The Texas House Makes HB2 Seem More Popular Than It Is by Changing the Page Layout

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Via Stand With Texas Women/Facebook

Via Stand With Texas Women/Facebook

The Texas House of Representatives’ House Research Organization (HRO) releases a “Daily Floor Report” summarizing the bills and testimony presented before the House or its committees. The House has been in recess since the second special session started, although the State Affairs Committee held a hearing on the resurrected anti-abortion bill, HB2, last Tuesday, July 2. The Daily Floor Report for July 9, 2013 (PDF file) has a summary of that hearing, and it demonstrates a sneaky way of making it appear, at least superficially, that your bill has more support than it actually does (h/t Arthur).

Beginning on page 1 (the first page after the cover sheet), the report lists witnesses testifying “for” the bill, “against” the bill, and “on” the bill. It lists three pages of witnesses supporting the bill and one page of witnesses opposing it. The report also identifies one person who testified “on” the bill, Ellen Cooper of the Department of State Health Services.

Based on that, you might think that far more people testified in support of HB2 than in opposition to it, right? You might be excused, at first glance, for thinking that three times as many people testified for it as against it.

You would be wrong about that.

At the end of the three-page-long list of HB2 supporters, the report states that “about 1,090 others” signed up to testify in support of the bill. Most of them did not get to deliver their testimony to the committee in person, of course, since the hearing might still be going on a week later if they had. Still, three pages of names plus 1,090 more is quite a lot of people.

How many more signed up to testify in addition to the one page of names testifying against HB2? At the end of that much-shorter list, the report states that “about 2,060 others” signed up to testify against HB2.

According to the Texas Tribune, a roughly equal number of people testified for and against the bill. I suspect the HRO is not accustomed to writing such lengthy lists of witnesses, but that still does not explain the different page lengths. The scale of the testimony on Sunday, June 23 does not even come close to last Tuesday, and the Daily Floor Report (PDF file) for that day clearly indicates that more people signed up to testify against that bill than for it.

Wherever you stand on the issue of abortion, this sort of game-playing should not be acceptable.

Maybe Daily Floor Reports are subject to a page number limit. That is about the only honest reason I can think of at the moment for why the report is set up this way, but even that would not explain why the HRO cut off the list of opponents when it could have shortened the list of supporters.

The chair of the steering committee for the House Research Organization is Rep. Bill Callegari (R-Houston). I sent Rep. Callegari the following request for information through his Facebook page:

Dear Rep. Callegari,

I am a resident of Austin, Texas, and I have been researching and writing about the events surrounding HB2, SB9, and the related bills pending in the Legislature. I am not affiliated with any news or media organization. I have a question regarding the Daily Floor Report released today, July 9.

The report summarizes the State Affairs Committee hearing on HB2 that took place last week, and includes lists of people who registered to testify for and against the bill. According to news reports, only about 100 people were able to give live testimony to the committee, with about an equal number of people testifying in support of and in opposition to the bill. Today’s Daily Floor Report lists three pages’ worth of supporters’ names, then adds that about 1,090 more people signed up to testify in support of HB2. It then lists one page of opponents’ names, and adds that about 2,060 more people signed up to testify against the bill.

My question is as follows: why did the report list so many more names of supporters than opponents, when more people signed up to testify against the bill than for it, and roughly equal numbers of people actually testified to the committee on either side of the issue? Your attention to this matter is greatly appreciated.

I’ll update if I hear anything back.

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This Week in WTF, July 5, 2013

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Once again, nothing much tops the shenanigans of the Texas Capitol this week when it comes to WTF, but here are a few stories that I caught.

– First up, an awesome story: Christina Stephens, who lost her left leg in a “foot crush injury,” has built a prosthetic limb for herself out of LEGO bricks.

National Park Service [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

National Park Service [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

– Tulsa, Oklahoma is considering a bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics, which Deadspin calls “adorable.” What makes it WTF-worthy is that the city is reportedly using the Trail of Tears in its bid, as a selling point.

In a nod to the state’s American Indian history, the Olympic torch would be led along the solemn Trail of Tears, not far from where field hockey would be played in Tahlequah.

Just to bring you up to speed on that bit of American history, here’s what the National Park Service has to say about it:

In 1838, the United States government forcibly removed more than 16,000 Cherokee Indian people from their homelands in Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina, and Georgia, and sent them to Indian Territory (today known as Oklahoma).

The impact to the Cherokee was devastating. Hundreds of Cherokee died during their trip west, and thousands more perished from the consequences of relocation. This tragic chapter in American and Cherokee history became known as the Trail of Tears, and culminated the implementation of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which mandated the removal of all American Indian tribes east of the Mississippi River to lands in the West.

And there’s this from PBS:

The Cherokee, on the other hand, were tricked with an illegitimate treaty. In 1833, a small faction agreed to sign a removal agreement: the Treaty of New Echota. The leaders of this group were not the recognized leaders of the Cherokee nation, and over 15,000 Cherokees — led by Chief John Ross — signed a petition in protest. The Supreme Court ignored their demands and ratified the treaty in 1836. The Cherokee were given two years to migrate voluntarily, at the end of which time they would be forcibly removed. By 1838 only 2,000 had migrated; 16,000 remained on their land. The U.S. government sent in 7,000 troops, who forced the Cherokees into stockades at bayonet point. They were not allowed time to gather their belongings, and as they left, whites looted their homes. Then began the march known as the Trail of Tears, in which 4,000 Cherokee people died of cold, hunger, and disease on their way to the western lands.

This kind of puts the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics in a different perspective.

– A Belgian diplomat and his wife apparently found themselves at the center of a terrorism investigation, of sorts, after she tried to breastfeed their baby in a posh country club while in possession of a black backpack. Accounts differ over what exactly happened, but a police officer allegedly told the woman, “In Sri Lanka, babies are used by terrorists…You have to understand, this club has had terrorism threats in the past.” So babies are precious gifts and terrorist accoutrements, I guess.

Photo credit: National Park Service [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

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Dear Rep. Laubenberg

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Via Dallas County Democratic Party on Facebook

Via Dallas County Democratic Party on Facebook

The following is reposted with permission from a Facebook post by my friend Andreas, in relation to the HB2 hearings on Tuesday, July 2, 2013 in Austin, Texas:

Dear Rep. Laubenberg,

The truth shouldn’t ever have to fear inquiry. If this was a bill that would actually help increase women’s health and safety you would not have to avoid answering tough questions about its effect on women. You would not have to endure scathing rebuttals from actual health organizations and medical professionals. You would not have to ram this legislature through with a special session. If this was a bill that would help Texas women, you would have garnered broad support for it.

But as we have seen in the last couple of weeks, this is not about women’s health. This is about your personal religious view on women, sex and when life starts. This is about limiting access to abortions and making them so dangerous, expensive or logistically difficult, that you are basically outlawing them.

I might by cynical when it comes to the motivations and loyalties of politicians, and I might be disenchanted by the mockery of the democratic process – but I am not stupid. Don’t insult my intelligence by pretending that you have the health and safety of women on your mind.

You know what would convince me that you actually care about women’s health and safety and that you want to lower the number of abortions?

If you would fund the abortion providers so they can meet the medical requirements that you say are so important.
If you would champion age-appropriate and comprehensive sex education.
If you would fight to make contraceptives easily available and affordable.
If you would listen to what medical professionals have to say about this topic.

But as it stands all you do is using questionable tactics to get around a law that you don’t agree with. Since you can’t attack Roe vs. Wade directly you try to cancel it out by these shamefully disingenuous tactics. The truth shouldn’t ever have to fear inquiry, but there isn’t much truth here, is there?

With the same respect that you show towards women,
AF

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The Extent of Anger at Planned Parenthood

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A friend posted this on Facebook after the protests regarding HB2 and SB9 on Monday, July 1, 2013:

Out of all the blues I talked to tonight, MOST of them were just super focused on having their tax dollars NOT go to Planned Parenthood. I mean, I kept trying to ask them “how can we help women have planned (versus unplanned) pregnancies” and they would just go back to Planned Parenthood Planned Parenthood Planned Parenthood and how evil it was.

Even the really cool, chill, level-headed people were just so transfixed with the evils of Planned Parenthood.

I almost felt that they would be fine with private abortion clinics as long as they weren’t Planned fucking Parenthood.

Planned Parenthood has really really pissed them off. Their main argument was that women who go in there aren’t given unbiased info about their options – they are pushed towards abortions. And they argued that PP makes their money of abortions and wants abortions. That PP is pro-abortion and is in the “abortion business.”

Also they said that Planned Parenthood gets money for giving mammograms from the government but it’s a fraud because they don’t actually give them.

There was a WHOLE LIST. I didn’t really believe any of it, but I suggest anyone who isn’t super familiar with Planned Parenthood and all that it has to offer and all that it does (and does not do) and how it works to take some real time reading up on Planned Parenthood.

PP isn’t the bad guy – but I found myself without enough thorough knowledge about them (other than the basics) to defend them.

Learning what to research through the other side’s arguments….

I have two thoughts on this:

1. Their information on Planned Parenthood seems incomplete or inaccurate. Here is what they actually do:

© Planned Parenthood/Via washingtonpost.com

© Planned Parenthood/Via washingtonpost.com

2. Remember how, a week earlier, Planned Parenthood funding was considered “not germane” to the issues presented in SB5?

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My Video of the Stand With Texas Women Rally, July 1, 2013

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Here’s my video of the Stand With Texas Women Rally at the Texas Capitol this past Monday, July 1, 2013. It was a less-than-seasonably-hot day for Texas, meaning it stayed under 100° F the whole time. The iPhone apparently doesn’t handle heat all that well, so it kept shutting off on me. Here’s the video I was able to get. The initial graphic is by Lindsay Braun.

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Right-Wing Deontological Morality

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Immanuel_Kant_(painted_portrait)Several studies published in the online edition of Social Psychological and Personality Science examined “the moral judgments of religious individuals and political conservatives,” finding them to be “highly insensitive to consequentialist (i.e., outcome-based) considerations.” The full paper is behind a paywall (and I’m not sure I’d understand it, anyway), but Eric W. Dolan at The Raw Story offered a summary, which included some unavoidable spin.

The study by Jared Piazza of the University of Pennsylvania and Paulo Sousa of Queen’s University Belfast, which included a total of 688 participants, found religious individuals and political conservatives consistently invoked deontological ethics. In other words, they judged the morality of actions based on a universal rule such as, “You should not kill.” Political liberals, on the other hand, consistently invoked consequentialist ethics, meaning they judged the morality of actions based on their positive or negative outcomes.

I can’t help but put this into the frame of the Philosophy 101 class I took at Rice University almost exactly twenty years ago. (Prof. Larry Temkin would be so proud to know I’m finally using what he taught me, assuming he has any idea who I am.) We read and compared the deontological theories of Immanuel Kant to the utilitarian theories of John Stuart Mill in that class. Dr. Temkin pretty much designed it to be as painful as possible for incoming freshmen.

Anyway, political and religious conservatives tend to be deontological, focusing on the “rightness” of an act itself. I’m not sure if the study examined political or religious liberals directly, but Dolan goes on to say that they tend to take outcomes into context in determining morality—a very utilitarian view.

In general, conservatives who participated in the study showed far greater concern with whether an underlying action was “right” or not, even if an action considered “wrong” by the participant led to positive outcomes, or vice versa. However, as Dolan notes:

There was a notable exception. When it came to torture, Piazza described American conservatives as “full-blown consequentialists.” But the same could not be said of religious individuals.

“In other words, political conservatives found torture acceptable when it brought about a greater good, but religious individuals found torture less acceptable even when it was a means to a greater good,” he told PsyPost.

Anyway, take what you will from this.

Photo credit: “Immanuel Kant (painted portrait)” [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

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When Sarcasm = Terrorism

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league_of_legends_ahri___cosplay_by_korixxkairi-d5yg32aSometimes Texas’ criminal justice system gets so twisted around, I find myself favorably quoting something from the National Review. This is the story of Justin Carter, a now-19-year-old Texan who made a flippant remark in an online argument about the video game “League of Legends,” and is now in jail for making a “terroristic threat.” When he was still 18 years old, Carter responded to someone calling him “insane,” “crazy,” and other hyperbolic taunts by saying “Oh yeah, I’m real messed up in the head, I’m going to go shoot up a school full of kids and eat their still, beating hearts.” He reportedly followed that up with “lol” and “jk.”

One might be tempted to think that this was a teenager being a pompous teenager, without any thought to the fact that anyone in the whole world could read what he just wrote. That includes a woman in Canada, who, according to the National Review‘s Charles C.W. Cooke, “inexactly described herself as a ‘concerned citizen'” and reported Carter to Texas police. She apparently did this after she noticed that Carter lived near an elementary school. I have no idea if that means “next door to” or “in the same zip code as” an elementary school, but it was enough for Austin police to arrest him and charge him with making a terroristic threat.

“Terroristic threat” sounds worse than it is under Texas law, but it’s still very serious. This is where the case gets odd. Texas Penal Code § 22.07(a) defines “terroristic threat” as follows:

A person commits an offense if he threatens to commit any offense involving violence to any person or property with intent to:
(1) cause a reaction of any type to his threat by an official or volunteer agency organized to deal with emergencies;
(2) place any person in fear of imminent serious bodily injury;
(3) prevent or interrupt the occupation or use of a building, room, place of assembly, place to which the public has access, place of employment or occupation, aircraft, automobile, or other form of conveyance, or other public place;
(4) cause impairment or interruption of public communications, public transportation, public water, gas, or power supply or other public service;
(5) place the public or a substantial group of the public in fear of serious bodily injury; or
(6) influence the conduct or activities of a branch or agency of the federal government, the state, or a political subdivision of the state.

(Emphasis added.) Offenses under (1) and (2) are usually Class B misdemeanors. An offense under (3) is a Class A misdemeanor, and offenses under (4) through (6) are third-degree felonies.

In theory, the state has to prove that Carter intended to cause fear or a disturbance, meaning that he knew such a result was likely and he wanted it to happen. The “lol” and “jk,” if you attempt to put yourself in the mind of a teenager, would seem to dispel any evidence of intent. It is also worth considering whether his comments were directed to any specific person or place. He was not specific as to a “target,” and it requires something of a leap to go from a stupid taunt on the internet to an actual plan.

The National Review launched a petition to “Free Justin Carter Now” that, according to Pajamas Media (a blog I might never otherwise go near), has at least 25,000 signatures.

Now, of course, the counter-argument: I do not for one second condone the actions of Austin police or, presumably, Travis County prosecutors in pursuing this case. I have a hypothesis as to why they initially took it so seriously, though: Newtown, Connecticut. If Justin Carter had gone and shot up an elementary school, and it turned out that police knew he had made a stupid threat on the internet…..it would not have been good for more than a few city, county, and maybe even state officials. Once they figured out, presumably, that Carter had no actual intention of doing anything other than bluster, continuing to prosecute him strikes me as a raw abuse of power. Maybe they hope to make an example of him, but that seems pretty inexcusably authoritarian.

Photo credit: “League of Legends Ahri – cosplay” by Korixxkairi [CC BY-ND 3.0], via deviantart.

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10 Things Old White Republicans Can Do Instead of Trying to Pass Anti-Choice Legislation

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Old white Republicans seem to have quite a bit of time on their hands, and they seem to think passing anti-choice legislation is a good way to pass the time. I thought I’d offer some tips on things they could do instead. (h/t to Jen for the idea.)

1. Shuffleboard.

file000504567877

2. Contra. Not the Nicaraguan guerrilla group—I’m talking about the 1980’s Nintendo classic. (Psst! There’s a secret code that can get you nearly unlimited lives. If you promise to stop trying to pass all this restrictive legislation, I’ll tell you what the code is.)

© 1988 Konami

© 1988 Konami

3. Duck hunting. This can be accomplished with the Nintendo or in real life.

file000700947736

4. Ensuring the people have access to affordable contraception.

file0001913270767

5. Arm wrestling. 

800px-Armwrestle

6. Fly fishing.

file0001047486975

7. Building a ship in a bottle.

800px-Bateau_en_bouteille

8. Southern-style cooking (I hear there’s a vacancy in the Southern-style cooking TV show market coming up.)

file8151332600640

9. Guaranteeing adequate and effective sex education.

How_To_Put_on_a_Condom_graphic

10. Retiring.

file6431234669588

Here are a few things you should not do instead of trying to pass restrictive anti-choice legislation:

1. Constitutional amendments that involve marriage.

file000353140187

2. Starting your own pornography company.

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3. Drone strikes.

800px-Predator_Drone_021

Photo credits: jimb from morguefile.com; ‘Contra’ © 1988 Konami, via Wikipedia; nasirkhan from morguefile.com; jppi from morguefile.com; Bombadil77 [GFDL, CC BY-SA 3.0, CC BY 2.5], via Wikimedia Commons; seriousfun from morguefile.com; Remi Jouan (Photo taken by Remi Jouan) [GFDL, CC-BY-SA-3.0 or CC-BY-SA-2.5-2.0-1.0], via Wikimedia Commons; LifeisGood from morguefile.com; Katherin Parker Bryden (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons; Seemann from morguefile.com; sullivan from morguefile.com; Mkey (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons; US Air Force (http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2005/s2421.htm) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

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The “Unruly Mob” Smears Continue, but Help Comes from Unexpected Places

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The North Texas Tea Party is at it again, insisting that the bulk of the opposition to SB5’s reincarnations, HB2 and SB9, comes from out-of-state people and local Austinites motivated primarily by free food.

There is a core of about 1500-2000 of Austin residents college, homeless, and others) that could just about qualify as semi-professional protestors. We’ve seen the same ones at education rallies, pro-abortion rallies, gay rights rallies, etc. They consider it fun and worthwhile WHEN the free food is involved. But try asking them who their state rep or state Senator is.

(Dawnna Dukes and Kirk Watson. I did not have to look that up. But I digress.)

And now, our folks have found Craiglist entries offering to PAY people to show up, as has happened before; a standard MoveOn tactic.  Add to that a NATIONALLY orchestrated effort for buses from all over (some possibly out of state) by the well-oiled community organizor types.

I was there yesterday. If there was free food, no one offered it to me. I was cheering and wearing orange, and yet I had to buy my own lunch. It’s almost like I wanted to be there because I believe in the cause. Hmmmm….

I’m wondering if anyone has photographs of these buses “possibly” coming from out of state. It would take many, many buses to get so many people to the Capitol. Anyone?

Then there’s the thing about the Craigslist ad. The NTTP blog does not provide a link or any other evidence of these ads, so I asked the author if he had links or screenshots. A quick Google search, however, turned up two pages addressing it.

Townhall.com has a brief (i.e. five sentence) piece by Katie Pavlich linking to a Craigslist ad (since deleted, as Craigslist ads usually are) and including the following picture (titled “ScreenShot2013-07-01at103755AM_zpsd0f53d76”):

Via townhall.com

Via townhall.com

That sounds very….general. At the very least, the fact that an organization is trying to hire activists in a town with more than 50,000 university students should not be surprising to anyone. To link this ad directly to the current protest effort at the state Capitol takes a bit of imagination.

A rather thorough debunking of the Craigslist claim came from Breitbart.com, of all places. John Sexton contacted the group that posted the ad and wrote the following:

I called Grassroots Campaigns and spoke to an individual there familiar with the ad. He explained it is part of an ongoing campaign being run on behalf of Planned Parenthood. PP has been hiring grassroots fundraisers since last summer. The Craigslist ad is part of that fundraising campaign, not an attempt to hire protest organizers.

There is another link on the ad itself which leads to this page offering full time “Assistant Canvas Director” jobs. The job description reads in part “Canvass in the field for four days per week, to train new and experienced staff in the field and meet personal fundraising requirements.” So it’s definitely a fundraising job.

Planned Parenthood is working with Grassroots Campaigns to hire fundraisers in Austin and also, it appears, in other locations around the country. These job listings are not part of the recent attempts to block SB5 though it’s probably not a stretch to imagine some of the folks will be participating in the protests.

From looking at his Twitter feed, I feel confident in saying that Mr. Sexton and I disagree on many things. That said, I am immensely grateful for his work to debunk this claim. The only way any progress is possible in the long-term is if the two (or more) sides can argue the actual issues, not slander one another. I try to refute misinformation on my side when I see it—and it does happen. I couldn’t leave a comment on the Breitbart story, so I tweeted my gratitude to Mr. Sexton.


He replied:


I truly believe we should applaud good journalism everywhere we see it. I am not talking to you, North Texas Tea Party.

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That Time a 20-Week Abortion Ban Was Found Unconstitutional – Isaacson v. Horne

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800px-Entering_Arizona_on_I-10_WestboundArizona passed House Bill 2036 (PDF file), a law banning abortions after 20 weeks, in 2012. After a federal district court declined to issue a preliminary injunction barring enforcement of the law in Isaacson v. Horne (“Isaacson 1“), 884 F.Supp.2d 961 (D. Ariz. 2012), the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed earlier this year, finding the law unconstitutional. Isaacson v. Horne (“Isaacson 2“), No. 12-16670, slip op. (9th Cir., May 21, 2013). I mention this now because Texas is trying something similar.

I. HOUSE BILL 2036

Section 7 of Arizona’s HB2036 added two sections to title 36, chapter 20, article 1 of the Arizona Revised Statutes, which covers general provisions for abortion. Section 36-2158 required doctors to give various information to women seeking abortions, with different sets of information depending on whether the fetus had been diagnosed with a “lethal fetal condition” or not. The information had to be provided at least 24 hours before performing an abortion. Section 36-2159 prohibited abortions if the “probable gestational age of the unborn child,” as determined by the physician, is twenty weeks or more. Violating this restriction could subject a doctor to loss of license and criminal liability.

Section 9 of HB2036 listed findings that, according to the Legislature, supported section 7 and the rest of the bill. These included supposed complications that become more likely in late-term abortions, the state’s interest in “protecting the health of women,” and fetal pain.

II. ISAACSON 1 – U.S. DISTRICT COURT, DISTRICT OF ARIZONA

The plaintiffs in Isaacson were three medical doctors who filed suit against the state attorney general, officials for Maricopa and Pima Counties, and the Arizona Medical Board and its director. The filed suit on July 12, 2012, seeking a preliminary injunction to bar enforcement of section 7 of the law, which was to take effect on August 2. They specifically objected to the 20-week ban. Continue reading →

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