Scumbag Update: Dem. State Rep. Ron Reynolds Finally Going To Jail

May 24th, 2018

Remember Democratic State Rep. Ron Reynolds? The one whose barratry conviction was overturned, only to be retried and convicted again?

Well, he’s finally going to jail:

After being denied a review of his 2015 misdemeanor conviction by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Democratic State Rep. Ron Reynolds (Missouri City) will likely serve a one-year jail sentence for illegal solicitation of legal services.

The sentence stems from a scheme in which chiropractic firms would persuade patients to unwittingly sign contracts rendering Reynolds their legal counsel without either his presence or even a physical examination. He was found guilty of 5 misdemeanor charges in 2015, after which he appealed his conviction to the Court of Criminal Appeals.

The kicker?

Although Reynolds will likely serve jail time, he is not required under Texas law to resign his Texas House seat, as the Texas Election Code only requires resignations in the case of felony convictions. Reynolds won his Democratic primary election in March with over 60% of the vote and faces no Republican opposition in November.

Someone in the state GOP fell down in the recruiting department…

(Also, I missed this: Rep. Reynolds had to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2016…)

Random Tweet: Trump Derangement Syndrome Edition

May 24th, 2018

2018 Texas Primary Runoff Results

May 23rd, 2018

Here’s a brief rundown of Texas primary runoff results:

Democrats

  • Lupe Valdez beat Andrew White 53.1% to 46.9% in the Democratic gubernatorial runoff. In addition to her Metroplex base, Valdez won Hispanic-heavy areas like the Rio Grande valley and 5 of the 6 most popular counties (Dallas, Travis, Bexar, Tarrant, El Paso), something White’s clear strength in Harris County was unable to overcome. Valdez goes on to see if she can top Wendy Davis’ 38.9%.
  • Lorie Burch beat “other” Sam Johnson 75$% to 25% in the U.S. 3rd Congressional District race. She’ll face (and most likely lose to) Republican Van Taylor in the general. (Previously.)
  • Jana Lynne Sanchez beat Ruby Faye Woolridge, fueling the narrative that Hispanics are overtaking blacks as the Democratic Party’s key minority voting block, 53.1% to 46.9%, in the U.S. 6th Congressional District race. She’ll face (and likely lose to) Republican Ron Wright in November. (See below.)
  • In a very closely-watched race, Lizzie Pannill Fletcher slaughtered DCCC target Laura Moser 67.1% to 32.9% in the U.S. Seventh Congressional District. It seems that the DCCC’s #1 priority this year wasn’t winning, but burying anyone with any ties to Bernie Sanders. Fletcher will face incumbent Republican John Culberson in November. Culberson won his 2014 off-year election by a solid 63.3% to 34.5%, but Hillary Clinton carried the district (even as Culberson won by a narrower 56.2%) in 2016.
  • Mike Siegel beat Tawana Walter-Cadien handily in the U.S. 10th congressional district race, and the right to lose to well-funded Republican incumbent Mike McCaul in November.
  • Joseph Kopser beat Mary Wilson 58% to 42% in the U.S. 21st Congressional District race. Kopser is a throwback to the sort of candidate the Democrats used to love to run: A rich white businessman with ties to government and the military who could win in swing districts. He’ll face Republican Chip Roy in November (see below).
  • Sri Preston Kulkarni beat Letitia Plummer decisively in the U.S. 22nd Congressional District race for the right to lose to incumbent Republican Pete Olsen, who won 59.5% of the vote in 2016.
  • Gina Ortiz Jones beat Rick Trevino with 67.9% of the vote in the U.S. 23rd Congressional District race. The 23rd is the only true swing district in Texas, and Republican incumbent Will Hurd only won by 3,000 votes over former incumbent Pete Gallego in 2016 (a rematch of a 2014 race Hurd won by 2,000 votes). Hurd has a fundraising advantage, but Jones has raised over $1 million herself, and this is likely to be a very competitive race in November.
  • Julie Oliver edged Chris Perri with 52.2% of the vote in the U.S. 25th Congressional District, and will face Republican incumbent Roger Williams in this solidly Republican district.
  • Eric Holguin beat Raul (Roy) Barrera by 61.9% in the U.S. 27th Congressional District race, and will face Michael Cloud (see below) to replace disgraced retired incumbent Blake Farenthold.
  • Mary Jennings Hegar beat Christine Eady Mann with 62.2% of the vote in the U.S. 31st Congressional District race for the right to face incumbent Republican John Carter in November. This is my district, and is still pretty solidly Republican.
  • Colin Allred trounced Lillian Salerno with 69.5% of the vote in the 32nd Congressional District, and will face incumbent Republican Pete Sessions in November. Sessions had no Democratic opponent in 2016, but Hillary Clinton edged Trump in the district. Probably still solidly Republican.
  • Republicans

