Judge Jack Roach is a District Court Judge in Collin County (Fort Worth).
He has up and decided that lesbians are unfit mothers. It appears that he has had no help coming to this decision. You know, like scientific studies or child advocates. Judge Jack Roach thinks children would be better off living with a convicted felon father who really doesn’t want them than a lesbian mother in a stable relation who adores them.
A Republican Texas Judge has ordered a lesbian couple to live apart or give up custody of their children. According to Think Progress, Judge John Roach of McKinney, Texas has given Page Price 30 days to move out of the home she shares with Carolyn Compton and Compton’s two children from a previous marriage because he does not approve of Compton and Price’s “lifestyle.”
Compton cannot have anyone in her home past 9:00 pm unless she is related to them “by blood or marriage.” Gay marriage is illegal in Texas.
I guess that means her kids can’t have sleepovers and New Year’s Eve is gonna be mighty lonely for those kids.
On April 25 - Thursday evening - American icon and humble hero George W Bush took one small step for man, one slip-and-fall for humanity - as he re-entered a spotlight until-recently blissful to have been abandoned by him, for the dedication of his presidential library. Put aside for the moment that having an actual structure that houses things you read dedicated to him is like honouring Chris Christie with a gluten-free restaurant or naming a Bar Mitzvah after Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Hell, I half expected him to don his trusty flight suit and declare "all major combat operations over in Iraq", you know, just for the memories.
But really, he did not have to do anything of the sort. For it was perfect timing for the My Pet Goat Athenaeum to emerge from the steamy Sun Belt hydrofluorocarbons just as one disaster after another befell the country, a helpful reminder of the eight torturous (in more ways than one) years he and his corrupted West Texas ideology made the rest of the United States resemble, well, West, Texas.
From the explosion at the fertiliser plant due to flagrant flouting of environmental regulations to the attack in Boston, the rejection of common sense gun safety to the square dance around sequestration; this was shaping up to be a Bush Legacy week whether he stayed home to paint nude portraits of Jeb or chose to step out and try to defend a presidency many Americans must be still convinced was just one long phantasm brought on by a bad batch of Peyote.
Michael Lind points out in, Made In Texas, that we have had conservative presidents over the past century and southern presidents. We have not had the combination. And it is an important distinction. As Lind put it in an interview with BuzzFlash (2002), "His [Bush's] political values - ranging from aggressive militarism in foreign policy to small-government ideology and fervent support for laissez-faire economics" have come to define much of our political culture in Washington - hence last week.
First, we had the Festrunk Brothers launch an attack on the Boston Marathon two weeks ago, and just about everything involved had Bush's West Texas political culture written all over it. Because of the NRA, which "worked out of his White House", there is no way to track where gun powder was bought as there is with plastic explosives. Because... freedom! (And defence contractor profits!).
There was the fact that these two clowns apparently committed these atrocities because of anger over Iraq - for which I hope the younger brother (I refuse to give them attention by using their names) spends a nice, long, pain-enveloped life carving rocks into chess pieces at Shawshank. Ahh yes, Iraq. Remember that war? The one that George W Bush lied us into with tales of yellowcake and "curveball", that has now cost up to about $2 trillion?
It is because of this war, unpaid for tax cuts and Big Pharma boondoggles that we apparently have to eliminate Medicare, according to the Pied Piper of granny starving, Congressman and former vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan. But let us eliminate, post haste, the part of our silly self-created "sequestration" - flight delays! - that causes inconveniences to wealthy members of the Congress on their way to the next Ladybank-single-malt-festooned, campaign contributor bribe-fests.
We were also recently treated to the West Texas answer to allowing weapons of war on our streets to blow apart toddlers in schools. Nothing. Unless you count Congress' finding ways to allow itself to insider trade again. Because... freedom!
Finally, there is the tragedy in West, Texas. A fertiliser-plant explosion near Waco (just like the Crawford pseudo-ranch!) that engulfed the neighbourhood, due to an understaffed and barely functioning Chemical Safety Board (by Congressional design), a lack of common-sense zoning requirements and the no-follow-ups rule we like to impose on the Environmental Protection Agency when they find that a plant like say, this one, had no risk management plan in 2006. But hey, the plant self-reported (is that like self-deporting?) that it posed "no risk" of fire, and why would they lie?
You may remember that a certain convict-Congressman named Tom DeLay - of West Texas - compared the EPA to the "Gestapo" and current lunkhead Texas Governor Rick Perry attacks the very same EPA for its "misguided and job-killing policies", as opposed to his people-killing ones. And then there is, once again, George W Bush. The Decider decided as President that, as dictated by his West Texas ideology, he would assault the EPA by any means necessary, short of naming the former Arabian Horse Association guy to run it (he saved that for FEMA... phew!).
So, in a way, it was fitting to see the George W Bush library opening this past week. It is his West Texas world. We are just stuck living in it.
People from foreign states don’t fully recognize the importance of high school football in small Texas towns.
I remember about 20 years ago when the Democratic National Committee sent some Yankee yahoo to my area of Texas to teach us how to win elections. He planned the first big fundraiser on the same night as the high school homecoming game. We tried to explain to him that homecoming involved parking lot barbeques, big ole honker corsages, booked hotel rooms, and enough enough noise to be heard a mile against the breeze. Everybody in town shows up for homecoming.
“Awww…. it’s just a football game,” he argued and proceeded to have the fundraiser that night. Two people showed up – one drunk and one lost. I determined then and there to never give another dime to the DNC and I haven’t.
It appears that high school football in Texas has become so big that God has taken an interest and is picking sides.
Personally, I’m kinda disappointed that God waited so long to do this. I mean, I’m not questioning God, but wouldn’t a better time to pick sides is when Christians were being fed to the lions?
Better late than never, I guess, because God is right here right now. In Texas.
Rep. Louis Gohmert is that crazy relative that comes to family dinners and hisses under their napkin about "those people" and how they're "ruining America." Except Gohmert is in Congress, and isn't as easily dismissed as Aunt Gert at the end of the evening.
The FBI, on the same token, they have brought as you know what the Dallas federal court and the fifth circuit court of appeals identified as the two largest Muslim Brotherhood front organizations in America, CAIR and ISNA, and so you know they have been working with them, they have been advised by CAIR. They finally suspended their so-called partnership with CAIR but you have Muslim Brotherhood members who have advised the FBI and have been telling them things that just simply make it virtually impossible to properly and adequately investigate and defend this country. The job they did was really amazing considering the fact that they have purged their lexicon of any words that Muslim Brotherhood advisers have told them that they find offensive.
Oh, dear God. WTF is he talking about, you ask? If you want to slither down the rabbit hole of right wing insanity, try a Google search on Dallas FBI + CAIR. The results are conspiracy and Islamophobe sites, top to bottom. No hate is too small to include in those results. So don't try to figure it out that way.
Going straight to the source reveals a story more mundane but no less bizarre in how people like Gohmert have reacted to it. CAIR has a page dispelling the Internet nonsense flying around that Gohmert and Bachmann spew like it was fact. Here's what they say:
CAIR's work with law enforcement was highlighted by the Congressional Research Service, the non-partisan institution which works for the U.S Congress, in its 2010 report American Jihadist Terrorism: Combating a Complex Threat:
"The [2010] story of the five men from the Alexandria, Virginia area...became public when the Council on American-Islamic Relations got their families in touch with the FBI after the five left the United States without telling their families." [CAIR note: This case is cited in numerous sources as a core example of the American Muslim community working with law enforcement.]
"Posing as a new convert, Monteilh arrived at the Irvine Islamic Center in 2006 wearing robes and a long beard, using the name Farouk al-Aziz. Monteilh had a criminal record that included serving 16 months in state prison on two grand theft charges. Members of the Islamic Center of Irvine were reportedly alarmed about Monteilh and his talk of jihad and plans for a terrorist attack. The local chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations reported him to the Irvine police and obtained a three-year restraining order against him." [CAIR Note: It was later revealed the Monteilh was an FBI informant.]
CAIR has long worked to improve Muslim community relations with law enforcement, a CAIR press release issued in October of 1998 is the earliest record we have of CAIR meeting with FBI representatives. Despite this, in 2008, FBI offices contacted many CAIR chapters stating that they were suspending some ties between the Washington-based civil rights and advocacy group and FBI field offices.
The actions "laid to rest" relate to the trial of the founders of the Holy Land Foundation, originally based in Richardson, Texas. It was a funding stream for Hamas and other terrorist organizations, and the government named nearly every pro-Islam charity in the country as unindicted co-conspirators in 2007 as a trial tactic:
In August 2007 Newsweekreported, "According to one senior law-enforcement official (who asked not to be named talking about an ongoing case), the listing of ISNA, CAIR and other groups as 'unindicted co-conspirators' was largely a tactical move by the government." (Newsweek, 8/08/2007) A June 2008 ACLU press release also reports, "The prosecutor also acknowledged that the public labeling was simply a 'legal tactic' intended to allow the government to introduce hearsay evidence against HLF later at trial."
Those are facts which were litigated all the way up to the US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, but that won't stop Moonbeam Gohmert and his sidekick Loonie Bachmann from saying something different in order to make us all afraid that the FBI is really a bunch of seekrit Moooslim terrorists ready to blow the whole damn country up.
