Tag Archives: Texas Politics

Texas Takes Step Back in Syrian Refugee Litigation

Leave a reply

Texas will no longer seek a temporary restraining order preventing resettlement of Syrian refugees scheduled for next week in Dallas and Houston.  Texas is apparently going forward with a request for a preliminary injunction, but that will come too late to stop the current refugees from joining their families in Texas.  The step backwards by Texas came after the Justice Department and the ACLU filed lengthy briefs on behalf of the embattled relief agency establishing that the Texas Health and Human Services Commission sought “unwarranted veto power over individual federal refugee resettlement decisions.”

The Dallas Morning News has the full scoop.

Texas Sues the Federal Government to Stop Syrian Refugee Resettlement

1 Reply

Gov. Greg Abbott (TP-Texas) has authorized the Texas Dep’t of Health and Human Services to sue the US, Sec. of State John Kerry and others to prevent the resettlement of Syrian refugees into Texas.  The suit seeks to immediately stop any such resettlement efforts and claims, as legally required, that Texas will suffer irreparable harm if a couple of Syrian families (who already have relatives in Texas) are placed in the Dallas area.  The suit quotes the FBI Director and others who have expressed some concerns about the ability to vet the Syrian refugees who are applying for status in the U.S.  The suit also quotes the Director National Intelligence as saying, “We don’t put it past the likes of ISIL to infiltrate operatives among these refugees.”

Whether those concerns create the prospect of irreparable harm (a required showing for the temporary relief sought) is perhaps questionable.  What is not questionable is the complete and total authority of the federal government over immigration including matters relating to resettlement of refugees.  There is no likelihood of success on the merits (another required showing to obtain temporary relief) here because Texas cannot and will never have any authority over immigration matters.

This lawsuit is a complete waste of time and taxpayer resources and clearly does nothing other than to burnish Abbott’s already glowing Tea Party credentials.  The Dallas Morning News has the petition filed by the State for your reading pleasure.

Non-Profit Defies Bogus Order from Gov. Abbott

Leave a reply

The fight over the right to resettle Syrian refugees in Texas is heating up.  Gov. Greg Abbott (TP-Texas) previously declared that Texas will not accept Syrian refugees despite having no authority whatsoever over the matter and in apparent violation of legal protections against discrimination based on national origin or religion.  Abbott then threatened non-profits who are doing the hard work of creating conditions for a better life in the U.S. for these refugees with legal action if they did not kowtow to his demands.  Well, at least one such non-profit is fighting back against Abbott’s baseless blustering.  The Texas Tribune has the details.

The New York-based International Rescue Committee said in a Monday letter to Texas health and human services chief Chris Traylor that its Dallas affiliate would continue to provide resettlement assistance to all refugees “who have been admitted lawfully to the United States.”

The nonprofit had received a letter earlier on Monday from Traylor urging the International Rescue Committee’s Dallas branch to discontinue resettling Syrian refugees or risk losing its state contract “and other legal action.” The International Rescue Committee — one of about 20 nonprofits that have a state contract to resettle refugees in Texas — had previously informed the state that it would resettle two families in the Dallas area in early December. Both families have relatives in North Texas, the nonprofit said.

The federal Office of Refugee Resettlement last week warned Abbott and other governors that they do not have the power to reject Syrian refugees, telling them they would be breaking the law if they denied benefits or services to refugees based on their country of origin or religion. States that defy the law could face suspension or termination of their refugee resettlement programs, according to a letter signed by Robert Carey, director of the office.

Abbott has insisted he has the legal authority to refuse to accept Syrian refugees, citing a specific part of federal law requiring resettlement nonprofits to work “in close cooperation and advance consultation” with the state.

Abbott is a well-versed constitutional lawyer who should know better than to put forth absurd claims of authority  based on statutory language that does not actually give the state any power to control the resettlement of refugees.  But that wouldn’t play well with his Tea Party base – now would it?

 

Gov. Abbott Visits Cuba – For Dinner and a Floor Show

Leave a reply

Gov. Greg Abbott (TP-Texas) embarked on a supposed trade mission to Cuba and apparently accomplished little other than having a nice dinner and taking in a floor show.  According to the pool report filed by a Texas reporter traveling with Abbott, the governor dined and watched a concert at a high-end private restaurant in the Miramar section of Havana on Monday evening.

On Tuesday, Abbott visited Cuba’s new Mariel port and free trade zone.  Abbott’s group was told by Cuban officials that the U.S. trade embargo – which Congress has refused to lift despite normalization of relations between the two countries – meant there was no opportunity for U.S. businesses to invest there.

Abbott told the officials that “Texas has an abundance of (rice and other commodities) and a very easy ability to export from Texas to Cuba,” according to the pool report.   The Cuban officials indicated that the island nation would continue to buy rice from other sources until the U.S. allowed the country to buy on credit, a measure currently prohibited by the embargo.

Despite the bad news, sources tell Red that the excellent flan and expresso Abbott was served after his fancy meal made the entire trip worthwhile and a really good deal for Texas taxpayers.

