The cold winds of taxpayer frustration swept through downtown Houston today as the Americans for Prosperity Texas Taxpayer Trust Tour rode into town, led by Peggy Venable, Bob Lemer and Bruce Hotze. Also in attendance was Harris County Department of Education Trustee Michael Wolfe.  A few highlights of their presentation:

• From 1980-2004, local gov. spending has increased by 486%
• From 1980-2004, per capita income has only increased 178%
• From 1980-2004, population + inflation has only increased 187%
• From 1980-2004, local gov. debt increased by 576%
• Last legislative session, taxpayer-funded lobby groups took $52 million from local governments
• School superintendents make more money than the governor (they aren’t saying that we should pay Slick more)
• Mayor White refuses to honor the voters mandate in Prop 2, Houston Taxpayer Bill of Rights

And much more. You can view the entire set of handouts here. Mayor White skipped the taxpayer tour, apparently frightened by the jihadists.

 

 

This is just bizarre:

This is how it all went down. On Wednesday evening, around 6 p.m., Tancredo was preparing for his trip to Mississippi. And as he so often does, he was unwinding with a cigar.

Soon enough, however, a police officer walked in to check on the smoke. The officer told Tancredo that the officer came because he was required to do so and not because the officer wanted to. The officer had already told Ellison that Tancredo was permitted to smoke in his office. The visit was more a formality.

Apparently, Tancredo smokes magical cigars that emit wall-penetrating smoke:

Ellison’s press secretary, Rick Jauert, made the call to the Superintendent’s office when he noticed the smoke. “I called because the smoke was coming through the walls,” Jauert said, adding that the Superintendent’s office referred him to the Capitol Police.

This is the legislative equivalent of that annoying neighbor who calls the homeowner’s association when you don’t cut the grass every other day.

Congratulations, Rep. Ellison. You’re that guy.

As promised yesterday, here’s the video from Dan’s press conference earlier this morning.

Enjoy!

Lately we’ve seen a disturbing trend of prosecutors going after border cops. A lot of people wonder where this push is coming from.

Now we know. South of the border, down Mexico way:

The Mexican Consulate played a previously undisclosed role in the events leading to U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton’s high-profile prosecution of Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, who are serving 11 and 12 year sentences for their role in the shooting of a drug smuggler, according to documents obtained by WND.And Mexican consular officials also demanded the prosecution of Texas Sheriff’s Deputy Guillermo “Gilmer” Hernandez, who subsequently was brought to trial by Sutton, the documents reveal.

WND has obtained a copy of a letter written April 18, 2005, by Mexican Consul Jorge Ernesto Espejel Montes in Eagle Pass, Texas, demanding Hernandez be prosecuted for injuring a Mexican national, Marciela Rodriguez Garcia.

[Page 1 of the letter can be seen here and page 2 here.]

The letter’s broken English even threatened to “punish” the United States for Deputy Hernandez’s actions:

Based on the Consular Convention between Mexico and the United States and the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, the Consulate of Mexico is entitled to represent, protect and defend the rights of Mexican nationals in this country. Therefore, I would like to point out, that is the care of my Country that this kind of incidents against our nationals, do not remain unpunished.

Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas) sums it up perfectly:

Culberson told WND it is “outrageous and unacceptable that our government is prosecuting U.S. law enforcement officials at the request of the Mexican government.”

There’s so much to this story that I can’t do it justice. Hop over to WND and read the whole thing.

Now that the media attention to the great governor of Texas’ executive order to inject little girls with who knows what has died down, a Houston area legislator thinks it is necessary to inject them a year earlier.

Rep. Jessica Farrar, D-Houston, said today she is continuing to push for her proposal that the human papillomavirus vaccine be mandated for sixth-grade girls beginning this September.

As I was reading this nonsense, I saw this statement from Dr. Kimberly Carter, OB/GYN from Austin:

“It’s as safe as Tylenol,” Carter said, adding that Tylenol is fine to take during pregnancy.

Wow, that is a pretty strong endorsement for a drug that has no long term studies of it’s effects on little girls.

Is it really safe for preteens? The FDA has approved use of the vaccine for females between the ages of nine and 26. In Merck’s trials, however, only 250 nine-year-old girls and boys were tested with Gardasil. Where did these kids come from? The other question we ask ourselves is, “Would I volunteer my nine-year-old daughter to test a vaccine against a sexually transmitted disease?”

But that name kept bugging me, Dr. Kimberly Carter. I knew I had heard it recently but couldn’t quite place it. Fortunately, we have Google these days to help those of us with memories not quite as good as they used to be. Yep, I knew I had heard that name. She is a member of the Austin chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility, according to the Austin Chronicle. She’s been on the circuit speaking out against coal plant permits being issued in Texas, conveniently ignoring the fact that they are replacing older, higher emission plants. But this statement from Dr. Carter is what tweaked my memory regarding forced injections of little girls:

“Women eat fish and fish is contaminated with mercury,” says Dr. Kimberly Carter, a local OB/GYN. “Mercury is not metabolized by your body so that means that while it goes through our digestive system, it does not go out of our system, so it’s stored in body fat and in other areas of the body, and we’re not sure how long it’s stored there. It could be stored for six years; it could be stored for ten years. So, the fish you eat now can affect children you have ten years from now potentially.”

So let me see if I understand Dr. Carter correctly. She is concerned that a minute amount of mercury might be emitted into the atmosphere, might be absorbed by a fish, which might be eaten by a woman, who might store that in her body fat, who might become pregnant at some time and it might affect her child.  But she is so totally unconcerned with the long-term effects of injecting a mixture of chemicals into little girls that she compares it to Tylenol. Got it?

Today’s Chronicle story on the arrest of blogger-terrorist Daniel Joseph Maldonado Aljughaifi contains a fourth paragraph that just strikes me as odd:

A former Houston resident who allegedly lived in terrorist camps overseas sits in Houston’s federal detention center, accused of training with al-Qaida.

Daniel Joseph Maldonado, 28, is the first American to be charged with joining Islamic extremist fighters in Somalia, where violence and instability have been commonplace since a transitional government took power in 2004 and warlords have fought to gain control.

The federal criminal complaint filed Tuesday against Maldonado alleges that, from September until January, he trained with the terrorist group and studied bomb-making with a man who assembled and produced explosives in Somalia.

Al-Qaida is blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people at the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Arlington, Va.

Here’s what I don’t get:

1. Either that is just a bit of rhetorical excess–i.e., the Chron might just as well write an additional sentence like “George W. Bush was President at the time of the attacks,” since by now I think pretty much everyone on Earth over the age of six has heard about al-Qaida and 9/11; OR…
2. The sentence reflects the absurd, hyper-neutral “non-judgmentalism” so endemic to modern journalism–after all, isn’t it more accurate to say that “Al-Qaida is responsible for the Sept. 11th, 2001, attacks,” rather than merely that they are “blamed” for them?

Does the Chron think Al-Qaida has gotten a bum-rap, being “blamed” for something that, you know, there are actually more and more questions being asked about, and information that contradicts the “official” storyline of the Wolfowitz/Feith/Kristol Zionist Occupational Goverment is coming out every day?

I don’t think so… but that takes us back to the fourth paragraph being the “Well, duh!” statement of the morning.

Al-Qaida isn’t merely “blamed” for 9/11–they are responsible for 9/11.

Some things we know to be true. Some judgments can be made.

Put them in the paper.

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