I probably shouldn’t call attention to this, but the local paper is reporting that Rick “The Coif” Perry has come out advocating that Texas schools teach intelligent design in science class along with evolutionary theory. In The Pink and Pink Dome took note along with and Gibberish who points out some things you can do to get a jump on this nonsense. Please. Tell me we didn’t beat Florida in the race to return to medieval education.
A fire early this morning has done significant damage to KOOP radio, Sweatbox Studios and the rehearsal spaces housed in the building at 5th and San Jacinto. This is a pretty big blow to the local music scene taking out a great community supported radio station, a recording studio with a long history of great recordings and a centrally located rehearsal space for many local bands. Here’s hoping they can all get back up and running. Stay tuned as I’m sure there’ll be benefits to get the whole thing back up and running. Unfortunately, the cause seems to have been “improperly discarded smoking materials”.
Update: K-EYE (*shudder*) has some video.
I’m not letting this go. The president has decided he’s above the law and nobody’s doing anything about it. Where are the impeachment proceedings?
Here’s yet another example where Bush thinks he’s above the law. He signed McCain’s torture bill, but with the presidential equivalent of keeping his fingers crossed while he did it. He and his administration clearly think that they know better than everyone else and you’re a freedom-hating terrorist-lover if you disagree.
I heard this on the way to work this morning, another example of the administration hurting our position more than helping.
Today was the deadline to file as a candidate for the 2006 elections here in Texas. The big news is that Carole Keeton Strayhorn (or Rylander or whatever the hell her last name is these days) has filed as an independent and not a republican. This allows her to avoid a nasty primary battle for the GOP nomination with our current governor, Rick Perry. It looks to be a four-way race between Perry, Strayhorn, the winner of the democratic primary (Bell or Gammage?) and Kinky Friedman. There’s a lot of speculation going on around the Texas political blogosphere. Check out Off the Kuff, Burnt Orange Report or Pink Dome among others for more info going forward.
Both Strayhorn and Friedman have to collect enough signatures before they’re official and apparently those signatures have to come from people who do not vote in either the republican or democratic primary as I understand it. This means that if you’re going to push for Friedman or Strayhorn, you’ll want to abstain from voting in the primary? I guess they check that on your voter registration? How does that work? What if you vote in some other races in the primary, but abstain from picking a nominee for governor in either party?
For those not familiar with Texas politics, you should pay attention, because what’s been going on here for the last 20 years was a breeding ground for Rove et al. You should also know that Strayhorn is White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan’s mother, which is enough to make me avoid her like the plague no matter how much trouble she causes for Perry.
Update: Here’s some more admittedly left-leaning analysis on the race.
I’m having a hard time remembering how many clubs have called this place just east of Congress on Riverside home. There was Steamboat for a brief time and Bad Dog Comedy Theater. It was a least one latin dance club and it was most recently Sidekicks, a lesbian sports bar? Well now it’s La Bare. That’s right, Austin has joined Dallas, Hollywood, Miami, Houston and Ft. Lauderdale as a city lucky enough to have an official location. For those unfamiliar, La Bare is a male strip club and I’ll forever associate it with the type of place that my mother’s divorced fortysomething friends would try to persuade her to go when I was in high school *shudder*. Let’s see how long this one lasts. Who wants to go over/under on 1 year?
The family and I hit First Night earlier than Andy. We were there from 3pm until 5:30 or 6. We too opted not to buy the buttons this time. I think the overall feel was nice. I agree that they should probably block off Congress in addition to blocking off Cesar Chavez and the South First Bridge. It sounded like they were having problems with pedestrian traffic on Congress anyway from what I overheard on volunteers’ radios. You can check out my Flickr set to see how it all looked during the “Family Festival”.
I would’ve liked to have seen the climbers on the Radisson at night with the film being projected on the side of the building and it would’ve been nice to check out the dragon and the fireworks on Town Lake. The food could’ve been better, although the butter-soaked pretzel from Hoffbrau was a big hit with the adults and the kids. Mmmmm….butter. Blocking off the South First Bridge and letting people go nuts with colored chalk was a cool idea. We took the opportunity to get family photos in all directions since it’s not often that you can safely stand on that bridge. We’ll go again next year.