The United States has issued a travel advisory for parts of Mexico. Drug violence (especially around Nuevo Laredo) is once again out of control. The travel advisory comes as emboldened traffickers have posted written death threats against government officials and their families – attaching them with ice picks to the bodies of murder victims, U.S. and Mexican officials said. Ok, WTF is wrong in Mexico. If drug dealers/cartels or whatever murdered an 'official' in America and put a death threat to other 'officials' on his body with an ice pick don't you think that entire city would be swarming with every police authority we could bring to bear? Does Mexico have an army or anything? What are they doing these days, don't they have the time to run up there and do something? [DMN]
State Rep. Harold Dutton, was arrested on a charge of driving while intoxicated late Wednesday night. Tsk, tsk, tsk. Seriously, even I have the phone number for a taxi programmed in my Blackberry. [AAS]
Yes, we do love Youtube. Mary Denny's voter ID bill, now being carried by Leo Berman, will be on the floor on Monday.
Did you know that Maryland is the most liberal, whacked-out state in the nation? Neither did I!
Complete Nutjob. (YouTube)
about the killings on a university campus. Clearly, a sad and tragic day for students, faculty, parents and community and one that in retrospect we will all learn something about security...or our complete lack of it.
The person that did this, with his manifesto and videos, was no martyr. He was schizophrenic or somehow else deranged. He should have had a lobotomy years ago. Maybe the real fault of our society is trying to mainstream people that clearly should not be mainstreamed. Anyone reading anything else into his message is crazy and should be poked with a stick until they become annoyed and cry.
If someone in your office came to you and said, "We have this new product we need to roll out. If we do it in May it will hit the budget at somewhere around $10 million. If we wait until November and roll it out with our regular Fall schedule it will only add a small incremental increase in the budget. Oh, the $10 million is not in our budget." What would you say?
The Texas Legislature says, "Whatever. It's not my budget, it's someone else's. Just do it. We'll be able to sell it as a tax cut!" Once again, irresponsibility comes to mind.
I especially appreciated the tone that Travis CountyClerk took with the legislature.
Yesterday the state affairs committee met, as they do. Sue Richardson spoke as a witness reprezentin' the good members of Texans for Responsible Government, for the approval of (get ready) HB 127, HB 38, HB 291, HB 904, HB 905, HCR 11, HR 97, and HB 2998 (any bill having to do with holding off illegal immigration). You can watch her here (if you have a RealPlayer, starting around 46 minutes in). In her spiel against illegal immigrants, she compares legal immigrants to jelly beans ("like our legal immigrants, we love jelly beans"). She keeps playing with jelly beans while discussing how our state is overly compassionate to illegal immigrants from Mexico, and how they are responsible for the downfall of the American empire (I exaggerate slightly): they drink all our water, steal our spots on the beaches, etc. It gets better, though.
The best part of all is when Ms. Richardson surmises that the illegal immigrants are going against God's commandment not to covet and that coveting (covetousness?) is the reason so many immigrants come to America. Now here she truly loses me. Even though I know the words to certain "Jesus Christ Superstar" numbers, I'm no Biblical scholar. HOWEVER - I always thought G-d was talking about not coveting your neighbor's hot wife/husband/slave/donkey, not "coveting" the American way. Correct me if I'm wrong. If I was on the state affairs committee, at this point in her speech I would have been stifling my giggles . . . and hungry for jellybeans.
David Ritcheson was flung into the national spotlight when he was attacked at a party in Houston. You may remember the Mexican-American teen that was 'sexually assaulted with a pipe' and beaten and burned with cigarettes. While the attack was a brutal reminder of the brutality that exists today, it was also labelled as a hate crime.
Young Ritcheson will testify before Congress in the hopes that uniform and harsher hate crime laws will be enacted. Personally, we'd rather address why we as a nation encourage and tolerate hate in the first place. Why do we fuel it with inflamed rhetoric? Why does even the most benign political issue turn into a shouting match?
Maybe Patrick Rose will carry this legislation here in Texas. Didn't somebody beat him down because he is a *cough* Democrat? That's kind of like a hate crime.
We here at PinkDome are going to make an effort to offer you the latest in Internet gadgetry: something called "YouTube," which offers online "videos" - basically moving pictures with sound. Revolutionary!
So to keep us on our toes, please let us know whenever something good happens in the Lege - whether it's in committee or on the floor of either chamber, we'll try to capture it for posterity and your amusement. Don't be shy, now.
Here's PinkDome's YouTube user profile, so you can peruse all four of the videos we have online so far. Four!
The advertisements were the root of our slow load time on the site. I have since removed them altogether. Sorry it took me so long to figure it out and then to fix it. Well, you know, as sorry as someone like me can be about something as stupid as this.
Muah.
Now in YouTube format so all can enjoy.
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