We Don’t Need No Smart Peoples Telling Us What to be Learnin’ our Childrens

Leave a reply

In the face of numerous absurd statements in a recently published history book, the State Board of Education – which authorized the ridiculed textbook – has rejected a proposal to have people who might actually know something about history review textbooks for accuracy.  The 8-7 vote against the proposal at least indicates that not every member of the Board is a Tea Party hack.  But it is clear, that the Board functions as a wing of the Tea Party and is attempting to indoctrinate Texas students with conservative ideology at the expense of actual facts.  The Trailblazer Blog of the Dallas Morning News has more.

State Board of Education members on Wednesday narrowly rejected a plan to create a group of state university professors to scour Texas schoolchildren’s textbooks for factual errors.

The vote against was 8-7, with all the board’s Republicans except two opposing the measure.

The push for more experts to be involved came after more than a year of controversy over board-sanctioned books’ coverage of global warming, descriptions of Islamic history and terrorism and handling of the Civil War and the importance of Moses and the Ten Commandments to the founding fathers.

A tipping point to add more fact checking may have come last month. A suburban Houston mom’s alert that a newly approved geography text described African slaves forcibly brought to North America as “workers” set off a national furor.

At issue is whether the board should continue to rely on publishers and the public to flag errors. Currently, citizen panels nominated by the board have a narrower mission – to determine whether a book fits into Texas’ curriculum standards. Mostly, current and retired teachers sit on the panels.

Board vice chairman Thomas Ratliff, R-Mount Pleasant, offered the backstop panel of university professors as an amendment to a proposed overhaul of textbook approval procedures. Under his proposal, the board could set up a new panel drawn “solely from Texas institutions of higher education” to check the books for errors.

“I know that people are concerned about pointy headed liberals in the ivory tower making our process … worse,” he said. “Why wouldn’t we reach out to them and say let’s make sure these books are as factually accurate as possible?”

Why indeed?

 

Stand in Line to Insult Ted Cruz

Leave a reply

The thin-skinned Senator Ted Cruz (TP-Texas) thinks that Pres. Obama has insulted him by criticizing Cruz’s proposal to only allow Christian refugees into the U.S.

When I hear political leaders suggesting that there would be a religious test for which a person who is fleeing from a war-torn country is admitted, when some of those folks themselves come from families who benefited from protection when they were fleeing political persecution, that’s shameful, that’s not American.

Apparently, they are scared of widows and orphans coming into the United States of America.  . . . At first, they were too scared of the press being too tough on them in the debates. Now they are scared of 3-year-old orphans. That doesn’t seem so tough to me.

Cruz responded claiming that, “It is utterly un-befitting of a President to be engaging in those kinds of personal insults, attacks.” Cruz further charged that Obama was “belittling the Republican field” and called for the President to “insult me to my face.”

First, the Republican field is doing a more than adequate job of belittling itself with its  ridiculous rhetoric.  Second, Cruz seems to have a double standard about insults.  Cruz has accused Pres. Obama of waging a war on police, being a state sponsor of terrorism and violating the constitution.  Cruz also claimed that Obama’s “vilification of law enforcement” was responsible for the shooting death of Harris County Deputy Darren Goforth – a patently absurd claim in light of the facts surrounding that tragic murder.   Them’s  fighting words where Red comes from.

Moreover, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC points at that if Cruz should be concerned about anyone insulting him it should be Cruz himself –  who just last year argued that we should be accepting Syrian refugees while castigating the President for failing to act.  But that was before Cruz realized he could score some political points with his Tea Party base by attempting to look tough by calling for a halt to resettlement of all but Christian refugees from Syria.

What’s more, Cruz is doing more than just posturing and thumping his chest for the cameras. As the Washington Post reported, the senator “introduced a bill Wednesday that would prohibit refugees from any country the State Department has determined is controlled in part by a foreign terrorist organization from entering the United States.”
 
How would blocking victims of terrorism help? Cruz hasn’t explained, though it’s the sort of move that’s likely intended to impress Republican primary voters.
 
That said, if the senator is serious about a spirited debate over U.S. refugee policy, perhaps the best course of action would be an argument between this version of Ted Cruz and last year’s version of Ted Cruz. 
Interviewed in February 2014, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz declared that Syrian refugees should be permitted into the United States and argued that this could be done without jeopardizing national security.
 
“We have welcomed refugees – the tired, huddled masses – for centuries. That’s been the history of the United States,” he told Fox News in a video featured on Cruz’s website. “We should continue to do so.” He added: “We have to continue to be vigilant to make sure those coming are not affiliated with the terrorists, but we can do that.”
I’ll look forward to Cruz’s condemnation of Cruz for his reckless indifference to national security.

