Ken Paxton – Vexatious Litigant (cont.)

Embattled Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton just can’t help himself from continuing to waste taxpayer dollars on important issues like who gets to pee where.  One might think that Paxton was merely trying to draw attention away from his own considerable legal woes – but then one would be a small petty-minded type of person – like Red.

But the chances that Paxton would shy away from the most important legal and moral issue of the day, involving – as Red so crudely puts it – which hole gets to go in which hole, were slim to none.  Apparently there is not a single action of the federal government that Paxton does not feel up to challenge – at least until another Bush becomes President.  Paxton reflexively must challenge anything that might possible offend or cause the slightest consternation amongst his Tea Party followers – all the while maintaining his innocence in the face of what the legal experts refer to as “pretty damn good evidence” that he himself is the real lawbreaker.   Thus despite the lack of a shred of evidence that allowing the various varieties of our transgendered Texans to decide where they would like to evacuate their various by-products of human existence has endangered anyone or caused any of the Baptist women to cry “Oh, my!”, Paxton bravely soldiers on in the belief that only he knows best and that the very fate of the constitutional republic hangs in the balance on his briefs (no pun intended).

Red for one expresses no opinion (as yet) on the constitutionality of the Obama administration’s rule on bathroom equality.  What is clear, however, is that Paxton and ilk truly believe that this is the issue that will re-ignite the Tea Party movement (not just their bowels) and lead them back to national prominence in the wake of seeing their influence eviscerated by Donald Trump’s emergence (from the anus of the political sphere).  The right must have a bogeyman – real or imagined – and fear is the only thing they know how to properly manipulate into a position of power.  If not the Red Menace washing upon our shores, or the Hippies destroying our social fabric, or the Welfare Queens taking us to the cleaners, or Sex, Drugs and Rock & Roll corrupting our youth anymore, then there must be a new cause.  And with the so-called War on Terror falling out of fashion after a sort, what can the denizens of the right latch onto now.  Aha, bathroom safety.  The terrifying image of a grizzled child molester tarted up in a chemise and sporting some f*#k me pumps coming in to the Women’s room to terrorize Ted Cruz’s daughters will certainly get the base riled up.  Except maybe enough Americans are not quite stupid enough to believe such nonsense.  And no one will ever accuse Ken Paxton of not being stupid enough.

Today in Texas History – May 25

From the Annals of the Defeated  – – – The Texas Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy met for the first time.  According to the TDUDC, who are still referring to the Civil War as the “War Between the States”, their motto (on a five point star surrounding a cotton boll) is an ambitious “Love, Live, Pray, Think, Dare.”  The UDC was instrumental in the late 19th century  attempts to recharacterize the Civil War as not having been caused by slavery and in attempting to divert focus away from the rebellion that it was to a glorious cause dedicated to preserving a way of life that probably never really existed.

The GOP Voters Disappoint Red

The voters in the GOP primary run-off elections did themselves and Red a great disservice by rejecting Mary Lou Bruner for a position on the State Board of Education.  Readers may recall that Bruner, a Tea Party stalwart and former school teacher, had claimed that President Obama had been a gay prostitute in his youth to pay for his drug habit.  That’s just an extraordinary dose of crazy that very few politicians can deliver.  But Bruner kept the hits coming when she also claimed that the Noah’s Ark flood had extinguished the dinosaurs and that the Democrats had killed President Kennedy.   Such crazy talk did not keep Bruner down as she nearly won in the GOP primary in March and would surely have been elected to the SBOE in the fall despite her lunatic fringe beliefs.  But alas, Bruner went down in flames Tuesday night losing the run off by 18 points to local school board president Keven Ellis.  So unfortunately, Red will not be able to parade her around as the poster child for the band of right-wing zanies that goes by the name of the Texas GOP.

Today in Texas History – May 20

From the Annals of the Rockers –   In 1978, “The Buddy Holly Story” premiered in Lubbock the home town of Buddy Holly and the Crickets.  The film starred Gary Busey as Buddy Holly and chronicled his meteoric rise to stardom, courtship and marriage and untimely death.  The film received excellent reviews and was a commercial success as well.  

Your Annual Dose of Crazy – This Time with Extra Cheese

The Texas GOP platform is a thing of wonder – that is, it makes you wonder what planet these folks live on.  Charlie Pierce, one of Red’s favorites – listen to him on Only a Game on NPR – takes down the Texas GOP and takes them down hard.

