Zippidy Doo Da

I'm not stupid, I'm from Texas!

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Chupacabra Report

News that Gets My Goat


-For my morning schadenfreude today I see a Chronicle headline saying Appeals court agrees to review DeLay’s overturned conviction. This news was welcome to me, as I’ve been perplexed recently to read that DeLay has a new job as columnist and radio personality for the Washington (Moonie) Times, and that he gave $1,000 to an otherwise-credible candidate to be my representative in Austin.

DeLay was convicted in 2010 of money laundering and conspiracy for a scheme to illegally spend corporate money in Texas political campaigns. This conviction was overturned in 2013 by two Republican judges on a three-judge-panel, who ruled that “the evidence was legally insufficient to sustain DeLay’s convictions.”

DeLay’s attorney, Brian Wice, said that he looked forward to arguing again that the conviction should be overturned. No doubt. For a defense attorney, Tom DeLay is a gift that keeps on giving.

-President Obama’s nominee for the post of Surgeon General is tied up in the Senate, of course. The issue here is that the NRA found him referring to shootings as a public health problem. Personally, in this country where there are more gun deaths every year than fatal car accidents, I would say that he ought to be disqualified should he not recognize this fact, which is endorsed by physician and hospital groups nationwide. But if the NRA’s against it, so goes the Congress. This would be like Detroit automakers opposing a nominee for advocating a seatbelt requirement.

-NPR had a story today about an unpublished theory from Albert Einstein. This “lost theory” offers a model of a universe expanding after the big bang. Researchers at Hebrew University in Jerusalem found a mistake in Einstein’s calculations, a minus sign that should have been a plus. Astrophysicist Mario Livio, author of “Brilliant Blunders” a book about mistakes made by great scientists said “About 20% of Einstein’s papers contain various mistakes of various degrees. You try to think in unconventional ways and when you do that, guess what? Sometimes you encounter mistakes.” No doubt people lobbying Texas’ State Board of Education will be combing through the work of Isaac Newton now, looking for grounds to finally repeal the law of gravity.

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