Wanna see what Republican leadership and planning will do? Check this out.

Although turtle nesting season continues well into July, there have already been 51 Kemp's ridley nests and an Atlantic green sea turtle nest recovered this year - as opposed to an overall 23 nests Sea Turtle Inc., a nonprofit conservation organization, gathered on South Padre Island in 2007.

Among the 52 nests, eggs in at least 17 have hatched. Eggs in another dozen nests are expected to hatch any day now.

The number of hatchlings turned loose this year is at least 1,350, according to Sea Turtle Inc., which releases the nestlings into the Gulf of Mexico.

Kemp's ridley sea turtles are an endangered species.

For decades, the Harris County Sheriff's Office has justified its controversial contract deputy program by saying it puts more officers on the streets to keep everyone safer, not just those who can afford to pay for extra protection.

But a Houston Chronicle analysis of Sheriff's Office records shows contract deputy positions are filled immediately while dozens of normal patrol jobs remain vacant. In some cases, deputies who were pulled from the traditional patrols to fill contract spots have not been replaced.

Under the department's contract deputy program, civic associations, school districts and municipal utility districts pay the county to have deputies assigned to specific areas or neighborhoods rather than larger patrol districts that may include dozens of subdivisions.

With nearly half of the department's 530 patrol deputies assigned to the predominantly middle- and upper-income communities that can afford to sign contracts, lawmen say they are struggling to provide basic services to the rest of unincorporated Harris County.

The city also ranks 21st nationally in Allstate's list of cities with the safest drivers.

...

Three other cities on the Texas-Mexico border - Laredo, McAllen and El Paso - were also highly ranked in the report, a positive reflection of the safety of drivers on the border.

Via Sholars & Rogues, It’s time to label conservatives for what they really are.

It’s succinct (four words or less, remember?). The words aren’t inflammatory or even accusatory. They speak to common sense. Everyone knows you can’t get something for nothing, right? We all know that’s wrongheaded. The phrase allows liberals to talk about how conservatives have been buying votes by running up debt, and how that debt affects us now and will be a crushing burden for our children. It paints conservatives as being dishonest vote-buyers, using an entire course of action beginning in the Reagan years. It puts them on the defensive, and allows liberals to put forward taxes for investment in the common good while fending off the tax-and-spend labels with an equally effective slogan.

I’m going to start referring to conservatives as “something for nothing conservatives.”

Won’t you join me?

Yes I will.

Well, as individual citizens who are not members of the US Senate, there's very little we can do to stop the freight train of telecom immunity and the ultimate effect of it, to protect Bush from ever having to answer for his illegal actions.

However, sometimes 'very little' is enough. Sign the petition here, donate a few bucks here and, if you're on Sen. Obama's campaign site, click here to ask him to join the filibuster.

I've heard from a brave few of you, and one of you posted, about my 'whining' about Obama's cave in on FISA. And Faith Based Initiatives. You're brave because you know I can be, to be perfectly honest, a little volcanic in response to criticism.

First off, let me make one thing perfectly, crystal clear. IT'S NOT WHINING. IT'S ANGER.

Let's make something else crystal clear, we live in a REPUBLIC. We elect officials to serve us. We do not need them to 'carry a banner', especially not on these issues. We need them to do the right thing and when they don't we express our displeasure in a number of ways. Finally, they are the ones we have placed in positions to effect change. If they don't do it, what the hell are we supposed to do?

These are Constitutional issues. There is NO compromise on them. This isn't a litmus test issue, like gay marriage, abortion or any of the other issues that people vote on. THIS IS THE FOUNDATION OF ALL OUR LAWS AND OF OUR COUNTRY.

My question to you is why the hell YOU aren't as mad as I am. Make no mistake, this isn't about a lingering primary that still festering. This is about OUR candidate for President blithely agreeing with, even extending, some of the most ridiculous programs of the Bush regime.

I have been opposed to wiretapping since it was discovered in December, 2005. I have ALWAYS been opposed to faith based initiatives. I did not oppose these programs because they came from President Bush's rotten brain. I opposed them because they violated the Constitution of the United States (and, in the case of the wiretapping, because it was also a violation of federal law). I would have opposed them just as ardently had Bush been a Democrat. Integrity demands nothing less.

Take me to task over my very solid criticism? Like hell. Why aren't YOU fighting alongside me?

And this one wins the MOTO of the day award...

McCain typically leaves the sharpened criticism to others, in the hope of being able to claim the high ground of conducting a "respectful" campaign. But the abrupt shift in tone among his paid staff members, volunteer surrogates and other Republican staples of the cable news circuit is unmistakable, and it resembles the unified message the GOP used to paint the 2004 Democratic candidate, Sen. John F. Kerry, as a flip-flopper.

It also reflects a growing belief among McCain's strategists that the campaign for the White House will be won or lost based on voters' view of Obama's character. In a strategy memo released Thursday, McCain's top political adviser accused Obama of "self-serving partisanship."

"In his time on the national stage, he has consistently put his party and his self-interest first," McCain strategist Steve Schmidt said in the memo. "We have seen Barack Obama forced to choose between principle and the interests of himself and his party. He has always chosen the latter."

Schmidt said in an interview that the campaign intends to point out "every day" that Obama broke his promise to accept public financing for his campaign, and that he has not made good on his pledge to debate his Republican opponent anytime and anywhere.

"It's a statement of fact that he discards people, and he discards positions when they become inconvenient for him," Schmidt said Friday. "When politicians say one thing and then do another, like Senator Obama has done, voters wonder about the steadfastness of the character of the person sitting in the Oval Office."

Obama spokesman Bill Burton said he is not surprised by the sharp attacks from McCain's surrogates: "It's our view that's exactly the politics that the American people are sick and tired of. The only ideas they have to promote are the failed ones for the last eight years."

Kinda a puts the Gen. Clark bullshit in perspective, no? So now it's all about flip flopping, eh? Well, he's in favor of faith based bullshit and that's nothing new. He's been talking about the smallness of our politics, as if that was our biggest problem, for a while as well.

Exactly how has he flip flopped?

Yet this new evidence has never received a full hearing. Appeals cases are often argued on narrow points of law, which is why, in two decades of court battles, no judge has ever ruled on the new evidence in [Lester Leroy] Bower’s case, Anthony Roth, one of Bower’s attorneys, told the Observer.

For what it’s worth

So what does Brother Barack have to say about rights and liberty? Any bets on the FISA vote?

Yes, progressives are again marginalized by a presidential candidate. What do you want for nothing – a rubber biscuit? For the purist

Quit crying a river and do something, and stop depending on politicians to carry your banner. Also, don’t start carrying on about Clinton because her mad dash to the center would already have been complete.

I have to admit that I haven't had much time for news this week, what with actually trying to get some things accomplished at work this week. Not an easy task, especially when, because July Fourth comes on a Friday this year half the country decided to take Thursday off as well. On top of that, the Canadian overlords of the company I work for were off on Tuesday because that's some kind of holiday up in the Great White North to celebrate their forefathers' decision to live under British tyranny. (Oh please, Your Majesty, won't you quarter some of your soldiers in my house? I have some comely daughters they can ravish. And are you sure I'm paying enough tax on tea?)

But I have picked some chatter on the blogs about the Democrats cave-in on FISA, and it's maddening to see much of the discussion descend to the level "given that your Constitutional rights are being trashed, wouldn't you trust the Democrats to do the trashing rather than the Republicans?" To me, this seems like asking me if I'd prefer being hanged with a nylon rope or one of hemp.

I still believe that this country was founded on ideals that are still worth fighting for, and if we sometimes fall short of those ideals, we owe it to ourselves to renew the fight to preserve and extend them, not to rationalize our failures and give up our heritage as something quaint and outmoded in this modern, dangerous world.

Like some folks say at Christmastime, let's remember the reason for the season.

In Congress, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

Really, feigning sadness over this would just be disingenuous. He didn't like gays, blacks, hispanics... well, he didn't like most Americans. And well, we didn't like him.

To his family, we're sorry for your loss.

However, we're thrilled to see this son of a bitch go on to his great reward, whatever that may be. Seriously, I'm doing cartwheels. I hated this fucker and I'm glad his malevolent life has finally come to an end.

Despite the ACLU’s TYC lawsuit, many juvenile justice advocates assert that, while it’s slow-moving, there is progress at TYC — trickling down from the top.

When Richard Nedelkoff became TYC conservator and brought new leadership from outside the agency, reform proponents saw hope for change—hope that may have been dashed by the ACLU’s revelations of punitive practices and abuse.

But for those brave (or naive) enough to keep believing in the possibility of reform, the ACLU’s revelations don’t seem to fit the classic TYC pattern of abuses following the promise reform. State-appointed TYC watchdog and former ACLU director Will Harrell says the suit does not accurately reflect the massive culture shift occurring at TYC. And, even most youth advocates say there’s evidence the agency is on the right path; it just needs legislative and fiscal support.

“Six months ago, I wouldn’t have believed the reforms taking place at TYC were possible,” says Harrell, “but this leadership has embraced all the principles we advocated for in the past.”

Harrell says most allegations mentioned in the ACLU suit are already being addressed. “I wish ACLU would have come to me before filing suit,” he says.

Litigation, says Harrell, is often an ineffective means to bring about change, especially when it involves filing suit against an underfunded agency, whose new leaders have demonstrated a willingness to openly discuss problems and issues with advocates.

And, indeed, advocacy organizations traditionally opposed to TYC say they have seen dramatic changes in the agency over the past six months. “TYC leadership is making encouraging cultural and structural changes,” says Deborah Fowler, legal director of Texas Appleseed, a non-profit that sued TYC last year over pepper spray policies. “The new leadership shares our reform vision,” she says.

So why did the ACLU hit TYC with such force just as the agency is trying to right itself?

Terri Burk, ACLU of Texas executive director, says the organization was representing clients with pressing needs, and the 2007 legislative reform was too slow in its progress. The best way to move the process along was to file suit, she believes.

“Culture shifts won’t happen overnight in an agency with deep-rooted issues to overcome,” responds Harrell.

Advocates on the ground seem to agree.

“TYC is a big ship to turn around. It takes longer than we sometimes would like, but it’s moving in the right direction,” says Rebecca Lightsey, Texas Appleseed executive director.

Ultimately, it seems the longevity and speed of reform efforts depend on those beyond TYC’s top management. “TYC finally has leadership that’s youth and family-focused,” says Jodie Smith, public policy director of Texans Care for Children. “The burden of change now falls to the legislature.”

“You get what you pay for,” says Harrell, who believes funding issues will ultimately determine the pace of change. “The real test of progress will be what reforms are put into place next legislative session.”

[Michael] Ratcliff [former Sheriff and aide to Victoria DA, Steve Tyler,] was indicted in October. He was accused of offering the boy a swap of sexual favors for a nicer cell in the hospital wing when the boy was an inmate. Ratcliff told the grand jury that he didn't make unwanted or sexual advances toward his accuser.

What many didn’t expect was for [Terry] McDonald, the San Antonio special prosecutor, to offer a plea for a charge that did not appear in the original indictments.

In October, a grand jury indicted Ratcliff, a former sheriff, on five counts – including aggravated sexual assault of a teenage boy and of criminal solicitation of a minor.

But McDonald offered Ratcliff an aggravated perjury plea on Thursday, and Ratcliff accepted it.

In an ominous trend for baby boomers, Texas doctors are opting out of Medicare, weary of the perennial fights over cuts in reimbursement.

Only 58 percent of doctors in the state now accept new Medicare patients, according to a recent survey by the Texas Medical Association, down from an estimated 90 percent before 1990. Among primary-care doctors, the percentage is 38 percent.

An appeal in a judge’s ruling declaring that a new trial should be held in the Jim Wells County Pct. 3 Commissioner’s race could be decided before the end of the month, court officials confirmed Wednesday.

....

Following a one-day trial, visiting District Judge Nelva Gonzales-Ramos issued a ruling April 15 finding that two voters were prevented from voting in the March 4 primary, a sufficient number to throw out the results and order a new election for June 17.

John McCain warned Mexicans that more border walls are needed before he attempts to overhaul U.S. immigration laws again, an unpopular position in a country where he had hoped to boost his standing with Hispanics.