The Texas Progressive Alliance is ready for the Super Bowl this Sunday as it brings you this week’s blog highlights.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme thinks that the Houston Chronicle caught the essence of the GOP with this headline ‘Many attacks, but few suggestions‘.

WhosPlayin is tired of hearing obstructionist Republicans whining about not having a seat at the table for Health Care Insurance Reform, after they make it clear they’ll vote against any attempt to harm their Pharma and Insurance benefactors.

Off the Kuff notes that the Texas ParentPAC has endorsed Thomas Ratliff in his GOP primary fight against uber-SBOE wingnut Don McLeroy.

Bay Area Houston watched as the Texas Association of Builders got kicked in the nuts at a hearing in Austin over the abuse of mandatory binding arbitration.

It’s been such an amazing news week in the Barnett Shale that it’s hard to pick one topic for the round-up. One item that should be of interest to anyone in the DFW area who drinks water: Argyle Disposal Well in Denton Creek Flood Plain. No kidding! It’s for real on Bluedaze: DRILLING REFORM FOR TEXAS.

The Texas Cloverleaf looks at the taxing TAKS becoming the pretty STAAR that school children will have to shoot past in order to graduate.

Has the so-called nuclear renaissance been dealt a blow by the South Texas Project’s troubles? Learn more at Texas Vox.

If you missed the GOP gov debate, check out McBlogger’s rather insightful analysis of the three players performances, along with a mercifully brief comment on the sexual desirability of Rep. Louie Gohmert.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson posts on the latest Texans for Public Justice “Watching Your Assets” report, this one about the Texas Enterprise Fund, Perry’s corporate welfare not paying off for Texas.

Over at TexasKaos, Libby Shaw puts a local spin on young James O’Keefe’s foiled attempt to tamper with Mary Landrieu’s phones. The roll call Texas Republican admirers is quite long. Of equal interest was the discussion that followed the outing of these Republicans. See it all at Texas Republican Lawmakers Honor James O’Keefe.

It’s a travesty that only Bill White and Farouk Shami are participating in the Texas Democratic gubernatorial debate on February 8 because the other five candidates don’t meet the “standards”. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs believes it’s impossible to reconcile that KERA, a public broadcasting station, together with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Univision and other corporate and media industry sponsors, would conspire to preclude candidates for the state’s highest public office.

Neil at Texas Liberal is glad that Houston City Councilmember Jarvis Johnson is talking about poverty in his 18th U.S. House District primary fight with incumbent Sheila Jackson Lee. However, it will take some solid ideas and not just talk to feel that Mr. Johnson is really serious about the issue.

The House of Representative by a vote of 152-4 approved and sent to the Senate a bill that would ban junk food in schools and require new and healthy nutritional standards to be developed for food sold in all school cafeterias and vending machines.

The Senate rejected a proposed comission to tackle the deficit, largely because it would have required Congress to either completely accept or reject its recommendations without the ability to make changes. President Obama has issued an executive order to create something similiar, however. The Senate did accept pay-as-you-go limits on federal spending and to raise the debt ceiling without a single Republican vote on either. The Senate also confirmed (with a bipartisan mix of votes) Ben Bernanke for a second term as chairman of the Federal Reserve.

As for health care reform? Who the hell knows.

The Texas Progressive Alliance congratulates the city of New Orleans for its first Super Bowl as it provides an instant replay of its blog highlights for the week.

Something stinks about the recent TCEQ Barnett Shale air quality testing in Fort Worth and in Flower Mound. Bluedaze: DRILLING REFORM FOR TEXAS.

Off the Kuff looked at a report on the economic impact of dropouts.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme sympathizes with Lamar Smith’s constituents who were told they must contact Smith’s office if they want him to stop illegally calling their cellphones. Smith’s breaking the law and his solution is to make his constituents ask him to stop.

At Texas Vox we’re pleased as punch to see that Austin isn’t alone in preparing for a clean energy future; Portland General Electric plans to shut down its coal plant by 2020!

