The Texas Observer

Updated below

Just how crazy is the tea party movement? Crazy enough that elected GOP officials are now openly calling for the overthrow of the U.S. government because they don’t like Obama’s policies. Here’s an excerpt of a commentary by Daryl Fowler, the chairman of the DeWitt County (Texas) Republican Party. The commentary is currently posted on the main page of the DeWitt GOP website:

His [Obama’s] reign ends in less than four years, but the party could be over before then. If enough Americans stand up and reassert their God-given rights to institute governments and overturn those that are unjust. The movement in Texas and several other state legislatures regarding the 10th Amendment rights of the States is welcome on this page.

To put it as bluntly as possible: Republicans like Fowler don’t believe in democracy.

Update: Fowler responded to an email I sent him asking whether he was in fact advocating a government overthrow. He said (I think) that he wasn’t.

“I would say you are mistaken. The party may be over on November 2, 2010, but his term won’t end for another 1360 days.”

Fowler seems to be saying that he was just talking about the mid-term elections. Meanwhile, this whole 10th Amendment push, which Fowler welcomes, has taken on a reactionary, if not revolutionary tone. Just ask your friendly white supremacists over at Stormfront.

Forbes Magazine’s annual billionaires list includes Mexico’s most notorious drug trafficker Joaquin “el Chapo” Guzman Loera. At first when I saw the headline I thought it was a joke, but it’s absolutely true. I don’t doubt that el Chapo (Spanish for Shorty) probably has more than a billion dollars. According to an Associated Press report, the Mexican government is extremely angry about the listing.

I had to smile a little after reading so many stories as of late about Bernard Madoff and AIG when I read the following in the AP story: Mexico’s Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora said Forbes is defending crime by “comparing the deplorable activity of a criminal wanted in Mexico and abroad with that of honest businessmen.”

Guzman is the alleged leader of the Sinaloa cartel and there is a $5 million price on his head. The picture Forbes used shows a much younger Guzman in a rumpled ski jacket, which looks like it was taken in the eighties. The drug kingpin is now 54-years old.

Guzman is number 701 on the list between a Swiss oil tycoon who speculates on oil in war-torn countries and the inventor of condensed, canned soup. According to Forbes this isn’t the first time they’ve listed a drug dealer on their list. Colombian cocaine tycoon Pablo Escobar also made the list before he was gunned down in the early nineties.

For reporters, the first day that Texas legislators can file bills for the upcoming session is like Christmas in November.

Yesterday, the pre-filing period began for the 81st Legislature, and the bills flooded in by the hundreds. (A list of House bills is here and Senate bills here.)

There’s the usual collection of poorly thought out bills, funny bills, scary bills, and bills that are downright unconstitutional.

One idea already receiving media scrutiny is Rep. Frank Corte and Sen. Dan Patrick’s proposal to require women seeking an abortion to first receive an ultrasound so they can see the fetus and hear its heartbeat. Corte and Patrick do stipulate in the bill that women “may avert their eyes” from the ultrasound display. (How nice of them. Presumably they ruled out the Clockwork Orange-style eye-lid clamp approach as impractical.)

Corte has another doozy of a bill that’s so far received scant attention. His House Bill 44 seems an attempt to dissuade women seeking emergency contraception (the morning after pill). The bill begins by defining emergency contraception as a drug that is “used postcoitally.”

It requires pharmacists to first inform anyone seeking the morning after pill that the drug could prevent “implantation of a fertilized egg,” (Just in case someone actually wants arthritis medicine and asked for the wrong thing.)

A pharmacy must also display a sign that’s 18 by 24 inches and reads:

IF YOU BELIEVE THAT LIFE BEGINS AT FERTILIZATION — THE POINT WHERE THE SPERM AND EGG UNITE — THEN YOU NEED TO KNOW THAT EMERGENCY CONTRACEPTION MAY EITHER FUNCTION AS A CONTRACEPTIVE TO PREVENT THE EGG AND SPERM FROM UNITING OR PREVENT THE IMPLANTATION OF YOUR ALREADY FERTILIZED EGG IN YOUR WOMB. THE PHARMACIST DISPENSING THIS DRUG IS REQUIRED TO EXPLAIN TO YOU HOW THE PRODUCT MAY HELP TO PREVENT YOUR PREGNANCY.

