July 1, 2013

If you're not reading the Burnt Orange Report, you're missing a great source for Texas political news. Joe Deshotel:

Leigh Larson, a leader of and organizer with College Kids For Wendy, is now becoming another face of the movement to Stand With Texas Women. Much like Martha Northington, Larson has received a lot of plaudits for leading the "Eyes of Texas" in the Capitol Rotunda at the end of Tuesday night's citizen filibuster.

Now Lt. Governor David Dewhurst may have his eyes on her. She has received notice that the Lt. Governor and Attorney General Greg Abbott may be considering pressing charges on her along with others for "disturbing the peace" and "inciting a riot".

I was sitting with Leigh when she first heard the rumor and she had the following response:

"I'm not gonna worry about it, I have a Spanish test on Tuesday."

Brilliant. I imagine Ann Richards would be proud.

The past few days have seen Dewhurst go off the rails in his attempt to explain what happened that night the Senate gallery was forcibly cleared. Rumors are floating around that he is considering arresting House members who were on the Senate floor, and has publicly stated that he will look at tapes to determine if he can prove members of the media were stoking the crowd. However, he has since dropped the idea of charges for media.

[...] The Dallas morning news reports that Dewhurst is willing to close the gallery. Another conjecture around the Capitol is that Dewhurst would like to avoid another show like Tuesday night with officers filmed dragging people out of their seats.

One option he is considering is clearing the floor (of Senators) instead of the gallery of people. The logic goes, if folks see Senators vacate the floor eventually they will leave the gallery and allow time to Senators to quickly return and pass the bill. No word on how he plans to get Democratic Senators to leave.

Dewhurst told Hot Air in an interview that spectators were "throwing things down on us from the gallery," but from the pictures of the floor all we can see being thrown was the peace sign.

The conversation that has really been going on amongst the thousands of people who watched the events in person and online has focused on investigating Dewhurst for the change of timestamp in order to make it appear the bill was passed before the 12am deadline. Dewhurst explained to Hot Air that the bill has passed but they merely didn't have it signed. Tough luck. It is clear that he is losing control and there are folks on both sides ready to pounce on the opportunity.

Can you help us out?

For nearly 20 years we have been exposing Washington lies and untangling media deceit, but now Facebook is drowning us in an ocean of right wing lies. Please give a one-time or recurring donation, or buy a year's subscription for an ad-free experience. Thank you.

Explore more

Discussion

We welcome relevant, respectful comments. Any comments that are sexist or in any other way deemed hateful by our staff will be deleted and constitute grounds for a ban from posting on the site. Please refer to our Terms of Service for information on our posting policy.
Mastodon