Remember how Ron Paul said he only wrote the economic parts of his newsletters and the racist bits were written by someone else? Except then when the newsletters were challenged because they also had whacko conspiracy truther theories in them he also blamed that on other people even though the newsletters went out under his name? Remember that?
No thinking person bought that crap. Ron Paul is a loony racist truther. He has been and always will be, and now he has his very own think tank with a board of lunatics to back him up.
On April 17, Paul announced the creation of a new think tank, the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, which, according to its website, “continues and expands Dr. Paul’s lifetime of public advocacy for a peaceful foreign policy and the protection of civil liberties at home.” Sitting on the advisory board is none other than [Lew] Rockwell.
Lew Rockwell is widely credited as the person who authored those offensive newsletters. Here's a little taste of Lew's flavor of crazy.
Meanwhile, in the Texan business community …Well, come to find out, the West Fertilizer Company lied to the EPA.
The fertilizer plant that exploded Wednesday night in West, Texas, reported to the Environmental Protection Agency and local public safety officials that it presented no risk of fire or explosion, documents show.
West Fertilizer Co. reported having as much as 54,000 pounds of anhydrous ammonia on hand in an emergency planning report required of facilities that use toxic or hazardous chemicals.
But the report, reviewed Wednesday night by The Dallas Morning News, stated “no” under fire or explosive risks. The worst possible scenario, the report said, would be a 10-minute release of ammonia gas that would kill or injure no one.
So the volunteer firefighters at the burning plant had no idea what they were dealing with. Because it’s easy to lie in Texas. All ya gotta do is check a box.
And why would they lie? They were storing 1,350 times the amount of ammonium nitrate that would normally trigger safety oversight by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). They didn’t want EPA or the DHS in their business. That might cost them time and money.We all know how Rick Perry feels about the EPA, don’t we? He thinks its sole goal is to kill jobs.
“Somebody has to tell the E.P.A. that we don’t need you monkeying around and fiddling around and getting in our business with every kind of regulation you can dream up,” he said. “You’re doing nothing more than killing jobs. It’s a cemetery for jobs at the E.P.A.”
So, Rick Perry handed us this mushroom cloud on a silver platter.
I cannot wait to hear hear him and Ron Paul explain how the market forces will correct this. The company will declare bankruptcy, its owners will keep their money and the injured people will hold bake sales to pay their medical bills. That’s what we call “Business Friendly” in Texas.
But now Rick Perry, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz just love the Federal Government. I tell you what, I would buy Chris Christie an airplane ticket if he would come down to West, Texas, and shake his finger in Ted Cruz’s face.
Cruz voted against aid for New Jersey but now wants aid for Texas.They can all kiss my big blue butt.
This case just keeps taking bizarre turns. Today Kim Williams, wife of former Justice of the Peace Eric Williams, confessed to the murders of Mike McClelland, McClelland's spouse, and assistant District Attorney Mark Haase.
Kim Williams’ arrest warrant says she confessed to the entire plot, explaining her role and saying her husband was the shooter.
Authorities confirmed the charge and $10 million bail during a brief news conference at the Kaufman County sheriff’s department. Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse was shot dead as he walked to the courthouse on the way to the courthouse on Jan. 31 and Mike and Cynthia McLelland were shot dead over Easter weekend.
Kaufman County Lt. Justin Lewis told the media that family members would be briefed on the investigation this afternoon and that a full news conference would be held Thursday.
“Out of respect for families of the victims during this time we are not answering any questions at this briefing until we are able to brief the families on the events of the last several days,” said Lewis.
The warrant says she “did then and there intentionally and knowingly cause the death of an individual, Mark Hasse, by shooting him with a firearm and the said, Kim Renee Williams, on or about the 30th day of March 2013 did then and there intentionally and knowingly cause the death of an individual, Michael McLelland, by shooting him with a firearm and further, did then and there, intentionally and knowingly cause the death of an individual, Cynthia McLelland, by shooting her with a firearm.”
“Kim Williams described in detail her role along with that of her husband, Eric Williams, whom she reported to have shot to death Mark Hasse … and Mike and Cynthia McLelland.”
It says that during questioning, “the defendant gave details of both offenses which had not been made public.”
It's mind-boggling to imagine that this couple saw fit to execute three people in cold blood because he was caught lifting computer equipment while acting as a public official, but there it is, in black and white.
The article has more details about Kim Williams, including the couple's struggle with health problems and her conduct during her husband's trial. The full arrest warrant is below the fold.
