Tuesday Roundup - Vaccine Hearings Underway

The turnaround on hearings for Perry's HPV order was very fast, but that's no surprise. Impassioned arguments began yesterday, and the House Public Health Committee will probably hear them through most if not all of today. The arguments for and against are the same as you've been reading in the last few weeks, from a challenge to the Governor's authority to make such an order to questions about the long term effects of Gardasil. You can watch the hearing after 10:00 AM here.

Over at the Statesman blog, Jason Embry connects the dots between Kent Grusendorf's defeat, which came largely at the hands of teachers' groups, and HB 1607 by Representative Bill Zedler of Arlington which makes the dissemination of "information that omits relevant facts in order to elicit a particular opinion" a civil offense. Or at least, it makes that action by a professional educators' association a civil offense. This is pretty overt, and he deserves to receive tersely-worded letters.

If you'll remember when Governor Perry was putting together his team after Bush left town for his new job, he swore he would institute standards which would prevent the revolving door of government workers turning to the private sector and then returning to government. That didn't work out so well, as about a dozen of his former high-level advisers are lobbying to the tune of about $10 million.

Nuevo Laredo and the Texas-Mexico border around it continues to be a bad place to do much of anything, as gang violence and cartel activity continue. This time, a Mexican legislator and his driver were attacked by gunmen. President Calderon is sending more troops there, but that presents its own problems.

CSPAN 2 is re-running a forum on political blogs and the 2008 elections from the University of Kansas, of all places. Bob Dole doesn't blog much. Bob Dole!

Things are slow in the Dallas mayoral race - last week, the news story was that no one had officially filed yet. This week, it's that the candidates aren't crazy about the city smoking ban. Someone's going to have to get arrested soon to zazz things up.

The Politico engages in something similar to what we did with our initial take on the Republican and Democratic candidate slates, but they go after my own heart by only pointing out the bad stuff about the top tier candidates.

Iowa Republicans are upset, and rightly so — the whole party is in disarray, and it isn't just Democrats that sense the real possibility for another whipping in 2008. That led to John McCain being greeted by "somber" crowds this last weekend. The experience has been different for Joe Biden, who's been making the rounds in church basements all over Iowa.

In other presidential news, Quinnipiac University put out a new poll today about the primary race in Connecticut. Senator Chris Dodd is in a distant fourth among Democrats in his home state. I know its too early for some polls to mean much, but this is one of those that might mean something. And to think, you can join the Dodd Squad right off his website.

To put this Roundup to bed, I wanted to point you to an informative column on Mitt Romney by Richard Cohen at the Washington Post. He makes a reference to The Talented Mister Ripley in describing how Romney has changed his positions to suit his needs and has not necessarily been punished by it. Yet.