The good news:  The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case on the constitutionality of Texas redistricting based on the one man / one vote principle.

The bad news:  This Supreme Court is as worthless as a four card flush.

I thought about writing more about this, but that right there pretty much says it all.

Two male Republicans came this close to getting into a fist fight on the Texas House floor over an abortion bill.  If the sergeant at arms staff hadn’t stop it, Republicans Rep. Jonathan Stickland and Republican Rep. Byron Cook could have sold pay-per-view tickets.

On an abortion bill.  Two males.  Doesn’t that seem odd to anybody?

Here’s what the fight was about:

SB575 is a bill about “elective” abortions.  It would require women who want to be covered for abortions under their health insurance to purchase supplemental plans.  It didn’t look like it was going to get out of committee.

Jonathan Stickland, who is one kinky guy, decided to add an amendment on some other bill about roads or some damn thing.  His amendment would force a house vote on an amendment “to prohibit abortions on the basis of fetal abnormalities.”

Yeah, that’s some crap.  A woman would be required to carry a non-viable fetus until it died and was expelled from her body naturally.  Yeah, that crap.  The crap that kills women.

So anyway, Stickland agreed to pull the amendment in exchange for a promise from the Republican leadership that SB575 would get reported out of committee.

Although Cook kept his word, three Republican women on the Calendars Committee — Reps. Sarah Davis, Debbie Riddle and Patricia Harless — backed out of supporting the bill at the last minute and sided with the Democrats, killing the measure with a 7-7 vote.

Strickland got screwed by Republican women.  But you can’t hit women so he decided to hit Cook instead.

The result?

But in the end, Stickland’s temper tantrum worked.

The Calendars Committee reconvened after the House session and voted to move SB575 forward by a vote of 8-0. Two Republicans and all of the Democrats were marked as absent. Republican Rep. Debbie Riddle swung her vote in support of the bill, but it was not immediately clear why she had changed her mind.

Debbie Riddle is kinda nuts.  You’ve read about her here before.  You can call her office and fuss up a storm about her caving to a temper tantrum worthy of a two year old.   281-257-4222 .  Be nice.  Don’t cuss.  But don’t back down.

Ole Bubba and I lived through a night of constant lightning and thunder last night.  Damnest thing I’ve ever seen.  They say we got ten inches of rain in about 4 hours.  And it’s only just begun.

We have power but no one else we know does.  We have friends with 2 feet of water in their houses, a large oak tree on their roofs, or the Brazos River eating their property.  Bubba just went up to check on his office.

We are waiting on Pat Robertson to blame all the ultra conservative actions of the state legislature for this act of a pissed off God.

John Zerwas is one of four state representatives from my county.  I am ready to admit that he’s only a 4 on the Crazy-Mean-Hateful Republican scale.  I mean, we do have one who sponsored a hate-the-gays bill whose son is a leading HIV advocate in Houston and a proud gay man, so the bar is set pretty high.

But Zerwas pulled a stunt worthy of making me want to go to the state capitol and run circles around him yelling, “Are you nuts?  Are you nuts?  John, are you nuts?”  I did that once before to another state rep who promptly got sick and had to retire.  I jokingly got the blame for his illness.  If that were true, there would be a lot more sick state reps.

Two things:  The Lege wants to hold a special election to cut tax rates which will mean $125 a year for most folks.  The other thing: John Zerwas is not a veteran.  Here’s how those two things meet and shake hands.

The Texas lege meets for 140 days every two years, which is about 139 days too much.  Since the session is coming to a close, they will meet on Memorial Day.

John Zerwas wrote a bill that would dramatically cut education benefits for Texas veterans.  It came to the floor the day before Memorial Day.  Holy cow, man.  Just holy cow.  Are you nuts?  You didn’t see this coming?  You’re going to cut veterans benefits on Memorial Day?

Zerwas says we cannot afford to continue to pay these benefits.  Oh yeah, but we can afford to fight abortion and marriage equality to the Supreme Court, which is very, very expensive.

I do not need to lecture anybody about veteran educational benefits pulling us out of the depression and giving us an educated America.  But since Zerwas has never served in the military, nor have any of his sons, he doesn’t know that we pay our military squat and we send them into harm’s way. Some will never come back and their children deserve those educational benefits.

Most kids enlist in the military solely for the educational benefits.  You gotta admire and be in awe of that, not undercut it.  They are willing to risk their lives for an education.  Hell, I’d double their benefits because I know it will pay off in the future with productive tax-paying educated members of society.

The bill got pulled because even some Republicans realize that messing with veterans just ain’t right.

John, you screwed up royally.  On Memorial Day.  Shame on you.  Go find a veteran and apologize.

Maybe I missed it, but where are Pat Robertson and Mike Huckabee with pronouncements that the terrible weather in Texas is God’s punishment for something people in Texas have done?

