Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton is a man living on the edge.  Odds are pretty good that he’s gonna be convicted of felony stealing-other-people’s-money.  But, far be in from Ken to stay quiet.

Paxton Mug Shot

He’s also a big giant muddy nasty piece of poopie del pollo.

He was charged with contempt of court because he refused to follow a judicial order to list same-gender spouses on death certificates.  But when the hearing that could land him in jail for contempt got close, he backed down.

Wednesday’s contempt of court hearing for Attorney General Ken Paxton and a state health official was canceled Monday after state officials agreed to allow death certificates to acknowledge same-sex marriages, a lawyer involved in the case said.

And to keep the wacko GOP base from chewing his butt for backing down, he immediately went on the attack.

Female employees of religious nonprofits should not be given insurance coverage for birth control if their employers object to certain contraceptives on religious grounds, according to a brief filed at the U.S. Supreme Court by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

I want you to think about this.  The Baptists are against abortion and contraceptives.  How the hell do they get any woman to work for them when the women are all barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen.  But, maybe that’s the whole point here, ya know?

Thanks to S Gray for the heads up.

Well, well, well, it looks like Cowboy Rick is hanging up his spurs.

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s campaign team in South Carolina is no longer being paid by his presidential campaign, National Journal has learned.

It is not clear if or when paychecks will start backing up for Perry’s team in South Carolina. Dawson said that Perry staffers in the state “have been paid up to two weeks ago.”

The rich folks in South Carolina say they will continue to campaign for him, but he just didn’t raise enough money to keep paid staffers there.

Perry has struggled in his repeat bid for president in 2016. He raised a meager $1.1 million in the second quarter and his campaign will depend almost entirely on his far better-funded super PAC. Notably, Perry also missed the main debate stage last week, despite a weeks-long push of television ads by his super PAC in Iowa.

Anybody want to guess when Rick will be coming home?  I give him another 45 days of sliding on bad momentum and because he really doesn’t know how to do anything else.

Thanks to Alfredo over at the Dairy Queen for the heads up.

Well, it seems like Sam Brownback has more to worry about than his bully brother in Kansas.

Now he’s got to worry about people who can do math.

Beth Clarkson

Wichita State University’s Beth Clarkson (who is also chief statistician of WSU’s National Institute for Aviation Research) discovered “odd patterns” in Kansas electoral voting records, so she requested public docs to help her get to the bottom of things — requests that state officials ignored, dodged, and stalled.

Professor Clarkson is asking to see the paper tapes from the voting machines.  They do not tell how someone voted, but “merely timestamped votes with associated metadata.”

No can do, says Kansas.  The reason?

Because the software is proprietary, even elections officials can’t examine it and postelection audits can’t be done, according to Pamela Smith, president of Verified Voting Foundation, a nonprofit agency whose mission is to safeguard elections in the digital age.

Okay, so we privatize elections and end up with private elections.

And if you didn’t click the link about Brownback’s brother, you missed some of the best purple prose I’ve ever read.

Adversaries say he has woven a liquor-infused tapestry of fear colored by intimidation, abuse and lies. The saga features stalking, death threats, trespassing, drive-by gunfire, massive explosions, cattle theft, loan defaults, hit-and-run driving and marital strife. Linn County Sheriff’s Department files bulge with complaints about him.

That’s not  dude you’d want to mess with.

Thanks to Rick and Craig for the heads up.

Preachersplainin’ it.

Dr. Craig Conner, senior pastor of the First Baptist Church of Panama City, threatened to stop paying taxes at the risk of being sentenced to jail if the federal government did not defund Planned Parenthood.

Look, Preacher, here’s the deal. Go to jail. Mosey on over there. It’s easy to talk big when your church doesn’t pay taxes and the fancy-pants home you live in is owned by the church as is your car and probably your barbeque pit so no taxes are paid on that either.

But the Preacher doesn’t stop there.

“You want to talk about reducing the national debt?” Conner continued. “We could reduce it overnight if they would defund this evil organization and put it on the national debt. Man, we could get out of debt immediately.”

Okay, how does that exactly work?  The national debt is $18 trillion dollars.  Planned Parenthood gets $540 million dollars.  Is this one of those fishes and loaves deals because that would be super cool to see.

Conner said that Planned Parenthood had met the biblical definitions for evil, wicked, ungodly, hellish and shameful.

But running up an $18 trillion debt to kill people in a war is dandy okay with God.

Somebody needs thread the Bible to this guy.

The 75 year old Mayor of Talladega, Alabama, made the news today because he was shamelessly attacked outside a barber shop where he works part time.

Larry Barton, who is about to run for his fifth term as mayor of Talladega — and who was re-elected in 2011 after serving prison time for fraud — told NBC News from his hospital room at the University of Alabama that the attack began around 7:30 a.m. (8:30 a.m. ET) Saturday in the parking lot of Cahaba Heights Plaza Barber Shop in Vestavia Hills.

The assailant was wearing a coat and hood and his weapon of choice was “a sawed-off baseball bat.”  My theory is that a sawed-off baseball bat is actually a lesser weapon than a actual baseball bat.  However sawed-off baseball bat sound so damn badass.

In Barton’s own words.

Barton said that he eventually grabbed the bat and held on to it, then kicked the man twice in the groin.

He’s 75 years old.

Barton identified the assailant as 72 year old Benny Green, a man who used to do a talk radio show with him.  Barton says he has “no idea” why Green would attack him.

But, someone else does.

Barton said that he didn’t know why Green would attack him, but The Birmingham News reported that it could have been over an alleged sex tape.

“Barton was caught on hidden video having sex with Green’s wife,” a former divorce lawyer for Green said, according to the newspaper.

Barton, however, told NBC News that he didn’t know anything about a sex tape. “I don’t know what they’re talking about,” he said.

He’s 75 years old.  He probably forgot all about it.

Thank you, Alabama.

Well, so much for going into your closet to pray.

Houston, Texas.

My Photoshop geek says part of the background is photoshopped but the car is not.  (Click the little picture to see the big one.)