Posts Tagged ‘Rick Perry’

Who Had “Rick Perry, Psychedelic Warrior” on Their 2023 Bingo Card?

Monday, September 25th, 2023

To the surprise of many, Rick Perry has come out for legalization of psychedelic drugs to treat PTSD.

Republican Rick Perry served as governor of Texas from 2000 to 2015 and then did a stint as secretary of energy from 2017 to 2019. He describes himself as a small-government conservative. He’s not in favor of legalizing all drugs, but in the last five years he has warmed up to the idea that psychedelics could be a valuable and legitimate treatment for trauma.

Reason’s Nick Gillespie sat down with Rick Perry in June at the Psychedelic Science 2023 conference to discuss how poorly the U.S. deals with those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and how he believes that psychedelic-assisted therapy can help.

Q: How have you changed your mind about psychedelics?

A: When I got introduced to this approximately five years ago, it was through a young man [Morgan Luttrell] who worked with me at the Department of Energy.

I was the secretary of energy and he was seeing some of his colleagues in the special operations world—this is a former Navy SEAL, who, interestingly enough, today is a United States congressman. He’s the one that started getting me comfortable with “Rick Perry” and “psychedelics” in the same sentence. His twin brother, Marcus Luttrell, lived with us at the governor’s mansion as my wife and I were learning about post-traumatic stress disorder and how poorly our government was dealing with this. And we were trying to find solutions to help heal this young man.

Q: Can psychedelics help individuals struggling with PTSD?

A: I’ve educated myself about the history of this and why psychedelics got taken away from the research world, from the citizens at large. These are medicines that were taken away for political purposes back in the early ’70s that we need to reintegrate. The potential here is stunningly positive.

I’ll give you one example: Rachel Yehuda, Ph.D., who’s working at [Veterans Affairs] in New York. She has two studies in phase three that are showing just amazing results. They have classic symptoms—anxiety, depression, sleeplessness, suicidal thoughts, one or all of those. Seventy-five percent of those individuals who are treated have zero symptoms after six months. Those are stunning numbers.

Q: Do you think people in your political tribe will be able to grasp this message about psychedelics treating trauma?

A: This is an education process and the short answer is yes, I do. Because I’m not for legalization of all drugs. We need to go a little more pedestrian here. Government has fouled this up substantially in the past. Let’s not give them a reason to mess this up, again. Let’s go thoughtfully at an appropriate pace as fast as we can.

Government needs to be limited. It needs to be restrained at almost every opportunity that you can. We haven’t been very successful with that in our country.

This isn’t the first time “Rick Perry” and “drugs” have appeared in a post here, as there was a significant possibility that Perry was hopped up on goofballs following back surgery in his 2012 presidential run flameout. But Perry is very far indeed from a liberal squish. Maybe the time has arrived for Republicans to give serious thought to rethinking current drug policy.

The United States Constitution is silent on the issue of drug regulation, which, under the 10th Amendment, should make drug policy the provenance of the states for anything not involving interstate commerce. Federal marijuana prohibition rests on the deeply un-conservative New Deal expansion of federal powers enshrined in Wickard vs. Filburn, which allowed the federal government to regulate what people grow on their own land for their own consumption. And our current drug prohibition policies aren’t keeping illegal drugs flowing into the country from Mexico and China.

On the flip side of that coin, deep blue locales like San Francisco and Seattle have amply demonstrated how not to legalize drugs, refusing to enforce basic law and order and letting mentally ill transients shoplift at will and shit in the streets, destroying the quality of life for law-abiding citizens. Clearly de facto legalization doesn’t work if government refuses their fundamental duty of ensuring ordered liberty.

There’s a vast range of policy options between “throwing teenagers into prison for years for smoking a joint” and “let drug addicted transients shit in the streets.” San Francisco and Seattle show how Democrats run things if left to act on their instincts of hating the police and farming homeless populations for graft. That means Republicans will have to come up with policy options for slow, careful, phased drug legalization policies on their own.

State legalization of marijuana has been a very mixed bag, with vast illegal grow operations popping up in states with even partial/medical legalization, and it hasn’t been nearly the economic boon that the legal pot lobby had forecast. More careful experimentation and data gathering is required.

For psychedelics, the literature seems to indicate that addiction rates are very low, but there are obviously people who have seriously damaged their mind by tripping to much.

But ultimately, the purpose of government is not to protect citizens from themselves. Drug prohibition cuts against fundamental American principles. A lot of modern drug addiction has it roots in the culture of despair, lawlessness, family breakup, social decline and general failure Democrat-run cities have cultivated in their poorest citizens. Starting to fix those problems would do far more to fix the problems of addiction than current drug prohibition policies.

Obviously Joe Rogan needs to interview Rick Perry so they can talk about psychedelic drugs..

Today Is The Texas Runoff! Go Vote!

Tuesday, May 24th, 2022

Today is the Texas runoff election. Here is some brief coverage of the races and who I’ll be voting for.

  • Texas Attorney General: Incumbent Ken Paxton vs. current Land Commissioner George P. Bush. Paxton has campaigned on a solid conservative record and an endorsement of President Donald Trump, while Bush has dropped a bunch of direct mail flyers trying to label Paxton as corrupt. My pick here is strong favorite Paxton, who has constantly followed conservative principles in filing lawsuits against both federal overreach and neglect of enumerated constitutional duties. Moreover, the charges against Paxton have dragged out over seven years, long after the underlying federal charges were dismissed, making it seem more like a political witch hunt and possible Sixth Amendment rights violation than anything resembling justice. George P. Bush has hardly been impressive in his stint as Land Commissioner and doesn’t deserve a promotion.
  • Texas Land Commissioner: Former Texas Senator Dawn Buckingham vs. Dr. Tim Westley. Buckingham is the pick here, and she’s going to win this one running away, having been endorsed by Trump, Ted Cruz and the NRA, and holding a significant financial advantage over her underfunded challenger. Westley seems like a nice guy, but he has the profile of someone who should start out running in a local race.
  • Texas Railroad Commissioner: Incumbent Wayne Christian vs. challenger Sarah Stogner. Christian, a solid conservative, is the pick here, endorsed by Cruz, Abbott, Rick Perry and Dan Patrick, and should win this one running away, despite Strogner getting a huge $2 million donation from transexual West Texas ranching heir Ashley (formerly Andrew) Watt Watt), who nurses a grudge against the Railroad Commission. Stogner’s previous donation to Beto O’Rourke’s 2018 campaign against Ted Cruz isn’t helping her case any either…
  • Texas Senate District 24: Pete Flores vs. Raul Reyes: Flores is the heavy favorite here, having been endorsed by Trump, Cruz, Abbott, Perry and Patrick. Despite all that, I will be voting for Reyes, based on Flores seeming a bit squishy to me, and Reyes receiving the endorsements of Gun Owners of America and several Tea Party groups.
  • Voting locations:

  • Williamson County
  • Travis County
  • LinkSwarm for January 20, 2017

    Friday, January 20th, 2017

    Welcome to Inauguration Day, when Donald J. Trump is sworn in as the Forty-Fifth President of the United States of America! Celebrate the momentous day with a Friday LinkSwarm.

  • Trump plans to hit the ground running with a number of executive actions his very first day on the job. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Trump started planning his presidential run right after Romney lost. In fact, Trump registered his “Make America Great Again” slogan six days after Romney’s defeat. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Clinton Family Friend: “Yes, I will be at the review stand at the inauguration and I am going to kill President-elect Trump… what are you gonna do about it Secret Service?” Secret Service: “Enjoy these complimentary handcuffs.”
  • Much of the hatred against Trump is pure class bigotry:

    I don’t think reasonable differences of opinion on the one hand, and the ordinary hypocrisy of partisan politics on the other, explain the extraordinarily stridency, the venom, and the hatred being flung at the incoming administration by its enemies. There may be many factors involved, to be sure, but I’d like to suggest that one factor in particular plays a massive role here.

    To be precise, I think a lot of what we’re seeing is the product of class bigotry.

    Snip.

    Until last year, if you wanted to experience the class bigotry that’s so common among the affluent classes in today’s America, you pretty much had to be a member of those affluent classes, or at least good enough at passing to be present at the social events where their bigotry saw free play. Since Donald Trump broke out of the Republican pack early last year, though, that hindrance has gone by the boards. Those who want to observe American class bigotry at its choicest need only listen to what a great many of the public voices of the well-to-do are saying about the people who votes and enthusiasm have sent Trump to the White House.

    You see, that’s a massive part of the reason a Trump presidency is so unacceptable to so many affluent Americans: his candidacy, unlike those of all his rivals, was primarily backed by “those people.”

