Let it drag to a halt. Considering all the damage they have done already.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Voter ID Already Rearing Its Head
A full day before it's set to come up, with debates on Unemployment Insurance and the Top Ten Percent rule still to come, the partisan quagmire colloquially known as Voter ID has already halted productivity in the House.
When the first local and consent bill came up this morning, the Democrats began chubbing - talking on the bill just to stall time. Edinburg Democrat Rep. Aaron Pena tweeted that "The core of the problem is the Voter ID bill and the objections of many to it hitting the floor."
Talking on a local bill for 10 minutes kills it. Today is the last day to pass House bills on the local and consent calender. Rep. Craig Eiland, presiding over the chamber, insists that all bill killings be "earned," forcing the representatives to talk it out rather than simply indicate their intent to speak, as has been allowed in the past. At this rate, with approximately 10 minutes of chubbing on approximately 160 local bills, it will be a full day before we get to any major bills. To be fair, for the most part, Democrats are not killing the bills. They are taking the bills right to the brink of death by speaking for 9 minutes and 30 seconds.
Almost instantly, Republican Rep. Sid Miller risked killing all of the local bills by raising a point of order on the entire calender on the grounds that it was set in a committee meeting that did not have public access. The P.O.O. was withdrawn after its consideration began dragging out causing even more delay.
A group of republicans huddled with Republcan Caucus Chairman Larry Taylor (pictured) to come up with a response to the Democrats' stunt. 
As of this posting, the Republicans were letting the Democrats carry on with their public late-session time-wasting. If this carries on, it will be a long Friday. If anything changes, it will be updated here.
Update: Meanwhile, the Senate spent the morning caucusing to discuss the logjam in the House. For awhile, with just 10 days left in the session, nothing was happening in either chamber. When the Senate finally got started, they set about the work of saving as many bills as possible.
Coming to a Texas highway near you: License plate readers
Deep in the Senate's version of the massive TXDoT bill is a provision that, if not stripped out in conference committee, will allow local, state and federal law enforcement agencies to install license plate reading cameras on Texas highways. The technology - already in widespread use in surveillance-crazy Britain - is very powerful, enabling the government to automatically photograph the license plates of moving vehicles and check the information against databases. If the system finds a "match," officers can be alerted.
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Senate Bill 690: Trimming the Grassroots
Karen Hall’s knees still haven’t recovered from gathering signatures door-to-door for an amendment to Bryan’s city charter. “Democracy is a messy business,” she says, “but we like it.”
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Women to Watch: Rep. Kristi Thibaut, D-Houston
After she lost her first campaign for a House seat from Houston in 2006, Kristi Thibaut showed up in Austin anyway. What she encountered, as she lobbied unsuccessfully for lower utility rates with fellow ACORN activists, was almost enough to make her wonder why she'd wanted that seat in the first place.
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One Weekend a Month, Two Weeks a Year, Five Years in Jail
Sometimes our legislators don't even know what's in their own bills. This morning, Rep. Dan Flynn (R-Van) discussed his House Bill 1165 before the Defense & Veterans Affairs Committee and it was evident that he hadn't read - or maybe didn't understand - what all was in it.
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