I’m beginning to think I might become – to borrow a Marine Corps recruitment phrase – “one of the few, the proud” to have flown on Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner.

If the plane keeps having many more problems, air carriers just might ground the bird for keeps.

Another Dreamliner flight was delayed in Tokyo because of problems with the power that runs the air conditioning on the aircraft.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/27/travel/boeing-787-dreamliner-air-con-fault/index.html?hpt=hp_bn10

It was the fourth incident in 10 days. Well, I’m telling you that the plane has experienced even more trouble than that.

On June 7, I was set to board a United Airlines Dreamliner at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport. All the passengers were seated, the pilot came on to announce our impending departure – only to come back on later and tell us we had to get off the plane because of “mechanical issues.”

In other words, the plane wouldn’t start.

I gathered my gear, got off the bird and trudged down the concourse to another gate where – to my surprise – another Dreamliner awaited. We boarded the plane and the pilot informed us over the intercom that the aircraft was fit to travel and was “ready to go. No problems.”

We took off and the flight to Denver was smooth and glass.

I’ll say this about the Dreamliner: It’s a very nice aircraft on which to sit for a couple of hours, even in Economy Class. It’s spacious, with plenty of leg room. It’s quiet. The in-flight amenities – such as the video selections – are appealing.

I just worry that the shiny new aircraft is going to keep breaking down.

To borrow another phrase from a former U.S. president: I feel the latest passengers’ pain.

Radio talk show host/gasbag Laura Ingraham has joined the Bash Wendy Davis Brigade on the right wing of the Republican Party.

Ingraham tweeted the following message: “Which kids that you see on the playground shouldn’t be there?”

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/06/27/laura-ingraham-launches-vicious-attacks-against/194650

Here is Example A of just one more perversion of the debate between those who favor retaining a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion and those who want to make it illegal.

You see, every woman who gave birth to those hypothetical children “on the playground” made a choice. They chose to give birth to those children. Indeed, it’s a choice most women who become pregnant do make. Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, who led the filibuster against Senate Bill 5 in the Texas Legislature this week, made a similar choice when she was pregnant at the age of 19 with her first child. For that she deserves high praise, not the kind of condemnation she is receiving now from those who want to write laws that prohibit women from making the most heart-wrenching choice they’ll ever make.

Those on the pro-choice side of the abortion debate should not be construed as being “pro-abortion.” They merely want government to keep its mitts off a woman’s body; they want to enable women across America to make these choices themselves after consulting with their clergy, their families, their own souls.

Whether they choose to end a pregnancy or give birth to a child should be a woman’s choice … pure and simple.

That’s where Wendy Davis appears to stand. That’s where government at all levels – as well as Laura Ingraham and others on her end of the political spectrum – need to butt out.

Ross Ramsey’s analysis of Lt. David Dewhurst’s worst nightmare coming true this week reminded me a late, great Texas politician who once held that office.

Bob Bullock once ruled the Texas Senate like a tyrant. I’m trying to imagine the late Democratic lieutenant governor getting steamrolled in the manner that Dewhurst got trampled during the final hours of the fractious Senate debate over a restrictive abortion bill.

Ramsey’s piece in the Texas Tribune is linked here. It’s worth taking the time to read it.

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/06/26/dewhurst-critical-failure-large-audience/

A couple of key aspects about the way Bullock ran the Senate come immediately to mind.

I don’t believe he would have changed the Senate’s long-standing two-thirds rule merely because it was meeting in a special session. Here’s how it goes: The Senate needs 21 votes – out of 31 total senators serving in the body – in favor of any bill to bring it to a full floor vote. Senate Bill 5, the anti-abortion bill in question, didn’t have that many votes. The two-thirds rule is intended to ensure bipartisan support, meaning in this case at least two Democrats would have to cross over to support SB 5.

Dewhurst, a Republican, decided prior to the start of special session to waive the two-thirds rule. One of the results of that decision was the chaos we saw ensue on the Senate floor late Tuesday.

Bullock would have run the place with an iron fist. No, make that two iron fists.

The second factor I think of is Bullock’s deal-making skills. Although he was known have hard-headed – and some would say hard-hearted as well – the man knew how to grease the system with pols from the other side of the aisle. His legendary relationship with Republican Gov. George W. Bush has become the stuff of legend around Austin. Bullock knew how to schmooze the other side when it needed schmoozing.

In Dewhurst, I see a supreme policy wonk who knows the nitty-gritty of just about every bill under consideration in the Senate. His deal-making skills? Well, they seem to need lots of need work.

Rick Perry followed Bullock into the lieutenant governor’s office, but didn’t stay there long enough – just through one legislative session, in 1999 – to make his mark. He moved into the governor’s office in December 2000 after Bush’s election as president. Perry certainly has made his mark as the state’s longest-serving governor.

He’s going to seek to deepen his imprint on the office next week as he calls his second special session while trying to ram this punitive abortion bill into law. Will the lieutenant governor step up this time? I’m betting he won’t.

Wherever he is, Bob Bullock is laughing.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry cannot get enough rowdiness in the Legislature, which must be his rationale for calling a second special session as the state is still reeling from the near-brawl in the Texas Senate this week.

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/06/26/rick-perry-calls-second-special-session/

The second special session gets under way July 1, the day Perry is supposed to reveal his future political plans.

“Texans value life and want to protect women and the unborn. Texans want a transportation system that keeps them moving. Texans want a court system that is fair and just. We will not allow the breakdown of decorum and decency to prevent us from doing what the people of this state hired us to do,” Perry said in calling legislators back to work.

There you have it. Abortion, transportation and the courts will be on the agenda.

I have to differ with one of the governor’s points. “Texans value life and want to protect women and the unborn,” Perry said. I’ll agree with him as far as that statement goes. I do not believe Texans want legislators to enact punitive legislation that makes abortion a criminal act. Texans have joined the rest of America in supporting a woman’s right to reproductive independence. Yet, Perry is listening to the conservative base within his party by demanding the Legislature mandate a law that tells a woman she must carry a pregnancy to full term.

The filibuster – led by state Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth – that brought the previous special session to a raucous end on Tuesday is going to commence once the defeated abortion bill hits the Senate floor. Also, look for the crowds to return to the Senate gallery – once they catch their breath from all the yelling they did to disrupt the proceedings the other day.

Here’s hoping they return in full-throated form to stop this punitive bill.

Wendy Davis has become the new poster child for women’s reproductive rights.

I trust the Fort Worth Democratic state senator will wear the label proudly – as she should.

Davis talked a punitive abortion bill to death overnight, filibustering Texas Senate Bill 5 past the time it could become law.

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/06/26/led-davis-democrats-defeat-abortion-legislation/

The special session of the Texas Legislature had been called to repair the state’s congressional and redistricting issue, but was expanded to include abortion restrictions when Gov. Rick Perry added that poison pill to the session’s call.

SB 5 would have made any abortion past the 20th week of pregnancy illegal. Many observers have labeled the bill the toughest in the nation. It would have required doctors who perform abortions to have hospital admitting privileges within 30 miles of an abortion clinic and would have required doctors to administer abortion-inducing drugs.

What makes Davis’s victory so interesting is that she filibustered the bill the old-fashioned way. She stood on the Senate floor and talked for 13 hours. Some Senate Republicans tried to rule her out of order because – and this is rich – she was reading a prepared document instead of speaking extemporaneously. This was no procedural filibuster. Davis talked and talked and talked.

The filibuster drew national attention, with the proceedings being broadcast live into homes all across the land.

My applause at the end – for now – of Senate Bill 5 is not an endorsement of abortion. It is an endorsement instead of preserving a woman’s right to make this difficult decision rather than criminalizing it.

Sen. Davis and her Texas Democratic colleagues have performed a valuable public service.

And if you thought the session in the Texas Senate chamber was raucous, just wait to see what happens if Rick Perry calls yet another special session to try to ram this legislation into law.

I keep resisting the urge to call Edward Snowden a traitor to his country, or otherwise convicting him before he’s even been tried in a courtroom.

Still, I cannot stop believing that the former National Security Agency employee has committed some serious wrongdoing by leaking national security secrets. He’s on the lam, apparently hiding in a transit room at Moscow’s airport. The Russians say they won’t extradite him to the United States.

http://thehill.com/blogs/global-affairs/un-treaties/307665-white-house-russia-has-clear-legal-basis-to-expel-snowden

This young man is in serious trouble and is seeking asylum, reportedly, in Ecuador, a country run by a government with a known hatred toward the media – to whom Snowden leaked the secrets.

This story is giving me a slight case of heartburn, but it’s relenting somewhat as I’m finally believing that Snowden, at minimum, violated an oath he took when he went to work for NSA. The oath no doubt called for a vow of confidentiality, that he would protect the secrets to which he had access.

Has this fellow committed an act of treason? A court ought to determine whether he’s guilty of the espionage for which the government has charged him.

Edward Snowden is no hero, despite what some on the left suggest. He’s accused of committing several serious crimes against the nation. He needs to be brought home to stand trial, where he can mount whatever defense he has in a public courtroom.

My friend and columnist Rick Horowitz noted this morning on Facebook that he’s awaiting “conservative outrage over activist judges” overturning a federal law that had the full approval of Congress.

The outrage, were it to come, would be in response to the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision overturning a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/25/politics/scotus-voting-rights/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

The anger, of course, won’t come from the right side of the political aisle. Conservative judicial activism doesn’t count in conservative political circles. Activist judges in that context are, um, “following the law.”

The court said in its narrow ruling that Congress now must revise the law to ensure that it measures up to constitutional scrutiny.

The court struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, which sets a government formula for determining which states and counties are subject to continued federal oversight. The country has changed and the formula is now unworkable, said Chief Justice John Roberts in his majority opinion.

Horowitz’s point, though, is an interesting one. Congress enacted the law 48 years ago after vigorous national debate. There were no hidden agendas or secret provisions. It said the law is firm and should be obeyed. Now, nearly five decades later, a new court has said the law no longer applies. The court, in effect, has written a new law from the bench.

Isn’t that the kind of activism that gets righties all riled up? Don’t they bristle when liberal judges interpret the law in such broad terms?

Where, indeed, is the outrage now?

Heard an interesting anecdote this morning. It goes something like this:

According to an out-of-town Texas journalist who was visiting Amarillo, the fastest-growing demographic group in the Texas Panhandle happens to be Latinos, the very folks who tend to vote Democratic. This journalist (who shall remain unidentified because he doesn’t know I’m writing about our conversation) said he heard it from a former senior member of the Texas House of Representatives.

What does this mean? It means that over time this staunchly Republican region is slated for some major changes. They won’t occur during the next election cycle, or even one or two after that. It’ll take some time because that particular demographic doesn’t vote in huge numbers the way, say, Anglo voters do.

The change that’s occurring here, as told to me, mirrors what’s happening in many other areas of the state. It’s also the kind of change that excited up-and-coming Democrats who are beginning to see a glimmer of hope that they make Texas a competitive two-party state.

I’m not yet holding my breath for that to occur. The next election cycle, in 2014, is likely to produce another Republican sweep of statewide offices. I’ll be watching, though, for the percentages rolled up by the winning GOP candidates and will look for any narrowing of the gap.

If Democrats can become competitive in races they used to surrender to Republicans, then I could become a believer in the impending demographic change in Texas.

When that change occurs, a lot of die-hard Panhandle Republicans are certain to suffer from some serious apoplexy.

I’m kind of a stick in the mud on this one.

Amarillo’s city ordinances prohibit the use of fireworks within the city limits. Good deal. Amarillo Police Cpl. Jerry Neufeld advises those who wish to pop them off during the Fourth of July celebration to take their fireworks into the unincorporated areas.

My reaction? The counties should ban them too, at least during this season of extreme drought.

http://www.connectamarillo.com/news/story.aspx?id=913593#.UcjjL0oo6t8

The counties already have imposed – and then lifted – burn bans. First they’re on, then they’re off, depending on the amount of moisture we get from the sky. Personally, I’d rather see Randall and Potter counties impose uniform burn bans, keep them in place until we get substantial rainfall; and by substantial, I’m talking several inches, maybe 4 or 5 inches at a single dousing.

The same principle can apply to fireworks bans.

The practice of lighting off Roman candles or whatever rocket-launched fireworks is fraught with danger even without the threat of fire should something go terribly wrong. I won’t go so far as to call for their permanent ban. However, in this time of drought – the recent rain and hail notwithstanding – the exploding of fireworks is at the very least a foolish act.

The rain will come again … eventually. Until it does, keep the fireworks bottled up.

I’m beginning to understand the term “irony” a bit more as I watch Edward Snowden’s attempt to escape the long of U.S. law.

Snowden is being charged with espionage in relation to his release of classified information from National Security Agency files. Snowden once worked for the NSA. Thus, he broke an oath he took to protect national security secrets, correct?

He claims to have done it in the interest of full disclosure, free speech and all that kind of thing.

But get this. Where has this man gone to escape the feds’ clutches?

Hong Kong, which is part of the People’s Republic of China; Moscow, the capital of the one-time Evil Empire, which has turned into a country, Russia, that doesn’t provide its citizens nearly the freedom that we enjoy here; he’s asking for asylum in Ecuador, another country hardly known for its freedom; and he’s now reportedly seeking entry into Cuba, one of two Marxist states in the Western Hemisphere.

What do all these places have in common? One thing that comes to mind is that if Snowden were a citizen of any of these countries, he would be arrested, locked up, tried, convicted and possibly executed for his crimes.

Ironic, don’t you think?