Wednesday Roundup: Not in the Immigration Business

If you filed one of the 40 or so immigration bills this session, State Representative David Swinford has some bad news for you: your bill is going nowhere. It seems that state government is not "in the immigration business."

In some ways this is a good thing. Representative Leo Berman earned national infamy with his plan to deny citizenship to children born inside the United States to illegal immigrants, so if the State Affairs committee is the rock against which that bill breaks, great. But immigration is an issue that must be addressed; the only more inappropriate treatment of immigration matters than not taking them seriously is to not take them at all.

Immigration continues to be a defining everyday issue for some Texas citizens. After all the Farmer's Branch noise about the city's self-selected Chosen Few rising up against the tide of illegal immigrants on some imagined holy geas, I didn't expect that brouhaha to quiet down due to something so flimsy as a court order, and it didn't — now the FBI is investigating claims of door-to-door harassment by those same LandWarriors, who must imagine themselves as the starring characters in some latter-day Alamo epic, probably starring Mel Gibson. Someone should alert Rep. Swinford that even if the Lege isn't in the business of immigration policy, rank amateurs are taking it upon themselves.

Oh, hey! That mulch fire in Helotes? Finally out! It only contaminated 5 private wells while it was burning, too. I'm sure no one has to worry about the long-term effects of that mulchy, ashen evil creeping into the genetic code of everyone who lived around it or anything. I am sort of sad that a running joke is now gone forever, but I'm sure we can come up with a few ways to keep it alive.

Rep. Harold Dutton got a stern talking to from Rep. Charlie Howard during a debate yesterday on Dutton's bill which would have done away with last call at hotels. Howard, who said people would come spilling out of hotels in the morning "drunk as coots" and ready to kill, seems to have been using faulty logic. If there's no last call, it doesn't make any sense to assume that drunkards would come out in any concentrations in the morning. There'd be a steady trickle of homicidal coots all day long. Point of order, Mr. Speaker!

Mitt Romney has assembled a crack team of, uh, rich guys for his Texas finance team. It is an extensive list, but it contains one very important name — Mr. Bob Perry, of homebuilding and donating fame. Perry is a whale of a name to have on your list, but let's not forget what's really important: how many other rich guys do these rich guys know? For instance, Larry Benson is described as "a former part time owner of the New Orleans Saints." How rich does one have to be in order to have the ability to only own something when you want to? Does that work with pets, or just sports teams?

Finally today, The Politico's Ben Smith has been duped: "pwn" does not mean what he says it means in the article. To "pwn" someone is to make them look bad, not make them look good. You would be pwned by me, for instance, if I were to hack your website, or shoot you in the face from all the way across the map in Halo. A decent slang definition can be found at the always informative Wikipedia. I will say that the article that Ben links to uses pwn a tad more accurately, in saying that youTube is being pwned by Obama as his numbers get inflated, but context is important.