It had to happen somewhere sooner or later, and none of us will be surprised that it has happened first in Texas. The rabidly anti-choice mob comprising the majority of the Texas Legislature passed a law this year that finally has abortion-providing physicians exactly where the Rapture Right wants them: subject to the death penalty.

How could such a thing have happened? In a state with a government like ours, how can you ask?

Rick Perry signed our new law exposing doctors who provide abortion care to a risk of execution for capital murder at a Fort Worth church three months ago, on the same occasion that he notoriously suggested that returning Iraq veterans shouldn't come back to Texas . . . if they were gay.

"It has been a tragedy of unspeakable consequences that for decades activist courts denied many Texas parents their right to be involved in one of the most important decisions their young daughter could ever make - whether to end the life that was growing inside her," Perry told a crowd of about 1,000 people gathered at the Calvary Christian Academy. "For too long, a blind eye has been turned to the rights of our most vulnerable human beings - that's the unborn in our society."

Texas already had a parental notification bill, approved in 1999. The new, tougher measure requires a parent to provide written consent for unmarried girls under 18.
<...>
Before Perry spoke, several pastors received standing ovations and shouts of "Amen!" from the crowd as they touted the two measures being signed by Perry.

"It seems to me that people of the great state of Texas will be silent no more," said Rod Parsley, of the Center for Moral Clarity in Ohio. "Folks in this room understand, God is still watching."
<...>
Pastor Larry White of Our Savior Lutheran Church in Houston said the gathering inside the church school was about life, family and marriage.

"There are those that would drive people of faith from the public square if they could," White said.

Perry spokeswoman Kathy Walt said many of the critics "would object to this bill-signing if it were in a public school, a library, a Wal-Mart parking lot or any other venue, because they oppose pro-life and pro-family issues."

This particular critic doesn’t give a nickel-plated damn where Perry signed such an appallingly framed and potentially lethal excuse for a statute. If he didn't realize what he was doing, he's merely hopelessly incompetent. But if he did know, there are no words for what he is.

Capital Defense Weekly

Sunday, August 28
Texas Authorizes Death for Some Abortion Providers

Abortion providers in Texas who don't follow the exacting letter of that State's abortion law are eligible for capital punishment according to the Texas District and County Attorneys Association's Lindsay Roberts. “This is a case study of sorts on how changing one code can have dramatic effects on other codes that actually reference those statutes,” Roberts said. “I presented it as an unintended consequence on a change to the civil code, but you will have to talk to your local prosecutors there about how they will handle those situations. I just presented what the Legislature has done.”

The Waco Tribune-Herald notes:
<...>
Roberts noted that the Legislature two years ago altered the definition of an individual in homicide statutes from “a human being who has been born and is alive” to “a human being who is alive, including an unborn child at every stage of gestation, from fertilization until birth.”

There was debate when the definition of individual was changed about whether the effect would make abortion the equivalent of murder. So lawmakers took particular care to write into the homicide statute that a lawful medical procedure performed with consent by a physician or other licensed health-care provider, if the death of the unborn child was the intended result, is an abortion. That provided a lawful defense or exception to homicide laws.

Continuing to connect the statutory dots, however, Roberts told local prosecutors that there is no such defense provided for a doctor who performs an unlawful medical procedure, such as an abortion on a minor without parental consent.

So, in effect, the doctor would have killed a child younger than 6 in an illegal abortion and thereby subjected himself or herself to potential prosecution for capital murder, Roberts told the dumbfounded audience.

OK, I’m not a doctor, so all I can be charged with is having a vivid imagination.

Scenario #1: Kim and Katie are sisters. Kim is 17 and Katie is 19, but like many other sisters, they look enough alike to be twins. Their parents hate Kim’s boyfriend, believe that she broke up with him when they ordered her to stop seeing him three months ago – and now Kim is pregnant. There will be hell to pay if Mom and Dad find out, so Kim makes an appointment for an abortion in Katie’s name. She borrows her sister’s driver’s license, presents it at the clinic as her own ID, and no one suspects a thing. A week later, while Kim is at school, Mom tosses her bedroom and finds a note from Kim’s best friend that mentions Kim’s abortion.

Scenario #2: There’s already a ton of paperwork required for getting an abortion in Texas. There’s a consent form for the ultrasound, and for the prerequisite lab tests. There’s a receipt for the clinic’s HIPAA Notice of Privacy Practices, and another signature to attest that a woman has received a copy of her aftercare instructions. There’s a consent form for IV sedation, and yet another for the abortion procedure itself. And then there’s the woman’s signed certification that the doctor personally gave her a laundry list of state-mandated information including dire warnings of such possible consequences of abortion as breast cancer, and that she afterward completed a 24-hour waiting period before her procedure – a document without which no abortion in Texas can be legally performed. Somewhere amid all this documenting and attesting, a woman will have questions about birth control, about how the abortion procedure itself is going to feel, and a dozen other things.

If the patient is a minor, her mother will have many questions of her own. And while a clinic’s staff is busy making sure that having an abortion really is the teenager’s idea and not just what her parents want, detailing her medical history, flagging her chart for medical evaluation, filling out the lab requisition form for a Pap smear or selecting informational materials for the girl to take home – or while they’re preoccupied with any number of other necessary things -- they might overlook yet one more form, the one that documents parental consent.

Scenario #3: The parental notification law was part of the Texas Family Code, but in its fervid zeal to tighten restrictions on abortion, the Lege attached the new consent law as an amendment to an entirely different section of the state statutes. The law requires the Texas State Board of Medical Examiners to provide doctors with an official consent form for compliance with the new law. But TSBME says that it will be next spring before they create that form and make it available. Until then, doctors are on their own, and simply will have to hope that whatever documentary standards they come up with to comply with parental consent eventually will meet legal criteria yet unknown.

Only yesterday, performing an abortion without having a teenager’s parent sign a form could have cost doctors their licenses to practice. Now, under the law of the State of Texas, it could cost them their lives.

And it seems odd that some of the holy hyenas who howled the loudest about stopping abortion during the legislative session seem unusually reluctant to comment.

In signing the parental consent bill, Perry said, “Today, we are laying down a significant marker in the effort to create a culture of life by protecting those who can't protect themselves, by giving voice to the voiceless who yearn for life.”

Robert Black, the governor's deputy press secretary, said last week that his office was not aware of the potential created by the new bill for doctors who perform illegal abortions to face possible death sentences.

“During the legislative process, a lot of folks see conspiracies everywhere,” Black said. “But the fact is that the parental notification law as well as the parental consent legislation that the governor has always supported is intended to protect young girls and protect the rights of parents. What you mentioned is a hypothetical and we are not going down the road of hypotheticals.”

Roberts said he is no conspiracy theorist.

“We are just giving facts. We pitched this as an unintended consequence,” Roberts said. “It shows you that when they change one thing, for whatever reason they changed it, it can have an effect on other things. It happens all the time. We are just telling it like it is.”

And I can't think of a single reason not to believe him.

Rabid conservatism defeats itself!

Stop talking about school finance already! The governor is planning to address a group of preachers about the anti-marriage amendment, PinkDome reports, with commentary on an Austin American-Stateman article on the upcoming inquisition, um, I mean meeting.

Pink Dome is pissed. I'm too unsurprised to be that pissed off. Obviously Perry is going to suck up to his natural base of far right radicals (the American version of these guys) because he's been such an inept governor that even Republicans aren't thrilled with him.

The American-Stateman article is an example of the general lame-ass reporting the entire Texas press has been doing on this topic. A request to any media types who might be reading this: could one of you, please, do something slightly reporterly and ask a question or two? When Perry and his folks start talking about how we have to stop the vague, amorphous bad thing that would happen is gay people ever got married in Texas, could you perhaps ask them what that thing is and how exactly it would come to pass? Is it too much to ask reporters to actually dig into a story a little bit?

Is the fear that we'll turn into Massachusetts, with its significantly lower divorce rate and healthier children attending better schools, going home to more stable families, and being well prepared to be part of that state's superior economy? Heaven forbid.

(From By the Bayou, Houston)
Rabid conservatism defeats itself!

