Tag Archives: Dan Patrick

national news

Trying to comprehend the incomprehensible

AAgWqqi

At this moment the nation’s heart is broken. Its head is spinning.

Fifty people are dead after a massacre early this morning at an Orlando, Fla., nightclub. One of the dead is the shooter, an American whose parents were Afghan immigrants.

Omar Mateen opened fire with an AR-15 assault rifle. His father said his son was apparently enraged when he saw two men kissing, so he walked into the gay nightclub and killed all those innocent victims.

Did he commit an anti-gay hate crime?

Not so fast.

Now we’re getting word of a pledge of allegiance to the Islamic State.

Was this an act of an Islamic terrorist?

Mateen’s father said “religion had nothing to do” with what his son did.

Then we have the Texas lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, sending out a tweet — which he has since deleted — that quoted a Biblical passage from Galatians that said men will “reap what they sow.” Hmmm. Of all the passages he could have picked, he perhaps could have looked at Mark’s Gospel, which instructs us to love our brothers.

This was an act of terror, no matter how you choose to define it.

The nation is sickened by what has happened.

Let us pray now for the families of those who died and let us pray for the people charged with answering the key question.

Why?

legal news, national news, State news

Transgender issue taking strange turn

Transgender-Bathroom-600x321

I am trying to understand this issue, but it’s escaping me … so far.

The Obama administration is going to send out a “directive” to public school systems throughout the country advising them against discriminating against “transgender” students.

It won’t have the “force of law,” according to federal officials. It will warn districts that they face being denied federal funds if they fail to comply with the directive.

Check this out:

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/obama-administration-to-issue-decree-on-transgender-access-to-school-restrooms/ar-BBsZoch?li=BBnb7Kz

What is giving me so much grief?

It’s the “transgender” issue all by itself.

People who identify  with the opposite sex should be granted access to facilities set aside for the opposite sex, say proponents of transgender rights.

So, if I hear them correctly, a man with all the requisite male body parts can use a woman’s public restroom. Same for a woman who wants to use the men’s restroom.

Simply identifying with the other gender doesn’t require them to dress appropriately, as I understand it. Am I wrong about that?

How do we know who’s truly transgender, therefore, and who, um, isn’t?

Here in Texas, the lieutenant governor weighed in on this matter by ordering the Fort Worth Independent School District superintendent, Kent Scribner, to resign because of guidelines he wrote governing the issue — in that school district.

I’ve stated already that Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick overstepped his bounds by meddling in a local issue. Scribner’s employment status should be determined exclusively by the school board that appointed him.

The federal “directive” seems to line up the same way. Have the federal courts ruled on the constitutionality of this matter? If so, then it got past me.

I’m trying to understand which rights are involved here, particularly as it pertains to individuals who haven’t yet been surgically altered to comply with their stated gender identity.

I have no issue, moreover, with those who’ve had the “gender reassignment” surgery and have been re-created into the appropriate gender. The medical procedure, by my way of thinking, removes the transgender confusion.

I’ve stated many times over many years that I don’t understand a lot of things.

This, most assuredly, is one of them.

My head hurts.

State news

Lt. Gov. Patrick renews inappropriate intervention

3 Comments

Patrick-Scribner

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick hasn’t yet given up his interventionist strategy.

He’s continuing to insist that a local Texas school district superintendent step down because he’s doing something with which the lieutenant governor disagrees.

Patrick is off base.

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/05/10/superintendent-wont-resign-over-transgender-bathro/

The issue is Fort Worth school superintendent Kent Scribner’s decision to allow transgender boys to use girls’ restrooms.

I am going to continue to insist that Patrick’s intervention flouts the traditional Republican philosophy that calls for greater local control  and fewer mandates handed down by the state.

Scribner today refused to quit, as Patrick has demanded. There’s no word yet from the elected school board that selected Scribner to run the school system on what it intends to do.

I’ll take a leap here and presume that Scribner is acting with the blessing of those who hired him.

Does that constitute a reason for the man who presides over the Texas Senate to weigh in on how a local school district should handle an internal administrative matter?

Not by a long shot.

Patrick went to Fort Worth today to say that Scribner broke state law by enacting the transgender policy. OK, so what if he did?

The school board should act independently of whatever the second-ranking state official thinks.

This issue is none of Lt. Gov. Patrick’s business.

 

political news, State news

Local control? Who needs it in Fort Worth?

dan patrick

What am I missing here?

Don’t statewide elected officials in Texas — all of whom are Republicans — tell us they prefer to let locals control their affairs? Get a load of this tidbit.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick wants Fort Worth Independent School District Superintendent Kent Scribner to resign. He’s demanding it, by golly.

Why? Scribner has drafted guidelines regarding transgender students in the district.

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/05/09/patrick-wants-fort-worth-superintendent-resign/

According to Patrick, Scribner has gone off the rails with this transgender matter.

I believe I’ll set aside the correctness or wrongness of Scribner’s view on dealing with transgender students. My issue here is whether the state’s lieutenant governor should pressure a local school superintendent chosen by a duly elected local school board to quit his job.

Lt. Gov. Patrick should butt out. How a major Texas school district decides to run its affairs is solely the province of its elected trustees.

The Texas Tribune reports: “‘After less than a year as superintendent, Dr. Scribner has lost his focus and thereby his ability to lead the Fort Worth ISD,’ Patrick said in a statement. ‘He has placed his own personal political agenda ahead of the more than 86,000 students attending 146 schools in the district by unilaterally adopting ‘Transgender Student Guidelines.'”

Interesting, don’t you think?

Patrick said the superintendent has “placed his own personal political agenda ahead” of the needs of students. Isn’t that what Patrick is doing now, by demanding that a local school superintendent step down?

This issue should be decided by the constituents in Fort Worth who elect the school board, which in turn appoints the district’s chief executive officer.

Lt. Gov. Patrick’s primary job is to preside over the Texas Senate and to guide legislation through the Legislature’s upper chamber. It should not include telling local officials how to conduct their own business.

 

legal news, medical news

Grand jury turns tables on Planned Parenthood foes

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Grand juries cannot always be depended on to do precisely what some folks want them to do.

Take the case of a Harris County panel that had been impaneled to investigate Planned Parenthood’s activities. The district attorney launched the investigation at the urging of state officials — starting with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick — into whether Planned Parenthood “sold fetal body parts” in violation of state law.

Today, the grand jury cleared Planned Parenthood of wrongdoing — and instead indicted two anti-abortion activists on charges of “tampering with government records.”

It was a serious surprise.

Here is part of how the Texas Tribune reported the story today:

“The indictments — part of the county prosecutor’s investigation into allegations that Planned Parenthood was illegally selling fetal tissue — include charges against anti-abortion activists David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt for tampering with a governmental record, a second-degree felony that carries a punishment of up to 20 years in prison. The grand jury handed down a second charge for Daleiden for ‘Prohibition of the Purchase and Sale of Human Organs,’ according to the Harris County District Attorney’s office. That charge is a class A misdemeanor that carries a punishment of up to a year in jail.

“The grand jury cleared Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast in Houston of breaking any laws.”

Planned Parenthood has become a whipping child for foes in Congress — and some Republican presidential candidates — over a heavily edited video that purported showing staffers talking about selling organs from babies.

Planned Parenthood, with a mission that goes far beyond assisting women who want to terminate their pregnancies, sees this no-bill from the grand jury as a significant victory in this public-relations campaign being waged against it by political adversaries.

Will this end calls to defund the organization? Probably not. It’s possible that we’ll hear complaints from those who consider this some kind of “political decision.”

Grand jurors lock themselves behind closed doors, listen to presentations by prosecutors and other witnesses. They are charged with weighing the evidence dispassionately and then deliver a decision based solely on what they hear in that room.

Unless I hear otherwise — and grand jurors are sworn to secrecy about what they say and hear during the presentation of evidence — I’ll presume the grand jury did its job properly.

political news, State news

Texas government is a monstrous entity

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I posted a blog recently that was critical of an appointment to the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick selected a former Florida congressman, fellow Republican Allen West, to the panel. Its job is critical to assuring that Texans are being well-served by their state government agencies.

I feel a need to flesh out just a bit why I object to West’s appointment.

I’ll get right to the point: Allen West likely knows next to nothing about how our state’s government functions and how its myriad agencies work.

The Texas Sunset Commission recommends which agencies should continue and which should bit the dust. It conducts serious business. It reviews agencies’ efficiency and whether they’re giving Texans the biggest and best bang for the big bucks Texans spend on their state government.

West’s credentials? His expertise?

Well, he’s a fiery conservative, just like the man who picked him for the post. Dan Patrick earned his own political stripes first as a radio talk show host and then as a state senator from Houston. West’s record contains a couple of significant chapters: He was an Army officer who lost his battalion command during the Iraq War in 2003 after he admitted to assaulting an Iraqi detainee; he then was elected to Congress in 2010, but lost his re-election bid two years later.

Then the former congressman moved to Texas a year ago to begin a new job.

This job shouldn’t go to someone who’s a political celebrity. It ought to go to individuals who have a sufficient knowledge of how to make Texas massive government machinery work well for the folks who pay the bills.

I believe it is fair to ask Lt. Gov. Patrick: Weren’t there a sufficient number of individuals who (a) share your political philosophy and (b) understand the complexities of our state’s enormous bureaucracy?

 

political news, State news

Lt. Gov. Patrick makes celebrity pick for Sunset panel

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Allen West is a brand-new resident of Texas.

But by golly, he’s gotten himself a high-powered political job, thanks to an appointment by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.