How Would a Real “Tea Party” Fare in Texas

Leave a reply

The divide in the GOP is playing itself out on the national stage as the Tea Party wing (represented by Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, etc.) fights it out with the Establishment wing (represented by Jeb!!!!$$$$?, Marco Rubio, John Kasick, Chris Christie, etc.) while the Insanity wing (Donald Trump and Ben Carson) leads the way.  Meanwhile, Red wonders how his many Republican friends can continue to stand with a party in which 43% of its members think Pres. Obama is a Muslim, which believes we can deport 11 million people back to wherever they came from without any problems, still believes that supply-side economics works, and wants to return to the gold standard.

Simply put, the Republican Party needs to break up.  We will have your Grandfather’s Country Club GOP which believes that responsible governance is a good thing, that not all government is inherently evil, understands that many aspects of modern commerce require reasonable regulation, recognizes that compromise is an essential part of life, and which has more or less sane fiscal policies.  Then you will have a Tea Party which will be ideologically pure and stand for kicking out every last undocumented alien, huge tax cuts for the very wealthiest, bring back the gold standard, making gay marriage illegal, destroying any right to choose, instituting religious tests for office, allowing guns everywhere, repealing the 17th Amendment, instituting property ownership requirements for voting and any other policy that will insure that the upstanding good, white people of  America remain in control.

The Texas Tribune has the breakdown on just what might happen if the GOP were to fracture.

Candidate filing is underway and guess what, Captain Obvious? Almost everything that’s competitive in Texas races will come to a head in the March primary and not in the November general election.

That said, recent polling shows that not only are there strong factional differences between Tea Party and non-Tea Party Republicans, but also that the anti-establishment types are a sizable part of the Texas GOP.

The latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll asked Texans which primary they’d be voting in; 50 percent said Republican and 35 percent said Democrat. It also asked how they would vote in a congressional race if there were candidates from the Republican, Democratic and Tea Parties. Once again, 35 percent chose the Democrats. The Republican number dropped to 22 percent, and the Tea Party got 17 percent. The percentage of “don’t know” responses rose, too.

One of the poll’s co-directors, Daron Shaw of the University of Texas at Austin, reads that to say that 43 percent to 44 percent of the GOP primary voters are Tea Party voters. That faction is relatively small in the Legislature, especially in the Texas House. But they’re bucking for a promotion, talking about entering enough candidates in the 2016 elections to seriously challenge the conservatives now in power.

The races will firm up over the next month; the filing period that opened on Saturday continues through Dec. 14.

Anticipating Tonight’s GOP Debate

2 Replies

With all the hubbub, hoo-hah, and general commotion surrounding Dr. Ben Carson’s claim to have stabbed someone as a youth, Red anticipates that the other presidential hopefuls on the GOP side may feel compelled to come up with their anecdotes showing how they have risen from their troubled past and become the better person for it.

Rand Paul –  Once refused to tip his hairdresser when she cut his hair too short.

Ted Cruz – Never killed anyone himself, but his Dad Rafael, was part of team of assassins who were dispatched to kill deposed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Bautista but were thwarted when FB had the impertinence to die of a heart attack just days before the planned assassination.  Ted himself did once unleash a brutal tongue lashing that reduced a first grade classmate to quivering jelly after cutting in front of Ted in the boy’s restroom.  Ted really had to pee very badly.

Jeb!!!!$$$$? – Whacked a fraternity brother up side of the head with a pledge paddle when he refused to give Jeb!!!!$$$$? a copy of an old Econ 101 final.  Jeb!!!!$$$$? made a C.

Marco Rubio –  Tried to attack a convenience store clerk with a switchblade.  Luckily, it was only Marco’s switchblade comb.

Carly Fiorina – Too many school yard cat fights to pick out one in particular.

Donald Trump –  Paid local toughs to beat up kid who made fun of his hair.  This happened more than once.

John Kasich –  Food fight in the men’s locker room at his country club.  Couldn’t get a decent tee time for several months.

Chris Christie – Sat on little brother until he forked over allowance.

Mike Huckabee – Body slammed gay man in the mosh pit.

Bobby Jindal –  Peed in neighbor’s back yard.

Gregg Abbott Takes Action Against Non-Existent Texas “Sanctuary Cities”

Leave a reply

Gov. Gregg Abbott, Tea-Party Wannabe, is cracking down by threatening to withhold funds from so-called “Sanctuary Cities.”  There are a couple of problems with Abbott’s plans.  First, the funds he wants to withhold are miniscule in the scheme of things for the larger cities and counties in Texas.  Second, it is really unclear if there are in fact any SC’s in Texas.  The essence of an SC is that it’s law enforcement officials will not indefinitely hold an undocumented alien in custody for a minor crime until the Feds can get there and take the UA into custody for immigration violations.  It does not appear that any major law enforcement agencies in Texas are actually refusing to do just that.  So our poor idiot Governor (who is just one in a seemingly unbroken line of OPIG’s) is doing nothing more than his typical and customary grandstanding for his Tea Party base while ignoring the real issues that are facing our state.  If you want more on Abbott’s latest sad effort to look gubernatorial, you can check out FoxNews.  Even they have the correct take on Abbott’s folly.