Witch Hunt Takes Down CSCOPE

by: Texas Freedom Network

Mon May 20, 2013 at 03:44 PM CDT

Cross-posted from TFN Insider.

Once again, politics trumps education in Texas.

State Sen. Dan Patrick, the Republican chairman of the Texas Senate Education Committee, sounded downright gleeful today in making a surprise announcement that the state's Education Service Centers will no longer provide lessons in their CSCOPE curriculum management system.

“The era of CSCOPE lesson plans has come to an end,” Sen Patrick declared at a Capitol press conference this morning. What remains of CSCOPE will essentially be a guide to scheduling instruction on the curriculum standards. The hundreds of small school districts that use CSCOPE will now have to find other resources for developing lesson plans for teaching those standards.

Officials with the Education Service Centers that created and managed CSCOPE released a letter at the press conference agreeing to stop providing lessons to school districts. The letter came after increasing pressure from Sen. Patrick, the Texas Attorney General's Office and an assortment of Tea party and other right-wing pressure groups.

Those critics have been absurdly claiming that CSCOPE has been indoctrinating students into Islam and Marxism and undermining Christianity and patriotism. (Current and retired teachers had been writing those lessons for CSCOPE. Who knew that so many Texas teachers were Marxists and Islamists? Shocking!)

Read more below the jump.

What Will Happen if Texas CISPA-Like Bill Passes?

by: Ben Sherman

Mon May 20, 2013 at 03:10 PM CDT

Hey Texans - hope you like 404 messages.

The Texas CISPA-like bill, SB 1052 - is being debated today and may very well pass the Texas Legislature.

The Texas CISPA bill could soon affect the ability of Texas users to access specific websites -- and every website and Internet provider in the country that serves data to Texans will be forced to comply with the law. Call Governor Rick Perry @ 512-463-1782 and tell him to veto the bill if it makes it to his desk.

Supporters of the legislation have shortsightedly attempted to circumvent the national CISPA law by empowering their own law enforcement agents to use search warrants to seize any electronic data/communications "regardless of whether the customer data, contents of communications, or other information is held at a location in this state or at a location in another state." That is - from any websites or Internet service providers "under a contract or a terms of service agreement with a resident of this state." This is extremely broad and encompasses the endless copyright claims all across the Internet that CISPA targeted.

That means that if you are a company in Iowa, or California, or New York, and you have Texas users who visit your site or have accounts, you could be required to turn over their user data, communications with other users, and any other information about the user that you may be storing - and you could be forced to turn it over in as little as 4 days.

The bill states that the maximum amount of time that a site or Internet service provider can delay turning over records is between 15 and 30 days, depending on the court order. The bill also criminalizes any delay by a website or service provider, and lets the local jurisdiction decide whether to file contempt of court charges against a director/owner of a website or service provider who fails to comply within the short window.

What are websites and Internet service providers going to do, in order to prevent themselves from being at the whim of every court and law enforcement agent in Texas? One simple solution: Texans could be blocked from websites that don't want to comply with an extremely broad definition of "electronic communications".

Read more below the jump.

Craft Beer Closer to Tapping Its Full Potential In Texas

by: Joe Deshotel

Mon May 20, 2013 at 00:56 PM CDT

The bipartisan Senate bills, SB 515-518, sponsored by Eltife (R-Tyler) and co authored by Watson (D-Austin) received unanimous support from their originating body before being sent to the House where so far they have been passed on 2nd reading with little or no debate. Bills must pass a 3rd reading of both chambers before being sent to the Governor's desk. Perry could still veto the bill, but his signature is not required for it to become law, and the fact that the bill passed both chambers with better than 2/3s support means the measures would go into effect immediately. For a breakdown of what each bill would effectively do for brewers check out my earlier post.

The bills may be making their way through the process now but only because the hard work and negotiating has gone on behind the scenes for over a decade, as small brewers have battled the Wholesale Beer Distributors of Texas over changes to the industries "3 tier" system. The WBDT have fought against the concept of allowing brewers to self distribute, but in concession from the brewers the package of bills also included, SB 639, restrictions on "reach back pricing". That entails the brewers charging retailers or distributors based on how much those entities sell their product to consumers.

Cheers to Republican Senators Carona and Eltife, Democratic Senators Watson and Van De Putte, and all the stakeholders in the Beer Working Group who have helped to tap the full potential of this creative and growing industry.

Jan Soifer Elected Travis County Democratic Chair

by: Michael Hurta

Mon May 20, 2013 at 09:30 AM CDT

This meeting saw high turnout, as over 70 precinct chairs were present to choose their new leader. Congressman Lloyd Doggett and Senator Kirk Watson were present, too.

Both Doggett and Watson expressed their gratitude for outgoing chair Andy Brown's hard and diligent work. For that work, that CEC would pass a unanimous resolution praising Andy Brown for his service to the party.

Doggett and Watson also expressed their support for Jan Soifer. Soifer was the only candidate nominated to fill the role in an interim basis -- there will be a full election in the March primary -- and she was elected by acclimation.

Soifer is currently a Democratic precinct chair. She's a practicing attorney who has been long involved in Democratic politics in Austin. Like Andy Brown, who lost an election to a different political office before running for Chair, Soifer's involvement includes a run for District Judge in 2004. Her experience will undoubtedly help her in the chair's most frequent and important function - raising money for the Travis County Democratic Party. The transition is already off to a good start in that manner, as Kirk Watson handed over a $15,000 party right before Soifer was elected.

Soifer started immediately, as she chaired the rest of this May's CEC meeting. In remarks to the precinct chairs, she enumerated several immediate goals: continue the party's solid fundraising immediately, recruit more precinct chairs (over half many of the county's precincts are without Democratic chairs), and finally hire a full-time Executive Director to replace former ED Laura Hernandez.

Soifer is the first female chair of the Travis County Democratic Party in over three decades, and she plans to run in the 2014 primary to finish the term.

9:37 pm 5/20 Correction: The original posting said that over half of the county's precincts were without Democratic precinct hairs. That is not correct. Depending on semantics, one might be able to say that almost half were without chairs -- but the CEC approved about 15 new chairs on Sunday.
Clarification: While Andy Brown ran for HD48 in 2006, he dropped out and endorsed Donna Howard, but too late to take his name off of the primary ballot.  

Deadly Texas Tornadoes Kill Six, Injure Dozens, Displace Hundreds

by: Ben Sherman

Mon May 20, 2013 at 08:00 AM CDT

On Wednesday night, as many as 12 tornadoes hit around north Texas' Granbury, killing six people and destroying nearly one hundred houses. Dozens were injured and 250 were displaced in Granbury. Seven people remain unaccounted for.

Hood County Sherrif's Lt. Kathy Jiveden said officers "are going house to house" looking for residents trapped under rubble, injured or dead near Lake Granbury.

"We have never seen a community catastrophe with as many injuries as we did through last night," Kyle McCombs, chief of staff at Lake Granbury Medical Center, told USA Today.

The tornadoes also impacted other cities in the area. In Cleburne, 25 miles southeast of Granbury, Mayor Scott Cain declared a disaster citing "wide damage, some injuries and loss of property." Millsap and Decatur were also hit.

The United States hasn't seen such deadly tornadoes since six people were killed in Woodward, OK in April 2012.

Watch interviews with Texans affected by the tornadoes below the jump.

Texas CISPA Bill Scheduled for Monday Vote

by: Ben Sherman

Sun May 19, 2013 at 02:00 PM CDT

Read more about the contents of the bill here.

The Texas CISPA bill, approved unanimously by the House last week, may be passed by the Legislature within 24 hours. It has been scheduled for a vote on Monday.

The bill, now slightly altered SB 1052 in the Senate, does the following:

• Requires any Internet provider that serves Texans to hand over private communication and files.
• Sets no standard for warrants for such seizures, enabling arbitrary violations of Texans' privacy.
• Forces Internet providers to respond within 15-30 days (and sometimes 4-30), giving them almost no time to protect information not targeted.
• Makes it a crime for an officer, director or owner of a company to not comply with the request within the 15-30 day window.
• Opens the door to politically-motivated seizures of online communication.

Read more below the jump.

Republican Judge Forces Lesbian Texan Out of Her Home For Helping Raise KIds

by: Ben Sherman

Sun May 19, 2013 at 01:00 PM CDT

Judge John Roach, 296th Judicial District Court

This month in McKinney, just outside of Dallas, Republican judge John Roach kicked Page Price, a lesbian, out of her home. Why? Because she was helping raise her partner's two children. As of May 7th, Price has 30 days to evacuate her home.

This sick, anti-family judge is involved at all because Price's partner, Carolyn Compton, is going through a divorce. Compton's husband rarely sees the children and was once charged with stalking Carolyn Compton, though he plead the charge down to a misdemeanor. Roach inserted a "morality clause" into Compton's divorce papers which forbids her from having anyone she is not related to "by blood or marriage" in her home past 9:00 p.m. if the children are present. The aptly named Roach wrote that he didn't approve of Compton's "lifestyle". Her lifestyle of living with the person she loves and raising two kids.

"Our children are all happy and well adjusted. By his enforcement, being that we cannot marry in this state, I have been ordered to move out of my home," Price wrote on Facebook.

Read more below the jump.

McClendon: The People Deserved a Fair Public Hearing of the Exoneration Review Commission Bill

by: Michael Hurta

Sun May 19, 2013 at 00:00 PM CDT

Read on to see this week's op-ed from Representative Ruth Jones McClendon.