    Snip.

    This isn’t just because so large a fraction of working class voters generally backed Trump; it’s also because Trump saw this from the beginning, and aimed his campaign squarely at the working class vote. His signature red ball cap was part of that—can you imagine Hillary Clinton wearing so proletarian a garment without absurdity?—but, as I pointed out a year ago, so was his deliberate strategy of saying (and tweeting) things that would get the liberal punditocracy to denounce him. The tones of sneering contempt and condescension they directed at him were all too familiar to his working class audiences, who have been treated to the same tones unceasingly by their soi-disant betters for decades now.

    Much of the pushback against Trump’s impending presidency, in turn, is heavily larded with that same sneering contempt and condescension—the unending claims, for example, that the only reason people could possibly have chosen to vote for Trump was because they were racist misogynistic morons, and the like. (These days, terms such as “racist” and “misogynistic,” in the mouths of the affluent, are as often as not class-based insults rather than objective descriptions of attitudes.) The question I’d like to raise at this point, though, is why the affluent don’t seem to be able to bring themselves to come right out and denounce Trump as the candidate of the filthy rabble. Why must they borrow the rhetoric of identity politics and twist it (and themselves) into pretzel shapes instead?

    Read the whole thing. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)

  • “In donated shoes and suit, a Trump supporter comes to Washington.”
  • Follow-up:

  • How ObamaCare helped destroy Medicare.

    Physicians across the country have been firing Medicare patients; and according to a late 2015 study from the Kaiser Family Foundation, 21% of physicians are not taking new Medicare patients.

    Much of this trend is based on stiff penalties and financial disincentives from the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), and 2015’s Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization (MACRA) Act.

    MACRA in particular is completely mystifying.

    The law created a whopping 2,400 pages of regulations that Medicare physicians are expected to know and follow.

    Many of the rules are debilitating.

    For instance, MACRA changed how physicians can be reimbursed for their Medicare patients by establishing a bizarre set of standards to determine if a physician is providing “value”.

    As an example, if a patient ends up in the emergency room, his or her physician can incur a steep penalty.

    This explains why my step-dad was dropped by his doctor.

    The healthcare system has been broken to the point that physicians now have a greater incentive to fire their Medicare patients than to treat them.

  • City journal has an extensive profile of George Soros.

    Soros’s global reach and influence far outstrip those of the Koch brothers or other liberal bogeymen—and that underlying it all is a vision both dystopian and opportunistic. “The main obstacle to a stable and just world order,” Soros has declared, “is the United States.” Ergo, that constitutional republic must be weakened and its allies degraded. The Sorosian world order—one of open borders and global governance, antithetical to the ideals and experience of the West—could then assume command.

    Snip.

    n the United States, Soros bankrolls a broad range of political and cultural causes. One is to destabilize the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. In 2015, he dedicated $650,000 for the purpose of shaping Pope Francis’s U.S. visit, using left-leaning Catholic groups to promote gay marriage, abortion, and physician-assisted suicide. Leading the effort was Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta, a self-professed Catholic. Bill Donohue, outspoken president of the Catholic League, vainly called for Podesta’s dismissal. “He is fomenting revolution in the Catholic Church, creating mutiny and is totally unethical,” Donohue said. “He is the front man for George Soros to create a host of phony anti-Catholic groups. These are not just bad comments, as some have suggested. These words are orchestrated, calculated and designed to create fissures in the Catholic Church.”

    Another Soros favorite is Black Lives Matter, the radical protest group dedicated to the proposition that police are inherently racist. Working the streets with incendiary rhetoric, at odds with the truth about black-on-black crime, BLM has helped foster “depolicing,” as Heather Mac Donald describes it, in high-crime urban areas. In 2015, after days of rioting in Baltimore in response to the death of Freddie Gray in police custody, an Open Society Foundations memo excitedly commented that “recent events offer a unique opportunity to accelerate the dismantling of structural inequality generated and maintained by local law enforcement and to engage residents who have historically been disenfranchised in Baltimore City in shaping and monitoring reform.” Three straight acquittals of police officers involved in the matter left the prosecution’s case in shreds but made no difference to the Open Society Foundations. It has donated at least $650,000 to Black Lives Matter and pledged more assistance to antipolice factions across the country. These activities prompted the father of one of the Dallas police officers killed during a Black Lives Matter protest to sue Soros (along with other individuals and groups) for inspiring a “war on police.”

    (Hat tip: John Tierney at Instapundit.)

  • I always thought George Soros was running Black Lives Matter, and now here’s some proof: “BLM leader lives in home owned by Soros’ Open Society board member.”
  • Don’t look now, but the Clinton/Sanders rift is still roiling the Democratic Party. Sadly, neither side seems to be willing to give up on Social Justice Warrior victimhood identity politics. (Hat tip: Hot Air, which notes “Democrats have to come to grips with the fact that they stopped speaking for most Americans over the past eight years, and started lecturing at Americans instead. The party got wrapped up in the progressive-academic social-justice agenda to the point that the party made diversity into an obsession at the expense of the real economic issues facing voters outside of the coastal enclaves and college campuses.”)
  • One college Democrat has had enough:

    A National Councilman for the College Democrats of America is jumping ship and considering joining the Republican Party just before President-elect Trump takes the oath of office.

    Michael J. Hout, a junior at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, told Campus Reform that he believes the contemporary Democratic Party is no longer the best place for an ideological moderate like himself, saying the Party is pivoting towards more extremist rhetoric and appealing more to those who often do not even consider themselves Democrats, such as socialists and independents.

    Snip.

    “This strategy of catering to the whims of those for whom identity politics matters more than anything else, and of allowing for even anti-white, anti-male rhetoric to find a home within the party, is a large part of its untenable strategy moving forward,” Hout explained, predicting that “it will continue to cause Democrats to lose, time and time again.”

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Former California Democratic Party chair argues that Democrats should move their headquarters to Detroit to reconnect with middle class voters. I agree, but for a different reason: So they can be forced to see the results of their handiwork firsthand every day.
  • A glimmering of a clue: “U.S. Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy III, breaking ranks with other Democrats who are trashing President-elect Donald Trump and boycotting his inaugural, is imploring his party’s rank and file to figure out why middle American voters went Republican in November….’Folks, we lost their trust and being mortified and mystified about their vote doesn’t bring it back.'” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Tolerant left gets another Milo speech cancelled.
  • Ignore the shame mob and they’ve got nothing else to throw at you:

    While [Steve] Harvey tries to use his celebrity for something selfless and useful and while the Talladega College marching band gets the world stage to show off the results of its hard work and school spirit, think of their detractors as the latter sit behind their cell phones and sling names like “coon” and “Uncle Tom”[i] in between posting their twerking and ghetto fight videos.

    Ouch! (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • Joe Bob Briggs takes aim at the “angry white male” concept.

    Numero Three-o: Why is anger as a voting incentive limited to white males? Don’t black men get angry? When Louis Farrakhan holds a rally, why doesn’t Yahoo News say “Angry Black Men Gather in Chicago”? Why aren’t there any Angry Latino Men or Angry Chinese Men?

    Numero Four-o: More specifically, how do you explain the fact that the Angry White Men who voted for Trump in 2016 are the same white men who voted for Obama in 2008? When they vote for Obama they’re not angry, but when they vote for Trump it can only be because they’re enraged hicks? Gogebic County in Michigan is 92 percent white and hadn’t voted for a Republican since 1972—until this election. The counties in southwestern Wisconsin, all heavily Democratic, went for Trump after a strong Obama vote in 2008 and 2012. Eastern Iowa, Democratic since 1988, went for Trump. Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, which is frequently used as the very definition of “working-class,” went for Republicans for the first time since 1988. Why are all these people classified as “angry” now, but in 2008, when they were angry at George Bush, they were just “voting for change”? Could it be, just perhaps, maybe, they feel betrayed by the Democratic Party? If we’re gonna call them angry, let’s define what they’re angry about.

  • Then again, fake outrage over non-issues is the stock in trade of the center-left.
  • Four reasons why nobody trusts the media. Including that nothingburger of a New York Times hit piece on Rick Perry that relied on no facts whatsoever.
  • For all that CNN flack global warming, they certainly don’t act like they believe it. In addition from moving CNN headquarters from Atlanta to New York City, “Time Warner, the company that owns CNN, just invested in SEVEN new buildings located in Hudson Yards, a part of Manhattan just a block or two away from the water. An area that, according to its own CNN, will soon be underwater, and therefore utterly and completely worthless.”
  • Speaking of CNN, they just hired Valerie Jarrett’s daughter to report on Trump’s Justice Department. “Valerie Jarrett’s daughter quietly joined CNN in September as a reporter in the network’s Washington bureau. She came to CNN with no experience in journalism.” Evidence suggests CNN has naked contempt for both objectivity and those not in the anointed liberal overclass. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “The primary aim of official propaganda is to generate an “official narrative” that can be mindlessly repeated by the ruling classes and those who support and identify with them. This official narrative does not have to make sense, or to stand up to any sort of serious scrutiny. Its factualness is not the point. The point is to draw a Maginot line, a defensive ideological boundary, between “the truth” as defined by the ruling classes and any other “truth” that contradicts their narrative.”
  • Post-Brexit, an economic boom in the UK. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • UK PM Theresa May aims at a “hard Brexit.” Andrew Stuttaford (and I) wonder why she isn’t going for the ‘Norway option’ of leaving the EU but staying in the European Economic Area.
  • Marine Le Pen cues up Frexit. “The euro has not been used as a currency, but as a weapon—a knife stuck in the ribs of a country to force it to go where the people don’t want to go.” I disagree with Walter Russel Mead: The EU, as currently constituted, is incapable of being reformed. Reform is impossible without scraping the European Commission, which is impossible without scraping Maastricht, which would scrap the EU. Better to start again from scratch or go back to just the common market.
  • Jihadwatch’s Robert Spencer had a minor piece at The Hill on why Lindsay Lohan’s (rumored) conversion to Islam was a bad idea. I wasn’t even going to link it. The The Hill took it down due to political pressure. Now I have to.
  • As one of his last acts, Obama commutes the sentence of convicted Puerto Rican terrorist Oscar Lopez Rivera.
  • And it’s not just terrorists: Obama commutes the sentences of four South Texas druglords:

    Four family members who ran one of the largest cartel smuggling operations in south Texas had their life in prison sentences commuted and will likely be returning to this border city from where they ran their criminal empire. One of the main destinations that the criminal organizations delivered drugs to was Chicago, Illinois.

    This week, outgoing President Barack Obama commuted the sentences of 209 convicted criminals and pardoned 64 others. The majority of the convictions were from drug trafficking or production offenses.

    Four of those convicted criminals who had been sentenced to life in prison will be released by May 17. They ran a criminal organization made up of close to 80 men and women who worked with Mexico’s Gulf Cartel to move between 100,000 to almost 750,000 pounds of marijuana into the U.S. during a 10-year period. The drugs were moved into Houston and then distributed to Atlanta, Chicago, and other major metropolitan areas.

    According to court records obtained by Breitbart Texas, brothers Cesar Moreno Sr., Eduardo Moreno, Lazaro Moreno, and Luis Moreno along with other relatives and friends had been at the helm of a large-scale drug distribution operation based out of the border city of Roma, Texas.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • A tweet:

  • Brian Krebs deduces the author of the Mirai worm.
  • Seattle kills bikeshare program. If it can’t make it in Seattle…
  • 3D TV is dead again. Good. 3D always struck me as an annoying gimmick, even in IMAX.
  • “Woman stabbed man 9 times after he wouldn’t commit to relationship.” I’m pretty sure the guy made the right call there… (Hat tip: Bill Crider.)
  • Man gets head start on the epic douchebag Olympics. “28-year-old James Allen is facing a charge of driving while intoxicated. [He] drove a $385,000 Ferrari off a bridge in Westlake, went airborne for 40 feet and crashed into the woods while speeding on Friday night.” (Hat tip: Iowahawk’s Twitter feed.)
  • Oakland Raiders file papers to move to Las Vegas.
  • “It’s come to my attention that some of you Hollywood types are calling yourselves ‘the Resistance’. Stop. Now.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Graduate student sues after being kicked out of school for not supporting left-wing causes.
  • Scott Adams being unable to comment on his own blog due to a software bug has to be the most Dilbert thing ever…
  • Trump To Tap Rick Perry For Secretary of Energy?

    Tuesday, December 13th, 2016

    So read the tea leaves:

    Donald Trump has selected Rick Perry to be energy secretary, according to two sources directly involved in the transition and selection process.

    He had been summoned to Trump Tower for a meeting Monday to discuss the position after having been contacted over the weekend. The meeting was only finalized on Sunday.

    The other contenders for the position were Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, and Ray Washburne, a key Trump fundraiser, former RNC finance chair, restaurateur and investor in oil and gas operations.

    The piece goes on to note that Perry sits on the board of Energy Transfer Partners, which is involved in the North Dakota pipeline liberals are performing their current pipeline freakout over, then spends several paragraphs talking about that, because of course they did.

    Perry was an extraordinarily effective governor who made the mistake of running for President while hopped up on goofballs and never recovered from it. He constantly fought the EPA to keep Texas exempt from that agency’s more outlandish policies and was an outspoken advocate of fracking. He should be a very solid Secretary of Energy and, as a bonus, will probably become one of the Trump cabinet officials most hated by liberals.

    Trump’s cabinet picks so far seem both reasonable and salted with more movement conservatives than you might have guessed in, say, July. Trump also seems to be pursuing a “Team of Rivals” concept, selecting strong, well-known political figures over those from his own circles. Perry is a serious pick for a serious cabinet.

    Sanders Refuses to Climb on the Cart

    Wednesday, May 11th, 2016

    Hillary Clinton and her sycophantic media have declared the Democratic presidential race over. Clinton has stopped spending money on primary advertising and her proxies have called for Bernie Sanders to drop out.

    Evidently Sanders hasn’t gotten the memo. Last night he beat Clinton by 16 points in the West Virginia primary. Sanders is less than 300 pledged delegates behind Clinton, and says he’ll continue the fight all the way to the Democratic National Convention.

    And a lot of Sanders supporters seem very, very bitter over Clinton’s dirty tricks and corruption, possibly far more than I’ve ever seen on the Democratic side of the race, at least since 1972 or so. Which may be the reason “a third of those who voted in West Virginia’s Democratic primary say they plan to back Trump in November, according to NBC News exit polls. Sanders won those voters by a wide margin. In fact, 39 percent of Sanders voters said they would vote for Trump over Sanders in the fall. For Clinton, nine percent of her voters say they plan to come out for Trump in the general election.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

    In other Presidential race news:

  • Hillary helps out a Swiss bank, and the bank gives millions to the Clintons.
  • Trump surges in a new Reuters poll, now in a statistical dead heat with Clinton.
  • Other polls are also showing a tightening race. “A Harvard poll finds Clinton ahead only 46 percent to 40 percent nationwide and 45 to 41 in swing states; Quinnipiac finds Clinton leading by one point in Florida, leading by one point in Pennsylvania, and trailing by two points in Ohio.”
  • Rick Perry endorses Donald Trump.
  • Rick Perry Cleared of Phony Travis County Charges

    Wednesday, February 24th, 2016

    Travis County’s politicized District Attorney’s office loses yet again:

    Texas’ highest criminal court on Wednesday dismissed the remaining felony charge against former Gov. Rick Perry in the abuse-of-power case that he blamed for his early exit from the Republican presidential race.

    The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals tossed a charge of misuse of office that stemmed from Perry’s 2013 effort to force out the Travis County district attorney. And it upheld the decision of a lower court to dismiss a charge of coercion of a public official.

    The 6-2 decision appears to mark the end of Perry’s 18-month legal saga — one that outlasted the end of his record-setting, 14-year tenure as governor and his short-lived second bid for the White House.

    Snip.

    “The case centered on Perry’s threat in 2013 to veto $7.5 million budgeted for the Travis County district attorney’s office if District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg, a Democrat, didn’t resign after her drunken-driving arrest.”

    The only corruption in this case was not Rick Perry using his constitutionally authorized veto power, but the Travis County DA’s nakedly partisan witch-hunt on behalf of a Democratic Party furious at how Perry consistently kicked their asses…

    Green vs. Green in 2016

    Thursday, February 18th, 2016

    Let’s talk about the Green vs. Green Texas Supreme Court race.

    Supreme Court Place 5 incumbent Paul Green is being challenged by conservative activist Rick Green in the Republican primary. And a few notable figures (such as Chuck Norris) have endorsed Rick Green.

    Usually when a Republican incumbent is being challenged by a conservative activist, I’m backing the insurgent. This is not one of those cases.

    Here’s a National Review piece covering why Rick Green is unsuited for the Texas Supreme Court:

    Rick Green, age 44, has a law degree but does not primarily practice law. He is a speaker (with David Barton’s WallBuilders), radio talk-show host, family-based reality TV performer (Red, White, Blue & Green – imagine Sarah Palin meets Duck Dynasty), former state legislator (he served two terms in the Texas House of Representatives, 1999–2003), and founder of the Patriot Academy, a religious-oriented youth organization. Rick Green’s website offers services ranging from constitution training (Constitution Alive!) to firearms instruction. However beloved Rick Green may be in the world of conservative political activists (akin to Alan Keyes, Chuck Norris, or Ted Nugent), and no matter how admirable his work, he is simply not qualified to serve on the Texas Supreme Court.

