Monday Roundup: A Winner Is Several People

The city elections were this last weekend, and Democrats made it in all over the place. City Councilman Ed Oakley is in the Dallas mayoral runoff against Tom Leppert, and Melissa Noriega, wife of State Representative (and friend of the show) Rick Noriega, came pretty close to winning outright the Houston City Council seat vacated by Shelley Sekula-Gibbs, but will face a runoff opponent in Roy Morales.

The Austin-American Statesman has had some interesting stories in the last few days. This one, for instance, looks at what effect Bush's presidency has had on the image of Texas. The comparative piece draws some interesting parallels (or points out the lack thereof) to other presidencies. The overall verdict seems to be that America has had quite enough of Texas for some time, and Cowboy Diplomacy and the Texas-dominant era is coming to a close.

This other one, from John Kelso, is sort of bizarre and wonderful at the same time. It is a treatment on Dan Patrick's bill that requires women to get an ultrasound before getting an abortion, and recommends he open a daycare out of his house.

While Patrick has had time to consider foolish bills like the aforementioned one, the entire lege apparently had enough free time to cook up and vote in favor of legislation making bolo ties and boots some of the official clothes of Texas. I understand it, I do, but at the same time, I have to hitch a hefty sigh.

Mistakes were made, and now officials in charge of the border fence plan are owning up to the fact that maybe they could have communicated a little more clearly on how the whole fence deal would actually go. My personal feeling is that if you're planning to build millions of dollars worth of fence, and you talk to the people that live where you're building the fence at length about the fence project, and then several months later you bring it up again and they all say "You're going to do what?" then you obviously didn't do a very good job the first time you tried to explain it. That, or you conveniently glossed over the "fence" part of the "fence" plan.

The measure to make taxes on sporting goods go to Texas state parks looks like it might break in the Senate. Senator Kip Averitt, of the Natural Resources Committee, doesn't seem particularly inclined to give the bill any movement. We've covered state parks funding here, and while it isn't a dramatic or hero-type issue, it is still pretty important.

Fred Thompson Status: Now the Conservative Christians/Religious Right love him. I bet Tancredo and Brownback feel particularly betrayed.

Finally today, lest you think the voter ID bill currently being tussled over in the state lege isn't part of a larger GOP plan, observe this story in the Washington Post about how Karl Rove and the rest of the crew endangered themselves significantly by firing US attorneys who wouldn't prosecute voter fraud cases.