Monday Roundup - Primaries and Punishments

We have a lot of exciting items for you this week: Chris Bell has an essay on the TAKS test and its efficacy, staff writer Josh Davis holds forth on the debate over Texas casinos, and later today Karl Lynch will begin a five-part Bill Tracker series on election laws.

The argument about whether or not to move the Texas primary is already underway - this Statesman editorial argues that moving the Texas primary to early February will force politics to compete with Christmas and New Years, which is true, but in a world where the 2008 election cycle is already underway in earnest, I'm not sure that wouldn't happen anyways. The arguments I've heard in favor of moving the primary generally express a desire for Texas to matter in presidential politics "as more than an ATM." No matter which argument wins, I wouldn't expect to see any action on this for several months.

In other primary news, the Obama campaign's seeming unpreparedness is becoming a story with ever-lengthening legs: at BOR, David Holmes reported on their lack of presence at last week's Democratic National Committee meeting, and the Washington Post discussed the fact that he seems to be behind on nuts-and-bolts basics. You'll probably see more about it as the excitement Obama fades a little in the next few weeks, but he'll probably get a bump this Saturday when he makes his official-official announcement.

John Edwards, Obama's primary competition for the role described by the New York Times as "fresh-faced change agent," is doing better in the organization and issues categories, but is still battling hard to delineate himself from the rest of the potential nominees. His plan for universal health coverage is getting play in the MSM, although the fact that he would tax rich people more to pay for it seems to be getting distilled down to "Edwards plan includes a tax."

If you're a fan of the state's rights v. federalism debate, you'll enjoy this: state legislatures all over the union are passing laws which rail against the federal government's plan to standardize driver's licenses, codified in the Real ID Act. In Montana, they voted 99-1 to ignore it. The federal government usually starts messing with public works dollars when the states do this sort of thing, but maybe we'll get a hearing or two on unfunded mandates out of this.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales seems to be continually occupying Agitation Station these days, from temporarily denying the Senate Judiciary Committee access to domestic spying documents to his recent shenannigans over who gets to be US Attorneys and how. The US Attorneys thing could get contentious - last year, the Attorney General was given the authority 'to appoint interim US Attorneys indefinitely,' and Justice has started making the case for the at-will employment of US Attorneys since Gonzales began a run of firing seven of them late last year. The Senate Judiciary Committee starts hearings about it tomorrow.

In state news, the Chron has an editorial in which they pose the question as to whether the Perry-Dewhurst 2TheExtreme child sex offender laws are actually doing anything to make Texas children safer. One particularly stark yet compelling argument posed against the death sentence for child sexual abuse cases is the "perverse incentive" to kill the child in order to eliminate them as a witness, since the potential cost to the abuser of abusing or killing the child is the same. I suppose some of this will come down to whether the resulting policy initiative is driven by partisanship or practicality.

In Lege news, the Valley delegation is in ascendancy, and they largely attribute it to teamwork. Blogger and state Rep. Aaron Peña is a part of that delegation, and I'm sure he'll be discussing the differences between this session and the last through May.

This is in opposition to the El Paso delegation, which seems to be undergoing some internal strife. These relationships weren't thrashed in the last month - they've been building to this point for a while. Despite what is said about me in hushed tones, I am a huge proponent of party discipline and presenting a united front, so I wish everyone would stop complaining to the media about other Reps in the same party. I'm just saying.