Today’s federal court order enjoins State Attorney General Greg Abbott’s office from enforcing the new state election code that makes it a felony to possess another person’s ballot. The intent of the law is to prevent mass voter fraud where unvoted mail-in ballots are collected and voted en masse by a third party in order to commit voter fraud. Unsurprisingly, the democrats are complaining. I’m trying to find out who the federal judge was and who appointed him/her. I suspect that information will be quite enlightening.

Abbott’s office is filing an immediate appeal.

Seems the suspected serial rapist that HPD has nabbed has a little secret. He’s in the country illegally. He had been deported back in January and is already back and raping his way through southeast Houston.

Go get ‘em, Tony!

UPDATE: I have it on good authority that the press secretary considers the eyes to be an edible delicacy.

Sen. John F. Kerry, October 31, 2006:

”I apologize to no one for my criticism of the president and of his broken policy.”

Sen. John F. Kerry, November 1, 2006:

“I personally apologize to any service member, family member, or American who was offended.”

Via super secret channels we can’t even confirm exist, we have Donald Rumsfeld’s reaction to the Troops Message to Kerry:

Yes, the SECDEF is channeling Patton!!

(Courtesy of monkapotamus on Free Republic.) 

  

Shots fired, barricaded suspect, multiple shooting victims. Just another day in Houston:

A SWAT team surrounded a southwest Houston apartment complex where four people were shot on Wednesday, KPRC Local 2 reported.

Houston police said at least one person has barricaded himself inside a unit at the Keegans Mill Apartments on Keegans Ridge Road near West Bellfort Street.Officials said gunshots were fired from the apartment at about noon. No one was hit by the bullets, police said.

Police responded to a quadruple shooting in the complex’s parking lot at about 6:20 a.m.

The men were shot while sitting in a parked car, officials said.”They backed into a spot,” Detective C.P. Abbey said. “On the driver’s side of the car there are multiple gunshots into the side of the car and through the glass.”

Channel 2 refers to “gunmen,” but it looks like there’s only one guy in the apartment. Be careful out there, folks.

What a knucklehead:

A Maine attorney who released information in 2000 about President George W. Bush’s drunken driving conviction was arrested on Tuesday after he dressed up as al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and waved a fake gun at traffic.

Police in South Portland, Maine, arrested Thomas Connolly, 49, of Scarborough, Maine, and charged him with criminal threatening. He was released on bail, local officials said.

Lt. Todd Bernard said the police department received calls about a man wearing Middle Eastern garb and a bin Laden mask and carrying fake dynamite standing along an interstate highway. When police arrived, they saw Connolly holding a gun.

“They ordered him to drop the weapon several times and he eventually complied,” Bernard said.

Even weirder, the guy doesn’t seem to think he did anything wrong:

“I didn’t expect to be arrested,” he said. “Obviously I touched a post-9/11 nerve.”

Hey, dummy, you waved a gun at traffic. What did you think, motorists were going to toss you a few Snickers bars?

Sheesh.

And they got caught red-handed:

Three Texas Tech football players face burglary charges after being accused of breaking into a house and leaving with a laptop computer and an iPod, police said Tuesday.

Defensive end Rashad Hunt, offensive lineman Dimitri Lott and linebacker Julius Howard, all redshirt freshmen, were arrested about 3 a.m. Friday.

I wonder if they were carrying six-shooters like this guy.

It’s election season, which means the mud is flying in political circles. While this is nothing new, our rather unusual multi-candidate Texas Governor’s race has created strange political bedfellows. The resulting debate and discussion highlights some differences in the political parties.

In general, our Democrat friends seem rather better at party unity than Republicans. The downside, however, is that the iron fist required to keep members in line also quashes freedom of thought and expression. You may recall, for example, that pro-life Democrats are oftentimes shunned by their leadership. Democrat Senator Joe Lieberman, who supports the effort in Iraq, was also considered so far off the reservation on just that one issue that he was shoved aside in his own party’s primary election.

Years of this marching in lock-step have damaged the party’s intellectual vigor. Instead of honestly evaluating their ideas, Democrat efforts have been invested in new ways to repackage the same old big-government, high-tax, pro-abortion, anti-war, Republicans-are-evil leftovers from the 1960’s.

On the Republican side, the Kinky-Perry debate is a prime example of the exchange of ideas allowed to work. Some feel a vote for Friedman would send a message to the GOP establishment, while others see Perry as the best, but not ideal, available choice. The possibility of Democrat candidate Chris Bell sneaking past both men to victory also affects all who consider their vote.