  • Ex-SEAL Dan Crenshaw walloped Kevin Roberts with just shy of 70% of the vote in the U.S. 2nd Congressional District race, and should easily beat Democratic political newcomer Tod Litton to succeed retiring Republican incumbent Ted Poe in this heavily Republican district.
  • State representative Lance Gooden edged conservative favorite Bunni Pounds with 53.1% of the vote in the U.S. 5th Congressional District race. He should easily handle Democrat Dan Wood in November to succeed retiring Republican incumbent Jeb Hensarling.
  • Tarrant County Tax Assessor-Collector Ron Wright beat Jake Ellzey 52.2% to 47.8%, which is a bit closer than I expected. Republican votes totaled twice those of Democrats in this heavily Republican district, so he should have no trouble dispatching Democrat Jana Lynne Sanchez in November (see above). (Previously.)
  • Conservative favorite Chip Roy beat Matt McCall with 52.7% of the vote in the in the U.S. 21st Congressional District, underperforming expectations. Though a solidly Republican district, he’ll have to step it up against well-heeled incumbent Joseph Kopser (see above) if he wants to succeed retiring Republican incumbent Lamar Smith.
  • Michael Cloud beat Bech Bruun with in 61.0% in the U.S. 27th Congressional District race to replace the disgraced Blake Farenthold. The state legislature made this a solidly Republican district after Farenthold’s surprise win over Solomon Ortiz in 2010, so expect Cloud to easily beat Democratic nominee Eric Holguin (see above).
  • Andrew White Concedes Dem Gov Race to Valdez

    May 22nd, 2018

    Lupe Valdez has won the right to get walloped by Greg Abbott in November:

    In Republican races, Chip Roy is winning, Bunni Pounds is losing, and Dan Crenshaw beat Kevin Roberts handily.

    More tomorrow.

    Texas Primary Runoff Today

    May 22nd, 2018

    If you didn’t participate in early runoff voting, today is the day!

    Also note that, at least here in Williamson County, a lot of the regular voting locations don’t seem to be open, so plan accordingly…

    It Begins

    May 21st, 2018

    (I’ve always wanted to do a post that portentously starts out “It begins!”)

    President Donald Trump may have signaled that the endgame on the Clinton/Obama/FBI/CIA/FISA/campaign spying scandal may finally be at hand:

    This comes on the heels of the revelation that the FBI had an “informant” (read spy) inside the Trump campaign:

    A Cambridge professor with deep ties to American and British intelligence has been outed as an agent who snooped on the Trump presidential campaign for the FBI.

    Multiple media outlets have named Stefan Halper, 73, as the secret informant who met with Trump campaign advisers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos starting in the summer of 2016. The American-born academic previously served in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations.

    The revelation, stemming from recent reports in which FBI sources admitted sending an agent to snoop on the Trump camp, heightens suspicions that the FBI was seeking to entrap Trump campaign aides. Papodopoulous has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, while Page was the subject of a federal surveillance warrant.

    “If the FBI or DOJ was infiltrating a campaign for the benefit of another campaign, that is a really big deal,” President Trump tweeted Saturday, calling for the FBI to release additional documents to Congress.

    The Halper revelation also shows the Obama administration’s FBI began prying into the opposing party’s presidential nominee earlier than it previously admitted.

    Halper’s sit-downs with Page reportedly started in early July 2016, undermining fired FBI Director James Comey’s previous claim that the bureau’s investigation into the Trump campaign began at the end of that month.

    Halper made his first overture when he met with Page at a British symposium. The two remained in regular contact for more than a year, meeting at Halper’s Virginia farm and in Washington, DC, as well as exchanging emails.

    The professor met with Trump campaign co-chair Sam Clovis in late August, offering his services as a foreign-policy adviser, The Washington Post reported Friday, without naming the academic.

    Clovis did not see the conversation as suspicious, his attorney told the paper — but is now “unsettled” that “the professor” never mentioned he’d struck up a relationship with Page.

    Days later, Halper contacted Papadopoulos by e-mail. The professor offered the young and inexperienced campaign aide $3,000 and an all-expenses-paid trip to London, ostensibly to write a paper about energy in the eastern Mediterranean region.

    “George, you know about hacking the e-mails from Russia, right?” the professor pressed Papadopoulos when they met, according to reports — a reference to Trump’s campaign-trail riffs about Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server.

    Sources close to Papadopoulos told NBC News that he now believes Halper was working for an intelligence agency.

    Highly detailed descriptions of the FBI informant in Friday reports in The New York Times and Washington Post pegged Halper in all but name. Outlets including NBC and Fox News subsequently connected the dots. The revelation confirms a March report in the Daily Caller that outlined Halper’s repeated meetings with Papadopoulos and Page.

    Indeed, conservative media has been constantly ahead of MSM outlets like New York Times on the scandal, mainly because those outlets function as extensions of the Democratic Party. As National Review puts it:

    What the Times story makes explicit, with studious understatement, is that the Obama administration used its counterintelligence powers to investigate the opposition party’s presidential campaign.

    That is, there was no criminal predicate to justify an investigation of any Trump-campaign official. So, the FBI did not open a criminal investigation. Instead, the bureau opened a counterintelligence investigation and hoped that evidence of crimes committed by Trump officials would emerge. But it is an abuse of power to use counterintelligence powers, including spying and electronic surveillance, to conduct what is actually a criminal investigation.

    The Times barely mentions the word counterintelligence in its saga. That’s not an accident. The paper is crafting the media-Democrat narrative. Here is how things are to be spun: The FBI was very public about the Clinton-emails investigation, even making disclosures about it on the eve of the election. Yet it kept the Trump-Russia investigation tightly under wraps, despite intelligence showing that the Kremlin was sabotaging the election for Trump’s benefit. This effectively destroyed Clinton’s candidacy and handed the presidency to Trump.

    It’s a gas, gas, gas!

    It’s also bunk. Just because the two FBI cases are both referred to as “investigations” does not make them the same kind of thing.

    The Clinton case was a criminal investigation that was predicated on a mountain of incriminating evidence. Mrs. Clinton does have one legitimate beef against the FBI: Then-director James Comey went public with some (but by no means all) of the proof against her. It is not proper for law-enforcement officials to publicize evidence from a criminal investigation unless formal charges are brought.

    In the scheme of things, though, this was a minor infraction. The scandal here is that Mrs. Clinton was not charged. She likes to blame Comey for her defeat; but she had a chance to win only because the Obama Justice Department and the FBI tanked the case against her — in exactly the manner President Obama encouraged them to do in public commentary.

    By contrast, the Trump case is a counterintelligence investigation. Unlike criminal cases, counterintelligence matters are classified. If agents had made public disclosures about them, they would have been committing crimes and violating solemn agreements with foreign intelligence services — agreements without which those services would not share information that U.S. national-security officials need in order to protect our country.

    In the scheme of things, though, the problem is not that the FBI honored its confidentiality obligations in the Trump case while violating them in the Clinton case. The scandal is that the FBI, lacking the incriminating evidence needed to justify opening a criminal investigation of the Trump campaign, decided to open a counterintelligence investigation. With the blessing of the Obama White House, they took the powers that enable our government to spy on foreign adversaries and used them to spy on Americans — Americans who just happened to be their political adversaries.

    The timing of Halper’s payments is particularly important:

    Again, the name is Stefan Halper, who, as I wrote here last week, was paid a substantial sum by the Department of Defense’s Office of Net Assessment.

