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(Sorry, Momma, but I couldn’t help myself.  I know I have backsliding blisters on my butt, but sometimes you just gotta call them how you see them.  I promise not to say anything to embarrass you for at least the next hour.)

FreedomWorks, chaired by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas, continues to make the case for state House Republicans to dump incumbent Speaker Joe Straus, R- San Antonio.

The group continues to communicate with its 43,000 Texas members via e-mail, and Armey has also called GOP House members.

“This is a real opportunity for us and for the Tea Party movement and conservatives given this mandate,” says FreedomWorks spokesman Brendan Steinhauser. The Washington, D.C. based group promotes limited government, less taxes and more freedom.

FreedomWorks has not spent much money, Steinhauser said, noting “it doesn’t cost a lot to spread the word.”

“Nope,” Juanita says, “it doesn’t cost hardly a thing to make Breathing While Jewish illegal.”

“Why Dick Armey is not in a courtroom awaiting sentencing is totally beyond me,” she admits.

“I do not know why they continue to say ‘Dick Armey of Texas.’  He’s not even registered to vote here anymore.  We threw his butt outta Texas, but he keeps sneaking back across the border.”

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Texas Democratic State Rep Raymond Raymond, one of Juanita’s personal favorites, is holding some Republican feet to the fire this legislative session.

Richard Raymond: An Honest Man

Republican leaders in the Texas Legislature have already declared 2011 a no-new-taxes legislative session. With that in mind, one Democratic lawmaker wants to make sure his House colleagues are using the right definition of the word “tax.”

State Rep. Richard Peña Raymond, D-Laredo, plans to file a constitutional proposition that would classify fees, surcharges and other revenue-generating measures as taxes. With the state facing an estimated $15 billion to $28 billion budget shortfall, Raymond expects that lawmakers will look to those money-making methods to help close the gap. “Before you go starting to double or triple or quadruple what somebody pays for a driver’s license, for a birth certificate, for a hunting license,” he says, “I think we need to be honest with the people and call them taxes.”

“Republicans are trying to backdoor these taxes,” Juanita said.  “I think the poet Sir Paul McCartney said it best.”

She came in through the bathroom window
Protected by a silver spoon
But now she sucks her thumb and wanders
By the banks of her own lagoon

“Raymond is just making sure that Republicans have to remove their silver spoon and suck their thumbs before raising taxes the secret way,” Juanita smiles.

If you are inclined to agree with Richard Raymond that you can call a tax a fee, but it’s still a tax and Republicans need to get some honesty on, you can call his office at (512) 463-0558 and let them know you approve of his “Honesty in Taxation” constitutional amendment.

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I’m gonna miss Jeff and Hazel’s Baby Boy.  Don Meredith was a lot of what’s good about Texas.

We’re gonna miss him.

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The Texas Lege only meets for three months every two years.  That’s plenty enough.

During those three months, no man, woman, child or sheep is safe in Texas.  One thing you can be sure of:  somebody is gonna get screwed.  It’s highly likely it’s gonna be you.

Texas had a corrupt and semi-insane Speaker of the House for damn near a decade named Tom Craddick.  Last session, Democrats joined with a handful of Republicans who have actually read the Constitution and elected Republican Joe Strauss as Speaker.  By all accounts, he did a good job.

“We cannot be having that,” Juanita grins.  “Doing a good job is certainly outside the Republican Party Platform.”

So Republicans, fresh from their victory of electing some of the inmates at the Mental Health Institute to the State Lege, have decided that Strauss has got to go.

There searched far and wide for some dirt on Strauss they could throw at him so they could elect one of the inmates as Speaker.  This is the best they could do.  Strauss is a Jew.

“By the looks of things, you’d think he was a drug pushing, unwed mother on welfare, crack ho, agenda toting homosexual, public school supporting, abortion doctor who once voted Democratic while driving an American made car,” Juanita reports.  “They don’t like him because he’s not a Christian and these are people who have levels of Christian.  I mean, they don’t even count Episcopalians as real Christians, and they are highly suspect of Methodists.  Unitarians are going to hell and taking Catholics with them.  That’s their attitude.”

“He’s just Jewish.  That’s not against the law.  Even in Texas,” she exclaims.  “Okay, maybe in Lubbock.  You never know about Lubbock.”

So, you’re in for a real treat.  The Texas Lege is going to be called into session the day after the Tom DeLay sentencing hearing. It’s gonna be fireworks at both places.  Juanita loves fireworks.  And hullabaloo.  She’s real big on hullabaloo.

“God willing and the creek don’t rise, we’ll be on the scene for both of them,” Juanita smiles.

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After Juanita made hotel reservations to go see the Tom DeLay sentencing hearing, DeLay’s attorney suddenly remembered that he had other plans that day.  Juanita canceled her reservations and called off the party planned for the night before.

We now have a new date.  It’s gonna happen on Monday, January 10th.  “It’s nice that it’s a Monday so you only have to call in sick and hungover for one day of work,” she says cheerfully.

Juanita will soon announce major plans for the party the night before in Austin, Texas, so go ahead and make your airplane and hotel reservations.

There are abundant theories about why the date was moved.  The most popular one is that Delay knows he is going to jail for at least 10 years, which means he has to go to jail while appealing the verdict.  So, he wanted to go after Christmas so he could smoke some big ole cigars and announce, ‘I am the Texas Prison System’ to celebrate the birth of Little Baby Jesus at a fancy restaurant where someone else is picking up the bill.

Another theory is that he’s having trouble finding character references.  Apparently, Newt won’t do it.

The most vicious one is that there’s only one foster family left at his much touted DeLay Foundation Rio Bend community of 8 expensive houses that influence peddlers paid for and  Tom wanted to personally kick them out, too, on Christmas Eve.  Just because he can.

Listen up people: Rick Perry cannot pardon him.   First  of all, in Texas a Governor cannot commute a sentence.  To even cut his sentence time, they have to have the recommendation of the DA, the judge, the sheriff, the Board of Pardons and Paroles, and six members of the Baptist church.  (Okay, so I made up the Baptist church part.  So, sue me.)  Additionally, a person cannot be pardoned at all until they’ve exhausted all their appeals.

Bubba, who thinks about these kinds of things more than average, thinks the judge has signaled to Delay’s lawyers that it’s gonna be 10 years or more so they might want to sit down with the DA and work out a deal to avoid all the appeals while Tom sits in the pokey.  Juanita disagrees with that possibility  because Tom can never, ever, no way, no how, admit he did anything wrong.  Bubba counters that Delay will simply say, “I am totally innocent but I am doing this to save my family the burden of the appeals process.”  Juanita admits that’s a possibility because Tom loves being a martyr.

“I know he named his book No Retreat No Surrender, but those are the two things he’s done best,” Juanita admits.

“And let me say something,” Juanita requests.  “There are those who say that I’m being mean; that I’m kicking man when he’s down and I shouldn’t do that.  They are right.  They are absolutely right.  And I almost feel bad about it.  Almost.”

“When Tom DeLay acknowledges that selling out democracy and his constituents was wrong, when he seeks redemption and salvation for the evil he has done and the people he has hurt, it’s over for me.  I will feel sorry for him and I will leave him alone.  I will even put money in his commissary fund.  I will never say another bad word about him,” she promises.  “But, until then, he remains the biggest hypocrite in Texas.”