Scratch the Aryan Brotherhood from the list. It appears that someone from within the law enforcement community may be about to be arrested for the murders of Assistant District Attorney Mark Haase and District Attorney Mike McClelland and his wife.
Sources tell CBS 11 that Former Justice of the Peace Eric Williams will be charged with capital murder in the deaths of Mike and Cynthia McLelland, and Mark Hasse.
Williams was booked into Kaufman County Jail early Saturday morning for making terroristic threats and “insufficient bond.” He’s being held on a $3 million bond.
A search warrant executed on Friday uncovered weapons similar to those used to kill former Kaufman County District Attorney, police added. They followed up with searches of his home, his in-laws’ home, and Williams’ personal storage unit. Williams was ultimately booked into jail just after midnight on Sunday morning.
Official sources would not comment on other details of the investigation, other than to say Williams was arrested on a charge of making a terroristic threat and insufficient bond. He has not yet been charged with murder.
If Williams is in fact connected to the murders, it’s possible that he did not act alone. Witnesses to the Haase murder said that two men seemingly wearing body armor shot the Hasse in broad daylight and left the scene in a silver Ford Taurus. No shell casings were found. The second attack, against DA McClelland and his wife, was just as brazen but executed under the cover of darkness, leaving a scene littered with shell casings.
[...]
Police sources told Dallas-based CBS 11that Williams is likely to be charged with all three murders. He was previously interviewed by investigators, during which time he’s said to have willingly submitted to ballistics testing for gunpowder residue on his skin, and allegedly turned his phone records over to police. Williams was prosecuted by Hasse and McClelland in 2012 after he was caught stealing computer equipment. He was subsequently removed from office and disbarred.
This story just gets more bizarre with each new installment. A Justice of the Peace is successfully prosecuted for stealing computer equipment, convicted and disbarred. His lust for revenge over justice being served drives him to assassinate two public officials and one civilian? Because he was nailed for stealing computer equipment?
Joe “Smokey Joe” Barton, a Texas congressvarmint from outside of Dallas says that climate change is a God-thing and he has Biblical proof.
Smokey Joe got that name because he is pretty much owned by the petrochemical industry. If something ain’t polluting the air, Joe is losing money.
Joe says that you can have “an honest disagreement about the causes of climate change”. You know, like you can have an honest disagreement about gravity or what causes pregnancy or whether is the earth is flat. These, of course, are all things based not on knowledge or science; but on opinion. My opinion is the babies are delivered on a turnip truck and hidden in hospital nurseries until you come get one. And what’s your opinion?
See, this make science tests so much easier.
So, Smokey Joe says –
“I would point out that if you’re a believer in in the Bible, one would have to say the Great Flood is an example of climate change and that certainly wasn’t because mankind had overdeveloped hydrocarbon energy.”
And to think that there are people who call themselves Christians who seriously doubt the existence of Noah and think maybe this was an allegorical story.
Additionally, remember God’s promise after the flood? “I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”
So, unless stupidity is going to be the way God destroys the earth – which from the looks of things might in be very strong contention – Smokey Joe is gonna have a hard time blaming this one on God.
Personally, I think climate change is caused by the carbon put out by Republican brains going up in smoke.That’s my opinion and it’s every bit as solid as Joe’s opinion.
Whoever shot Texas District Attorney Mike McClelland and his wife Cynthia wanted to make sure they were dead.
According to NBC News, McClelland was shot at 20 times. It is unclear whether or not he was hit with that number of bullets. The reports did note that they recovered shell casings from a weapon using .223 caliber ammunition, which just happens to be the same type of ammunition used in AR-15 assault-style weapons. While it's not unique to AR-15s, the number of bullets shot at McClelland could indicate that such a rapid-fire weapon was used.
A Texas district attorney was shot at 20 times and his wife, Cynthia, was shot once when they were gunned down in their home on Saturday, a federal source with knowledge of the investigation told NBC News.
The source didn't say exactly how many times the man was hit. An earlier affidavit in the case said both of the victims sustained multiple gunshot wounds. The reason for the discrepancy was unclear.
The slayings of Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife have rocked the the small town of Kaufman on the eastern outskirts of Dallas.
The brazen attack on the justice official comes weeks after Colorado's prison director, Tom Clements, was shot to death at his home, with a paroled white supremacist ex-con killed in a Texas shootout the main suspect.
The Star-Telegram has published the full affidavit (PDF), which includes requests for a cell phone records dump for the period beginning January 1, 2013 and ending March 31, 2013.
Even though police are not making public statements connecting white supremacist gang prosecutions with the assassination of Assistant DA Haase and DA McClellan, the federal prosecutor in charge of the Texas racketeering case pending against the Aryan Brotherhood has withdrawn, citing security concerns.