Finally, Corte would require anyone seeking emergency contraception — after they read the sign — to show a driver’s license and sign for the purchase. The pharmacy would then be required to “make a record of the transaction,” including the person’s name and the date. The pharmacy would have to keep the record of that sale for two years. The bill doesn’t restrict access to those records.

This process could intimidate and humiliate young women trying to obtain legal medication, especially in small towns.

The Texas Residential Construction Commission defended itself today during a Texas Sunset Advisory Commission hearing. Just last month, the Sunset Commission’s staff made the unusual recommendation that the agency be scrapped because it did “more harm than good” for Texas consumers.

Today, the representatives from the TRCC who testified before lawmakers did all they could to avoid taking blame. The general consensus of the TRCC commissioners was that Texas consumers needed to be more educated about the home building process.

They argued for the survival of the agency and said that HB 1038, which made changes to the agency, needed time to take effect. The legislation was passed in 2005 by Rep. Allan Ritter, D-Beaumont, who also authored the original legislation.

TRCC Commissioner John Krugh, general counsel and VP for Bob Perry Homes, who helped craft the legislation that created TRCC, said he felt the agency was “fair and unbiased” toward consumers.

He said there were a number of misconceptions about the agency such as the idea that TRCC blocks or delays court access. (Arbitration can take up to two years with TRCC before homeowners can pursue their cases in court). “We are light regulation and heavy reconciliation,” he told the Sunset panel.

Commissioner Lewis Brown said he “totally disagreed” with the Sunset staff’s recommendation that the agency be scrapped. He called TRCC the voice of the consumer. “If you take away their voice, then shame on you,” he admonished the legislators.

Rep. Dan Flynn, a member of the Sunset Commission that will help decide if the agency survives, wondered why, if TRCC was fair and unbiased, was there such a disconnect between consumers and the agency?

Krugh remained silent on the issue. The executive director of the agency chimed in. He said consumers were very upset, because they already felt abused and cheated by the builder. Once they start working with TRCC, consumers felt the process was taking too long so they started to believe the agency was on the builder’s side. He also blamed the news media for portraying the agency on the side of home builders.

The “don’t blame us” argument from the agency didn’t sit well with consumers.

Carol Hemphill, a home buyer testified that she had 215 defects in her new home. Hemphill said she contacted TRCC who acknowledged the defects but said they were powerless to do anything about it. Hemphill said no attorney would take her case because construction defect cases were too expensive and took too long to pursue.

Hemphill said a lawyer had told her that “too many roadblocks had been put up by the Legislature to successfully pursue a case for a consumer.” She said she would probably lose her home because there was no way to sell it. “It would cost $25,000 to $50,000 to see it through arbitration,” she said.

It’s difficult to believe in the agency’s independence when wealthy home builder Bob Perry, the state’s largest campaign donor, donated $17,000 to Ritter’s campaign in 2006, the author of TRCC legislation. And when Perry’s VP and general counsel serves as an agency commissioner.

The Sunset Commission will make a recommendation in December on whether the agency should be abolished.

The Republican Party of Texas recently held an online contest to create a clever anti-Obama bumper sticker for use in the fall campaign. Texas Republicans were invited to vote for their favorite entry on the party’s Web site. After thousands of votes, the winning slogan has been announced.

And that winner is…..”Obama for Change? That’s all you’ll have left in your pockets.”

As in, tax hikes will leave you with nothing but change in your pocket. Get it?

Karl Rove must be rolling over in his grave.

You can see the bumper sticker here. You can purchase a set of three for $10, thus letting the Republicans pick your pocket instead. “This is sure to be a collector’s item within weeks,” says a party press release. We had no idea there was an aftermarket for non-starter campaign clinkers.

But we do hope whoever came up with this dog of a pun is at least getting royalties. Lite Gov. David Dewhurst told the crowd at the GOP state convention in Houston last month that “If Barack Obama gets the chance to change America, we’ll only be left with change in our pockets.” Gov. Rick Perry and former Secretary of State Roger Williams rolled out similarly thudding lines in their convention speeches.

We get the sense that state Republicans didn’t quite have their hearts in this particular attack, but lifeless sloganeering is just one symptom of the party’s woes. Jumping the gun is apparently another. The party email announcing the new bumper sticker says, “Texas is ready to take on Barack Obama and his conniving, liberal schemes as President!”

Of course, he isn’t president just yet. But unless the GOP offers better opposition than this, he probably will be soon.

