News Roundup

Congressman Carter said this last week at the Tom DeLay rally:

"Houston should be proud that they have the best member of Congress in America representing them.

If you want to hear it for yourself just go here, it's a decent analysis of his primary. If you don't want to listen to the whole thing just scroll to the 7:10 mark.

Common Sense has a great analysis of Leininger's AAS editorial last week, Leininger speaks. Nate's got it right. It's pretty much what I was thinking when I read it. What the doctor's saying is that if you put children in a school that is well funded, committed to education, and less crowded they will get a good education. Fully funding public education would take care of that and then there is no need for vouchers.

The Houston Chronicle has a good article today on the Republican primary races, Gloves have come off in GOP primary races:

"If Republicans are vulnerable, it is on education. Collectively, they have not been able to give us anything more than gridlock on this issue," said Greg Thielemann, a political science professor at the University of Texas at Dallas.

Grits For Breakfast has the poop on you governor's plan for more eavesdropping on the border, No border-based need to expand wiretapping:

Here's a non-solution searching for a problem: Currently wiretapping in Texas is limited to prosecuting drug trafficking and murder, so Texas Governor Rick Perry announced he wants to expand eavesdropping authority to combat border violence. But that makes no sense - aren't drug running and murder exactly the crimes we're trying to stop on the border? How much more authority could they possibly need to use wiretaps to combat smuggling rings? The whole thing seems like an odd non-sequitur - another idea promoted for show that doesn't make anyone safer.

And Greg has the analysis of why the Texas GOP, that controls every branch of the government in Texas, will not be trying to outlaw abortion anytime soon, "Phonies" Alert:

Seriously. For all the faux concern over the number of unborn children lost to abortion. Let's go back and question what it really means to be considered "pro life" shall we? I'll go out on a limb and suggest that "doing nothing" does not qualify a political party as being worth calling "pro life."

What's entirely curious is that there's a majority in the State House and State Senate who favor banning abortion in most/all situations. There's a Governor who's flaunted his desires to do the same. There's a court who, apparently, we can tell if they're pro-life based on what church they go to (hat tip: Nathan Hecht). There's every other statewide official who shares this worldview. So there's absolutely zero hurdles in the way of Rick Perry (a so-called Pro-Life Governor) getting such a bill passed.

Then, there's this quote from the Chron:

"I'm not saying we don't support a total ban. It's just not realistic at this point," said Elizabeth Graham, director of the Texas Right to Life Committee. "We would much more prefer to pass a law that saves 5,000 lives than go for something that will never be passed."

I'm sure what Mrs. Graham meant to say was "We would much more prefer to pass something that appeased a few meddlesome voters than pass something that would actually be viscerally opposed by the majority of Texans and likely cost the Texas GOP their majority."

Have they been playing politics with abortion far all these years?