A massive Earthquake rolled through the Republican Establishment after Eric Cantor became the 1st sitting House Majority Leader to lose in a primary since, well... ever. Going back to 1899, the 19th Century. Back when Mugwumps bought buggy whips and the Emperor of Russian lunched with the Viceroy of India.
Usually state parties nominate candidates at conventions, activists adopt a pre-approved platform and everyone goes home happy. What happened in Fort Worth was a combination of a demolition derby and an inauguration. Rick Perry may have kicked off the weekend with a well-regarded speech, but there was a new king when delegates left town. Ted Cruz is now the head of the He-Man Woman-Gay-Immigrant-Science-Logic Hater's Club formerly known as the Republican Party of Texas. Long may he reign.
In 2006, I invited the late General Bill Odom to address my Thursday Congressional luncheon group. Gen. Odom, a former NSA director, called the Iraq war "the greatest strategic disaster in American history," and told the surprised audience that he could not understand why Congress had not impeached the president for pushing this disaster on the United States. History continues to prove the General's assessment absolutely correct.
The Wizard of Oz" made Kansas synonymous with tornadoes. But it took the Topeka tornado of June 1966 to bring this Hollywood fiction to reality. That twister was, at the time, said to be the most costly tornado in our country's history.
My condolences go out to the families of the victims at fill-in-the-blank. I know the gun-manufacturing industrial complex has dubbed the wake of a tragedy as an inappropriate time to talk about their product. So lets just eulogize the lives of the people lost to a fill-in-the-blank with his/her/their arsenal of fill-in-the-blank. They were innocent victims who didn't deserve this. We're all shocked.
To this day there's some dispute over who originated the phrase "grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory." What is certain is we're now seeing living examples of the phrase, demonstrated by both the Obama administration and the Republican Party.
The death penalty isn't perfect, but then neither are we. The botched execution last month in Oklahoma has raised legitimate questions about the secret sauce Texas uses on death row, and a lot of Texans still haven't gotten over the state-that is, us-executing Cameron Todd Willingham based on unscientific and discredited folk tales about arson. The Oklahoma incident in particular has caused many to re-examine the death penalty's use in Texas, but the problem isn't the process but the people who carry it out.