful forces that can blind us to the path’s we’re on as a society. Government’s role here is to help apply the brakes to the invisible hand of the market, to temper it with a smattering of moral framework, with the goal of protecting and supporting those that pure capitalism would ignore (and crush). This framework grows directly from our popular electorate, which acts as an objective force in the whole government gig, making sure that no one person/citizen becomes to powerful via excessive influence or wealth – the goal being that the common man can always run for office, should he want to effect change in his country.
Sweeping aside a century-old understanding and overruling two important precedents, a bitterly divided Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections. The ruling was a vindication, the majority said, of the First Amendment’s most basic free speech principle — that the government has no business regulating political speech. The dissenters said allowing corporate money to flood the political marketplace will corrupt democracy. The 5-to-4 decision represented a sharp doctrinal shift, and it will have major political and practical consequences. Specialists in campaign finance law said they expected the decision, which also applies to labor unions and other organizations, to reshape the way elections are conducted.
Well, fuck.
It’s not that the Democrats are playing checkers and the Republicans are playing chess. It’s that the Republicans are playing chess and the Democrats are in the nurse’s office because once again they glued their balls to their thighs.”
I’m suspicious of numbers like this. To quote Twain, There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.” Peoples values tend get more conservative as they get older (I was once going to tour the country and live out of the back of my Jeep, now you’re hard to pressed to get me to sleep sans-bed for more than a single night). However…