    If it was for this work – and it suspiciously looks like it because the payments were made in July and September of 2016 when he was weaseling his way into the campaign – then we know we have the DNI, CIA, DOJ, FBI, Dept. of State and the Defense Department working for Hillary’s election and to smear and create a basis for further spying on Trump and his campaign.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

    The general shape of Hillary’s attempt to “Steele” the election has been known for a while:

    The intensity of the media’s attacks on a Republican is always in proportion to the degree to which he is impeding one of its causes. The doggedness of Nunes — his refusal to let a politicized FBI and Justice Department stonewall his committee — has thrown considerable light on the real scandal of 2016: not that Trump colluded with the Russians to win but that the Obama administration colluded with Hillary to defeat him.

    One government most certainly did meddle in the election — ours. In desperate denial mode, the media will talk about everything but the fact that the United States government was spying on one campaign by using opposition research from the other, all while hoodwinking FISA court judges and leaking to the press about its politicized investigation.

    The more that the probe is put under the microscope, the more outrageous it appears, with Hillary partisans and Trump haters figuring into it at every crucial turn. Hillary didn’t need a campaign headquarters in Brooklyn; she already had one in Washington, D.C. John Brennan, auditioning to be her CIA director, laid the groundwork for the Trump-Russia probe by hyping bogus intelligence; Trump hater Peter Strzok formally opened the probe at the FBI just weeks after whitewashing Hillary’s mishandling of emails; the slop of Christopher Steele, Hillary’s opposition researcher, served as the basis for spying on all of Carter Page’s communications with the Trump campaign, while the spouse of a Justice Department official involved in the probe shoveled more of the slop to her husband.

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

    Quoting President Donald Trump yet again:

    Indeed. Use of the federal national security state to spy on political opponents dwarfs the Nixon reelection campaign’s dirty tricks department using bumbling outsiders to plant bugs.

    At this point, the only question is: How high in the Obama Administration did the orders to conduct surveillance on the Trump campaign come?

    Further reading:

  • Director Blue’s Timeline of Treason.
  • The Conservative Treehouse has been all over this story from the beginning.
  • Shoe0nHead Debunks “The Pink Tax” (Again)

    May 20th, 2018

    Shoe0nHead did a video debunking the idea of “the pink tax” (i.e., that women pay more than men for the exact same goods). So what does YouTube do?

    It puts ads promoting the pink tax at the beginning of her videos.

    So, naturally, she has to produce another pink tax debunking video.

    Liberal Texas Republican Follies

    May 19th, 2018

    Two primary runoff tidbits, courtesy of Michael Quinn Sullivan of Empower Texans:

  • A silly but effective fake 911 call from liberal Republican Lance Gooden, who’s in a tight runoff with Bunni Pounds in the U.S. Fifth Congressional District race against Bunni Pounds. (Previously.)
  • Liberal Scott Milder, who got walloped in the Lt. Governor’s republican primary by incumbent Dan Patrick, endorsed liberal Democrat and perennial candidate Mike Collier for the office and announced he was launching a campaign called http://conservativesforcollier.com/. One tiny little problem: Empower Texans already owns that website. That’s some mighty fine planning there, Lou…
  • LinkSwarm for May 18, 2018

    May 18th, 2018

    At some point I will grapple with all the unraveling Clinton/Mueller/Fusion GPS/FISA/Brennan Scandularity…but not today.

