I thought your point was: the protesters, regardless of their legal guilt, could never be prosecuted for appearance/political reasons.
I’m pointing out that’s also true for the time-changer.
By golly, Bricker, you did it! You found something to defend, and without having to resort to points of grammar. True, this is odious, unjust, and vile, and likely to cause enormous suffering for Texas women who can’t simply bop over the state line for their medical care. But look how well dressed the Republicans are! And they regularly brush and floss!
Yes, that’s why I tacked on ,“my opinion” in the next post. To clarify, I’m working in the “court” of public opinion only.
And since I’m an adept rabble rouser, I say we get the rope and string’em up now … 
The senator was discussing SB5 in relation to the recent sonogram bill, which requires women in Texas to get a sonogram and then wait 24 hours before proceeding with an abortion, as another barrier in Texas womens’ ability to exercise their legal rights as guaranteed in Roe vs. Wade. She cited the sonogram bill as an example of another recent piece of legal obstruction – one in a series. This is like saying you can talk about one brick in a wall but you cannot mention the other bricks when describing the wall.
Except it doesn’t say that in the Texas Senate rules. Anywhere. Unless it’s somewhere outside of the ‘decorum’ and ‘filibuster’ sections. It does say what the senator shall and shall not do, must and must not do. Greater violations of decorum have gone unremarked. This is treading closer to tradition than actual law.
The pleas from Ellis and Whitmire regarding this were along the lines of “look, traditionally in the Texas senate if someone is going to stand in front of this body for hours and hours and hours with no relief, unless they make some deep violation of the rules, we don’t give them a harder time than they’re giving themselves. We’re supposed to be colleagues, not enemies.” As deep as tradition goes in the Senate and in Texas, the opposition were more interested in winning – at any cost.
On this at least we agree. This was a vastly stupid thing for the majority party to do. It fired up the base of Texas progressives and made the case internationally famous. Dewhurst’s subsequent blustering about arresting the press and the kid who started the “unruly mob” singing The Eyes of Texas in the Capitol didn’t help (for y’all who are watching at home, this would be like forbidding people from singing the National Anthem. The Eyes of Texas is particularly troublesome in that it’s about being constantly vigilant against injustice).
I don’t think the possibility of incarceration for 48 hours is equivalent to a second-degree felony for forging government documents.
The problem with that argument is that there’s very little limit. You could talk about the pay disparity between men and women as an example of yet another burden on a woman who needs to pay for an abortion.
It’s certainly inferrable from the two rulings from 1969, 61 S.J. Reg. 1059, 1760.
“When a member has been recognized and is speaking on a motion to re-refer a bill, he must stand upright at his desk and may not lean thereon;” and “When a member has the floor and is speaking on a bill or resolution, he must stand upright at his desk and may not lean or sit on his desk or chair.”
Taken together, it’s pretty clear that the purpose of those rulings was to impose a highly artificial and strict reading of Rule 4.01.
I am willing to bet that no one enforces those rules for a four minute speech. So if you wanted, you could find thousands of instances in which a senator spoke while leaning on his desk, and no one raised a eyebrow. So your comment that other breaches have gone unremarked is not all that compelling. A breach is whatever behavior is raised by point of order and ruled upon by the chair (and, if appealed to the body, then confirmed by the body).
Incarceration for 48 hours is the penalty the Senate can directly impose. But the behavior also violates criminal law: Texas Penal Code § 38.13, which is a Class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail, or a fine of up to $4,000, or both.
Be sensible. Both are bills specifically designed to regulate and limit abortions in the state of Texas. They explicitly have the same aim – to regulate and limit abortions in Texas – but they go about it in different ways. One institutes a sonogram and 24 hour waiting period. The other has a laundry list of other restrictions: 20 weeks instead of 24 as the ceiling, requirements for the doctor to administer the RU486 pill concurrently over two separate days, et cetera. They are both regulating an identical activity. It strains credulity to suggest they are unrelated to that extent.
I’m just talking about filibusters, though there is technically no ACTUAL difference between a filibuster and just holding the floor all day long. In the words of the senators themselves, there was no doubt that this was the most scrutinized filibuster in the Texas Senate for more than forty years.
Slightly tricky to enforce on a rotunda full of people – not to mention mightily bad publicity. I’m not suggesting that the demonstration was strictly legal, though given that the lion’s share of the shouting protesters were outside the Senate chambers rather than inside, the argument could also be made that the 48 hour penalty is slightly shakier. I forget the actual wording of the law. 
