Early voting ends tomorrow in Texas. Plan accordingly…
Election Roundup for October 30, 2014
October 30th, 2014Antonio Buehler Found Not Guilty
October 30th, 2014From the Austin legal beat, Antonio Buehler was found not guilty of refusing to obey a police officer’s instructions while filming an arrest on January 1st, 2012.
Chalk up another small but real win for the right to monitor government employees doing their work in public.
Houston Mayor Backs Down Over Sermon Subpoenas
October 29th, 2014Better late than never, Houston Mayor Annise Parker comes to the belated understanding that she was getting her ass handed to her on a plate over her subpoenas of church sermons by enemies of her Transvestite Bathrooms Initiative, and has dropped the subpoenas entirely.
However, the clue-by-four still doesn’t seem to have fully registered:
The move is in the best interest of Houston, she said, and is not an admission that the requests were in any way illegal or intended to intrude on religious liberties.
Snip.
The plaintiffs’ attorney in the lawsuit, Andy Taylor, called Parker’s announcement a “head fake,” and challenged her not only to pull down the subpoenas but to drop the city’s defense of the lawsuit and put the ordinance to a vote. The city last summer ruled opponents’ petition to submit the equal rights ordinance to a repeal referendum fell short of the legal requirements spelled out in the city charter, prompting the lawsuit.
“The truth is she’s using this litigation to try to squelch the voting rights of over a million well-intentioned voters here in the city of Houston,” Taylor said. “It’s very simple why we filed a lawsuit: Because they won’t do what the city constitutional charter requires them to do.”
Ms. Parker is obviously what we call a “slow learner.”
The Wendy Davis Campaign Prebituaries Are Already Coming In
October 29th, 2014Has there ever been a campaign with as much national hype behind it as Wendy Davis’ that ended up doing so poorly? Maybe Edmund Muskie’s Presidential race in 1972, Ed Koch’s Governor’s run in 1982, or Gary Hart’s abortive 1988 Presidential run. But all those were already major political players before running smack into Nemesis, and Muskie and Koch still had careers after their debacles.
Perhaps McGovern’s 1972 general election campaign comes closest, with one disastrous decision following another and a healthy streak of bad luck to boot. (Which only compounds the idiocy of Nixon’s dirty tricks team monkeywrenching an election that was already in the bag.) But the McGovern 1972 team can rightfully claim to have displayed real tactical brilliance in winning the nomination in the first place. And McGovern was already a Senator.
Davis doesn’t even have that going for her. This was her first (and undoubtedly her last) statewide race. After this horrendous showing, I’m not sure Democrats would even nominate her for the Railroad Commission.
Various media outlets are already busy writing Davis’ political obituary:
And to top it all off, no one is buying Davis’ book:
Despite enormous levels of media buzz, Nielsen BookScan numbers provided to Slate by a publishing source show only 4,317 copies of the memoir, called Forgetting to Be Afraid, have been sold since its Sept. 9 publication.
Nielsen BookScan doesn’t include all book sales, notably sales at many independent retailers, so the actual number of copies sold is probably higher, although still likely below 6,000. As a point of comparison, Elizabeth Warren’s memoir, A Fighting Chance, sold more than 70,000 copies in its first few months on shelves. And David Limbaugh’s book Jesus on Trial, which was published the day before Davis’, has sold about 65,000 copies, including 6,778 just last week, according to BookScan.
In some cases, selling 6,000 hardback books would be a good number. For a first-time novelist, for instance, 6,000 hardbacks would be a pretty good number. (And it’s more than all but one of this year’s Booker Prize nominees sold in the UK.)
But for a book with a $132,000 partial advance? Not so much…
Election Update for October 28, 2014
October 28th, 2014Your “one week until Election Day” roundup of news:
(Hat tip: Moe Lane.)
Election News Roundup for October 27, 2014
October 27th, 2014Since we’re in the home stretch, here’s a quick roundup of various election news:
Salon Suddenly Discovers What the Quran Actually Says
October 27th, 2014So how the hell did this ever get past the editors at Salon?
As they rampage and behead their way through Syria and Iraq, ISIS fighters know they have the Koran on their side – a book they believe to be inerrant and immutable, the final Word of God, and not at all “malleable.” Their holy book backs up jihad, suicide attacks (“martyrdom”), beheadings, even taking captive women as sex slaves. This is not surprising; after all, the prophet Muhammad was a warrior who spread Islam by the sword in a dark, turbulent time in history. (Christianity’s propagation had, in contrast, much to do with the Roman emperor Constantine’s fourth-century conversion and subsequent decriminalization of the faith.)
Moreover, the razor-happy butchers of little girls’ clitorises and labia majora, the righteous wife-beaters, the stoners of adulterers, the shariah clerics denying women’s petitions for divorce from abusive husbands and awarding sons twice the inheritance allowed for daughters, all act with sanction from Islamic holy writ. It matters not a whit to the bloodied and battered victims of such savagery which lines from the Hadith or what verses from the Koran ordain the violence and injustice perpetrated against them, but one thing they do know: texts and belief in them have real-life consequences. And we should never forget that ISIS henchmen and executioners explicitly cite their faith in Islam as their motive.
To be sure, writer Jeffrey Tayler couches his critique (which focuses on Islamist apologist Reza Aslan) in the usual “look at the violence in the Bible” rhetoric, and in a general defense of atheism. Still, it’s quite remarkable for Salon to be catching up with what conservatives have been saying for more than a decade.
Who are you and what have you done with the actual Salon staff?
(Hat tip: Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch, who notes “Has Bill Maher made it safe for Leftists to admit that there is a problem with how jihadis and supremacists use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence and oppression?”)
The Anti-Feminist Comedy of Bill Burr
October 24th, 2014It’s Friday and I’m feeling lazy, so enjoy the comedy of Bill Burr, who’s actually willing to make fun of women and feminists.
Enjoy it while you can. If the Social Justice Warriors win, merely listening to these routines will be categorized as a hate crime…
Texas vs. California Update for October 23, 2014
October 23rd, 2014With all this election news popping up, this may be the last Texas cs. California roundup until after November 4: