Edward Snowden now has reportedly sought asylum in the former Evil Empire, the one-time communist menace, the enemy of the Free World … and of free expression.

He wants to live in Russia. The irony is getting even richer with this guy.

http://thehill.com/blogs/defcon-hill/policy-and-strategy/308717-us-russia-look-for-solution-to-snowden-controversy

Russian President Vladmir Putin reportedly has agreed in principle to asylum for Snowden — the former National Security Agency contract worker who spilled the beans to the world about some sensitive information pertaining to our security. But Putin has put a caveat on it: Snowden can stay only if he ceases attempts to damage Russia’s new “partners” in the United States.

How do you like that?

I guess Snowden, who’s been on the lam since fleeing Hong Kong about two weeks ago, gave up on asylum in Ecuador, which also is no champion of free speech and expression.

Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, another Internet outfit that relishes releasing sensitive material, said the U.S. revocation of Snowden’s passport is a “disgrace.” No it’s not. It merely represents the U.S. effort to bring this guy into a courtroom, where he could be tried for espionage, which the federal government has charged.

It is amazing to me, though, that Snowden would seek asylum in a country that still punishes people far more severely than the United States does for doing what Snowden is alleged to have done.

This story has a long way to go before it plays itself out.

Stay tuned.

Nineteen heroes died Sunday in a wildfire near Prescott, Ariz.

These individuals are the real thing. Not the make-believe “heroes” we concoct out of sports figures or even out of film and TV characters.

They are the folks who put their lives on the line every time the bell goes off.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/arizona/free/20130701yarnell-hill-firefighters-die.html

The firefighters were members of an elite team called Hot Shots and were battling a wildfire in the town of Yarnell, near Prescott. Reports indicate that the fire swept out of control rapidly and overcame the firefighters in what’s been called the worst firefighting tragedy since 9/11.

It was during that horrific event nearly a dozen years ago when the world watched firefighters running into — not away from — the inferno at the Twin Towers. It was that event that cemented in our minds the meaning of the word “hero” and educated many of us never to hang that label on those who don’t deserve the honor.

The 19 firefighters who perished over the weekend in Arizona are heroes forever.

God bless them … and all of those public safety personnel who answer the call to duty on our behalf.

One of my Facebook “friends” recently posted a comment to a post I put out there calling for “term limits” in Texas.

Her response was to Gov. Rick Perry’s pending announcement on whether he’ll seek another term  in office. I should stipulate here that my Facebook “friend” is an ardent Democrat who lives in Donley County, Texas; Perry, of course, is an equally ardent Republican who’s served as governor since December 2000.

I’m guessing my Donley County pal’s insistence on term limits is based more than just a little bit on partisan preference.

I need to say it once more: We already have term limits for Texas governor, or for any other statewide office for that matter. We call ‘em “elections.”

I’ve never voted for Perry for any statewide office he’s ever sought and held. Not for agriculture commissioner, lieutenant governor or governor.

But since I live in a state where quite often my ballot gets counteracted by others who think differently from me, I accept the reality that majority-rule matters. And I’m totally on board with that.

The 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution established a two-term limit for president of the United States. The amendment was pushed through by a Republican-led Congress that had grown fearful of a potential “imperial presidency,” particularly one that featured a four-times-elected Democrat – Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR died only a few months after being elected in November 1944 to his fourth term and the amendment was ratified a couple of years after that.

Ronald Reagan once lamented publicly that he wished he could have run for a third term. So did Bill Clinton.

And even though I’ve never lived in a time when the 22nd Amendment wasn’t the law, I agree with them. The notion of term limits goes against the potential will of the public.

Do I think Rick Perry should be “governor for life”? Of course not. If I had my way, he’d never would have become governor in the first place. Democrat John Sharp – who lost narrowly to Perry in 1998 – would have ascended to the governor’s office after George W. Bush’s election as president in 2000 … if I had my way.

But we don’t need mandated term limits. If someone is doing a bad enough job in office, the voters will take care of him or her at the next election. Rick Perry has managed – and it’s a bit of a mystery to me – to keep enough Texans happy with the job he’s doing to enable him to keep doing it.

For those who have stars in their eyes over state Sen. Wendy Davis’s boffo filibuster performance in the Texas Legislature this past week, they need to read Ross Ramsey’s excellent analysis in the Texas Tribune.

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/06/29/davis-opportunity-knocks-inopportune-time/

The bottom line, according to Ramsey, is that if Davis has thoughts of running next year for Texas governor, she needs to forget about it. She will lose.

Davis, the Fort Worth Democrat who stole the show at the end of the Legislature’s special session last week, made the talk-show circuit this morning. Everyone wants to know if she once more can filibuster the anti-abortion bill that drew such attention this past week. The media love her. And why not? She’s, um, “telegenic” – which is code for good-looking – smart (Harvard Law grad), articulate and she has a compelling life story. She’s quite qualified to discuss abortion rights, as she once was a single mother who chose to give birth to her child while she was unwed.

However, Davis is facing some fierce partisan headwinds if she has any thoughts of challenging whoever the Texas Republican Party nominates next year for governor. My hunch continues to be that Rick Perry will not seek re-election next year and that Attorney General Greg Abbott is a shoo-in for the GOP nomination.

Abbott is loaded with cash and he has something, Ramsey reports, that Davis wouldn’t have: a political party infrastructure equipped to run a winning statewide race. Despite all the brave talk among Democrats and their infatuation with Davis, the Texas Democratic Party is in sorry shape. The party hasn’t won a statewide race since 1994 and, near as I can tell, is still in the dumps over its inability to make any headway in this Republican state.

I’m wishing the best for Davis. I think she’s got a bright future in Texas politics. The one thing she has going for her is that she’s still young enough – at 50 – to make a name for herself, even as a Texas Democrat. She has to start, though, with rebuilding her party.

The Texas Panhandle has become a sort of testing ground for water conservation.
I consider that to be exciting news.
http://www.texastribune.org/2013/06/30/texas-push-show-farmers-how-save-water/
We’re in the third year of a crippling drought. Dryland farmers – those who depend on rainfall exclusively to irrigate their crops – are having the most difficulty of all. They can’t grow crops, earn income and then reinvest that income into next year’s crop.
Those who are irrigating their land are having to dig more deeply into the earth for groundwater. The news out of the Panhandle, though, is that scientists are experimenting with irrigation methods that enable farmers to irrigate their crops with less groundwater.
Time will tell, of course, whether these methods work. But the North Plains Groundwater Conservation District, which is overseeing the project, believes the time is now to start finding methods to conserve water.
I tip my hat to the North Plains folks for thinking proactively. I also should note they aren’t alone. Others throughout the Panhandle region have talked openly about searching for ways to save our water.
Farmers have to rely a good bit on faith that the Almighty will deliver more moisture eventually to the region. The reality, though, is that sometimes it’s best to get ahead of the issue in the hope that the rain comes. That’s what North Plains district officials are seeking to do with these experimental irrigation methods.
Sucking the aquifer dry is not an option.

This next week could produce some of the most exciting political news in Texas that we’ve seen in, oh, maybe two decades, about the time a political neophyte named George W. Bush challenged Ann Richards for the governorship.

Gov. Rick Perry is going to announce whether he’s running for re-election to his zillionth term. I’m betting he’s not.

The next special session of the Legislature convenes Monday with three items on its agenda: transportation funding, juvenile justice reform and, oh yes, abortion. My hunch is that abortion is going to swallow up about 99.8 percent of everyone’s attention.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst has announced his intention to seek re-election, but he’s already gotten a challenger awaiting him in the 2014 Republican primary, fire-breathing state Sen. Dan Patrick of Houston. Dewhurst’s response to Patrick’s candidacy will be to tack even farther to the right, much as he tried to do unsuccessfully this past year in his losing bid to become a U.S. senator; he lost the GOP primary to another fire-breather, Ted Cruz.

Comptroller Susan Combs says she’s retiring from politics. Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson also is running for lieutenant governor, for now, as is Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples.

These all are Republicans, by the way.

With Perry bowing out of the governor’s race – and possibly running for president (God help us!) once again – that leaves the door wide open for Attorney General Greg Abbott, or so one might think, except for the sudden emergence of a Democrat as a possible gubernatorial contender. State Sen. Wendy Davis of Fort Worth, the heroine of the abortion-bill filibuster, says she’s considering a run for statewide office. Hmmm.

And against this backdrop, we have the special session that is shaping up to be a huge donnybrook in Austin. Department of Public Safety and state officials are examining ways to control the mob that is sure to descend on the Big Pink State Capitol Building. Dewhurst vows to fight back against those who obstruct passage of the anti-abortion bill, which would criminalize an abortion after the 20th week of a pregnancy and shut down virtually every abortion clinic in the state.

I haven’t heard whether Davis is planning another filibuster. She might have run out of gas after the 11-hour gabfest she waged this past week. What’s more, Dewhurst likely will waive once again the Senate’s long-standing two-thirds rule requiring at least 21 votes for any bill to be brought to the floor, which all but ensures a filibuster – by Davis or anyone else willing to step into the limelight.

Let the fireworks begin.

Sound “Taps” for the era of collegiality and bipartisanship in the Texas Senate.

They’re all but gone.

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/06/27/coming-out-swinging-dan-patrick-announces-lt-gov/

State Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, has announced his candidacy for lieutenant governor, vowing to bring “authentic conservative leadership” into the Legislature’s upper chamber. You know what means, yes? The two-thirds rule that used to govern the way the Senate did business is a goner, toast, road kill.

I know that because (1) Patrick opposes the rule and (2) the incumbent lieutenant governor, David Dewhurst, is going to fight like hell to keep his job and one of the things he’s going to do to keep it is get rid of the rule himself.

The lieutenant governor can do that, as the Senate’s presiding officer. Dewhurst did so, in fact, prior to the start of the special session that ended this past Wednesday morning. He’ll do so again when the Legislature convenes Monday for its second special session, which Gov. Rick Perry has called to shove through an anti-abortion bill that was filibustered to oblivion by state Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth.

Republicans occupy 19 of 31 Senate seats. The two-thirds rule, established long ago, is meant to seek bipartisan support on legislation. That means bill sponsors would need 21 votes to bring any bill to a full Senate vote, which also means that at least two Democratic senators would need to sign onto a bill if it had full Republican support.

Such a rule helps breed at least a semblance of collegiality.

Patrick hates the rule. He vows to get rid of it. He’s a GOP firebrand who’s now taken the unusual – for Texas – step of challenging an incumbent within his own party.

Dewhurst was bloodied badly in the first special session as Davis took control of the floor at the session’s 11th hour and the Senate gallery erupted in cheers, hoots and applause near the end of her filibuster to help carry Davis across the finish line. Patrick and his Republican colleagues were steamed at what happened and so Patrick has decided to take matters into his own hands by challenging Dewhurst in next year’s Republican primary.

For his part, Dewhurst is talking tough – against Senate Democrats, the media (who he alleges helped foment the uprising in the jam-packed Senate gallery) and anyone else who stands in the way of enacting Senate Bill 5, the aforementioned anti-abortion legislation. Check this out:

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/06/28/dewhurst-ill-pass-the-late-term-abortion-ban-and-take-action-against-those-who-incited-demonstration/

The days of comity and collegiality in the Texas Senate aren’t long for this world.

This will be an ugly and sad spectacle to watch.

It occurred to me the other day as I was pondering a key ruling from the Supreme Court that changed so many Americans’ lives that the critical vote came from someone who wasn’t supposed to there in the first place.

Justice Anthony Kennedy fulfilled his role as the “swing vote” on the court, tilting it 5 to 4 in overturning the Defense of Marriage Act, the 1996 law that declared that marriage must be between a man and a woman. The court ruled that the law violates the equal protection clause of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment by denying same-sex couples the same rights as heterosexual couples. The ruling produced dancing in the streets, literally, in cities across the nation.

Kennedy’s role was critical. But think of this: Were it not for the U.S. Senate’s rejection of one high court nominee and another’s withdrawal from being considered for the court, Kennedy wouldn’t have been there to change history.

Justice Lewis Powell retired from the court in 1987. President Reagan nominated former U.S. Solicitor General Robert Bork to replace him. Bork, brilliant constitutional scholar that he was, harbored some views about race relations, affirmative action and women’s reproductive rights that troubled many members of the Senate, which had the power to confirm or reject his appointment. Senators chose the latter and knocked Bork out of the race in a decisive 58-42 vote to reject his nomination.

Then the president turned to Douglas Ginsburg, who looked like a shoo-in – until it was disclosed that he smoked pot while in college. Oops, Mr. Justice-designate. Can’t have that spot on the record of a Supreme Court justice. A firestorm erupted over that chapter in Ginsburg’s life. He backed out of consideration.

Only then did the president turn to Kennedy, a fellow Californian, to take his seat on the high court bench. Kennedy sailed through Senate confirmation and joined the court in 1988.

It’s not that Kennedy is an accidental Supreme Court justice. He happened to be in the right place at the right time. Furthermore, he’s proving to be far from the ideologue that some thought he’d become after being nominated by the godfather of modern political conservatism.

Vive la independent judiciary!

Texas House Speaker Joe Straus has weighed in Gov. Rick Perry’s remarks about state Sen. Wendy Davis’s controversial – and in some circles highly acclaimed – filibuster of an anti-abortion bill.

Perry said Davis, D-Fort Worth, had failed to learned from “her own example” that children born into “unfortunate circumstances” can grow up and be successful, as she has done.

Straus told the Texas Tribune that Perry’s remarks damaged the Republican “brand.” He didn’t like their personal tone.

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/06/28/straus-says-perry-crossed-line-davis-comments/

Well, I happen to agree with the speaker. Then again, I’m not a member of the Texas Republican Party’s extreme right-wing fringe, which includes Gov. Perry as its star member – and which has been highly critical of Straus’s speakership, not to mention his leadership style.

You see, Straus is a Republican as well, but he has this nasty habit of working across the aisle with legislative Democrats. Does he favor the restrictive anti-abortion bill that Davis filibustered into (temporary) oblivion? Yes. That’s not good enough to suit some within his party, who want him to be even more hard-nosed than he’s been. It kind of reminds me of liberals within the Democratic Party who didn’t much like former Speaker Pete Laney’s willingness to work with those dreaded Republicans, chief among them being then-Gov. George W. Bush. Laney, the Panhandle cotton farmer, wasn’t dissuaded by his critics and I’m guessing Straus won’t be deterred by his critics, either.

Straus still will be in the doghouse with righties within his party, even though he’s right to be critical of Gov. Perry’s big mouth.

Immigration reform by all rights should be halfway home, with a resounding “yes” vote in the U.S. Senate and one more roll call awaiting it in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Except for this little hitch: House Speaker John Boehner says a majority of Republicans who control the House need to favor it before he’ll even allow it to come a vote.

What he’s saying in effect is that a minority of the entire House of Reps is going to determine whether this important piece of legislation even gets to the floor.

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/308373-boehner-facing-full-court-press-on-immigration

And he calls that the “democratic process”?

The immigration reform bill approved by a 68-32 vote this week isn’t perfect, but it’s a dandy compromise. It allows a path to citizenship for an estimated 11 million people who are here illegally also while providing for more security along our borders and the completion of a 700-mile long fence along our southern border. There’s something in the legislation for liberals and conservatives, which is the essence of effective government.

But the speaker won’t have any of that. The tea party wing of his party is putting the arm on him to stop this thing, or approve an entirely new House bill.

Boehner’s strategy appeases one wing of his sharply divided House caucus. For him to insist that a majority of Republican members, along with a majority of Democrats, to favor this legislation before even allowing a vote sticks it in the eye of those who worked hard to craft a bipartisan compromise in the other congressional chamber.

What’s more, that tactic denies a majority of the entire House a chance to have its voice heard, as the speaker is deferring to the body’s vocal minority.

Boehner spoke grandly of the letting the “will of the House” determine the fate of immigration reform. He’s doing no such thing. He’s knuckling under to the will of knuckleheads.