The State of Texas: April 15, 2016

Quote of the Day

“When I married Ted, we got back from our honeymoon, and he went off to the store and came home by himself. And I was completely shocked to see that he arrived back at our apartment with literally 100 cans of Campbell’s Chunky soup. I never bought 100 of anything.”

-Heidi Cruz to CNN during a town hall discussion, according to Gawker. Heidi went on to say that she promptly returned “every can,” only to regret her decision after a heart-to-heart phone conversation with her mother. She later promised Soupin’ Ted she would bring his beloved broth-based non-perishables back to the pantry. It is unclear why she chose to tell this story, or why Ted has such a love affair with soup. Let’s just say this whole thing is souper weird.

Daily Roundup

Tag Teamed—Attorney General Ken Paxton has joined the City of Dallas in its legal fight to ban the Exxxotica porn expo. In February, city council voted to keep the convention out of the city-owned Dallas Convention Center, and Exxxotica soon filed a lawsuit alleging the city’s decision was unconstitutional. According to the Dallas Morning News, Paxton filed court documents on Thursday claiming the convention center is a “nonpublic forum,” so the city can pretty much decide what comes in and out of the building’s doors. “It is vital that governmental entities have the ability to exclude sexually oriented businesses from property that they own,” Paxton said in a statement. “The city of Dallas, through its democratically elected officials, has rightfully decided that its convention center should not be home to an event where obscenity and criminal activity occurs. A federal court should not overturn that decision by elected officials.” That’s kind of ironic considering Paxton is currently defending himself against allegations of criminal activity. But hey, he (hopefully) kept his clothes on during his alleged criminal activity, so it’s not that bad, right?

Keep Austin Devilish—This is why we can’t have nice things. Writes the Austin American-Statesman: “It began with a symbolic proposal to declare Austin a ‘compassionate community’ and ended with the website of the Satanic Temple blown up on the video screen at City Hall.” Apparently, a proposal before Austin City Council calling for compassion to be a “clear, luminous and dynamic force in our polarized world” was met with resistance from Don Zimmerman, a conservative councilman who was concerned the proposal contained too much religious language. So Zimmerman wanted to toss his own two-cents into the proposal through a brief amendment. His suggestion sounded normal, pretty much touting the righteousness of compassion, and the council accepted it. But Zimmerman spoke with a forked tongue. Unbeknownst to his fellow council members, the second paragraph of Zimmerman’s addition was lifted straight from the Satanic Temple’s website. When Zimmerman came clean, the council quickly voted to remove the Satanic verse. After the vote, according to the Statesman, Zimmerman said that “even though there are sure to be a handful of Satanists in his Northwest Austin District 6, he ‘just can’t represent everybody.'” A true man of the people.

Full Retreat—Is Texas basically Afghanistan? Apparently, one war veteran thinks the Lone Star State and the rocky, war-torn nation are roughly equal in awfulness, so he actually sued the Department of Homeland Security over his assignment in Laredo. The bizarre story comes from the Detroit Free Press, which reported on Thursday that a federal judge sided with Army Sergeant Anthony Gazvoda, a Michigan native, who argued South Texas’s dry, hot climate triggered PTSD attacks after having served overseas. “All I want is to be able to continue serving my country,” Gazvoda, who had been working for Customs and Border Patrol since his discharge, told the Free Press. “I just can’t do it in a place that constantly reminds me of where I was repeatedly shot at. I’m sorry about that – I really am – but I just can’t be there.” Counsel for the federal government suggested in court that Gazvoda’s request for reassignment may have actually been because he was “uncomfortable working around non-Caucasians who don’t speak English”—and though the judge admitted that there was some evidence of that, he also noted that doctors initially claimed “the presence of dark-skinned individuals (who) spoke a foreign language aroused painful and unpleasant memories from when Gazvoda was deployed.” That’s certainly unfortunate.