While reading about the ongoing Tx. Association of Business investigation, I came across this little gem:

"Also, a Washington lobbyist is holding a golf tournament and luncheon Wednesday in Virginia to raise money for the three men indicted in the investigation of Texans for a Republican Majority, an attorney in the case said."

Okay, a lobbyist in Washington is going to help get Tom DeLay's buddies some cash to pay for their lawyers.

Yep, if the clock on the wall is right, it's now time for the second round of pay-offs.

This is the same investigation that has found everyone around Tom DeLay (not DeLay himself - yet) to be crooked. TAB took money from insurance companies to "educate" Texans as to why they needed redistricting. The redistricting, as everyone knows, gave the Republicans a State House majority - which they used to (feign shock and surprise) deregulate the insurance industry. Now they are going to pay to get their best buddies off the legal hook that's sunk in their mouth like a spinner-bait to a nine-pound bass.

Okay - and Tom DeLay is still not involved? How come its a lobbyist in WASHINGTON raising money and not one in - well, any of the ten thousand places in Texas that have golf courses?

All of this comes on the heels of Jack Abramoff's indictment - and we all know how tight Jack and Tom are.

Can we bring back the days of Clinton when the only thing we worried about was who the President was having sex with?
Rabid conservatism defeats itself!

"The higher, the better."

So stated Frank Gafke of Galveston, who is described by the Houston Chronicle as a "senior service leader" employed by the Halliburton Corporation. Mr. Gafke was recreating in his pleasure craft along the Texas coast when the Chronic caught up with him, and is further quoted:

Gafke said Halliburton's profits - and his savings account - had increased markedly since fuel prices began rising. He predicted that prices soon will reach $3 per gallon for automobile drivers, as well as for recreational boaters.

And, he said, relief at the pump probably won't come anytime soon.

Hey, who should know better than ol' Frank?

Rabid conservatism defeats itself!

War in Iraq is all well and good for the Republicans in Washington, but what is it doing for Texas Republicans? What we need is a war right here in Texas. How about a good old fashioned border war with Mexico? From the Austin American Statesman:

Frustrated by a government that seems unable to stanch the flow of illegal immigrants, a Houston Republican has introduced legislation creating a civilian volunteer militia to patrol the nation's borders, armed with arrest power, guns and the approval to use "any force necessary."

Commanded by Gov. Rick Perry and other border-state governors, the Border Protection Corps would add another line of defense against terrorists, smugglers and gangs eager to prey upon the United States, U.S. Rep. John Culberson said.

Of course, we can count on our Austin-area congressmen to stop this nonsense, right? So what's their plan of action here? Apparently, to co-sponsor the bill. Even my beloved Rep. Lamar Smith, who actually mostly represents San Antonio. Good old TX-21... Excuse me while I throw up:

Though critics dismiss Culberson's numbers as unrealistic, 47 Republicans have signed on as co-sponsors, including U.S. Reps. Michael McCaul of Austin, John Carter of Round Rock and Lamar Smith of San Antonio, whose district includes most of downtown Austin.

One more thing I have to touch on here: the laughable idea of Rick Perry commanding anything. I can just see it now, Commander Perry tearing off his Kaiser Wilhelm helmet, miraculously revealing an unperturbed romance-novel coiffure, announcing on the steps of the capital: "I am a War Governor!" and "Remember the Alamo!" and "We must create a Grand Army of the Republic!"

Or maybe, "Now I've got you, you wascawwy immigwant!"


Rabid conservatism defeats itself!

Folks, Texas is done playing games. It is time to expand Come And Take It to encompass every corner of Texas. Inspired by Paul Hackett's close call in one of the most extreme parts of Ohio and dismayed by the discovery that the radical conservatives (of the very type currently doing damage to our State's good name) have an edge in local blogging, I want to take it to the next level.

It is time to get serious. We've had it with nuking Syria, gettin' on down the road, and our dear Senator Rubber Stamp.

I want a blogger in every county. A blogger with his or her ear to the ground--monitoring radical conservatism in their local paper, on their local television, at the church on Sunday, at their place of business--in every county in Texas.

Here's a list. Let's go out and find 'em and recruit 'em. We know they are there. We just want 'em here, with us. All it takes is pooling our knowledge in the comments below. Go to it. Leave links to blogs in counties not crossed out. Tell me where you are from if you are covering a county. I will gladly cross out that county.

Get local.

Once we have all of this information, we will have the beginnings of a state-wide accountability machine. And wouldn't that be nice?

The next post describes a new feature of the site.

And now, the 254 (count 'em) Texas counties...

Anderson
Andrews
Angelina
Aransas
Archer
Armstrong
Atascosa
Austin
Bailey
Bandera
Bastrop
Baylor
Bee
Bell
Bexar
Blanco
Borden
Bosque
Bowie
Brazoria
Brazos
Brewster
Briscoe
Brooks
Brown
Burleson
Burnet
Caldwell
Calhoun
Callahan
Cameron
Camp
Carson
Cass
Castro
Chambers
Cherokee
Childress
Clay
Cochran
Coke
Coleman
Collin
Collingsworth
Colorado
Comal
Comanche
Concho
Cooke
Coryell
Cottle
Crane
Crockett
Crosby
Culberson
Dallam
Dallas
Dawson
Deaf Smith
Delta
Denton
DeWitt
Dickens
Dimmit
Donley
Duval
Eastland
Ector
Edwards
Ellis
El Paso
Erath
Falls
Fannin
Fayette
Fisher
Floyd
Foard
Fort Bend
Franklin
Freestone
Frio
Gaines
Galveston
Garza
Gillespie
Glasscock
Goliad
Gonzales
Gray
Grayson
Gregg
Grimes
Guadalupe
Hale
Hall
Hamilton
Hansford
Hardeman
Hardin
Harris
Harrison
Hartley
Haskell
Hays
Hemphill
Henderson
Hidalgo
Hill
Hockley
Hood
Hopkins
Houston
Howard
Hudspeth
Hunt
Hutchinson
Irion
Jack
Jackson
Jasper
Jeff Davis
Jefferson
Jim Hogg
Jim Wells
Johnson
Jones
Karnes
Kaufman
Kendall
Kenedy
Kent
Kerr
Kimble
King
Kinney
Kleberg
Knox
Lamar
Lamb
Lampasas
La Salle
Lavaca
Lee
Leon
Liberty
Limestone
Lipscomb
Live Oak
Llano
Loving
Lubbock
Lynn
McCulloch
McLennan
McMullen
Madison
Marion
Martin
Mason
Matagorda
Maverick
Medina
Menard
Midland
Milam
Mills
Mitchell
Montague
Montgomery
Moore
Morris
Motley
Nacogdoches
Navarro
Newton
Nolan
Nueces
Ochiltree
Oldham
Orange
Palo Pinto
Panola
Parker
Parmer
Pecos
Polk
Potter
Presidio
Rains
Randall
Reagan
Real
Red River
Reeves
Refugio
Roberts
Robertson
Rockwall
Runnels
Rusk
Sabine
San Augustine
San Jacinto
San Patricio
San Saba
Schleicher
Scurry
Shackelford
Shelby
Sherman
Smith
Somervell
Starr
Stephens
Sterling
Stonewall
Sutton
Swisher
Tarrant
Taylor
Terrell
Terry
Throckmorton
Titus
Tom Green
Travis
Trinity
Tyler
Upshur
Upton
Uvalde
Val Verde
Van Zandt
Victoria
Walker
Waller
Ward
Washington
Webb
Wharton
Wheeler
Wichita
Wilbarger
Willacy
Williamson
Wilson
Winkler
Wise
Wood
Yoakum
Young
Zapata
Zavala
Rabid conservatism defeats itself!

As part of the effort to expand the reach of Come and Take It, we are going to do something that I have not yet seen.

Rabid Texas conservatism will begin funding its own destruction starting today when you will see this link appear on every post here at Come and Take It.



That would be a link to contribute to the Texas Democratic Party. Now, this blog is not for liberal activism generally. And I know we have been good that way. But this blog also isn't just a place to vent without making a difference. So this is a good compromise--we'll just let the rabid Texas right wing decide how much it will fund its own electoral defeat.