I mean, after all, the state lege has done some stuff.  They’ve hated on gay people. They tried to enact a requirement to practically force everybody to carry a weapon on their hip, especially convicted felons.  They want to make a woman carry a non-viable fetus to term no matter what her health issues.  They tried to cut funds to veterans.  They said cutting taxes for the wealthy is a good thing because Texas doesn’t need no damn infrastructure.  They want to cut state funding to state colleges and universities.  They want to tell local communities that fracking is good for you.

So why would God be punishing us if we’re doing exactly what you say God wants us to do?

Yeah, ‘plain that, guys.  How exactly does that work?

Thanks to Gene for the heads up.

by Primo Encarnación

I have spent a lot of time avoiding these folks.  The whole Quiverfull movement makes me quiver.  It falls right in line with all the other weird fundie perversions of Scripture, where the men act like gods, and the women are stepford martyrs with rubber wombs.  I’ve avoided getting deeply into it, the same way I avoid reading about flesh-eating bacteria: intellectually I know it’s out there, but it skeeves me out and I don’t care to know more.

Then  oldest spawn, Josh, was scooped up by Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council and given a job running their PAC.  FRC is an anti-LGBT hate group (so identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center) and, of course, it seemed the perfect place for young Joshua to turn his family franchise into the big time political career his dad, Jim Bob, tried and failed to spark off his own after a brief stint in the Arkansas legislature.

Again, I ignore the FRC and Focus on the Family and all that other BS for much the same reason I ignore Duggar Dynasty:  it’s a carnival sideshow, designed to separate credulous Christians from their widows’ mites.

Now it comes out that teenage Josh Duggar was a bit of a perv, molesting at least five girls including up to four of his yonger sisters.  Growing up in such a household, learning that women are there to serve the man and prohibited most if not all forms of sex, except to set off your own population pipe bomb with your covenant wife – hell, it’s  a wonder he didn’t turn into an axe-murderer…yet.

Again, I didn’t much care; yet another sex scandal among the holier-than-thou crowd… yawn.  And this one was 12+ years ago, and the “molester” was himself still a pretty young teen.   So, now his hate-friends don’t want him in their gang no more?  Yay, my schadenfreude said, then rolled over and went back to sleep.

But then it got interesting.

As the Josh-is-a-perv story was getting legs, I imagine that tons of FOIA requests started wending their way towards the Springdale Police Department.  But the day after the story broke, an Arkansas judge ordered the police records destroyed.

Hello, what have we here?

Here we have the reason why schadenfreude should wake up and pay attention, because this is no longer just an uber-christian TV family dealing with something that happens all the time to all sorts of people.  This is now Watergate-y, where the pretty predictable crime, given the kid’s effed up upbringing, is now about to be overshadowed by the political cover-up.

I looked again at the timeline.  Josh’s late-night gropes come smack-dab in the middle of his dad’s political career.   Twelve years ago is when they allegedly stopped – 2003 – but March, 2002, was when the family first becomes aware of improper touching.  In 2002, Daddy Jim Bob also runs for US Senate and loses in the May primary.  In 2003 more of this comes out and Josh gets sent for “treatment.”  In 2004, Dad runs for state senate and loses.

Around this time, as well, Josh was “betrothed” to the daughter of Jim Holt, another quiver-nut , who ran for the US Senate in 2004 and lost to Democrat Blanche Lincoln.  In one of those three races – stories vary –  the blame for the loss was placed by the candidate as “sin in the camp” and for years now – YEARS mind you – the rumors have been that Josh’s diddling of little girls was that sin.  The betrothal with the Holt girl ended, and then in 2006, as all their “## kids and pregnant!” specials were about to lead to a big Oprah appearance, both Harpo Studios and a tipster contacted state authorities.

Jim Bob had submitted Josh to a lecture from a trooper friend later found to be a pedophile (as was also suspected of the founder of Josh’s little re-training camp, who left under a cloud for molesting women).  But by the time the actual cops did some investigation, lo and behold! the statute  had run on Josh’s documented crimes.  All that remained were the ghosts of internet rumors, a tight-lipped community of homechurchers who know some of the story, and a police file which now no longer exists.

Folks, this isn’t about Josh.  This is about the yearning for power by Jim Bob and others like him (Mike Huckabee, you are HIP DEEP in this mess) who feel themselves above man’s law and want to bring this country under their god’s law, one theocratic state at a time.  And if their crazy, unbalanced methods create crazy, unbalanced children by the quiverfull, well, that’s all to the good, so long as they can place them in the halls of power.  Josh was groomed – and re-programmed, when needed – to lead the next generation to the Promised Land, and wage war on the non-believers along the way, just like his Biblical namesake.

Flesh-eating bacteria seem cuddly in comparison.