Friday Roundup: Real Estate and the Secret Thesis

Whenever an editorial titled "The Smell Test" shows up in the paper that has your name in the first sentence, you probably aren't going to be happy about the contents. I imagine state Senator Jane Nelson isn't crazy about the media she's gotten lately on the subject of paying rent on a house to your spouse with campaign dollars, and state Senator Kim Brimer probably wishes people would stop talking about it.

A few days ago we passed along the information that Governor Rick Perry hadn't sent in his budget proposal for his $100 million border security program, and that the Lege was more or less letting him know nothing was going to happen until they got his plan. He got the message and submitted it. Democrats would like the plan to have more oversight to ensure that criminals are the focus of the increased security rather than Hispanics.

The Dallas Morning News gets a little ornery with mayoral candidate Tom Leppert, pointing out specifically that he avoided answering questions about why he hasn't voted on much of anything in the last several years. They do the rundown of the other major candidates but the piece largely focuses on Leppert, even getting a quote from the Dallas chapter of the League of Women Voters on the importance of civic participation.

We've been using the National Guard to undertake missions in foreign lands, and the fiscal problems Republicans caused over the course of prosecuting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have resulted in severe equipment shortfalls for a great many Army National Guard units. A recent round of reports classifying the status of Army National Guard units revealed that 88% of them are "not ready." That is terrible news, and not just in matters of civil defense. The problem is indicative of a larger malfeasance at work in the management of the American armed forces, leading to a severely reduced capability for a military response to anything.

This poll should interest you if you might ever need a doctor or some similar service: most Americans not only support universal health care as a policy, but they also support raising taxes to pay for it. The polled American public continues to surprise me these days. This sort of thing bodes well for presidential candidates touting universal health care, and/or turning us into Europe. Pretty soon soccer will be the national sport.

Finally today, MSNBC has this riveting story about how people are clamoring to get a hold of Hillary Clinton's senior thesis from Wellesley. This is not a surprise, especially after the Clinton administration had kept it on the down low during his term in office. I find her use of phrases like "the anachronistic nature of small autonomous conflict" to be especially appealing to the political scientist in me. It is interesting to note that after she turned down a job with political organizer Saul Alinsky, the subject of her thesis, Barack Obama took one several years later.