Morality is not determined by the church you attend nor the faith you embrace. It is determined by the quality of your character and the positive impact you have on those you meet along your journey
Rep. Blake Farenthold resigned abruptly Friday, months after sexual harassment allegations against the Texas Republican surfaced.
Farenthold, who has represented Texas' 27th District since 2011, said in December he would not seek re-election this year. The 56-year-old becomes only the latest member of Congress to resign in recent months following sexual misconduct allegations.
"While I planned on serving out the remainder of my term in Congress, I know in my heart it's time for me to move along and look for new ways to serve," Farenthold said in a statement Friday.
A 2014 harassment lawsuit brought by a former staff member against Farenthold was settled using $84,000 in taxpayer money. The congressman's former communications director, Lauren Greene, accused him of making sexually inappropriate comments. Other former aides have spoken to media outlets about a toxic work environment.
Pajama boy is out?
Aww. what a shame.
Personally I have no idea how he lasted as long as he did.
I mean the guy's like a poster boy for inappropriate sexual behavior.
Some of the allegations about the conduct in his office, and among his staff, are quite shocking.
Looks like we can chalk up another win for the #MeToo movement, and the Blue Wave.
Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D-Texas) reportedly brought in more than $6 million during the first quarter of the year in his bid to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
The Texas Tribune reported that O'Rourke raised $6.7 million in the first three months of 2018.
O'Rourke's fundraising haul was far higher than the amount he had raised during previous quarters, according to the Tribune, when he raised between $1.7 million and $2.4 million.
His campaign told the newspaper that his fundraising haul was higher than that of any Democratic Senate candidate across the country.
"Campaigning in a grassroots fashion while raising more than $6.7 million from 141,000 contributions, we are the story of a campaign powered by people who are standing up to special interests, proving that we are more than a match and making it clear that Texans are willing to do exactly what our state and country need of us at this critical time," O'Rourke said in a statement.
The Cruz campaign has yet to release its first quarter report, but in past quarters the O'Rourke campaign had consistently out raised the Cruz campaign.
By a lot.
Which does not bode well for the Republican incumbent.
So from what I can gather this is Dakota and Bristol doing the whole "pretend not to hate each other for the sake of the kids" thing for the Easter holiday.
I've been there.
I am not a body language expert but if Bristol and Dakota were any further apart one of them would not even be in this photo.
It seems to me that Tripp is finishing out the school year in Texas, but I do not know what that means for him going forward.
Bristol however is likely stuck there at least until after the divorce, at which time she will have to decide if she wants to do the long distance parenting thing, or suck it up and stay in a state where she has limited friends and no family.
As for Track Palin, well his hearing has been reset or continued six times now starting way back in January, and the current date is set for May 5th.
In the meantime Track is under house arrest and all of this guns have been taken away.
So I am sure he is having plenty of time to contemplate his actions.
Who are we kidding? He is likely blaming his parents, blaming his exes, and blaming God.
A suspect in a wave of bombings that terrorized Austin killed himself with an explosion inside his car as authorities closed in, police in Texas said, ending a manhunt but leaving investigators scrambling to determine whether any bombs remain and if he acted alone.
The 24-year-old man detonated the bomb early Wednesday on the side of Interstate 35 in Round Rock, north of Austin, as SWAT team members approached him, police said.
Investigators believe he is responsible for the five explosions that killed two people and injured five others in Austin or south-central Texas since March 2, authorities said. They also warned a wary public not to let down their guard.
"We don't know where this suspect has spent his last 24 hours, and therefore we still need to remain vigilant to ensure that no other packages or devices have been left throughout the community," Austin Police Chief Brian Manley said.
This was a 24 year old white guy who seemed to be targeting minorities.
And yet when asked about this Sarah Huckabee Sanders refused to identify the bombings as an act of terrorism, and Trump did not bother to mention them until the bomber was dead.
AUSTIN BOMBING SUSPECT IS DEAD. Great job by law enforcement and all concerned!
I guess if the suspect is not a brown skinned or a Muslim, he does not qualify as a terrorist, nor do his attacks offer Trump the opportunity to call for a travel ban or a higher wall on the border of Mexico.
By the way Trump is right that the FBI did a great job on this case, and hopefully there is another investigation in which they will have equal success.
The Texas Secretary of State’s office is investigating the notary who stamped her approval on an adult film star’s non-disclosure agreement regarding an alleged fair with President Donald Trump, the Dallas Morning News reported Monday.