WhosPlayin reposted a article from 2007 about the corporation: Don’t hate the player, change the game, which is especially apropos this week.

A Republican in Democrats clothing tries to ride into office in Dallas County. SDEC members and precinct chairs say no way to this Eagle Forum darling at The Texas Cloverleaf.

Citizens of Texas say &^%$ Governor Perry! for screwing up the state after 10 years. Add your own!

WCNews at Eye On Williamson takes a glass half-full approach in analyzing the muffed election last week Let’s HOPE it’s seen as a wake up call.

Right-wing bloggers gathered in Austin to worship Rick Perry’s pistol. Seriously. Read the entire revolting display of sycophancy at Brains and Eggs.

BossKitty at TruthHugger is continually amazed at general ignorance concerning the actual words in the US Constitution. Interpretations abound from the mouths of people who have never read the document, or do not comprehend the words in context. Embellishments and fantasy surrounding this document are spoken every day. What is especially disturbing is how these fantasies infiltrate America’s politics. To be elected in some regions, a politician must fertilize the fantasy. Perspective must return to how Americans regard the Law of the Land. American Theocracy divorces US Constitution, promotes terrorism.

Over at TexasKaos, Boadicea offers a little not so subtle advise to Democrats who find themselves unmanned by the events of last week. She calls it .Dear Democrats: Balls.. Trust me, you will like the video she found to illustrate her point!

Neil at Texas Liberal made note of the fact that just two months remain before his tenth wedding anniversary. Neil is damned glad about his marriage. Neil is not certain he could advocate for liberal causes if he did not have such a solid personal relationship in his life to help him manage his frequent anger at the world. The personal and the private are often connected in many ways that we may not often consider.

It should not come as a surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention to District 105 that this year’s election was going to be a much hotter contest than the last time, at least in terms of actual campaigning. Lest you’d forgotten, Linda Harper-Brown won by 19 votes in the last election against a Democrat I never saw a single placard for. In a district that was considered unimportant and that most people assumed was solidly Republican, that came as quite a surprise. Now that the Dems have scented blood, they’re going in guns blazing. The two ladies running in the Democratic Primary have probably already spent more money campaigning against each other than Bob Romano did campaigning against Linda Harper-Brown two years ago. And perhaps it’s paying off, as the DMN dedicated an entire article to endorsing Loretta Haldenwang when their endorsement of Harper-Brown in the last election was a paragraph in an article about various local races.

Like I said before, this should be an interesting election. The question is will all those Democratic voters who voted in ‘08 come out to vote again? Is this a futile race if they don’t? There might be an answer in the numbers that turn out for the primary; as we all know the Democratic primaries were rather raucous last time because of the race between Obama and Clinton. Is there any of that energy left? We shall see.

On the one year anniversary of President Barack Obama’s election, Democrats aren’t feeling as great about things as they probably hoped:

In a stunning upset, Republican Scott Brown, a little-known state senator just weeks ago, Tuesday trounced Democrat Martha Coakley to win a Massachusetts U.S. Senate seat and jolt Washington’s Democratic leaders with a victory that imperils President Barack Obama’s agenda, led by his bid to overhaul the nation’s health care system.

Brown, 50, mobilized voters in one of the nation’s most Democratic states — voters frustrated by the sluggish economy, angry about big government and uneasy about changes in health care. He led Coakley, 56, who conceded defeat shortly before 10 P.M., by 52 to 47 percent with 99 percent of precincts reporting.

With his victory, the first time since 1972 that a Republican has won a Massachusetts Senate race, Brown will take the “Kennedy seat” occupied by Sen. Edward Kennedy for 47 years before his death in August and once held by John F. Kennedy before he became president in 1961.

What went wrong?  Most agree Coakley ran a simply awful campaign, and the Republican base was much more energized. This is definitely a wake up call to President Obama and Congressional Democrats to start delivering if they don’t want to to risk losing control this November.

The irony cannot be lost that Senator Kennedy, who long championed health care reform, was replaced by a Republican who opposes it and will deny Senate Democrats the 60 votes needed for its passage. But all hope is not lost:

To their credit, Washington Democrats haven’t given up. The White House is weighing a plan to pass the Senate bill immediately through the House, which would, with Obama’s signature, make it law automatically without Scott Brown or anyone else in the Senate getting another crack at it. Then the Democrats would use “reconciliation” budget rules to fix problems in the Senate version with 51 votes, per the agreement Obama has been working on for the last couple of weeks. This is a messy approach but doable.

Indeed, this will require holding moderate Democrats who fear they will suffer the same fate as Coakley if they support health care reform, while convincing House liberals to go along with the Senate version of the bill with the promise of improving it later.

If I were them, I’d do it. The Senate bill is far from perfect but still better than nothing. And its problems can be fixed through separate legislation. Let’s pass this thing and move on.

The Texas Progressive Alliance wishes you a happy MLK Day as it brings you this week’s blog highlights.

Off the Kuff takes a look at some demographic trends in the Houston area.

Something STINKS about TCEQ’s recent Fort Worth air study. Considering that the Barnett Shale has a staggering asthma rate of 25% compared to 7.1% statewide, TXsharon thinks it’s time for an intervention in Texas. Bluedaze: DRILLING REFORM FOR TEXAS.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme, along with every other progressive, knows why Democrats are having a hard time. Even the Tea Party activists know that our country should not be run by corporate lobbyists.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson discusses the importance of the election this year, 2010 races loom large for 2011 legislative redistricting.

Mary Peters loves her some private toll roads which is understandable since her income depends on stupid people at TXDOT selling off our roads. McBlogger, understandably, has a problem with the fact that taxpayers have to get screwed for Mary and her masters to make money.

A few of PDiddie’s friends around the state are taking a crack at public office this year. See who they are at Brains and Eggs.

Bay Area Houston notices What they didnt talk about at the Republican debates.

Neil at Texas Liberal updated his Martin Luther King Reading & Reference List for 2010. This list is the best such resource on the web.

MUD? FWSD? WTF? Developer welfare comes back into the light in Denton County, at the Texas Cloverleaf.

“Justice like a mighty stream”

Amen, brother.

Senator Reid will not be appearing in Irving tomorrow, most probably due to a Congressional session to deal with the crisis in Haiti.

I recently blogged about the redistricting lawsuit in Irving whose plaintiffs won. To recap, briefly:

On Oct. 19, two orders signed by Solis were filed in federal court. One order – which still stands – gives initial approval to the controversial settlement reached between the council and Benavidez’s attorneys.

The order granting initial approval is necessary before the proposed election system can be submitted for approval to the Justice Department. Approval by the Justice Department is needed before Solis can enter a final judgment turning the settlement into the city’s actual election system.

Well, the plan won approval:

The Irving City Council’s at-large election system is poised for a transformation. The U.S. Justice Department signed off on a controversial plan to create single-member districts.

The federal clearance was considered the final major hurdle between the plan and its implementation. It stemmed from a voting rights lawsuit in which resident Manuel Benavidez successfully argued that Irving’s at-large system effectively allows white voters to block Hispanic-backed candidates.

Ah, but remember the judge has to issue the final judgment in order for the plan to become final. And yet, he hasn’t done so.

In an order filed Tuesday, Judge Jorge Solis gave both sides until Tuesday to reply to a letter council members Tom Spink and Beth Van Duyne sent him. Their letter opposes the proposed election plan the U.S. Justice Departmentapproved last week.

Dramatic story, no?

In other Irving drama, Senator Harry Reid is coming to Irving on Friday, and tons people plan to show up, both to support and protest him.

Loyal Democrats are anxious to attend a planned fund-raiser and show support for the embattled Nevada senator and their Congress-dominating party. Texas Republican leaders are urging their faithful to stand outside the event and voice opposition to proposed health care legislation.

Tea Party leaders say their supporters are almost certainly attending and are likely to also express disdain for how Democrats have handled the economy. A local Hispanic activist wants Latinos to protest the lack of efforts to overhaul federal immigration laws.

Whew, sounds fun, hey? I think I just might be there to take some pics! Anyway, if you’re around here and have any interest, one of the comments on that story says he’ll be at the Irving Chamber of Commerce at 11 AM on Friday, which is one of the buildings next to the Mustang statues on O’Connor. I’m sure if you find your way to the area, you’ll see where the demonstrators are, so don’t worry too much about directions. Parking may be difficult to acquire though, so come early!

Couple of good reads in the DMN as of late. First, this editorial from William McKenzie, who argues that Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill White should run on the issue of judicial elections reform:

For years, Texas’ plaintiffs’ lawyers and business leaders have been like the Soviet Union and United States from the Cold War days, only brawling over the liability laws that govern the state. As part of the Texas death match, both sides have poured big dollars into judicial and legislative races, hoping to elect candidates that support their agendas.

The trial lawyers argue for maintaining strong punitive damages against businesses whose products or practices harm consumers. Of course, those lawyers benefit handsomely from the fees they earn from punitive damage cases.

The business community presses for more restrictive jury awards. Their leaders fear losing their companies through awards disproportionate to the actual injuries.

The two sides have their battle squadrons. The Texas Trial Lawyers Association leads one side; Texans for Lawsuit Reform heads the other. These competitors are so well financed that they could bloody each other until kingdom come.

But it’s hard to see the wisdom in that – or how the constant tug-of-war really helps Texas, which has the reputation of being a place where justice is for sale.

It would be great to see them come together behind a crusade to change the way Texas judges are selected. TLR has talked about this, and there’s some movement in trial lawyer circles to see changes at the Supreme Court and appellate levels. Perhaps the time is right to strike a deal. It certainly could cost less.

[...]

White is in a perfect place to change this perception, more than any other gubernatorial candidate, as both a successful trial lawyer and a businessman.

He made his mark in the 1980s working for one of Texas’ biggest trial firms. He then spent much of the 1990s pursuing oil deals in the former Soviet Union. And before becoming Houston’s mayor in 2003, he was head of a diversified company.

Those credentials give him the ability to talk to both sides about reforming Texas’ lunatic judicial system. None of the other candidates has a similar background.

I’m not sure how eager the average Texan is for judicial elections reform, but having opposing constituencies behind the idea would do a lot to get it moving forward, even if Texas voters are apathetic to the idea (and I’m not saying they are; I’m just saying I don’t know if they are or aren’t.) A recent U.S. Supreme Court case has brought more attention to the iniquities of state judicial elections, so perhaps now is the best time to move on reform.

Also, an article in today’s DMN provides an overview of the upcoming State Board of Education races, which will feature (yet again) a battle between right-wingers, moderate Republican and Democratic candidates:

“I see [the elections] as a referendum on what we’ve done the last few years,” said Republican board member Don McLeroy, an outspoken social conservative who served as chairman until last summer.

[...]

Now McLeroy is again in a contest to determine the board’s direction. His Republican primary opponent is lobbyist Thomas Ratliff of Mount Pleasant, son of former Lt. Gov. Bill Ratliff.

The younger Ratliff said he wants to “take politics out of public education,” citing the continuing squabbles over textbooks, evolution and sex education. McLeroy insists education is “too important not to be politicized.”

“If you’re going to be in a political office, you have to promote your views, and I’m confident and proud of the stands I’ve taken and my votes on the major issues,” McLeroy said.

As explained in this Washington Monthly feature, these board members have the power to influence what kids throughout the nation are learning by virtue of the size of Texas’ textbook market. They don’t have the ability to force creationism down anyone’s throat (though they would if they could) but they certainly do have the ability to undermine the teaching of evolution, or a more liberal reading of United States history, etc. I suppose McLeroy believes that teaching the facts of evolution, or teaching history without a right-wing bias, is “politicization.” Whatever he thinks, it’s certainly too important to be left in the hands of ignorant Bible-thumpers.