Tuesday Roundup: Craddick Before Gonzo?

In case you haven't hit the news circuits in a week or so, the buzz at the pink dome is all about a possible motion in the House to vacate the chair. I suppose it makes some sort of sense that those who were concerned about getting legislation through the house last time they tried to out Craddick would be less concerned about that so near the end of the session. At the same time, this does smack of too little, too late. Though considering some of the legislation that we're likely to see pushed through in the next few days, perhaps a little legislative gridlock is precisely what the doctor ordered.

Craddick's potential ouster notwithstanding, it looks like the Lege is trying to go home early this year after all. Many were thinking that early talk about not calling special sessions this year was, as usual, not going to go quite as planned, and it seemed the major culprit to that end would be HB 1892, which Perry has indicated he's about as likely to sign as a pro-contraception bill. (Encourages teen promiscuity, don'tcha know.) But the word is that Perry would sign SB 792, which has an even longer list of toll road projects to be exempted from the two-year ban along with a number of other loopholes and handouts to private toll road developers. It is out of the Senate, and on its way to the House. Of course, some are wondering why SB 792 is even necessary when HB 1892, its slightly less loophole-laden cousin, passed the Lege 166-5. Remember what I just said about legislation being pushed through these last few days? I'm putting my money on Republican legislators taking advantage of the "crunch time" before sine die to pass the red-meat conservative bills we haven't seen as much of earlier in the session, since the lack of time would make it that much harder to build an opposing coalition in the Lege.

The Galveston County Daily News has an op-ed on taking concealed handgun records out of public record. He rightly points out that the supposed problem of increased gun thefts from criminals using public records to find licensed owners just doesn't exist. It instead removes another layer of public oversight from political processes — and we know how well that tends to work out.

If trends at the Justice Department keep up, within a few months there's not going to be anybody there to run the store. Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty resigned yesterday, citing "the financial realities of college-age children and two decades of public service." That and a sinking ship. The Times quotes Chuck Schumer as saying, "It seems ironic that Paul McNulty, who at least tried to level with the committee, goes while Gonzales, who stonewalled the committee, is still in charge." As Josh would say, zing.

And finally today, Switzerland has completed what will be the most powerful particle collider in the world, which will hopefully lead to answers to some fundamental questions of how matter came to be and of the nature of mass and energy. Why is this making news in a political web site? Glad you ask. I'll let the article do the talking:

The advent of the Cern collider also cements a shift in the balance of physics power away from American dominance that began in 1993, when Congress canceled the Superconducting Supercollider, a monster machine under construction in Waxahachie, Tex. The supercollider, the most powerful ever envisioned, would have sped protons around a 54-mile racetrack before slamming them together with 40 trillion electron volts.

For decades before that, physicists in the United States and Europe had leapfrogged one another with bigger, more expensive and, inevitably, fewer of these machines, which get their magic from Einstein’s equation of mass and energy. The more energy that these machines can pack into their little fireballs, the farther back in time they can go, closer and closer to the Big Bang, the smaller and smaller things they can see. Recalling those times, Dr. Evans said: “There was a nice equilibrium across the Atlantic. People used to come and go.”

Now, Dr. Evans said, “The center of gravity has moved to Cern.”