Texas Blue Mailbag: Week of 7/15/07

George, Grace, and Patrick are down in Dallas at the YDA convention and I'm on the Disabled List, stuck at the house with a hitch in my giddyup. As such, this week's mailbag will be All Josh, All The Time.

There's been an awful lot of talk lately about al-Qaeda, but I'm not sure I understand. I thought the Taliban was the big threat.

Josh replies:

The worldwide threat is from al-Qaeda. I heard Ted Koppel refer to them as the most successful franchise since McDonald's, and that isn't far off the mark. They are largely decentralized and currently operate in a cellular form, with many subsidiary organizations all over the world, and plenty of strategic alliances as well.

The Taliban, on the other hand, is primarily operational in Pakistan and Afghanistan, although their capacity for ops in Afghanistan was largely diminished by the Northern Alliance and American military operations after 9/11.

Mullah Omar is to the Taliban what Osama bin Laden is to al-Qaeda, and the two groups are definitely related and have helped each other. Essentially, bin Laden dumped some money and troops into the Taliban in the late 90's when they were more or less the formative government and ruling force in Afghanistan; in return, Omar protected bin Laden and refused to extradite him to the US after al-Qaeda bombed the US embassies in Africa. Now they operate in Pakistan as well. The Taliban is the primary source of the insurgent guerrilla war against US forces in Afghanistan.

DW inquires:

Is the guy from Texas Justice really running for Congress?

Josh says:

He totally is. Judge Larry Joe Doherty, the star of late night Texas court show "Texas Justice" is running against Dan Grant for the nomination in Congressional District 10. Michael McCaul is the Republican incumbent.

Now, with all the particulars out of the way, I will say that Larry Joe is not all slapstick sideshow. He's actually a real lawyer and a partner in a firm of some note. I had been intending to link to some of the media clips on what seems to be his personal site in which, during the course of delivering some Texas justice, he used some colorful colloquialisms. They have since been removed. I guess he's running for office or something.

If FEC reports are your thing, you can check out the FEC pages and see that Grant and Doherty both raised about $75, 000, and Larry Joe loaned himself $100,000 more. Michael McCaul raised about $270,000, has about $133,000 on hand; he also seems to have a pretty significant "Debts Owed By" column.

EP asks:

Is Cheney really going to be president for a little while on Saturday while Bush has a colonoscopy?

Josh replies:

Yes. President Bush will be anesthetized and is giving Cheney the reins temporarily, under the 25th Amendment, Article 3. It doesn't happen very often, but that's what its there for. If you like Presidential trivia, the article points out that this Saturday will be only the third time the temporary handover will have taken place.

Also, for a few hours: President Cheney. Yikes!