By now, that agreement is well known: Porn actress Stephanie Clifford, known professionally as Stormy Daniels, received $130,000 to stay mum about the alleged sexual relationship. Clifford has argued forcefully in recent weeks that she has the right to tell her story because Trump didn’t sign the document, and she’s launched a publicity tour reportedly to include a “60 Minutes” appearance.
But the News reported Monday on yet another complication with the agreement: According to a letter from the Texas Secretary of State’s office obtained by the paper, Erica Jackson, the notary public whose stamp appears on the non-disclosure agreement, did not sign or date it. Jackson also failed provide a required notarial certificate confirming that the people signing the document were who they claimed to be, the letter said.
So Donald Trump never signed this document, and it was never legally notarized.
Well now, I'm no lawyer, but that sounds like somewhat of a problem.
It's kind of like there is a race on to see whether Robert Mueller, or Stormy Daniels will be the first to take Trump down.
And yes, I think there is something that Daniels knows which might very well accomplish that very thing.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's first shot at his expected Democratic challenger, Rep. Beto O'Rourke? Mocking his name.
As Tuesday's primaries were closing, Cruz's campaign released a 60-second radio ad that was a country music jingle prodding O'Rourke for going by "Beto" rather than "Robert."
"Liberal Robert wanted to fit in, so he changed his name to Beto and hid it with a grin," the song says.
O'Rourke said he's gone by "Beto" since he was born.
"My parents have called me Beto from day one, and it's just -- it's kind of a nickname for Robert in El Paso. It just stuck," he said in a brief phone interview Tuesday night.
Democrats in Texas are early voting in large numbers ahead of the first primary elections before the 2018 midterms, stoking party optimism that backlash to President Donald Trump won’t escape the biggest conservative state in the country.
More Democrats have cast ballots than Republicans since early voting began this week in Texas, according to state election figures released Thursday, and turnout among Democrats is up 46 percent over the last midterm elections in 2014. For Republicans, meanwhile, turnout is basically flat.
Trump won Texas by 9 points in 2016 and so dominant are Republicans that they haven’t lost a statewide race since 1994. Political strategists cautioned against reading too much into early turnout totals and said a relatively dull slate of GOP statewide primary races isn’t energizing Republican voters like four years ago.
But the numbers still encouraged Democrats whose best hopes in Texas for 2018 are flipping a few congressional seats as Republicans defend their majorities in the House and Senate. GOP U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz is also up for re-election but is a heavy favorite to win another term.
“It definitely says there was a large number of Democrats who couldn’t wait to get out and vote,” said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University.
Democrats are killing it in the special elections around the country, so the idea that Texas is out of reach for Dems is not exactly a given.
Personally I would LOVE to see that mealy mouthed little POS Ted Cruz go down in flames.
Easily one of the most despicable individuals on the planet.
Bristol Palin has returned to Texas after spending some time quality time with her family in her home state of Alaska amid reports her husband Dakota Meyer has filed for divorce.
The 27-year-old mother-of-three, who has two daughters with Dakota, took to Instagram on Wednesday to post a snapshot of herself enjoying the Alaskan winter with her two-year-old Sailor Grace.
'Already missing AK,' she captioned the image, which shows her eldest daughter bundled up in a bright pink snow suit while cuddled in her arms.
Of course leaving Alaska means that Bristol will be isolated from her support network that she relies on so completely.
What? No Track?
Broken families like this always seem to create a meme of "It's us against the world," which both binds them together and deepens their family pathology.
On her own Bristol is fairly fragile and cannot stand up for herself without breaking down and making it worse.
During her custody battle with Levi she seduced Dakota into becoming her white knight and used him as her go between when she was on the ropes.
Kind of makes me wonder what poor Texas SOB she has targeted to fight her fight this time?
(P.S. I kind of enjoy talking about this fucked up family again. After all covering the school shootings, Trump presidency, and decline of America can be so depressing sometimes.)
One of Dallas' top leaders has urged the National Rifle Association on Monday to find another city to host its annual convention, taking a stand against gun violence in the wake of last week's deadly mass shooting in Florida.
Dwaine Caraway, mayor pro tem of Dallas, said that the NRA, the nation's largest gun lobby, would be met with "marches and demonstrations" if it went ahead with plans to host the three-day meeting scheduled for May 4-6.
"It is a tough call when you ask the NRA to reconsider coming to Dallas, but it is putting all citizens first, and getting them to come to the table and elected officials to come to the table and to address this madness now," Caraway told reporters on Monday. "At the end of the day, we need to connect the dots. The NRA needs to step up to the plate, and they need to show leadership."
"I am saddened the fact that every time that we turn around is some type of gun violence," he added.
If the NRA moved its event, that could cost Dallas as much as $40 million, according to some estimates.