If one of our bloggers reports something here that gets us all Yosemite Sam angry, then we will click through and fund the electoral defeat of those who caused our bad day. Think of it as a "boiling blood tax."

And if you are the author of the post and it just gets YOU rip-roarin''' mad that you are even reporting such a thing, be sure to remind us all to click through.

Come and Take It, Texas.
Rabid conservatism defeats itself!

Boadicea's post below struck me as blaming the good guy. So I contacted Texas State Representative Lon Burnham myself regarding the Cindy Sheehan protest in Crawford. Some things I read yesterday about him “passing warnings” to the Sheehan protestors about possible arrest tomorrow did not strike me as reasonable.

Lon is the only Texas Representative to have stood up and spoken against the Patriot Act and the War in Iraq two years ago. He is Director of the Dallas Peace Commission. His brother was illegally arrested two years ago in Dallas during a demonstration, and only found not guilty this last March. Lon was told by one juror that it was difficult to acquit his brother because the Jury had to decide that the police were lying on the stand. [Yeah, welcome to Dallas - or Texas for that matter.]

Lon pointed out that he knows Karl Rove and the Bush people. They do not like the kind of media exposure that Cindy Sheehan is creating, and this is Texas. It is my opinion that the illegal activities of the New York City Police during the Republican National Convention were mild compared to what they will dare to here in Texas. Lon agreed with me.

He is also on a law enforcement committee in the House of Representatives, and has spoken to law enforcement at both the state and in McLellan County trying to let them know they are being watched. He wants to be sure that Cindy Sheehan and her supporters are provided with their first amendment rights.

There is a special situation coming up. There is going to be a motorcade pass through that area Thursday evening or Friday morning, and Lon is concerned, with what he knows of Rove and Bush, that there may be illegal arrests of demonstrators in advance of that motorcade.

Since Lon has experience with demonstrations in Texas, he is concerned that people who go there are prepared to be arrested. There is no official warning of arrests Thursday (as of 10:30 AM CDT as far as we know), but Lon Burnham knows Bush and Rove and he knows Texas law enforcement. His earlier statements were on the line of telling someone who is getting close to a scorpion about the nature of scorpions and advising them to be prepared for typical scorpion behavior. [The "scorpion" characterization is mine, not Lons.]

The Texas House is in special session right now, and he has not been able to break free to visit the demonstration. I think he was concerned that a lot of people would just hear about the demonstration, decide to attend, and show up without being ready for what they might be walking into. It is clear that his experience and his position as an elected official could be of great use of trouble occurs in Crawford, but with the House in special session he hasn’t been able to get free.

So that is the story as I have gotten it.

---

If anyone has a good checklist for what to take to a demonstration, it would be good to post it. I've never been to one before, either. What is normal Bail? What do you take for tear gas protection?

[Headline edited by Umpire]
Rabid conservatism defeats itself!

Apparently a small band of protestors camping out in the hot Texas heat led by a mother whose lost a beloved son in a dishonest, disgraceful war is about to constitute a threat to national security.

First they tried to ditch the protestors. Then they kept food and water from being supplied (though they relented eventually.) Then they sent a couple of political hacks to parrot the Chickenhawk Line: "At least the Iraqis can now vote". When they met a calm, resolute mother who wasn't buying their bullshit, they went back to Chickenhawk Ranch. Then the Secret Service warned the protestors that cars come down the road really fast and it would be a shame if anybody got hit.

Now, they warn her she's going to be considered a national security risk the day before a Yellow Elephant (Seniors Division) fundraiser. Presumably that means under the Patriot Act, and that means no access to counsel or charges need be filed.

Some folks are trying to get there to support Cindy. See this thread on Dkos.

This President is a lifelong coward and bully. From his frat boy days to putative volunteering for military service only to be the invisible man in his Reserve unit his sadistic enjoyment of the death penalty to the sound and fury of the stolen election of 2000 right through to the bald faced lies he's been peddling to the press and through them the public.

