You Know….

Acting as a dictator, a President DeSantis would exert direct political control over FBI and Justice in a way that Trump or Nixon would envy

DeSantis says this out loud, but folks are too busy laughing at his glitches to notice his fascism. My new column https://t.co/fjprFsvf6M

— Will Bunch (@Will_Bunch) May 30, 2023

...freedom of speech...

Democrats could do a better job of defining barely coded white supremacist language for what it is before the next election. https://t.co/WD3yGkhVI2

— Schooley (@Rschooley) May 30, 2023

...is also the freedom to say really dumb things. And just because Democrats don’t stop them from saying it, and don’t unleash the flying monkeys onto Twitter immediately after something is said, doesn’t mean “they win and we lose!”

Really. Get over the zero sum game reasoning. Granted, nobody’s paying attention to DeSantis right now (beyond political Twitter). But right now he’s nothing more than one more declared candidate for the GOP nomination for president.

And I gotta tell ya his outreach, even to MAGA, sux.

As much as I enjoy it, political Twitter is getting real hard to take seriously. This one, for example, is only a few hours old, and already it's running away with itself:

Is it possible that Paxton's claim that restricting mail ballots helped deny Biden Texas? Hard to know for sure since Texas is repressive on many counts, but there is a clear correlation between mail ballot usage and turnout in 2020. Texas circled in red pic.twitter.com/L3xRmkkkD5

— Michael McDonald (@ElectProject) May 30, 2023

No. Just: no. Paxton is bragging a la Trump's "border wall" pronouncements. There are no facts here, not as he describes the case. Calm down. There is a reason criminal investigations are long and complicated while internet memes spring up in a few hours and become "true" in less time than that. As I mentioned before, what the Texas Supreme Court said was that voters could mean "covid" when they said they had a "disability" (the term in the statute) and needed a mail-in ballot.

Oh, hell, let me quote the court opinion:

The respondents do not have a ministerial duty, reviewable by mandamus, to look beyond the application to vote by mail. Moreover, while the State has alleged that the Clerks are accepting “improper application[s],” there is no evidence in the record that any has accepted a faulty application.

The Clerks have assured us that they will fully discharge their duty to follow the law. We are confident that they will follow the guidance we have provided here. Accordingly, we conclude that issuing the writ of mandamus to compel them to do so is unwarranted.

Got that?  Paxton asked for a court order (mandamus) telling county clerks not to accept mail in ballots because the "disability" was covid, even though the box only says "disability," not "...and which one?"  The court said, explicitly (last sentence) they wouldn't issue such an order.

That's what Paxton asked for.  That's what he didn't get.  The court did, in dicta, say counties can't send ballot applications to all and sundry, but only to those who request one, again per the statutes.  The court also said covid was not a "disability" under the statute; but the county clerks didn't have to check on what voters meant by "disability."  So whether or not covid was the reason, was a moot point.  Paxton spun that bland statement into a "win!"  It wasn't.  What I said in 2020 still holds:

(My suspicion is Paxton's office said "Hey, we won!" and reporters were stupid enough to take their word for it.  The opinion isn't even that hard to read, and surely they have access to lawyers if they stumble over "mandamus" and don't understand that's what Paxton was asking for and didn't get.  We the people really are not well served by our institutions, including the "fourth estate."  My daughter The Golden Child scion of a lawyer would understand this ruling better than that, and she might ask me what "mandamus" meant anyway.  Ignorant reporters reporting on legal decisions are the worst.) 

Let me put it in plain sentences.  Paxton sued to get a court order.  He didn't get his court order.  Lawyers call that "losing."  Paxton says he won, anyway.  Paxton is a liar spinning things to his own advantage, a la Trump.  End of story.

Except now, instead of credulous and ignorant reporters, it's people on Twitter who think Paxton is telling the truth (for once?), and has given away the game.  He's mini-Trump, however, and he's not even lying.  He's just full of empty braggadocio, which in this case is not a crime.  He didn't win that issue.  He didn't suppress any ballots in Harris County.  He didn't do anything but waste taxpayer money on a case that he took to the Supremes, who wouldn't touch it with a club.

Now please get over it.  Please.  I remember when the important thing in on-line political discussions was to be the "fact-based community."  Whatever happened to that?