Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (TP) really, really wanted a vote on one of his pet projects – school vouchers.  After getting the increasingly right-wing Texas senate to pass a bill that would create education savings accounts allowing parents to remove children from public schools and send them to private alternatives, and provide tax breaks for businesses offering donations to help pay for private schooling.  The measure went down in flames in the Texas House – about the last bastion of occasional sanity in GOP-dominated Texas politics.   The House voted 103-44 to reject Patrick’s plan.  Democrats and rural Republicans torpedoed any chance of passage.  Republicans wonder how they sell a bill that  would reduce public school funding to parents who actually like public schools and have a harder time selling Patrick’s patchwork plan to rural voters where the public schools are the only option.

On to the bathrooms!