I’m afraid I don’t see it as being an equal crime to forging government documents, though. Nor does the law: a class A misdemeanor versus a type 2 felony. An action taken by one person to defraud the public versus spontaneous nonviolent protest of illegal actions taken by a public body… I’m probably biased, but I’m not seeing equivalence there.
So the legislature started back at it yesterday.
Any hopes of getting the abortion restrictions( ban without calling it that) unbuckled from the rest of the bill and tabled/killed?
What is the rest of the bill?
Just a regulation requiring the doctor and patient to pray together for guidance, and for God to smite the patient if she chooses wrong. Nothin’ much.
Can’t find any article on SB 5 that mentions anything beyond the abortion restrictions.
Bans abortion after 20 weeks with a narrow exception to avoid the “death or substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman,” or if any anomaly would result in the death of the born infant “not later than minutes to hours after birth,” regardless of treatment.
Requires doctors to administer abortion drugs like RU-486 in person and provide a follow-up appointment in person, which would substantially hinder those doctors who must travel in order to make their services accessible to women in rural and other underserved areas.
Requires all abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of where they perform their procedures, again restricting abortion access for women in underserved areas or in areas where hospital owners oppose abortion.
Requires all facilities where abortions are provided be certified as “ambulatory surgical centers,” the requirements of which would limit the number of facilities in Texas authorized to provide abortions to five, all located in major cities, again removing the ability for poor and rural Texas women to access abortion procedures.
Doesn’t sound like there’s anything to “unbuckle” so far.
Since it’s a new session, they were going to have to start over anyway. I believe – from what I’ve heard, anyway – that the new bill is not an omnibus bill; rather, there’s a series of bills that do some of the same things.
And the Senate’s apparently in recess until July 9, so there’s that.
So Perry called a special 30 day legislative session with a week knocked off right at the start? Oops…
Strange they’d go for piece meal rather than the omnibus. Would think that introducing each bill separately would be slower going.
Obviously they both involve abortion. But the sonogram bill became law. So what’s the specific relevance of it to the pending bill?
My point exactly. There is obviously a great deal of discretion vested in the cahir; the hammer comes out on a filibuster but not on an ordinary speech, even though, under the rules, a filibuster is simply an ordinary speech.
I don’t agree that the public is defrauded.
And according to this cite, no crime was committed by changing the time/date – the official time is when the voting begins, not when it ends.
Which would make it a Class A misdemeanor stacked up against no crime at all.
I guess it seemed appropriate since (presumably) this whole special session will focus exclusively on this one topic.
Well, now, if that isn’t a slippery piece of work! You mean to tell me there is some legal proscription, somewhere, says that while dicussing a *pending *piece of legislation, any *passed *legislation may not be referred to, because it isn’t relevant!
I’ll be dipped in shit! I have never heard of such a thing. And as embarassing as it may be to admit such ignorance, I doubt I’m the Lone Deranger, here. Probably says that somewhere, but I don’t know, so I pretty much have to ask you to show me. Where it says that.
Well, it might be somewhere in the Texas Senate filibuster rules. Probably not, as it would make no sense. At any rate, Dewhurst appears to confidently claim very broad latitude in defining “non-germane” remarks.
Yeah, I’m not sure why I need to handwalk you through this.
Bills don’t exist in a vacuum. If the pending legislation had been passed, combined with the sonogram bill, it would have created a massive burden on a woman undergoing this procedure.
A woman in El Paso, for example, who wanted RU486, would have to drive to San Antonio, have a sonogram, wait a day, go back, take a pill, wait a day, go back, take another pill, and go home. Can you afford to take a three day vacation whenever you feel like it? With less than three months’ notice? I can’t. Rich white women can. Maria Lopez down in the Valley can’t. Just as the sonogram bill creates a time and money burden on women, so too do the new RU486 regulations.
In, in fact, exactly the same way.
Not germane, apparently.
ETA: Oh, and in case you’re unaware. El Paso to San Antonio, one way, going at 85 mph up I-10? About a nine hour trip.
Well, sure, if you keep it down to 85. But this is Texas.
Not to take away from the crap that is the bill, but there is a little place north of El Paso known as New Mexico. I am pretty sure there is a clinic no further north than Las Cruces.
In a thread steeped in your bullshit, this is the bullshittiest thing so far.
Let me repeat this for emphasis: