Jiro posted:

Also in today's Texas House does something potentially good

https://www.texastribune.org/2017/04/06/amid-clash-over-procedure-texas-house-moves-defund-enterprise-fund/


The fact that this amendment was put and passed through by someone from my home area of the Rio Grande Valley and somewhere as small and isolated as Mission/Palmview makes me so happy. Even more so that it has Stickland throwing a poo poo fit.

RGV represent! Also worth noting that while Stickland was going on a tirade members started filing out to go watch The Masters.

Badger of Basra posted:

Mayor of Houston is a danged weeaboo.

https://twitter.com/sylvesterturner/status/850409538306134021

Badger of Basra posted:

So it turns out the amendment to cut all road funding in Stickland's district was attached to his feral hog amendment, meaning it didn't actually happen (because Stickland's amendment didn't pass). Not as funny imo.

https://twitter.com/TexasTribune/status/850339892458639362

Keeshhound posted:

"It's funny until it happens to you"

Well, maybe you shouldn't try to cut vital environmental programs, then it won't happen to you.

Badger of Basra posted:

https://twitter.com/PatrickSvitek/status/850495122483666944

https://twitter.com/PatrickSvitek/status/850518056434532352

Ah I'm afraid Beto is now officially a paid shill establishment sellout and when he loses it will def be because he didn't hug Bernie close enough.

e:

someone needs to delete this person's twitter account

https://twitter.com/unapobrecita/status/850525624326344708

blue squares posted:

bernie has a beto piss tape

duz posted:

I've been getting fun emails from Castro's campaign. About how we should donate before the filling deadline to help convince him to run against Cruz.

quote:

HOUSTON — A federal judge ruled on Monday that the voter identification law the Texas Legislature passed in 2011 was enacted with the intent to discriminate against black and Hispanic voters, raising the possibility that the state’s election procedures could be put back under federal oversight.

In a long-running case over the legality of one of the toughest voter ID laws in the country, the judge found that the law violated the federal Voting Rights Act.

The judge, Nelva Gonzales Ramos of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, had made a similar ruling in 2014, but after Texas appealed her decision, a federal appellate court instructed her to review the issue once more.

The appeals court — the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans — found that Judge Ramos had relied too heavily on Texas’ history of discriminatory voting measures and other evidence it labeled “infirm” and asked her to reweigh the question of discriminatory intent.

In her ruling on Monday, Judge Ramos wrote that the evidence cited by the Fifth Circuit “did not tip the scales” in favor of the state.

Her ruling sets the stage for a potential penalty for Texas that could have a long-lasting impact. Lawyers involved in the case said the ruling effectively strikes down the law, although the judge did not issue a separate order doing so. Texas officials are likely to appeal the decision.

“We’re disappointed and will seek review of this ruling at the appropriate time,” said Marc Rylander, a spokesman for the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton.

Some expected the ruling.

“This is an exciting ruling, but it is no surprise,” said Myrna Perez, a deputy director of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School, which represented two of the groups that sued the state, the Texas N.A.A.C.P. and the Mexican-American Legislative Caucus.

“Texas passed the most restrictive photo ID law in the country — a law the legislators knew would hurt minority voting rights, without any evidence justifying it, and they broke all sorts of legislative rules and norms to do it,” Ms. Perez said.

Judge Ramos acknowledged the difficulty of pinning down the Legislature’s motives. She wrote of considering “all available direct and circumstantial evidence of intent” rather than trying to “discern the motivations of particular legislators.” The judge highlighted attempts by Democrats to blunt the racial impact of the law, known as Senate Bill 14, through amendments that were ultimately rejected, including allowing additional types of photo identification. “Many categories of acceptable photo IDs permitted by other states were omitted from the Texas bill,” she wrote.

Kristen Clarke, the president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which represented some of the plaintiffs, said the ruling on Monday marked the fifth time that a court found that the law had a discriminatory purpose or effect.

Judge Ramos’s decision, she said, “should sound the death knell for burdensome voter ID requirements in Texas and across the country.”

For decades, Texas and several other mostly Southern states with a history of discrimination had been required to seek federal approval before making changes to their voting laws. But the states were freed from that requirement in 2013, after a Supreme Court decision that invalidated key provisions of the Voting Rights Act.

The finding of intentional discrimination could once again put Texas under federal supervision. It would be the first state brought back into so-called preclearance since the Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling. Judge Ramos did not address whether she would order Texas to undergo federal oversight, but will examine the issue during the next stage of the case.

The law was passed by the Legislature and signed by then-Gov. Rick Perry in 2011, but took effect in 2013. It required voters to show a driver’s license, passport or other government-issued photo ID before casting a ballot. It was previously found by the appellate court to have a discriminatory effect on black and Hispanic voters, many of whom lacked government-issued photo identification, and as a result was softened for the November 2016 election.

Numerous Democratic lawmakers, voters, civil rights organizations and black and Hispanic groups sued, arguing that Republican legislators steamrollered the bill through the State House and Senate. They said legislators departed from procedural norms in passing the law, including classifying it as emergency legislation, cutting debate short and bypassing the ordinary committee process in both chambers.

The plaintiffs told Judge Ramos in court documents and at various hearings that the law’s true purpose was to help Republicans maintain their hold on power amid the fast-paced growth of Democratic-leaning black and Hispanic voters.

Republican officials, including Gov. Greg Abbott, who defended the law in court when he served as the state’s attorney general, have long disputed any suggestion that lawmakers intentionally discriminated.

They said that the law was aimed at preventing voter fraud and that the departures from the normal legislative process were made to prevent Democratic lawmakers from manipulating procedural rules to thwart passage. They maintained that opponents had turned up no evidence that any legislator had intended to discriminate against blacks and Hispanics.

Under the Obama administration, the Justice Department had joined the legal fight against Texas. But in a reversal that angered civil rights lawyers and Texas Democrats, the Trump administration’s Justice Department withdrew from the part of the case that Judge Ramos decided on Monday: the agency’s claim that Texas had enacted the law with discriminatory intent.

Samuel Bagenstos, a law professor at the University of Michigan and a principal deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights in President Barack Obama’s Justice Department, noted the timing of the ruling.

“I think it’s a very significant ruling in part because the Department of Justice under the Trump administration decided to abandon arguing for a discriminatory-intent holding,” Professor Bagenstos said. “This sort of makes the Department of Justice look bad for abandoning its previous position.”

The ruling marked the third time this year that a federal court found, in separate cases, that Texas or one of its municipalities intentionally discriminated against minority voters.

A judge ruled that officials in Pasadena, Tex., intentionally discriminated against Latino voters in redrawing the city electoral map. And a panel of judges in San Antonio ruled that the Legislature drew congressional districts in an intentionally discriminatory manner. The Republican lawmakers who passed the voter ID bill in 2011 also drew the discriminatory Congressional-district maps.

“The State of Texas must turn away from this pattern of discriminatory behavior,” said Janai Nelson, a lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which represented an African-American voter affected by the voter ID law.

Vertical Lime posted:

https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/854842766312038400

PostNouveau posted:

PostNouveau posted:

PostNouveau posted:

Badger of Basra posted:

What's this guy so surprised about?

BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

The race for Denton City Council District 4 is getting heated y'all. A shadowy group calling itself "Denton Deserves Better" supporting candidate John Ryan, opposing candidate Amanda Servis, just dropped the oppo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHhbnfVucrE

Shifty Pony posted:

Question regarding Lege procedure:

Both the House and Senate have to author a bill and run it through the full committee process, correct? So if a Senate bill has passed that chamber but the House version was left pending in committee with (as yet) not even a committee report that's probably an indication that it isn't exactly highly likely to be a priority or get passed?

Badger of Basra posted:

https://twitter.com/FrankLuntz/status/857633086976270336

Mmhmm yes.

Badger of Basra posted:

https://twitter.com/FrankLuntz/status/857633086976270336

Mmhmm yes.

quote:

"I feel like Trump is spending a lot of time on defense and playing damage control and there aren't enough people giving him the benefit of the doubt," he said. "He's going to be president until 2020, so it's going to take some people sitting down and saying, 'OK, we need to work with this man to advance America's best interests because this is what we have right now.'"

JUST MAKING CHILI posted:

Poor kids living in a bubble. Time to make a donation to their young democrats club, if one exists.

DangerZoneDelux posted:

This school did a affirmative action bake sale back in 2000 when​ I went to school there. Not really surprising to read this article. If I was smarter I would have chosen a school not filled with these types of dumbasses and gone to school in a real city like UT, hell UH would have been better

DangerZoneDelux posted:

This school did a affirmative action bake sale back in 2000 when​ I went to school there. Not really surprising to read this article. If I was smarter I would have chosen a school not filled with these types of dumbasses and gone to school in a real city like UT, hell UH would have been better

DangerZoneDelux posted:

Young conservatives

Badger of Basra posted:

https://twitter.com/FrankLuntz/status/857633086976270336

Mmhmm yes.

DangerZoneDelux posted:

This school did a affirmative action bake sale back in 2000 when​ I went to school there. Not really surprising to read this article. If I was smarter I would have chosen a school not filled with these types of dumbasses and gone to school in a real city like UT, hell UH would have been better

Dameius posted:

Those responses are so dumb and ill formed I'd have thought they came from high school students who haven't even taken their government class yet.