Connoisseurs of American wingnuttery wait with great anticipation every four years for the release of the Texas Republican state platform. It is like Christmas morning. We wait for it the way America waited for that first cold beer on the evening of December 4, 1933. This is the real deal, the pure uncut hallucinogen of all American political ideology, the ultimate monster from the conservative Id. And this is not produced from some compound in Idaho. It is not stapled to a lamp post in downtown Coeur d’Alene. It is the official adopted philosophy of the Republican party in one of the most important states in the Union.

Today in Texas History – May 18

From the Annals of the Comanche – In 1871, a war party of more than 100 Kiowas, Comanches, Kiowa-Apaches, Arapahoes, and Cheyennes from the Fort Sill Reservation in Oklahoma attacked Henry Warren’s wagon train on the Butterfield Overland Mail route.  The raiders killed the wagon master and six teamsters, but five others escaped.  The raiders lost one dead and five wounded and returned to the reservation. One of the survivors reached Fort Richardson.  When General Sherman and Colonel Ranald Mackenzie heard his first hand account, the Army moved to arrest the leaders of the raid, Chiefs Satank, Satanta, and Big Tree. Satank was killed while trying to escape.  Chief Satanta and Big Tree were tried by civil courts in Texas (the first time Indians had been tried in civil courts), found guilty, and sentenced to hang. Governor Edmund Davis commuted the Indians’ sentences to life imprisonment. The raid caused General Sherman to change his opinion about conditions on the Texas frontier, thus ending his own defensive policy and the Quaker peace policy as well. Sherman ordered soldiers to begin offensive operations against all Indians found off the reservation, a policy that culminated in the Red River War of 1874-75 and the resulting end of Indian raids in North Texas.

We Haven’t Heard the Last of “Lyin’ Ted”

Christopher Hooks of the Texas Observer has been following Sen. Ted Cruz (TP-Texas) for quite a while and is convinced that Cruz’s quest for the White House has just barely begun.  Hooks examines Cruz’s non-concession speech after getting drubbed in Indiana and sees Cruz planting the seeds for another run in 2020.

Approximately three minutes and 30 seconds into Ted Cruz’s Indiana speech announcing the end of his 2016 presidential campaign, he announced the beginning of his 2020 presidential campaign — before he had even said the words that made his retreat from the field of battle official. For years, Cruz had been telling conservatives about Ronald Reagan in 1980, and the great reversal against Carter’s liberalism. But now, in defeat, he spoke about Ronald Reagan in 1976, the year the Gipper came close to beating Gerald Ford in the Republican primary but came just short of the finish line.

Cruz’s ambition and self-regard is all-consuming. He seems to have possessed a single-minded determination to become president from the time his classmates were falling off of monkey bars. So it’s a fair bet that he woke up the morning after the Indiana primary and started to make plans. But how should he play his hand as Trump flails his way to the general election?

Ken Paxton – Vexacious Litigant

Embattled Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton just can’t avoid the spotlight – or perhaps thinks that getting his office involved in a matter that doesn’t concern the State of Texas will divert the people’s attention from his own legal problems.  This time, Paxton is using Texas taxpayer money to intervene in a lawsuit on behalf of Exxon-Mobil – an outfit that typically is thought capable of carrying its own legal water.

The U.S. Virgin Islands’ Attorney General, Claude Walker, is seeking documents from Exxon related to an investigation into whether the energy giant covered up its internal investigation into climate change and misled shareholders about the impact of climate change on the company’s bottom line.  In that regard, the USVI issued a subpoena.  Exxon sued in Tarrant County district court seeking to quash the subpoena.  Paxton’s office filed a brief in support of Exxon.  Paxton decried the USVI’s attorney general’s investigation as “ridiculous” and a “fishing expedition of the worst kind.”  Kowtowing to his base in prototypical TeaPartySpeak, Paxton described the subpoena as “an effort to punish Exxon for daring to hold an opinion on climate change that differs from that of radical environmentalists.”

Red could probably not care less about whether Exxon has to cough up some documents or whether it was less than forthcoming with respect to its investigations into climate change.  Red does care about the limited resources of the Texas AG’s office being used for blatantly political purposes and to help line the coffers of Paxton’s re-election campaign fund.  Paxton was a major recipient of donations from the energy industry and his intervention in this matter in the week before Exxon’s annual shareholders’ meeting seems just a little too coincidental.  Texas has had some pathetic excuses for an AG before, but Paxton is putting the bar so low that no future AG will ever be able to limbo under it.