    Rick Green has no prior judicial experience, and scant relevant legal experience. He styles himself a “constitutionalist,” but the bulk of the Texas Supreme Court’s docket concerns mundane — albeit important — matters of state law. His judicial temperament is questionable. According to press reports (e.g., here and here), his brief tenure in Texas’s part-time legislature (which meets for 140 days every other year) was marred by ethical controversies involving his promotion of the dietary supplements Metabolife and FocusFactor. After he left the legislature, he reportedly decked the opponent who defeated him, Patrick Rose. Rick Green ran for an open seat on the Texas Supreme Court in 2010 and narrowly lost to Debra Lehrmann in the Republican primary runoff. Afterwards, in Trump-like fashion, he sued his critics, including former Chief Justice Tom Phillips, contending that their campaign against him was libelous.

    Call me a philistine, but I’m not wild about a Supreme Court justice punching out political opponents and filing libel lawsuits against critics. Doesn’t exactly befit the dignity of the office.

    (For those interested in the libel case, this brief goes over Rick Green’s alleged shady behavior, and evidently Rick Green dropped his lawsuit after it was filed.)

    The entirety of Rick Green’s attack on Paul Green seems to be the latter’s ruling in State vs Naylor: “The main issue in the race is the State vs Naylor case of two women who married in Massachusetts and decided to not be married in Texas. Eight of the nine justices participated with three dissents. Paul Green joined in the majority opinion. The majority opinion dismissing the lawsuit was based on lack of jurisdiction, a procedural matter, that had nothing to do with the central question of the constitutionally of the Texas Marriage Laws. The decision shows that the court exercised judicial restraint and did not engage in judicial activism.”

    Here’s a comparison chart between the two Greens.

    And just in case you’re worried that incumbent Paul Green is too moderate, the fact that he garnered endorsements from Texans for Lawsuit Reform should ease your concern. And former Governor Rick Perry endorsed Paul Green as well: “Paul Green is the type of constitutionalist that I want to see on our courts. Paul has the intellectual capability and the scholarly capability to serve the people of Texas.”

    All of which should help convince you to support Paul Green over Rick Green. Sorry, Chuck Norris…

    Winners, Losers, and Observations from Iowa

    Tuesday, February 2nd, 2016

    Now that was an interesting Iowa caucus! On the Republican side, Ted Cruz came in first (8 delegates), Donald Trump second (7 delegates), with Marco Rubio nipping at his heels for third (7 delegates).

    On the Democratic side, it appears that Hillary Clinton eked out a historically narrow victory over Bernie Sanders. I say “appears” since last night it was reported that results from 90 precincts had gone missing. Given her serial history of lawbreaking, and the entire weight of the DNC all-in on dragging her over the finish line, would anyone put it past Hillary to monkey-wrench the process to avoid a narrow loss?

    Let’s take a look at last night’s biggest winners and losers:

  • Winner: Ted Cruz: Given no chance at the beginning of the cycle, or even a few months ago, Cruz pulled out a clear victory against a candidate given eight months of unprecedented free media coverage. As I noted while following his 2012 senate race, Cruz is a smart, disciplined and indefatigable campaigner, a true conservative, and will make a great President.
  • Loser: Donald Trump: See above. A novice politician pulling 24% and second place in the Iowa caucuses would normally be cause for celebration, but Trump roared into Iowa like a juggernaut on a wave of unbelievable media interest and limped out like a hobbled mule. For all the talk about Trump’s money making a difference, there are few signs any of it was spent on an effective ground game. And for once he wasn’t bragging after the results came in.
  • Loser: Jeb Bush: Remember a year ago how everyone was predicting Bush’s fundraising machine and organizational muscle would bulldoze his rivals aside? Not so much. Bush ended up spending $2,884 per Iowa vote to come in sixth.
  • Winner: Marco Rubio: A strong third keeps him in the game, and he’s well situated to pick up deep-pocketed Bush backers who aren’t turned off by the huge amounts of money they’ve already thrown away.
  • Losers: Governors running for President. It used to be that Governor was seen as the ideal perquisite for running for President (Reagan, Bush43, Clinton, Carter, etc.), but not only did Jeb Bush come in sixth, John Kaisch, Mike Huckabee, Chris Christie, and Jim Gilmore (who we’ll mention only because he was a governor, since he got a whopping 12 votes in all of Iowa) all did even worse, Martin O’Malley came in an exceptionally distant third on the Democratic side, and Rick Perry, Bobby Jindal and George Pataki didn’t even make it to Iowa. Huckabee and O’Mally have suspended their campaigns, and the other governors should follow suit.
  • Loser: Rand Paul: Few expected Paul to win, but few expected him to do markedly worse than his father. He should drop out
  • Losers: The remaining Republican candidates. At this point there’s no path to victory for Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina or Rick Santorum. They should drop out as well.
  • Winner: Bernie Sanders: He went from being a crazy old socialist with no chance of winning to a crazy old socialist who fought the Clinton machine to a virtual tie.
  • Loser: Hillary Clinton: She desperately needed to win Iowa and got it, maybe (the Iowa Democratic Party is refusing to release actual vote totals, as opposed to precinct results), with the help of some missing ballots and unlikely coin flips, by the skin of her teeth, but she vastly underperformed in a race that was supposed to be cakewalk for her a year ago. “Her inability to ride a first-class ground organization to a decisive triumph underscores the candidate’s weakness and the lack of a message that resonates with primary voters.” And there were accusations that Hillary was using paid staffers as precinct chairmen.
  • It’s now a three man race on the Republican side, and a dog fight on the Democratic side.

    Rick Perry Endorses Ted Cruz

    Monday, January 25th, 2016

    Ted Cruz has picked up the endorsement of former Texas governor Rick Perry for President, and will help campaign as a surrogate for Cruz in Iowa. It’s not a huge endorsement, given how Perry’s own presidential campaign flamed out, but it’s a nice pickup for Cruz, and solidifies his odds for winning Texas on March 1. Also, it’s not as automatic a choice as some out-of-state commentators may believe, given that Perry endorsed (however tepidly) Cruz’s opponent David Dewhurst in his 2012 senate race. It may also indicate conservatives are coalescing around Cruz as the alternative to Donald Trump.

    In any case, it’s a worth a hell of a lot more than Lindsey Graham’s endorsement of Jeb Bush…

    LinkSwarm for October 23, 2015

    Friday, October 23rd, 2015

    Another Friday, another LinkSwarm, heavy on Benghazi and Presidential race news:

  • Seven revelations from the Benghazi hearing.
  • You know who wasn’t happy about Hillary Clinton’s latest Benghazi testimony? The families of the Benghazi victims. Funny how that “absolute moral authority” the MSM bestowed on Cindy Sheehan doesn’t apply to families of the slain when they criticize Democrats…
  • China vs. the United States: a tale of two economies.
  • Longshot GOP Presidential contenders are running out of money. “Any burn rate over 100 percent is considered dangerous by campaign finance experts. Pataki’s was 226 percent, Graham 188, Paul 181, Jindal 144, Huckabee 110 and Santorum 101.”
  • Speaking of Presidential fundraising, here’s why Rick Perry had to drop out: “Perry spent more than a million dollars during the last reporting period – July through September – while raising only $252,000 in contributions. And the former Texas governor, who exited the race in mid-September, had only $45,000 cash on hand at the end.”
  • “When you vote in your first Presidential election, please remember which political party decided to make your lunchtimes a living Hell for a decade. Spoiler warning: it wasn’t the Republicans.”
  • Some people Hillary Clinton listed as endorsing Hillary Clinton have not, in fact, actually endorsed Hillary Clinton.
  • Ohio Senate race update: “Incumbent Rob Portman (R) raised almost eight million this year, with eleven million in the bank, while former governor Ted Strickland (D) raised about two and a half, with about a million and a half in the bank.”
  • Turkish opposition leader accuses Erdogan’s Islamist government of protecting the Islamic State.
  • Criticize Islam in your blog in Bangladesh? That’s an arresting.
  • Heh:

  • Alvin bond update: “Firm in cracked stadium debacle funds pro-bond propaganda.”
  • Texas Democratic trial lawyer Mikal Watts indicited over fraud related to the BP oil spill case.
  • Arthur Miller — Communist. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Bernie Sanders is “paying” bloggers.
  • Emus on the loose in Round Rock.