July 22, 2015

Texas Lawmaker Wants People To Be Able To Carry Guns In Hospitals

Starting in January, you can legally carry handguns in public in Texas. And later next year, you can have concealed handguns on state university campuses. There are still a few strictly gun-free zones, like hospitals. Some Second Amendment advocates are trying to change that.

A North Texas representative wants legislation that would allow staff and visitors to bring firearms into hospitals for self-defense.

A few years ago, when State Rep. Drew Springer went to visit a Deputy Sheriff at Texas Health's Harris Methodist Hospital in Fort Worth, he had to leave his gun in the car.

“I go up and see the deputy and then I come back,” he said. "I spend the next 10 minutes walking in a dark parking lot to get to my car in downtown Fort Worth and I absolutely did not feel safe.”

Read more: http://keranews.org/post/texas-lawmaker-wants-people-be-able-carry-guns-hospitals

[font color=330099]He walked ten minutes in a dark parking lot? That will teach him to remember where he parked![/font]

July 22, 2015

It took a week to remember

July 22, 2015

Fashion faceoff

July 22, 2015

Former lobbyist gets new UNM job despite 3 DWIs

Saavedra: Got "last chance" after second arrest. [font color=330099]Got another "last chance" after third arrest.[/font]

A branch of the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center has signed a consulting contract with Marc Saavedra, a former UNM lobbyist who resigned from his high-profile position last year after being arrested and charged with drunken driving for the third time.

In a statement sent late Tuesday, a UNM Health Sciences Center spokesman did not specify details of the contract but indicated Saavedra’s past legal troubles are no secret to the center.

“The UNM Medical Group, which is the medical practice arm of the UNM Health Science Center, has entered into a contract with Marc Saavedra’s company, MHS Consulting on a limited basis to be involved in community outreach and education based on his extensive years of experience,” UNM Health Sciences Center spokesman John Arnold said in the statement.

-snip-

Saavedra, the son of longtime former state Rep. Henry “Kiki” Saavedra, had been receiving a salary of nearly $156,000 annually as the director of UNM’s Office of Community and Government Affairs at the time of his July 2014 arrest on a DWI charge.

Read more: http://www.abqjournal.com/616262/news/former-lobbyist-gets-new-unm-job-despite-3-dwis.html

July 22, 2015

Texas Is A Big State; Expect It To Eventually Play A Big Role In Democratic Party Politics

I was still a teenager the first time I ventured from home in New York to Texas. I had only passing interest in what I saw as a Big Oil-controlled fascist-oriented state where they killed JFK, but I was hitchhiking to Mexico and there was no way around it. It went as badly as I imagined it might. I was robbed of everything I had, then driven out into the desert by Texas police who pretended they were going to shoot my friend and me. Instead, they just left us.

I don't think I went back to the state again for over two decades, and even then it took the beginning of Austin's "South by Southwest" in 1987. Bernie Sanders went to the same high school I did in Brooklyn, James Madison, but he was a few years ahead of me and I have no idea how he felt back then about Texas. He sure seemed happy to be there yesterday!

Politically, Texas is still part of the Solid South, a bloc of states that once upon a time always voted for Democrats from the bottom of the ticket to the top. After Texas was admitted to the Union, the first presidential election it participated in was in 1848, when 8,801 Texans casting their ballots for Democrat Lewis Cass, as opposed to the 3,777 who voted for the victorious Zachary Taylor, a Whig. Four years later Texas was on the winning side with Democrat Franklin Pierce and it was again in the next go-round, which gave the election to Democrat James Buchanan.

In the pivotal 1860 presidential election, Abraham Lincoln didn't appear on the ballot in Texas. The state voted for Vice President John Breckinridge (D-KY), who has the distinction of being the only United States senator convicted of treason against the United States by the Senate, having enlisted in the Confederate Army in 1861 while still serving as a senator.

Read more: http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2015/07/texas-is-big-state-expect-it-to.html

July 22, 2015

Tony Romo’s sacked fantasy football event in Vegas sues the NFL

Tony Romo was mighty unhappy in June when the NFL axed the Dallas Cowboys QB’s fantasy football event in Las Vegas weeks before kick-off. And now, it’s the subject of a lawsuit filed in Dallas County on Monday: The Fan Expo v. National Football League.

You can read the entirety of the suit below — a well-crafted narrative penned by Dallas attorney Julie Pettit. But long story short: The Fan Expo, consisting of Romo and “a Dallas entrepreneur and a team of fantasy football experts,” per the lawsuit, wants more than $1,000,000 from the league after it canceled the three-day National Fantasy Football Convention scheduled to take place in July at a convention center attached to the Venetian in Vegas. Pettit confirms to The Dallas Morning News this afternoon that Romo is “part-owner” in The Fan Expo.

We asked if Romo felt, well, awkward suing the league. Pettit said, “I can’t speak for Tony on that. But ultimately those who could make a decision for the entity made that decision” to file the lawsuit on Monday. She says Romo is not going to make a statement concerning the complaint.

So instead we turn to the lawsuit, which says, “This case is about the NFL’s blatant and premeditated sabotage of an event designed to bring together the very people who are the backbone of the NFL — the players and the fans.”

Read more: http://cowboysblog.dallasnews.com/2015/07/tony-romos-sacked-fantasy-football-event-in-vegas-sues-the-national-football-league.html/

July 22, 2015

What they call terrorism--and what they don't

The glaring double standard in the U.S. media and political establishment about what constitutes "terrorism" was on full display after the July 16 shooting at two military facilities in Chattanooga, Tennessee, that led to the deaths of four Marines and a Naval petty officer.

Just hours after 24-year-old Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez opened fire on a military recruitment office and then a Naval reserve center, and was in turn fatally wounded, U.S. Attorney Bill Killian said authorities were treating the case as an "act of domestic terrorism." A senior law enforcement official likewise told the Washington Post, "We will treat this as a terrorism investigation until it can be determined it was not," he said.

All the authorities needed to know to adopt the "this is terrorism until it isn't" approach--in stark contrast to their attitude in other cases--was Abdulazeez's Middle Eastern name and his Muslim faith.

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The same media and political establishment that was loathe to call last month's shooting in a Charleston church by white supremacist Dylann Roof "terrorism" couldn't wait to ascribe these motives to Abdulazeez.

Read more: http://socialistworker.org/2015/07/21/what-they-call-terrorism-and-what-they-dont

July 22, 2015

Louisiana leaders want firms to adjust the state's ratings to boost bond sales for I-49 expansion

Louisiana money leaders want firms to adjust the state's ratings from negative to stable to boost bond sales for I-49 expansion near Lafayette

State financial leaders Tuesday lobbied the big New York rating agencies, arguing that in light of the results of the recent legislative session, the influential firms should adjust the state’s credit score upwards from negative to stable.

How the agencies view Louisiana’s finances, now that the numbers are in from the changes made by the Legislature, will go a long way to determine how much the state will have to pay next month for borrowing that would raise money to expand Interstate 49 south of Lafayette.

It’ll be the first bond issued since legislators attempted to address some of the financial problems raised by Moody’s Investors Services in February, when the firm lowered the state’s credit outlook from stable to negative.

“We were very clear in our ask: We did the work that needed to be done,” Commissioner of Administration Kristy Nichols said Tuesday in between calls to Moody’s and Fitch Ratings. On Wednesday the team will make their presentation to Standard & Poor’s Financial Services.

Read more: http://theadvocate.com/news/12973520-125/louisiana-money-leaders-plea-for

July 22, 2015

Should fleur de lis meet confederate flag’s fate?

NEW ORLEANS – The fleur de lis is a symbol that is deeply ingrained in Louisiana’s history. Seen in architecture, the state flag and on the helmets of the Saints, it’s everywhere.

But although it is now seen as the mark of our great state, it was once used to mark slaves.

“Code noir — those words are French and mean ‘black code,’” said slave historian Ibrahima Seck.

The black code was a set of regulations adopted in Louisiana in 1724 from other French colonies around the world, meant to govern the state’s slave population. Seck said those rules included branding slaves with the fleur de lis as punishment for running away.

Read more: http://www.shreveporttimes.com/story/news/local/2015/07/19/fleur-de-lis-meet-confederate-flags-fate/30400385/

Cross-posted in the Louisiana Group.

July 22, 2015

Should fleur de lis meet confederate flag’s fate?

NEW ORLEANS – The fleur de lis is a symbol that is deeply ingrained in Louisiana’s history. Seen in architecture, the state flag and on the helmets of the Saints, it’s everywhere.

But although it is now seen as the mark of our great state, it was once used to mark slaves.

“Code noir — those words are French and mean ‘black code,’” said slave historian Ibrahima Seck.

The black code was a set of regulations adopted in Louisiana in 1724 from other French colonies around the world, meant to govern the state’s slave population. Seck said those rules included branding slaves with the fleur de lis as punishment for running away.

Read more: http://www.shreveporttimes.com/story/news/local/2015/07/19/fleur-de-lis-meet-confederate-flags-fate/30400385/

Cross-posted in the African-American Group.