Please to be going away now

Yet another time Texas Monthly got Texas politics completely wrong.

I would comment at Salon, but they have a new comment system and I'm not going on Facebook in order to use it.

But here's the thing:  Texas has a "Legislature," not a "General Assembly."  Texas has a House of Representatives, and a Senate.  The Texas Senate passed Senate Bill 6, a bill aimed at stopping persons from using restrooms in public buildings that don't conform to the gender on their birth certificate.   Everyone understands what that means:  Dan Patrick, Lt. Governor and so "President" of the Texas Senate, gets to poke the Fort Worth Independent School District in the eye for laughing at his mighty sword.  No public building is going to post guards outside bathroom doors and ask for your papers before you can pee; but schools know who the transgendered kids are, and under Patrick's bill those schools can't do anything to make life easier for those kids.

Yeah, Patrick is a prick.

Which is really the only reason I'm going this far with this, except Salon alerts me that a new bill has been tendered in the Texas House, one meant to reflect the "watered down" bill of North Carolina.  Now, it is possible this bill will get through the Lege by sine die (the last day of the regular session) and it is highly unlikely Greg Abbott would call a special session on this issue even though he's now decided he likes this House bill.  But the fly in the ointment remains the same as it ever was.  Joe Strauss, the Speaker of the House, heard the cries of Texas businessmen and decided they spoke sooth.  He never said he was in favor of transgendered rights to pee where you're most comfortable peeing, but he did say he wasn't interested in the bill and quietly let SB6 die in the House without a vote.  Hence, the new House bill.  And what is it's fate?

Since last year, House Speaker Joe Straus has expressed reservations about the state adopting new bathroom regulations, describing the issue in November as not the "most urgent concern of mine."

"The Speaker's position has not changed," Straus spokesman Jason Embry said Tuesday in a statement following Abbott's remarks.

The Lege has a lot of important bills to get through before the last day of May.  Unless Joe Strauss decides this is one of them, Texas will likely be spared the embarrassment of making life that much harder for school children in Texas.