The open exchange of opinions on the subject demonstrates how Republicans generally think for themselves. The downside of this individualism, however, is that it is very difficult to maintain any party unity at all when the faithful become too fractured in their debates. This tension has now bubbled up among disaffected Republicans with the “Bring on the pain!” Kinky voters and the “party loyalty” Perry voters hashing it out.

So which faction has the upper hand? Will Perry pull out a win? Will divided Republicans give Bell the governorship? Will Texas get Kinky? We will find out come Election Day, but whatever the outcome we should be thankful that free thinkers have a home in the Republican Party.

This is the funniest thing I have seen in a long, long time:

Heh.

[Posted on Free Republic. Hat-tip: Hugh Hewitt.]

With all that’s going on in our nation and world, today’s Houston Chronicle devotes prime, front-page real estate to what? The Houston Rockets, Astros and - growing pecans in France.

By a vote of 1-0, all LST contributors that live in Colorado (yours truly) have endorsed the candidates and amendments and referenda below.  I didn’t contribute to David’s Texas ballot poll, since I can’t vote down there thanks to Paul Bettencourt’s efficient scrubbing of the Harris County voter registration rolls.  If I were still in Texas, I would vote for Kinky for governor and Republicans for everything else, except for Smither in CD 22.  But, that’s neither here nor there, so here’s who I -am- going to vote for.  I’ll try to keep it short for those of you who don’t care about this in particular.  However, our ballot is not all that short.

Governor: Bob Beauprez

He’s been a fairly conservative congressman, but I’m afraid that he is not only going to lose this race but that his seat in Congress will go Democrat as well.  The Republican party up here in Colorado is in bad shape.  Perhaps when they lose this race they will go back to their conservative base, rebuild, and work to take back the legislature.  This process would be helped by other Texans moving up here with me, to offset the liberals that have been moving here.  The state is pretty evenly split even so.

Sec. of State: Mike Coffman

This guy seems pretty great to me.  He was elected Treasurer, and when his number came up to go to Iraq in the Marine Reserves, he up and went to Iraq to serve his duty.  Not only that, but he has a plan to push through voter registration reform to make it harder for everyone who should not be voting to do so.

State Treasurer: Mark Hillman

Hillman took over for Coffman when he went to Iraq, and I figure we should keep him.

Attorney General: John Suthers

There’s a referendum below where Colorado will sue the federal government to enforce immigration laws if passed.  I want a Republican attorney general pursuing that.

CD 6: Tom Tancredo

Tancredo is my congressman, and while he’s a little too emphatic about the immigration issue for my taste, at least he is bringing it up, where most in Congress seem to want to ignore it.  Not only that, but he’s trying to bring the whole “Security and Prosperity Partnership” thing to light.  If you don’t know, that’s some deal that Bush, Vicente Fox, and whatever hoser is Prime Minister of Canada (Harper and before him, Martin; yes, I know their names, I just don’t much care) are working on to form a more perfect North American Union.  Anyway, I don’t think Tancredo is presidential material, but I want to keep him in Congress.

CD 7: Rick O’Donnell

This guy is trying to take over Beauprez’s seat, and is running behind some liberal named Perlmutter.  He’s probably going to lose.  An interesting aspect about this race is how the Democrats are using O’Donnell’s support for a couple of interesting conservative ideas and using them against him.  One issue is reforming or privatizing Social Security.  They are using that against him because several years ago he said he wanted to abolish it.  He has moderated that stance since then, but I myself agree with privatization of the whole thing.  The other issue is the Fair Tax, which O’Donnell supports.  The Democrats have phrased it as support for raising taxes, not mentioning that it’s supposed to REPLACE the income tax, not supplement it.  Of course, in their minds, such a tax would supplement it…  Anyway, this guy seems like a good guy, and he might be part of the Colorado GOP rebuilding itself in the years to come.  I hope he likes that job, since he won’t be going to Washington in January.

Amendments and Referenda:

For details, refer to the Colorado Blue Book, which is a state published voter’s guide.

Amendment 38: Petitions: For

Amendment 39: School District Spending Requirements: Against

Amendment 40: Term Limit Change for Judges: Against

Amendment 41: Standards of Conduct in Government: For

Amendment 42: Colorado Minimum Wage: Against

Amendment 43: Marriage: For

Defines marriage as one man and one woman, in the state constitution, to prevent some liberal state judge or the legislature from trying to change it.  How ridiculous that we need to do such a thing, but such is the world that liberals have brought about.

Amendment 44: Marijuana Possession: Against

Also known as the “Willie Nelson Moves to Colorado” amendment.