West is a retired Army lieutenant colonel, a former one-term Florida congressman, and a contributor to the Fox News Channel. He’s now a member of the Texas Sunset Commission, the panel that decides which state agencies live and which ones should die.

West’s statement upon the appointment is quite fascinating, too. According to the Texas Tribune: “There is no mission more important than working towards a more efficient and effective state government,” West said in a statement. “As a graduate of the University of Tennessee and a former member of Congress, it is a blessing to follow in the footsteps of Davy Crockett who came to Texas to fight for liberty and freedom.”

He’s a Republican, as is Patrick.

I believe West is a smart man, although I happen to disagree with just every utterance that has come out of his mouth since I first heard of him. He’s a fiery conservative who has said some rather remarkable things over the years, such as, oh, that most Democrats in Congress are communist sympathizers.

West’s combat duty during the Iraq War suffered a serious blemish. He was serving as a battalion commander, but then was stripped of his command after he admitted that he assaulted an Iraqi detainee during an interrogation. That’s not how officers behave, you know?

So, does this brand new Texan — he moved to Dallas about a year ago — know enough about Texas government agencies to be a serious contributor to the Sunset Commission?

I’m just wondering … out loud.

He’s a smart guy and perhaps he’ll get up to speed. I hope he does.

It’s just that from my perch, it seems that Lt. Gov. Patrick has picked someone as much for his notoriety as for his expertise.

Good luck, Col. West.

 

political news, State news

Cruz and Patrick: clash of egos

cruz

Texas Monthly blogger Erica Grieder calls the political alliance between Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz a union of “strange bedfellows.”

Boy, howdy!

Two of Texas’s largest egos have linked up. And when I refer to them in that fashion, that’s really saying something, given that the state is brimming with monumentally huge political egos.

Grieder notes that Patrick and Cruz have had a “frosty relationship” for some time. Cruz is running for president and Patrick is backing him. Cruz also is huge pals with Gov. Greg Abbott, while Grieder and some other political observers think Patrick might have his eye on Abbott’s office when the 2018 election rolls around.

Patrick said he has no plans to run for governor next time. I’m always intrigued by politicians who make that assertion. “I have no plans” to run for another office, they say. You know what that tells me? It tells me they “have no plans at this moment.”

There’s no telling what the next moment will bring.

So, as Grieder notes in her blog, Patrick’s current alliance with the state’s junior U.S. senator puts Cruz in a potential bind if Patrick changes his tune, say, in the fall of 2017 and ramps up a campaign against Gov. Abbott.

I think I’ll stay tuned to this one.

 

State news

Texas Senate to lose a voice of reason

The Texas Senate already is low on reasonable voices.

It is going to lose another one at the end of next year when Republican Kevin Eltife of Tyler leaves that chamber.

Eltife has decided 23 years of public service — in his East Texas home town and then in the Senate — is enough for now. He told the Tyler Morning Telegraph he wants to spend more time enjoying the company of his family.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/burka-blog/eltife-not-seeking-re-election

I respect his desire to take a breather, or perhaps step away forever. However, his absence in the 2017 Legislature will be felt in a body governed aggressively by the TEA party wing of the GOP, and that includes Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who presides over the 31-member body.

Republicans hold a commanding majority. One of the other more reasonable members happens to be Sen. Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, who was elected to the Senate the same year as Eltife.

Seliger often speaks kindly of his colleague, as he should.

Eltife resisted efforts to cut taxes in the 2015 Legislature without dedicating some public money to improving infrastructure and some other obligations to the public.

I’ve been concerned that the Legislature might be hijacked by the TEA party. Both chambers need reasonable men and women to keep the zealots from running amok.

The Senate is about to lose one of its voices of reason.

Will there be more? I’m hoping the answer is a resounding “no!”

 

 

State news, Uncategorized

Take this vow from Patrick with much salt

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick says he’ll never run for governor against Greg Abbott.

Not only that, he says he’s not going to run for governor ever.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/06/01/patrick-im-not-running-against-abbott-2018/

Do I believe him? Is this the final word on the subject?

I remain a bit dubious about this disavowal of any further political ambition. As for the finality, do not bet anything, not a nickel, that we’ve heard the last of it.

As lieutenant governor, Patrick presides over the Texas Senate. As governor, Abbott is the state’s chief executive. Patrick’s conservative agenda is well-known. So is his rather meteoric temperament. Abbott’s conservative credentials also are beyond question. However, there are times when he doesn’t seem as fervently conservative as Patrick.

I hear what Patrick says today about his political ambition. However, these things can and do change.

There’s just something about Patrick that makes me wonder whether he’s telling us the whole truth.

The late U.S. Sen. Lloyd Bentsen once told me he wouldn’t accept a vice-presidential spot on the Democratic Party ticket in 1988. Then he did.

The late U.S. Sen. Robert Kennedy said he wouldn’t seek the presidency in 1968. Then he did.

I believe Dan Patrick is capable of changing his mind.