It has been a few years since I left Texas to retire on the Left Coast (so I could be with my people), but there is one Texas issue I have continued to follow: Texas public school education.

See, I was a classroom teacher in Texas for a 13 lucky years. Secondary science. So I was constantly surprised at how closely Texas politicians remained focused on education, but not where you’d think. Their purview is funding issues. But their concentration was always on red meat cultural issues.

Things haven’t changed.

Last year the Lege passed SB 797. This bill, half a page long, stipulated that all public schools in Texas must display an “In God We Trust” poster display, but only if one is donated to the school or they use donated (non-tax payer) funds to acquire one.

And they must display it “in a conspicuous place” in each building.

That was the giveaway. You have to make it obvious. This is one of a series of subtle nudges to deny 1st Amendment rights to people who are not Christians.

So the impetus for the bill is a known. Proselytization. The only question that remains is, why only require posting of DONATED posters?

Simple. Since no taxpayer money is spent, no government entity contributed to its creation. Government merely requires the “conspicuous” display of it.

Where have we heard this before? Could it be Texas’ law that allows any private individual to sue anyone who has or abets the commission of an abortion?

Well, as it turns out, the guy responsible for that nefarious law has his dirty hands on the law requiring a religious motto be displayed prominently. Same MO.

Same State Senator. Texas State Senator Bryan Hughes (TX SD-1) is behind both. A graduate of Baylor Law School (I thought Baylor was a good school), Senator Hughes seems to have happened upon a formula to circumvent obvious constitutional rights, that is, entice and empower the uber-conservatives to gig the libs, among others that they hate.

Taking a half full outlook, I can imagine a world where this Baylor Law genius with a new and perverted concept of the rule of law will see his law overturned some day. Denial of Due Process comes to mind.

Otherwise California’s Gun Bounty law which is based on the Hughes concept of mob rule, where gun manufacturers can be sued for any death attributed to their product, will also stand.

When and if that happens, let the games begin.

With recent events, I have been pondering a new subscription blog called Watch Lawyers Unintentionally Murder Their Clients.

I’m already collecting loads of material.

Ingraham: Was there a limited number who had access to that storage room…
Bobb: Yes.. Mar-a-Lago is secure.. just getting on to the compound is hard.. Only certain members of staff can get down there.. It’s a very limited number of people that can get down there pic.twitter.com/5seWpty8h0

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 19, 2022

They are very secure because they are under lock and key and only “a small number of people” could get in there. Well, there’s that.

And later the same day she says that the lawyers “have done a very thorough search [of the documents]…”  That would be in violation of U.S. Code.

Are we sure they haven’t dumbed down the bar exam?

Have you seen this 110 year-old newspaper clipping dated August 14, 1912?

First, we need a fact check. Is this 110 year-old article predicting a “considerable” rise in global temperature the real thing? Yes, it is.

A startling prediction from so long ago. Al Gore may have invented the internet, but someone in New Zealand beat him out on introducing global climate change (however, when AL said it some people listened).

I’m intrigued that the forecast allowed that this considerable rise was going to become a problem “in a few centuries”. Probably true at the time, but that’s only if you consider a steady state of consumption which we all know just hasn’t happened.

In fact, we burn over 4 times as much coal these days (8.5 billion tons/yr) than in 1912. But that’s only 52% of today’s world fossil fuel consumption. Carbon dioxide yield from petroleum is about 80% of what on average we get from coal. Using this crude estimate, consuming petroleum is roughly equivalent to burning an additional 6.3 billion tons of coal for a grand total of 14.8 billion tons. Burned up, that’s over 7 times the rate of coal consumption in 1912, and hence 7 times the CO2 production.

“A few centuries” now appears to be an over-estimate. And yeah, it’s getting a little warm here.

I may have told you that Alex Jones had great difficulty finding a good lawyer and keeping them.  He had either 12 or 14 lawyers, one at a time and depending on who’s counting, over the course of the trials and two more for the bankruptcy court. They have managed to win exactly zero motion hearings or even objections during hearings and or trials.  And there’s still one trial in Connecticut and three more in Texas pending.

This morning I read that TFG’s biggest problem is getting a qualified a lawyer who knows his or her business in a courtroom.  It seems that no lawyer wants his case.

So, here’s my advice.  If you make fun of parents who lost their first graders to a crazed gunman or you steal nuclear secrets, you are on your damn own.  So, don’t do that. Also, it does not help if you are well known for lying all the time.

So there are 85 calendar days until the mid-term elections. Any day now we should be seeing a major uptick in political ads on TV (and radio, I guess). But here on the Left Coast we’ve been subjected to an avalanche of ads for months now on one ballot proposition, Proposition 27. We even had ads before they knew what the proposition’s number was. That was new. Not so new is the subject of the proposition: legalizing online sports betting. We’ve seen that one before.

Many states have legalized online sports betting, but California, the sugar plum that the gambling industry has tried to pick before, has not. And the “Yes on 27” campaign has vigorous opposition from the “No on 27” campaign. Hundreds of millions of dollars in TV ads are being spent across both campaigns. It could go as high as a half a billion.

See, California has lots of native American tribes that have enjoyed the profits from our many, many “Indian Casinos”. They’re big here. Seeing a cut in casino profits, the casino tribes are behind the “No” campaign and huge out-of-state online gambling concerns are behind “Yes”.

So this should be an interesting tug-of-war in this deep blue state. Vote “Yes” and the taxes levied on online sales go to help house the homeless, and vote “No” to protect the sovereign rights of California’s casino tribes. A conflict worthy of the California Woke to mull over.

I guess ultimately I’ll vote for the cause that tells the fewest lies.

Generally, in American history, Benedict Arnold is considered the epitome of a traitor. But I think there’s a better candidate than that emo, money-grubbing glory hound: a certain New Yorker.

The son of a powerful family, who from childhood to adulthood seethed with resentment over other people getting more attention or accolades, he became a sometimes-successful politician, who built a mere social club into a political organization so crooked, it became the avatar of political corruption in America, which he helped along by creating a shell company, ostensibly for one purpose, only turn it into a political slush fund making “loans” to business associates who would then support his candidates.

A power-hungry social climber who nearly destroyed the Electoral College in an attempt to turn a loss into a win, this ego-maniac thought he could kill a fellow New Yorker in broad daylight and not hurt his political fortunes.  And once those fortunes did tumble after one term, he conspired with foreign powers to set himself up as a kind of client-king in North America, beholden to the other strongmen who put him there.

He single-handedly stress tested the political experiment of our Constitutional Republic, blowing past norms and guardrails of gentlemanly patriotism in pursuit of raw power that he deemed was his by right, and it was only thanks to the incompetence of his co-conspirators that we didn’t end up with Aaron Burr the First, King of America.

Gotcha!

Yes, TFG emulates him in so many things, but let’s hope there’s one major difference: other than the political fallout, Burr got away with the rest, including two treason acquittals for playing a game of thrones with England and Spain. He got away with creating a clean water company that instead became a bank and gave loans to allow small business owners to have enough property to vote. He got away with creating Tammany Hall. He got away with lying to Jefferson as a running mate and trying to steal the election from underneath him via the Electors.

And he was never even charged for shooting that one guy who became a musical.

Now I’m the villain in your history.

Let’s hope that the knock on the door at Mar-a-Lago last week is just the first of many, and that Burr’s title gains an asterisk:  The Worst Traitor in American History*

*who got away with it