Referendum E: Property Tax Discount for Disabled Veterans: For

Referendum F: Recall Deadlines: For

Referendum G: Obsolete Constitutional Provisions: For

Referendum H: Limiting a State Business Income Tax Deduction: For

Note: This is to limit tax deductions for companies that hire illegal aliens; this is an attempt to dissuade employers from doing this, therefore reducing the incentive (jobs) for illegals to come here.  If they can’t find work, they will deport themselves.  Or, perhaps they’ll just go down to Texas…

Referendum I: Domestic Partnership: Against

Gays and lesbians can already do much of the things they claim they want domestic partnerships for.  Many companies give benefits to partners, and they can set up inheritance and medical powers of attorney with a visit to a lawyer.  This referendum would create gay marriage, without using the word marriage.  But by every other legal definition, that is what it would be.

Referendum J: School District Spending Requirements: Against

Referendum K: Immigration Lawsuit Against Federal Government: For

For my detailed posts about all these, you can go to my blog at these two links:

Astro’s Colorado 2006 Ballot Analysis

Astro’s Colorado 2006 Ballot Analysis Part Two

Monday I got very torqued over a plan to induce low income minorities to come down to the polling place to get a free flu shot with the intent to induce people to vote. I am still quite torqued over it. It is wrong, it is discriminatory, and it is electioneering at the taxpayer expense. BUT apparently it IS NOT TECHNICALLY ILLEGAL. Since there is no direct quid pro quo exchange, only an implied one, it is not specifically black letter law illegal, just unethical as hell. I firmly believe that a case could be made in court that an implied inducement exists and a reasonable person would understand that there is an implied inducement to vote. But the law is a bit vague when it comes to the definition of “inducement”.

Here is the specific paragraph of the law: (hat tip, Deep Purple)

Texas Government Code

Chapter 556: Political Activities by Certain Public Entities and Individuals

Sec. 556.004. PROHIBITED ACTS OF AGENCIES AND INDIVIDUALS.

(a) A state agency may not use any money under its control, including appropriated money, to finance or otherwise support the candidacy of a person for an office in the legislative, executive, or judicial branch of state government or of the government of the United States. This prohibition extends to the direct or indirect employment of a person to perform an action described by this subsection.

(b) A state officer or employee may not use a state-owned or state-leased motor vehicle for a purpose described by Subsection (a).

(c) A state officer or employee may not use official authority or influence or permit the use of a program administered by the state agency of which the person is an officer or employee to interfere with or affect the result of an election or nomination of a candidate or to achieve any other political purpose.

(d) A state employee may not coerce, attempt to coerce, command, restrict, attempt to restrict, or prevent the payment, loan, or contribution of any thing of value to a person or political organization for a political purpose.

(e) For purposes of Subsection (c), a state officer or employee does not interfere with or affect the results of an election or nomination if the individual’s conduct is permitted by a law relating to the individual’s office or employment and is not otherwise unlawful.

I think there is room to argue that it is a violation of the law. What do you think?

UPDATE: Matt Stiles reports that Mayor White is pulling the plug on the program because we made a big enough stink about it.

Well, we appear to have ruffled the Kool-Aid Brigade.

Take a look at LST’s “endorsements,” announced yesterday.

18 races. 94% of the time we endorsed the Republican candidate, often very enthusiastically (a couple of times out of party loyalty or “best of the choices available” motivations).

Not good enough for the Kool-Aid Brigade. They demand total obedience. They demand unquestioning subservience.

I want to be clear– I am NOT talking here about folks that are critical of LST’s suggestion that you might want to consider voting for Kinky Friedman.

We understand very well how a conservative voter might be uncomfortable with some of Friedman’s libertarian impulses. If that is a deal-killer for you, fine.

We understand very well how a conservative voter might simply be unwilling to risk having Chris Bell slide in through the back door because of GOP defections from Perry. If that is a deal-killer for you, fine.

As we noted in the original piece– the vote was 5 to 4. Every one of the “yes” on Kinky votes struggled with those same issues.

No, what I’m talking about is the chuckle-head Kool-Aid Brigade loyal trooper who called in to KSEV this morning to bitch to Edd Hendee about LST’s “endorsing a Democrat instead of a Republican like Orlando Sanchez.”

Sir, we didn’t “endorse a Democrat”– we endorsed abolishing a wasteful, unnecessary part of the government’s bureaucracy.

We’ve always endorsed reducing and limiting the size and expense of government to an absolute minimum.

Those are our principles. It just so happens that in this one race, the candidate who shares our principles–the candidate who has come along and said “You know what, we don’t need to be spending taxpayers’ dollars on this do-nothing position; let’s abolish it” happens to be the one running on the Democratic ticket, not the Republican one.

Somehow that’s OUR fault?

That Kool-Aid must taste mighty good.

We wouldn’t know.

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