Caraway, a self-proclaimed strong "believer" in the second amendment, said the NRA has a national responsibility "to address this madness now" as he called on the group to help establish better gun laws.
"We should not allow people to possess assault rifles and weapons," he said. "While we are worrying about terrorists, we're living in a terrorist society amongst us Americans today."
A city in Texas asking the NRA to stay the hell away from them?
I am not a Biblical scholar but I am pretty sure that is a sign of the End of Days.
Well for gun owners at least.
Go ahead, somebody tell me again that these students in Florida are just kids, and that they will never have a real impact on the gun debate.
Bristol Palin‘s husband, Dakota Meyer, has officially filed for divorce after less than two years of marriage.
The Medal of Honor recipient tried to keep the split under wraps by using only his and Palin’s initials in the documents, but PEOPLE has obtained the papers filed in a Travis County court in Austin, Texas.
According to the papers, Meyer said he (D.L.M.) and Palin (B.S.M.M.) are in the process of separating and cited “discord or conflict of personalities” as the reason for their split. The discord, the papers said, “destroys the legitimate ends of the marriage relationship and prevents any reasonable expectation of reconciliation.” Meyer, who shares two young daughters with Palin, Atlee Bay, 9 months, and Sailor Grace, 2, said he believes he and Palin will enter into a written agreement over the custody of their children as well as the division of their estate. (Their estate?)
A source knowledgeable of the situation tells PEOPLE Meyer moved out of their home in Austin, Texas, around Christmas.
Yep, around Christmas. That is another thing the IM sleuths got right.
On the divorce papers, which can be seen here, it appears that Dakota made this move to protect some of his assets which he believes are not part of the marriage agreement.
It is also fairly plain that he anticipates a fight and has circled his wagons in preparation.
In other words, yes this could be yet another ugly Palin legal battle.
Well hopefully they will not schedule it for March 27th, Track's trial date, or the Palins will not know which courtroom to show up in to watch their family fall apart.
Dakota Meyer has filed for divorce from Bristol Palin a source tells DailyMail.com.
The veteran filed paperwork two weeks ago according to the source, and move dout of the couple's Austin home around Christmas.
The couple were married in a private ceremony back in 2016, a little over a year after calling of their first wedding just days before the ceremony.
They have two daughters, 2-year-old Sailor and Atlee Bay, who was born back in May. Bristol, 27, also has a 9-year-old son Tripp from her relationship with fiancee Levi Johnston.
Dakota also blocked Bristol on social media says the source. Well I guess it's time for some IM sleuths to give themselves a little pat on the back.
There were certainly signs that not everything was going well with these two, but until today there was no definitive information.
There is already an Instagram photo which seem to indicate that Bristol is back in Alaska for her mom's birthday, and I would not be surprised if that became permanent.
After all, where else is she going to go?
Which makes me wonder if we are not in for another very public custody battle.
You know like the one that started this whole doomed relationship in the first place. I have a feeling that things are about to get ugly, very ugly.
But then again when have things not been ugly with this family?
Traveling the state for GOP events this weekend, Cruz portrayed an uncertain midterm environment that could go down as disastrous for Republicans if they don’t work to counteract Democratic energy throughout the country. Cruz has spent previous election cycles airing similar warnings against GOP complacency in ruby-red Texas, but this time it hits much closer to home for him — he is facing a well-funded re-election challenge from U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-El Paso.
Addressing the Fort Bend County GOP on Friday night, Cruz warned of an “incredible volatility in politics right now,” calling Democrats “stark-raving nuts” in their opposition to Trump. He pointed to Trump’s recent State of the Union address and Democrats’ reluctance to applaud, saying the scene “underscores the political risk in November.”
“Let me tell you right now: The left is going to show up,” Cruz said, delivering the keynote address at the party’s Lincoln Reagan Dinner. “They will crawl over broken glass in November to vote.”
Cruz is feeling the heat in his own bid for a second term. O’Rourke, who has sworn off money from political action committees, outraised
Cruz in the last three months of 2017, $2.4 million to $1.9 million. It was the second quarter in which O’Rourke’s haul was bigger than that of Cruz, who still maintains a healthy cash-on-hand advantage.
I think Ted Cruz is confusing "stark raving nuts" with "demonstrably patriotic" in our opposition of Putin's puppet.
Remember that Ted Cruz was carried to his victory by Tea Party anger at an imagined assault on our democracy, and yet he is surprised by the Left's very appropriate response to a very real assault on our democracy?
Methinks that somebody needs to step outside of the Fox News and right wing talk radio bubble.
(Interesting part shows up at the 1:50 mark.)