Well, I wasn’t going to do it. But after chronicling the travails of Puddles/Panchito for several months, it seemed fitting to write an epilogue about the little Shih Tzu that brought down the mayor of a South Texas town.

After a 10-month tussle over custody of the lovable little yapper, the Gutierrez family finally emerged victorious yesterday. State District Judge Richard Terrell ruled in favor of the family after chastising both parties for behaving like idiots.

After all, Grace Saenz-Lopez—now the ex-mayor of Alice—gave up her political career for the pint-sized ball of fluff. She was also indicted along with her twin sister in an alleged plot to hide the dog from the Gutierrez family. The two still face criminal charges and will have their hearing next week. The whole affair became such a—ahem—doggone debacle that it made headlines in the New York Times and the nationally syndicated Mike and Juliet Show.

I’m glad it’s nearly over, because I’m running out of dog-related puns.

The question now is, can the ex-Mayor let sleeping dogs lie?

As you may have heard, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, having aced his merit badge in self-hairstyling, has waded into the treacherous waters of ostensible authorship with On My Honor: Why the American Values of the Boy Scouts Are Worth Fighting For. The book, a bit astoundingly, debuted at #1 on the Washington Post bestseller list Monday (according to a press release paid for by Texans for Rick Perry), and it may have received a boost — in the lucrative homophobe market, anyhow — from a Sunday New York Times Magazine interview with the governor by a clearly astounded Deborah Solomon, excerpted below.

Solomon: On My Honor “draws on your experience as an Eagle Scout and champions the values of the Boy Scouts of America, to whom you are donating your royalties.”

Perry: “Yes, to their legal defense fund.”

Solomon: “Which has been fighting the A.C.L.U., to keep gays out of the scouts. Why do you see that as a worthy cause?”

Perry: “I am pretty clear about this one. Scouting ought to be about building character, not about sex. Period. Precious few parents enroll their boys in the Scouts to get a crash course in sexual orientation.”

Solomon: “Why do you think a homosexual would be more likely to bring the subject of sex into a conversation than a heterosexual?”

Perry: “Well, the ban in scouting applies to scout leaders. When you have a clearly open homosexual scout leader, the scouts are going to talk about it. And they’re not there to learn about that. They’re there to learn about what it means to be loyal and trustworthy and thrifty.”

Solomon: “But don’t you think that homosexuals might also be interested in being loyal and thrifty?”

Perry: “The argument that gets made is that homosexuality is about sex. Do you agree?”

Solomon: “No”

Perry: “Well, then, why don’t they call it something else?”

Like what, absurd reductivism?

We will let the governor — famously and a bit tiresomely both an Eagle Scout and the father of an Eagle Scout, and not even in the least tiny bit gay — slide on his title’s sentence-ending preposition (his grammar badge must be pending). But there’s no getting past the wrongheadedness of his message, which seems to be something along the lines of gay people are obsessed with sex and if they’re allowed anywhere near impressionable young minds, then you don’t even want to know what tomorrow’s Webelos will be doing after school in the garage with all those fancy knots.

That message wasn’t lost on Equality Texas, which Tuesday issued a statement decrying Perry’s narrowminded bigotry and — gotcha! — unseemly preoocupation with sex. The group invites gay scouts to attend Perry’s three scheduled Texas booksignings this week.

in case you’re interested, that’s Tuesday, Feb. 26 at 7:30 p.m. at Border’s Books in San Antonio; Wednesday, Feb. 27, at 7 p.m. at BookPeople in Austin; and Thursday, Feb. 28 at 7:30 at Borders Books in Dallas. Expect to find Perry set up at a signing table in the farthest possible corner from the Gay & Lesbian Literature section. Because you know, you can catch those cooties just by breathing too deeply in their proximity.

And Perry should know. Rumors about his own possibly closeted orientation have circulated for years, prompting the governor in 2004 to take the extraordinary step of denying them publicly.

So far no one has been cynical enough to suggest that the Perry book’s square-jawed broadside at the gay and gay-friendly communities is perhaps nothing more than a self-serving bulwark against that very rumor, which bulwark might come in handy if those other rumors — of Perry’s ambition for national office — ever turn out to be true.

But finally, lest mockery get the best of us, let’s pause just a moment to credit Gov. Perry for not encouraging his dog to write a book, as other governors have done. We all know what dogs have on their dirty little dog brains, and it’s certainly not loyalty and trust. And we’re pretty sure there’s no merit badge for it, either.