The State of Texas: March 20, 2014

Video of the Day

It’s a scene so ridiculous, even the TV newcasters had no problems knocking it out of the park. “And if you think traffic is bad in your town, take a look at the LBJ Expressway there … nothing ‘express’ about it,” says the anchorwoman. Police have accepted partial blame for what looks like the aftermath of an earthquake, since they began ordering people stuck behind a collision to turn around. It’s so chaotic, it’s almost a thing of beauty:

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Photo of the Day

When you’re Johnny Manziel, it seems you can get anything you want: girls, intimate interactions with the musician Drake … hybrid sneakers. In signing a deal with Nike, Mr. Football had them create some custom kicks that appear to be made for a University of Oregon player (he almost was) but with “the Texas A&M logo inside along with his nickname.”

Daily Roundup

Drug Addict — Texas has managed to scrounge up a new batch of lethal drugs despite almost running out recently, and like any drug fiend that’s finally found a supplier in the nick of time, the state ain’t sayin’ where it got the good stuff. “[C]orrection officials will not say where they bought the drugs, arguing that information must be kept secret to protect the safety of its new supplier,” according to the AP. ” … officials with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice also refused to say whether providing anonymity to its new supplier of the sedative pentobarbital was a condition of its purchase.” And by “safety” they probably mean “widespread public pressure to not sell such terrible chemicals,” as had happened in the past.

Lady Problems — After a lot of tap dancing around the issue, Greg Abbott has come out against legislation that would make it easier for women to file lawsuits for equal pay. “Because wage discrimination is already against the law and because legal avenues already exist for victims of discrimination, Greg Abbott would have not signed this law,’campaign spokesman Matt Hirsch,” said, according to KENS5. That’s all well and good, except for some dang reason, those “avenues” aren’t really there at all. In a great dissection of Abbott’s decision and the issue at large, the Texas Observer’s Christopher Hooks notes that “Pay discrimination happens because of entrenched institutional and personal biases and assumptions—ones the people responsible for hiring and setting salaries may not even be aware of … So why not give women more tools and legal leverage to address pay discrimination, to balance out the fact that many institutions—often without malice—value their work less than their male counterparts?” Great question! Maybe someone should ask the female attorneys under Abbott’s purvey, who apparently can’t find legal avenues themselves for pay equal to their male counterparts.

Cheaper By The Hundreds — It was a wild scene in Houston yesterday when authorities, acting on a tip about a single family being held by smugglers, “found 110 people imprisoned in a packed, rancid ‘stash house’ where smugglers had locked them away pending payment for their freedom,” according to the Houston Chronicle. The HPD spokesman described it as “a sea of people coming at the officers as they entered” the house that had been locked up tight from the outside. As the Chronicle notes, “The raid marked the biggest discovery in the Houston region in at least seven years, and underscored the area’s role as a hub for smuggling people into Texas and the rest of the United States.”

Law and Ordered — “The state’s highest criminal court Wednesday declined Attorney General Greg Abbott’s request to reconsider an October ruling that invalidated a law banning sexually explicit cyberchats between adults and minors — and acted instead to limit the power of Abbott’s office,” according to the Austin American-Statesman. Apparently there is/was a law on the books that says the attorney general’s office must be notified of (and essentially allowed to defend) any statute that the court has decided is unconstitutional. “But in a unanimous, unsigned opinion released Wednesday, the court threw out the notification law, saying it violated the separation of powers between the legislative and judicial branches of government as required by the Texas Constitution.”