  • Democrats, rather than maximizing their chance at a blue wave, have insisted on electing far left-wing candidates over more-electable party moderates. Those national results replicate what the Texas Democratic Party did to themselves: Push moderates out of the party. Result: More Republicans elected. They appear hellbent on replicating those results at the national level…
  • Former New York speaker of the House Sheldon Silver found guilty of a kickback scheme yet again. The first conviction was overturned on appeal over a technicality.
  • “The people who’ve lost their way are the liberals and civil libertarians, blinded by their rage for Trump, who have dropped their principles in a moment of political threat and are taking out their anger on a man who has been their staunchest ally. Maybe the question isn’t what happened to Alan Dershowitz. Maybe it’s what happened to everyone else.” Caveat: Writer suffers from usual “Fox News and Trump are the Devil” derangement. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
  • President Donald Trump: “Members of the violent MS-13 gang are animals.” MSM: “Trump just said all undocumented immigrants are animals!” Also: “Trump supporters are fleeing the media not because they want cheerleaders, but because they are tired of a secular, coastal, liberal press that not only cannot relate to heartland voters but thinks it is beneath them to even try.”
  • Rep. Lou Barletta wins Pennsylvania Republican Senate primary, to face Bob Casey in the general. Barletta earned a lot of nationwide Republican gratitude for taking out Stupak block flip-flopper Paul Kanjorski in 2010.
  • China, Russia and other scumbag authoritarian countries are lying about their GDP. This is my shocked face. This also why you should take all those “OMG China’s economy will overtake the U.S. in 20XX!” panics with several grains of sand.
  • Seattle thinks that golden goose would taste mighty fine cooked in a white wine reduction.
  • Class-action lawsuit filed against Facebook over revelations that the company logged users’ text and call logs using the Facebook smartphone app on Android phones. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • EU: here’s a statement condemning the U.S. embassy move to Jerusalem. Hungary, the Czech Republic and Romania: LOL, no. BLOCKED. (Hat tip: Pat Condell on Gab.)
  • Tom Wolfe, RIP.
  • Another case of illegal alien voter fraud that Democrats swear doesn’t exist.
  • President Trump wrings airline agreement out of gulf states.
  • The mathematician who cracked horse racing. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Joe Straus backed a lot of liberal Republican state candidates in March, to the tune of $1 million, and they all got walloped.
  • More scandal at the University of Texas law school:

    Jason Shoumaker, the law school’s facilities director until November 2017, is the subject of an ongoing probe by the Travis County District Attorney’s Office and the Texas Rangers. Though Shoumaker was taken into custody Thursday over tampering charges, he is at the heart of a major fraud investigation – one that potentially involves “several million dollars of questionable expenses,” a source familiar with the probe said….During multiple pay periods, Shoumaker logged regular 8-hour days with the university while he was actually cavorting out of state, according to the affidavit.

  • George Soros pulls out of Hungary.
  • #BadStockPhotosOfMyJob. But they obviously nailed the one for writers:

  • Death by Snu Snu! (Hat tip: Slone’s Twitter feed.)
  • Twitter Admits Shadowbanning Users

    May 17th, 2018

    In case you missed it, Twitter came out and admitted it shadowbans users in all but name.

    Twitter has acknowledged that it is working to artificially limit the reach of “troll-like” accounts on the platform — “shadowbanning” users in all but name, a practice that the company has repeatedly denied.

    In an announcement earlier today, Twitter said they were taking steps to limit “behaviors that distort and detract from the public conversation” by downranking content that exhibits such behaviors from search results and “public conversations.”

    In other words, if your behavior is considered “troll-like” by Twitter, it will be harder for other users to find your posts on the platform. The practice of limiting the visibility of content without formally suspending the content owner, notifying them, or deleting the content in question the definition of shadowbanning.

    Although Twitter employees have been caught on camera admitting that shadowbanning takes place on the platform, the company continues to publicly deny that it engages in the practice — they have even made such denials in Senate hearings.

    Twitter has made little effort to be transparent about the kind of signals it looks for when seeking to identify accounts that, in their words, “distort the conversation.” One of their employees was caught on camera admitting that accounts that post too much about “God, guns, and America” are likely to be classified as “bots,” but there is no acknowledgment of that in Twitter’s announcement.

    Twitter only provided a few examples of the kind of signals they look for.

    There are many new signals we’re taking in, most of which are not visible externally. Just a few examples include if an account has not confirmed their email address, if the same person signs up for multiple accounts simultaneously, accounts that repeatedly Tweet and mention accounts that don’t follow them, or behavior that might indicate a coordinated attack. We’re also looking at how accounts are connected to those that violate our rules and how they interact with each other.

    Buried at the bottom of the announcement post is another admission: Twitter has given itself the authority to restrict content that doesn’t even violate its policies.

    These signals will now be considered in how we organize and present content in communal areas like conversation and search. Because this content doesn’t violate our policies, it will remain on Twitter, and will be available if you click on “Show more replies” or choose to see everything in your search setting.

    Although considerable political attention has been focused on Facebook over its alleged political censorship, Twitter has a far worse track record. Conservatives and critics of progressivism are still routinely kicked off the platform, often for no other reason that presenting facts and political arguments.

    Want to see if you’re shadowbanned? Here’s a tester.

    Here’s a Slashdot thread on the subject.

    (Previously.)