THE LEGISLATURE KEEPS THE SAME OLD BOSS:

Though Democrats picked up some seats in the Texas legislature, the Republicans kept a majority and chose the Speaker of the House. There was a challenge to the authoritarian rule of incumbent Speaker Tom Craddick, who even upset many Republicans with his aggressive and brutal style of pushing for the agenda of Tom Delay and his cohorts. Most Democrats wound up supporting a Republican challenger instead, but he withdrew after the Craddick crowd forced through a vote prohibiting a secret ballot. You can read more here, and a column with more background here. (Notice that the Austin paper mistakenly listed our new Democratic State Representative from Dallas County, Allen Vaught, as a Republican instead.)

Representative Jim Dunnam of Waco, chair of the House Democratic Caucus, sent this letter to the 55 Democrats who voted for the arcane parliamentary motion that would have freed the Craddick opponents from fear of his retaliation. But all was not lost. Democrats also made some progress on reforming the rules for the future, as described in this statement.

THE WEB WATCHES W:

Bush Meets Monty Python "This policy is definitely deceased."

Keith Olbermann on Bush's speech (video)

Daily Show: Is Bush the New Lincoln? (video)

Texas Cong. Lloyd Doggett on Bush's speech (video)

Hand-picking Bush's audience

What Bush said to the troops (or maybe not)

Better armor lacking for new troops in Iraq

Vanity-Induced Bonfires

Bush Sends GIs to his Private Fantasyland

Rich: He's in the Bunker Now

Lying, Even Though It's Over

The collapse of the Bush presidency poses risks

Krugman: The Texas Strategy

Finally, this quote, reminding me of Lloyd Bentsen's line to Dan Quayle, is from Robert Fisk in Bush's New Strategy:

...history is littered with powerful men who thought they could batter their way to victory against the odds. Napoleon comes to mind; not the emperor who retreated from Moscow, but the man who believed the wild guerrilleros of French-occupied Spain could be liquidated. He tortured them, he executed them, he propped up a local Spanish administration of what we would now call Quislings, al-Malikis to a man. He rightly accused his enemies - Moore and Wellington - of supporting the insurgents. And when faced with defeat, Napoleon took the personal decision "to relaunch the machine" and advanced to recapture Madrid, just as Bush intends to recapture Baghdad. Of course, it ended in disaster. And George Bush is no Napoleon Bonaparte.