Face to face, he can't maintain the cloak of denial, so I don't hold out much hope that he'll have the huevos to engage in a basic human interaction with his opponents. Bar's baby boy has grown up into a rank, arrogant coward of the first water who has earned the White Feather being handed to him so publically on a hot stretch of asphalt in McLennan County.

He's nothing but a little man in a big suit trying to get out from under Daddy's tall shadow without actually earning his own way.

But he'll do so with a resolute jaw because, face it, he's got nothing else to offer the American military families who have given up so much to prosecute Halliburton's War.

Crossposted on We Are the Resistance.

Update: According to this story on Dkos the threat of arrest was actually speculation by some state legislator rather than a statement from law enforcement. Doesn't change much in my book as it was clearly an attempt by an official to intimidate citizens exercising their First Amendment rights.

I will speculate my own self that said legislator is probably feeling very foolish right now, and if I find out which numskull made that threat (we're talking about the Texas Lege, so there's an embarrassing wealth of candidates) he'll be in for a Lone Star smackdown that's gonna leave him dizzy for several days.

Rabid conservatism defeats itself!

That's what Pink Dome calls the cluster of do-nothings in Austin masquerading as our state Legislature.

They're exactly right. Here, read their compilations from editorial boards around the state (and PD's smackdown at the end):

Texarkana Gazette: In Our View: Trying do-littles: "They will just say, "The courts made us do it. It was those judicial busybodies who forced us to break our promises of tax relief and otherwise stiff the people who elected us. We wanted to keep the business of funding education under our control and local control. But now our hands are tied by people who don't have to answer to constituents.

"That will not be the whole truth. They have spent our tax money on unproductive special sessions. They have postured and propagandized, and done just about anything but come up with a solution."

Lufkin Daily News: Legislative delays stall school work: " The special session is scheduled to end on Aug. 21, and many state lawmakers are saying it's time to pull the plug and go home, despite Gov. Rick Perry's vow that he would keep calling special sessions until the Legislature passes school reform and finance laws.

"In the 26 to 27 years I've been working for Lufkin ISD, I've never seen it come down this close to the wire," Parsons said. "In the past, if they changed the funding, it went into effect at the start of the next school year."

Startlegram: Grusendorf seeks legislation for textbooks:"Grusendorf said it is also clear to him that enacting meaningful education reform is all but impossible anytime soon."

Sorry about that, teach! The way this session is going, the Lege won't be helping you out. That's okay, really. Who needs to learn Spanish/English/Algebra/Geometry/World History? Given the way your salary is looking, you'll have to take a part-time job teaching at Sylvan/working at the Tastee-Freeze/painting houses anyway.
Rabid conservatism defeats itself!

The GOP God Squad is having their second Meetup this Sunday, and Bill Frist won't be there despite the fact it is being held in Nashville, Tennessee.

It's possible he may have been disinvited because he dared to suddenly figure out this week that stem cell research is actually good science.

Instead, the lownote speaker will be ... *drumroll, please* ... Tom DeLay.

Do you think he'll be talking about his golf game?

Check out this awesome lineup of speakers (that's them, not really standing together, up there):

Senator Zell Miller, D-Ga. (HA! Everybody knows crazy ol' Uncle Zell is a Republican who can't find the exit door to the Democratic Party)
Tony Perkins, Family Research Council (I thought that this 'Psycho' actor passed away a few years ago...)
Dr. James Dobson, Focus on the Family (alas, in spirit but not in body -- that means by videotape)
Chuck Colson, Prison Fellowship Ministries (former Watergate criminal and the man who said: "it is not honorable to leak classified information to the press". He was NOT talking about Karl Rove)
Bill Donohue, Catholic League
Phyllis Schlafly, Eagle Forum
Cathy Cleaver Ruse, Family Research Council (OK, who else knew that Wally and The Beaver had a sister?!?)
Dr. Jerry Sutton, Two Rivers Baptist Church
Bishop Harry Jackson, Hope Christian Church
Ted Haggard, National Association of Evangelicals

The subtitle for the event is "God Save the United States and this Honorable Court!"

Yes, God, please do.
Rabid conservatism defeats itself!