.

Now, here’s a budget cut that makes sense.

Governor Rick Perry has asked all State agencies to cut their budget by 20% next year because we don’t any money because Texas Governor Rick Perry gave it all away to his friends.

The Court of Criminal Appeals, which is a collection of 9 rightwingers, has a better idea.

Here’s one way to cut the budget at the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals: Trim it by one judge, at least temporarily.

The state’s highest criminal court made the suggestion earlier this year during the first round of cuts to help address a looming, massive state budget shortfall.

Judge Charles Holcomb is retiring at the end of this year because of age restrictions — he’s 77 – and GOP Gov. Rick Perry would appoint his replacement to serve until the next general election.

But the nine-member appellate court, faced with a preliminary cost-savings target of $487,376 for the current fiscal period, said one option would be to ask Perry to leave the seat vacant until the end of the fiscal year next Aug. 31.

“Now obviously the big problem is that a appellate court needs an uneven number so that decisions will never be a tie,” Juanita explains.  “However, I have to admit that with this court, they all pretty much vote alike:  if the police arrest you, you’re guilty and you should go to prison pretty much forever.  And if you get the death penalty, you need to aware that they don’t work on the days before your execution.  It makes their work load pretty easy when only one of them has to say NO and the rest just say DITTO THAT.”

“But, of course, I have a better solution,” Juanita grins.  “Hell, if we can do without one member of the court, we can make this math thing easy and away with two.”

Killer Keller

“There is not a Texan on this planet who would miss even one minute with Sharon Keller, who is also known as Killer Keller.  So, she could resign, too, which would save us even more money and some embarrassing headlines, too.  That would solve the whole uneven numbers thingy because 7 justices seems to be enough.”

“But, there’s more,” she continues, “while we’re rolling along with this sucker, we could do away with Clarence Thomas, too.  Heck, he’s just Scalia with a dirty joke and a crazy wife thrown in.  But if we get rid of Thomas, another has to go with the numbers thing to work out.  Shoot, I say Scalia because he’s had two votes for a long time to make up for no votes now.”

“Okay, that problem is solved, so hop on over here in the chair and let’s see if we can solve your problem hair,” she suggests.