Okay, since we all know that the two places Ted Cruz hates to be are Houston (where he lives) and Washington DeeCee (where he works), it’s always fun to watch him travel and pay for it out of his campaign funds.

Here’s one for you to admire:

Click on it to get the big one.

This was almost exactly a year after the Houston big freeze, where 246 people died from being cold because the power grid failed. Cruz’s answer to the freeze was to sneak off to Cancun and then lie to the press when he got caught.

So, to commemorate the fact that Houston can tolerate 105 degrees just fine, but we have to put on a coat to look at pictures of Alaska, Ted pre-planned his get away.  I checked the weather and the week before, Houston had a solid week of rain and 40 degrees.  So, he’s Fled Cruz once again.

I know how much some of you enjoy perusing his campaign expenditures, so let us know if you find anything else funny.  Here ya go for weekend fun!

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Poor Llano County. Some federal judge has just ordered the county to return twelve (yes, count ’em, 12) children’s books to their public library shelves. It seems that the books offended the sensibilities of some adults who object to the racial and LGBT+ issues that are raised in them.

So rather than complying with the judge’s order, Llano County Commissioners are considering an old and accepted recourse: the equivalent of filling in the swimming pool.

Rather than bend to the Feds, the Llano County Commission is studying on nose-thumbing (and nose-cutting/face-spiteing) by closing all of their county libraries.

It’s a really great solution, see. No one can blame them for depriving their children of learning about racism and gender issues if no one in the county can learn about anything at all.

It has worked before. Racists have closed and filled-in public pools rather than desegregate them. And it’s legit.

Or so said SCOTUS Justice Hugo Black back in 1971 when the Jackson, Mississippi city council closed all of its public pools, save for the one that they leased to the “YMWCA” (Young Men’s White Christian Assn.). Justice Black said “There was no evidence of state action affect­ing Negroes differently from white.”

True that. If you’re a racist like Justice Black was.

So instead of violating a child’s right to read these 12 books, Llano County may elect to deny the educational enrichment of the entire county instead.

Bless their hearts

I hope this doesn’t give you a shock but Republican State Representative and Baptist minister and Baptist Youth Director Bryan Slaton is accused of having and “inappropriate relationship” with an intern in his office.

I know. Surprising, ain’t it?

The Texas Tribune has the story.

The complaint came after an incident in which Slaton and the staffer allegedly met up at his Austin apartment last weekend. A separate staffer told The Texas Tribune that Slaton drank alcohol with an intern under 21 years old.

The intern, rightly so, ain’t talking to the public after reporting the event(s).

Slaton is back in Austin hiding behind his criminal defense lawyer.

As of 9:30 am Texas time, in downtown Louisville five people are dead and six others are hospitalized.  The shooter has been neutralized.

We have decided that this is an acceptable price for allowing mentally ill people to exercise their right to be a well organized militia of one with weapons of war.

Okay, this is a rumor. This is only a rumor. But, it’s kinda a weird one.

Texas State Represent Bryan Slaton represents north Texas and is a member of the freedom caucus.  In Texas the freedom caucus is two jumps crazier than the KKK.  You can read all about him right here.

Well, all of a sudden out of the clear blue Slaton quits showing up at work. And even quicker than sudden, there’s papers taped over the windows to his office and nobody is there, including the roaches other than Slaton.

According to Texas Monthly, Slaton had a pile of bills filed to gum up the works during the budget debate.  Here’s some of the fun.

Combating the “sexualization” of young people is an important legislative priority for Slaton generally; in HB 151, he would—among other things—remove an existing defense to child pornography laws that would prevent, say, a nineteen-year-old from being prosecuted for having explicit photos of her seventeen-year-old boyfriend. HB 4129, another Slaton special, amends language in the existing business and commerce code for an “erotic performance”; where it now says “an individual younger than eighteen years of age” is barred from seeing such performances, it would instead simply say “a child”— seemingly an attempt to remind Texans that seventeen-year-olds are children in the eyes of the law.

In HB 5212, he’d require that morgues established using funding from Operation Lone Star “post a sign indicating the designation as the Joseph R. Biden Morgue in a conspicuous place reasonably likely to be viewed by all persons” who enter.

He also wants to prohibit the wearing of masks, no matter what the emergency is, and wants to make abortion punishable by the death penalty. He wants Texas to withdraw from the Union.

I know, he seems like a real nice guy.

The rumor is, of course, that Slaton is in trouble …

For the two days prior to the three-day weekend, Rep. Bryan Slaton was absent and there are all kinds of rumors about where he might be and whether he is in some kind of legal trouble. Then late Friday night, a member of the Freedom Caucus publicly said that a legislator needs to resign because he’s a “sexual predator.”

Oh damn.  The guy has been a Baptist youth minister for a couple of decades.  According to him, he’s the most righteous person in Texas.

If this rumor is true, I will not be surprised.