Courtesy of Mediaite:
“One thing your dad got criticized for is picking Sarah Palin,” Jones said. “Maybe he was ahead of his time.”
“Isn’t this the party of Sarah Palin?” Jones asked. “How well do you think Sarah Palin would do in the modern Republican party?”
“I still think President Trump is lightning in a bottle,” McCain responded. “I don’t think he’s going to be emulated very easily.
“I think it’s a very specific man and a very specific moment,” she added.
“The question of Sarah Palin — because I’ve heard it argued to me before, that she was sort of the opening of the populist movement within the Republican party — I’m mixed on it, because part of me thinks, yes that could be true. The other part of me thinks it was just the wave where the party was going.”
I would disagree with that last part.
I think that Palin gave voice to the very people that the Republican party had relied upon for decades but did not ever want to have their picture taken with at any events.
These were the great unwashed racists, xenophobes, and Christo-fascists who could be relied upon to vote GOP, but never felt that there were any candidates that truly represented them.
Sarah Palin did, and she demonstrated to Donald Trump that these people were the easiest to manipulate, agitate, and turn out to vote.
That is why Trump tapped Palin early on to present him to HER people, after which he summarily dismissed her and cast her back into the wilds of Wasilla.
Which is why we now find her showing up to give a speech in some bodunk county in Texas:Sarah Palin, the ninth governor of Alaska, levied accusations against the press, attacked “fake feminists” and called Texas to “revitalize our identity” during Saturday night’s Lincoln Reagan Dinner, hosted by the Denton County GOP.
The speech, which also saw a raffling off of a AR-15 shaped guitar autographed by Ted Nugent, had all of the red meat we would expect from Palin:
Palin called the area's climate “cute,” adding, “It's Texas, and there are a lot of snowflakes surviving in Texas.”
In her speech, she berated news reporters for perpetuating “press propaganda.”
Addressing the “state of the news media,” she said, “It's tragic because America's finest are fighting, and even dying, for those freedoms in the free press.”“What the press likes to focus on is labeling us 'conspiratorial,’” she said.
She presented a motif of “identity” throughout her speech, emphasizing that the GOP ideology serves to uphold American values.
“Leftists say the stupidest things,” Palin said before aiming an attack at “pink-pussy, fake feminists” — namely, actress, writer and director Lena Dunham.
The crowd responded with enthusiastic applause and whistles when Palin condemned illegal immigration. People who have a problem with that, she said, can “take it up with Barack Hussein Obama and Chuck Schumer.”
Yep, these are Palin's people. The biologically dead end cousin fuckers, who demand that pro-wrestling be part of their cable package, and who eagerly fill the stands of monster truck rallies.
And now this is who also supports Donald Trump, even though he does not have a thing in common with them.
Well aside for abject racism and a disdain for liberals that is.
Another high school has turned into a scene of carnage, this time in western Kentucky.
Fourteen people were wounded, two of them fatally, after a shooter opened fire Tuesday morning at Marshall County High School, Gov. Matt Bevin said at a news conference. Another five people sustained other injuries.
A 15-year-old male student was arrested at the scene and will be charged with murder and attempted murder, Bevin said.
The slain victims were a boy and a girl, both 15 years old. The girl died at the scene and the boy died at a hospital, State Police Commissioner Richard W.
Sanders said. The conditions of the injured students were not immediately known.
Sanders said the suspect, armed with a handgun, walked into the school at 8:57 a.m. ET and started shooting.
There was another shooting just the day before in Texas, also with a handgun, that fortunately did not result in any fatalities.
An Italy Independent School District employee confronted a 16-year-old after he opened fire on a teenage girl in the cafeteria at Italy High School on Monday morning, stopping the attack and prompting the gunman to run from the scene, authorities said at a news conference Monday afternoon.
Ellis County Sheriff Chuck Edge said the unidentified employee, "did an amazing job in stopping that situation."
Deputies responded to reports of the shooting just before 8 a.m., as students were gathered in the cafeteria for breakfast service, officials said. Italy Independent School District Superintendent Lee Joffre said there are typically 45-55 students in the cafeteria for breakfast, although he was unsure of the exact number of students inside when shots rang out Monday.
Edge said a 16-year-old male student, whose name was not immediately released, fired several shots from a semi-automatic .380 handgun.
"That handgun was recovered from the scene and is in evidence," Edge said.
Later the 16 year old was taken into custody and it was determined that the young man and his victim had been in a relationship.
Just a reminder that killers do not necessarily need AR-15s to maim or kill multiple victims.
When these events took place under President Obama's watch you could see the emotional toll it took on him, and how he struggled to find a way to keep our schoolchildren safe.
Somehow I just do not see Adolph Twitler bothering to even bat an eye over this.
President Trump’s voting commission asked every state and the District for detailed voter registration data, but in Texas’s case it took an additional step: It asked to see Texas records that identify all voters with Hispanic surnames, newly released documents show.
In buying nearly 50 million records from the state with the nation’s second largest Hispanic population, a researcher for the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity checked a box on two Texas public voter data request forms explicitly asking for the “Hispanic surname flag notation,” to be included in information sent to the voting commission, according to copies of the signed and notarized state forms.
White House and Texas officials said the Texas voter data was never delivered because a lawsuit brought by Texas voting rights advocates after the request last year temporarily stopped any data handoff.
Gee, it's almost as if this whole commission was created simply to prove that Donald Trump lost the popular vote because of illegal immigrants who voted against him.
Former vice-presidential candidate and governor of Alaska Sarah Palin will dine in Denton next month as the featured speaker at a Denton County Republican Party event.
Palin will give an address at the party's annual Lincoln-Reagan dinner on Saturday, Feb. 10, according to a news release, which also calls Palin a "conservative icon."
The ticketed event begins at 5 p.m. and will be at the Denton Embassy Suites hotel. It includes a meet-and-greet with local candidates and current GOP office-holders. individual tickets are listed at $125 on the party's web site.
It has been sometime since Palin has had a speaking gig, which makes me think that perhaps there were some recent unexpected expenses that were not covered in the Palin yearly budget.
You know, things like lawyer costs, replacing broken windows, medical bill for a badly beaten husband, that kind of thing.
In fact even in Texas they know about that most recent Palin kerfuffle:
Other members of the Palin family have made more news than she has recently, though. Her son Track pleaded not guilty Monday to a felony assault charge in a a case involving a dispute with his father, Todd Palin, according to the Associated Press.
Yep, not going to be able to leave that behind.
Which of course means that Palin will not be taking any questions from the press during her visit.
Well, maybe Fox News if they bother to cover the event.
The Comal County Sheriff's Office says the 53-year-old man was teaching his son how to shoot on a more than 10 acre private property in Bulverde when it happened.
Deputies say it was an accident.
Many in the community are saddened by the news, but local gun expert Jaime Correa says it's not unusual for kids to learn how to handle a gun at such an early age.
Nope it is never too young to teach them young'uns about shooting people in the head.
After all isn't that how people in Texas win arguments? (And Alaska to be honest.)
When that article was written the father was still clinging to life, but he didn't cling for long.
In Fort Bend County, Texas, the debate over free speech has come down to a now-infamous bumper sticker: “FUCK TRUMP AND FUCK YOU FOR VOTING FOR HIM.”
Last week, Fort Bend County Sheriff Troy Nehls suggested in a Facebook post that the owner of the truck bearing the remark could be arrested and charged with disorderly conduct after the sheriff’s office received complaints about it. That owner happened to be Karen Fonseca, who, a day later, was arrested on an outstanding warrant on fraud charges from 2015. Nehls, who is considering a bid for Congress in 2018, later deleted the Facebook post. Then, over the weekend, Fonseca struck back in her own way, adding another decal to her white GMC Sierra: “FUCK TROY NEHLS AND FUCK YOU FOR VOTING FOR HIM.”
At least 20 people are dead after a gunman opened fire inside a Texas church on Sunday morning, officials say.
The shooting occurred at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, approximately 30 miles from San Antonio, around 11:30 a.m.
The shooter, who is believed to have acted alone, fled the church on foot and was killed by police, officials said. Two county commissioners said at least 20 people were dead; a police commissioner told the BBC that 27 had died.
Whatever the final toll, it is already the deadliest shooting at a place of worship in modern American history, surpassing the nine killed at Emanuel AME Baptist Church in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015.
At least six helicopters transported injured people to hospitals, the Dallas Morning News reported, and a two-year-old child is among the wounded.
Here is more from the New York Times: Albert Gamez Jr., another Wilson County commissioner, told CNN that he was told by the police that the gunman was chased into the next county and was killed, but it was not clear whether the police shot him or he killed himself.
Mr. Gamez said he was told by an emergency medical technician that 27 people were dead and 24 others were injured.
We do not yet know much about this, but what we do know is that it is tragic, unnecessary, and ultimately preventable if only we wanted to take the steps to keep it from happening again.
Update: Now we know why the Right Wing has not said much. It's probably a white guy.
NEW: Authorities have preliminarily identified TX church shooter as white male in his mid-20s from outside San Antonio, sources tell @ABC.
