Texas, Early Voting, and Me

So far two million Texans have voted of which I am one. That's about 15% of the total number of registered voters in the state (mostly Obama supporters apparently) . I went one Monday around 2:30pm and my local polling station was packed. There wasn't a parking space to be found. Eventually I snagged a parking space, went into the library, and got in line. I give the poll workers props for being extremely polite and efficient. Questions were answered instantly and factually and the line moved at a rapid pace which kept everyone happy. Nice job!

This was the first time in my life that there was a Libertarian presidential candidate on the ballot as well as the option to vote for a straight Libertarian ticket. I then placed my vote for what could be called a straight divided government ticket in that I voted Libertarian for president, Republican for Senate, and Democratic at the state level. City elections in my case tends to be a mixed bag since I have met many of the sitting judges at various functions over the years and know of others by the reputation they have with various defense lawyers that I know. Basically I just try to vote out any judge that is operating in the extreme or where there are legitimate concerns about competence or fairness.

I have some real concerns about election day though. Given that here in Texas almost a million people have registered to vote since the primaries and 85% of the state has yet to vote and how badly the primaries went here (insanely long lines and caucuses not getting started till 11pm) I think we're going to see problems similar to Ohio 2004 (polls closing while there's still a line of voters) popping up both here in Texas and other states and possibly poll workers nationwide collapsing from exhaustion across the nation. I think the best we can hope for on that front is that it doesn't go so badly that we have to listen four more years of stolen election screeds.

Thanks for DWSUWF and Dave Lucas for linking to this post. (As an added reward MW I won't tag you with the latest meme I got hit with.)

Weird Fact

Texas is one of few states that doesn't allow its citizens to carry handguns unconcealed in public.

That kinda blows the Texas stereotype out of the water now doesn't it?

Toys for Texans

Another intrusive government attempt to legislate "decency" was shot down in Texas today.

From the Austin American Statesman

Court strikes down Texas ban on sex toys

A federal appeals court has struck down a Texas law that makes it a crime to promote or sell sex toys.

"Whatever one might think or believe about the use of these devices," said an opinion written by Justice Thomas M. Reavley of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, "government interference with their personal and private use violates the Constitution."

Under Texas law it is illegal to sell, advertise, give or lend obscene devices, defined as a device used primarily for sexual stimulation. Anyone in possession of six or more sexual devices is considered to be promoting them.

The Texas law dates back to the 1970s and is seldom enforced. Travis County prosecutors say that they haven't charged anyone with a sexual device-related crime in at least the past seven years, and probably much longer.

In 2003, a woman in the Fort Worth suburb of Burleson drew nationwide attention when she was arrested for selling erotic toys at a Tupperware-type party. The charges against Joanne Webb were later dropped.

In addition to Texas, whose law has survived previous state court challenges, three other states have a similar sex toys statute: Mississippi, Alabama and Virginia. Laws in Louisiana, Kansas, Colorado and Georgia have been thrown out by courts in recent years.

The 2-1 opinion by a panel of the 5th Circuit was based heavily on the U.S. Supreme Court's 2003 decision in Lawrence and Garner v. Texas, which struck down a Texas law prohibiting private consensual sex among people of the same sex.

That case established a broad constitutional right to sexual privacy.

On the heels of that landmark ruling, Reliable Consultants Inc. sued Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle and Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott in 2004 in U.S. District Court in Austin.

Personally I view such "decency" laws as intrusive and archaic. But then I'm of the frame of mind that what one or more consenting adults do in the privacy of their home is none of the government's business. If they want to add a battery operated friend to the mix well then more power to them. I may however draw the line at sex with robots though. But since we haven't gotten to that point I'm thinking I'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

**Update**
I received an offer to exchange links with a Sex Fashion Blog based on this post. I declined because the site is not PG and contains no content related to this blog. But I linked to them in this post to thank them for asking.

Obama Crushes Clinton in Potomac Primaries

He beat her by an average of thirty four percent. I figured that given the racial mixes involved in the races in question that he'd take MD and D.C. but that he'd eke out a tiny victory in VA or lose by five percent or less. Mainly I based that on the fact that he's done better in states that have caucuses, have a high percentage of Blacks, or a very low percentage of blacks. Simply put he does well in areas where racial tension is low or winners are more or less decided by debate. (Not my theory but I can't remember who to credit for that bit of pattern recognition.) In my experience (I'm from VA.) Virginia has just enough racial tension to have made it a hard state for me to predict. But what I had forgotten is my theory that the more Obama wins the more he will continue to win.

I theorized that if Obama won an early primary and SC he'd prove that he was electable. Once that happened voters that were backing Clinton because she was the presumptive front runner would start siding with Obama. Once that happened the more he won the more states he would win. Apparently my theory has reached a sort of critical mass. In tonight's primaries he actually pulled in more Women voters than Clinton according to early exit polls...

In the Democratic primaries in both states, Barack Obama won both men and women. In Virginia, he got 68 percent of men and 60 percent of women, while in Maryland he got 62 percent of men and 55 percent of women. In Virginia, Obama even won among white men, getting 58 percent of their votes while Hillary Rodham Clinton took her base, white women, by an unusually small margin. In Virginia she got 53 percent to Obama's 47 percent among white women. But in Maryland, Clinton won overall among whites, winning by a wide margin among white women but only tying Obama among white men.

Obama's narrow win among whites in Virginia marked one of his best showings yet among white voters and was the first time he has beat Clinton among whites in a Southern state. Obama won the votes of 90 percent of blacks in Virginia and 84 percent in Maryland.

Obama is now officially the front runner having a higher number of delegates and pledged super delegates in his corner. But Clinton has a major shot at playing catch up. She has to win Texas in order to regain momentum. Current polls have her ahead of Obama by ten percent. But I'm sticking to my theory and guessing that she'll be down to a five percent lead by the time the Texas primary rolls around. If she doesn't manage to do that she only has two options to stay in the race; reseat the FL and MI delegates and strong arm and/or sweet talk enough super delegates to come up even. And if she goes that route to get the nomination she'll poison the hearts of enough voters to ensure a McCain victory. So keep your eye on Texas because if I'm right it will make or break Clinton's campaign.

Texas Governor Rick Perry to Endorse McCain

First California's governor now Texas'...

From the Dallas Morning News:

LOS ANGELES – Texas Gov. Rick Perry will endorse John McCain for president, saying he is the best candidate in the GOP field to fight the war on terror.

The Texas governor's first choice, Rudy Giuliani, dropped out of the presidential sweepstakes and on Wednesday endorsed Mr. McCain.

"For the governor, it came down to a very simple calculation: The single dominant issue is the war on terror," said Perry spokesman Robert Black. "And he believes, looking at the field, the single best individual to be commander in chief and not flinch in this war is John McCain."

The endorsement from the red-state governor comes just days before the Super Tuesday primary in which 21 states will weigh in. Mr. Perry will formally make his endorsement Thursday afternoon in Austin.

Getting endorsements from the governors from the two most populous states in the nation back to McCain lost a lot of points in border states by appearing weak on illegal immigration. However previous Texas polls put McCain ahead of Romney by a two to one margin with Huckabee actually being in the lead. With Giuliani dropping out and endorsing McCain in theory that should put McCain in position to rake in a ton of delegates come March fourth.

Texas Governor Commutes Death Sentence

Well this was unexpected...

From the AP:

Texas governor spares getaway driver

Gov. Rick Perry, longtime head of the nation's busiest death penalty state, spared an inmate Thursday hours before he was to have been executed for being a killer's getaway driver.

Perry issued the commutation order on a parole board's rare recommendation about seven hours before Kenneth Foster was to have been put to death — the narrowest gap by which he has halted an execution in his more than eight years in office.

Thursday's vote marked only the second time since Texas resumed carrying out executions in 1982 that the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles endorsed stopping an execution with so little time remaining. And in that 2004 case, Perry rejected the board's recommendation and the prisoner, who had been diagnosed as mentally ill, was executed.

This time, Perry agreed with the board's recommendation that Foster be saved from lethal injection.

Foster, 30, learned of Thursday's board vote during a morning visit with his father. A warden told him of the governor's commutation about an hour later.

"The first thing I did was drop to my knees and say a little prayer," he said as he was being taken from the Huntsville prison unit where executions are carried out for a return trip to the prison that houses death row. "I owe a lot of people."

Death penalty opponents had launched a public-relations campaign to save Foster because they objected to Texas's so-called law of parties, a unique statute in which each participant of a capital crime is held equally responsible. In any other state, the person who actually killed another person might be eligible for execution, but the driver or other participants might not be. more

I think Gov. Perry did the right thing here. The death penalty is supposed to be reserved for those that commit the most heinous of crimes and to me this clearly doesn't meet that standard. The fact that Foster had exhausted his appeals and the sentence had to be commuted points to exactly how broken Texas' death penalty laws are. Additionally with only 2% of murderers getting the death penalty in Texas (according to a San Antonio Express News article from last week that I can't find) it seems that either the laws are applied inconsistently or that one gets the best justice one can afford.

I can understand a state wanting to be tough on crime but ultimately its more important to be fair. Somehow somewhere the powers that be in The Lone Star State seem to have forgotten that fact. Its good that Gov. Perry remembered. Even if it was at the last minute.