Hey, I enjoyed it…

… so I’ll take my beating like a Man.

TIME magazine has the exclusive scoop:

"I’m going to announce tomorrow that I’m not running for reelection and that I’m going to leave Congress," DeLay, who turns 59 on Saturday, said during a 90-minute interview on Monday. "I’m very much at peace with it." He notified President Bush in the afternoon. DeLay and his wife, Christine, said they had been prepared to fight, but that he decided last Wednesday, after months of prayer and contemplation, to spare his suburban Houston district the mudfest to come. "This had become a referendum on me," he said. "So it’s better for me to step aside and let it be a referendum on ideas, Republican values and what’s important for this district."

"I’m a realist. I’ve been around awhile. I can evaluate political situations," DeLay told TIME at his kitchen table in Sugar Land, a former sugar plantation in suburban Houston.  Bluebonnets are blooming along the highways. "I feel that I could have won the race. I just felt like I didn’t want to risk the seat and that I can do more on the outside of the House than I can on the inside right now. I want to continue to fight for the conservative cause. I want to continue to work for a Republican majority."

Much more to read in the full story.

UPDATED– Washington Post:

DeLay, who is withdrawing from his reelection bid, also is entitled under federal election rules to convert any or all of his remaining campaign funds to his legal expenses, whether or not he resigns, is indicted or loses the election. Election lawyers say one advantage of bowing out of the election now is that the campaign cash can be converted to pay legal bills immediately, instead of being drained in the course of a bid to stay in office.

President Bush has come in for more than his fair share of criticism from his political opponents. Accusations abound for everything from Iraq to not caring about black people, and now there is one more thing to add to the list: The poor showing of “sex thrillers” at the box office. Hollywood has taken the occasion of Sharon Stone’s “Basic Instinct 2” and its pitiful $3 million opening weekend to heap more blame on the President.

Paul Verhoeven, director of the first "Basic Instinct" (which scored $353 million worldwide) as well as the widely ridiculed "Showgirls" (now regarded as something of a camp classic), attributes the genre’s demise to the current American political climate. "Anything that is erotic has been banned in the United States," said the Dutch native. "Look at the people at the top (of the government). We are living under a government that is constantly hammering out Christian values. And Christianity and sex have never been good friends."

Now that “anything erotic” has been “banned” from the popular culture by those pesky Christians, can the charges of Puritanism be far away?

Scribe Nicholas Meyer, who was an uncredited writer on 1987’s seminal sex-fueled cautionary tale "Fatal Attraction," agrees, noting that the genre’s downfall coincides with the ascent of the conservative political movement. "We’re in a big puritanical mode," he said. "Now, it’s like the McCarthy era, except it’s not ‘Are you a communist?’ but ‘Have you ever put sex in a movie?’"

Strangely enough, Ronald Reagan was president in 1987, and his conservatism does not seem to have harmed “Fatal Attraction.” Well, now that we have had our turn outside reality, let us look at the real reason Stone’s new movie is doing poorly: It’s bad.

If you feel that tedium equals terror, "Instinct 2" should provide you with two hair-raising hours; everyone else should bring along a pillow. Numbingly dull when it isn’t unintentionally laugh-out-loud funny, this pitiful sequel has almost none of the cheesy/sleazy appeal of the 1992 blockbuster. Michael Douglas stayed away, and so should you.

Why bother turning out good-quality movies that people might actually want to see when it is so much easier to make mind-numbingly shallow, special-effects laden trash and wait for the big money to roll in? Besides that, blaming Bush, Puritans, and McCarthy-ites for the occasional failure is a joy that has to be experienced to be appreciated.

E-mail the author or leave a comment below.

Today’s Dallas Morning News informs us that RINO-extraordinaire Carter Casteel is an even bigger loser than previously thought:

A recount finished Friday failed to change the results of a Republican primary in a New Braunfels-area House district.

The recount slightly increased the margin of victory of Nathan Macias over Rep. Carter Casteel.

Taking bets as to how long the Texas Association of Counties will wait to hire Casteel as a lobbyist…

Forrest M. Mims III, a noted science writer and amateur scientist, attended the 109′th meeting of the Texas Academy of Science in which he is a member. He reports that Dr. Edward R. Piaka, a professor of  ecology at UT, gave a speech in which he professed that the Earth is overpopulated and that unless the human race reduces its population by 90%, there will be serious consequences. He actually espoused the notion that the most effective means of reducing the human population was an aerosolized version of Ebola Zaire (essentially a cross between Ebola Reston which is not dangerous to humans but is transmissible by aerosol, and Ebola Zaire which is not an aerosol, but has between an 80% and 90% mortality rate). This, my friends, is the sort of thing your tax money is paying for! I’ve read Dr. Mims’ work for years; and, yes he is a creationist, and yes that has made him a pariah in the academic world, but he has always been rigorous in his writing. Make sure that you let the President of UT know what sort of environmental terrorist he has on his staff.

(Hat Tip: SciGuy)

Courtesy today’s Houston Chronicle:

In the eight months since Texas began requiring some cold and allergy tablets to be sold behind pharmacy counters, about half as many people are cooking cheap methamphetamine, narcotics officers say.

Whoo Hooo! Victory in the War on Drugs is just around the corner!!!

But while the making of "moonshine meth" has slowed under the new law, the appetite for "speed" has remained high, with more expensive and, in some cases, purer imports taking up the slack.

Never mind.

The new law allows people to buy two boxes of pills at a time, but they must show identification and sign for the purchase.

"We go around to the stores and pick up the lists. It’s obvious who is ’smurfing’ the pills," Whitehead said, using the slang term for making numerous, small purchases and accumulating enough pills to make a batch of the drug. "Quite a few of the ones we spot already have pending charges."

Forget these stupid lists– just put out an all points bulletin for anyone that looks like this–

I suppose the ACLU would complain about racial profiling.

Still– can we dare not act?

PROOF: Methamphetamine Smurfs corrupting our youth…

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