Ten Commandments in Tex-ass schools? Constitutional, per Fifth Circuit

In a 9-8 full court ruling, the Fifth Circuit upheld Texas law about cramming the Ten Commandments into public schools. Contra Kuff, I am actually kind of shocked. Wingnuts they may be otherwise, but the court has in the past generally been decent on First Amendment issues.

This quote:

“It does not tell churches or synagogues or mosques what to believe or how to worship or whom to employ as priests, rabbis, or imams,” according to the ruling. “It punishes no one who rejects the Ten Commandments, no matter the reason.”

Is bullshit.

First, it DOES tell children in public schools what they should believe. THAT is the definition of establishment of religion.

Slate notes in detail how it's coercive, riffing on the Supreme Court's support for parental rights in various rulings:

If it’s true that parental rights are so important, then the 5th Circuit has to be wrong in upholding the Texas Ten Commandments law. The court tried to downplay this point by saying that it is just a “poster” and therefore lacks any coercive effect. But posters exist in educational settings so that they can educate. This is not a photo of a kitten saying “Believe in yourself!” A reproduction of a major religious text is bound to have an impact on the classroom experience. What happens when the first student asks a question about that large poster on the wall? If the teacher answers in a manner that showcases approval of the Ten Commandments, won’t the student feel pressured to agree? Or what if the teacher tells the student, as the 5th Circuit suggests, to simply ignore the poster? Could the state then punish the teacher for showing “anti-Christian” bias?

It also notes how it defies Supreme Court precedent:

What’s most remarkable about the decision, though, is not its support for theocracy, but its direct defiance of the Supreme Court. In 1980, justices struck down a law virtually identical to Texas’, forbidding states from placing the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms. By flouting this precedent, the 5th Circuit effectively went rogue, daring the Supreme Court to check its brazen disobedience.

That said, that was 1980, Slate. The Roberts Court has overridden precedent left and right. Somewhat in light of that, Slate notes:

What’s most remarkable about the decision, though, is not its support for theocracy, but its direct defiance of the Supreme Court. In 1980, justices struck down a law virtually identical to Texas’, forbidding states from placing the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms. By flouting this precedent, the 5th Circuit effectively went rogue, daring the Supreme Court to check its brazen disobedience.

 You think the Blind Umpire is really that worried? The only way he and other Catholics get concerned is if the Calvinist/Baptist version, barring graven images, is the only version allowed.

Frankly, per Slate's reference to 2022's Kennedy case, the court might now be looking for a reason to explicitly junk Lemon. We shall see. 

And, even if SCOTUS overturns, the damage will have been done. 

Net zero hypocrisies in Denton

The Observer reports on Denton's hypocrisies of more roads (and other things) versus a carbon net zero pledge. The bottom line:

Population pressure is real, and much of this construction is driven by state and county decisions Denton cannot fully control. But the city still holds levers it is not using. It can prioritize sidewalk and trail funding at the same level of urgency with which it funds road bonds. It can align development approvals with transit access rather than car dependence. And it can ensure that its positions on state-level highway expansion are consistent with its net-zero commitment. 

These choices have concrete costs. Ground-level ozone is already a documented crisis in this region, and every additional lane mile compounds it. The Climate Action Plan already identifies the tools needed to change course. The question is how consistently those tools are applied in practice. The orange barrels will eventually come down. The question is whether Denton will use the years of construction ahead to make different choices, or simply wait for the next plan to also go unread.

There you are. 

Living north of Little D, I find the I-35 expansion in Cooke County totally unnecessary not just for today but beyond, and of course, there's limited mass transit up here. 

Mojave National Preserve is full of shit

No really and yes literally. I noticed it myself on vacation last month. I thought I was in Grand Staircase-Escalante or Cascade-Siskyou national monuments, which are respectively, for the not knowing, BLM and USFS lands. I knew it had to be grazing leases and not just inholdings, based on the trail I was on, signage and fencings.

I did the google and got that link above, and it's even more disconcerting 

As of five years ago, at least, cows were even allowed in wilderness areas of the preserve, which, unlike the two sites above, is a National Park Service unit.

Ridiculous. What's being preserved?

It's like Dear Leader when he expanded Cascade-Siskyou because "sensitive habitat" and never made any effort to cut down on grazing leases. 

The issue is that this (under Clinton) and later actions under Obama and Biden are how Democrat presidents pretend to be environmentalists. 

That said, this sign: 

Shows larger problems with the NPS. What's blacked out? Why? How many years ago? Will the services that have been blacked out ever be fixed? If not, will NPS ever pay for permanent new signs?

When I saw this, I was reminded of a restaurant bleeding money that starts cutting items from the menu but is too cheap to print new menus to reflect that.

And no, this isn't "all Trump's fault." I am sure the black tape blackouts were done more than 15 months ago. 

Also, per friend Lyle Lewis, it's not the only NPS unit with grazing leases still active.

Also not Trump's fault, but the fault of both halves of the duopoly in Congress, which refuse to raise federal grazing rates to match that of private land in the West. About 3 percent of all your Merikkkan beef is grazed on federal land of any sort in its life. About 0.3 percent is grazed on (theoretically) protected federal land. In other words, this wouldn't affect the price of your steak at all.

And, I said both halves of the duopoly?

Look at the related issue of mining, where the government consistently refuses to raise rates and fees for hard-rock mining on federal land. For many, many years, the lead opposition to that was Democratic Sen. Harry Reid. I've long said we need to up both.

Then, there's the issue of inholdings.

A lot of NPS units have them, but Mojave is one of the worst. The boundaries of the preserve, as presented on the park's map as shown on the website and printed on the "trifold" slick brochure have little connection to reality. And, most of the inholdings are ranch land. I originally thought that the shit I saw near the Rings Loop trail was due to inholdings, not grazing leases, until I first checked details of how fences ran and knew it couldn't have been an inholding, then did teh Google and got the link above. 

And we haven't even touched on all the National Recreation Areas in the NPS, most of which are damned lakes behind damned dams, all of which violates the Organic Act. I've called them out for this before.

That said, this isn't new and isn't limited to Mojave. Carsten Lien's excellent book on the history of Olympic has a fair amount of discussion of the dirtiness of the Park Service in general. 

And, speaking of cows and cow shit, let's not forget Point Reyes. 

Texas Progressives roundup — special elections, nature vacations, more

Off the Kuff considers the possibilities for a special election in CD23. 

SocraticGadfly talks about "Death Valley Days" — the heart of his recent vacation, not a remake of the 1950s black and white TV oater.

Even if ERCOT is off by a factor of two, a doubling, not even a quadrupling, of electric power demand in just six years would be massively alarming. 

Will the Texas Medical Board's sanctioning of three doctors over inadequate care for pregnant women with complications, because the doctors were worried about the state's abortion ban, get either the Texas Lege or TMB to further address the issue next year? Probably not. Will yet more OB/GYN docs either quit practice or else leave the state? Possibly. 

Ibogaine clinical trials? Sure, cuz Dannie Goeb, alt-medicine, pseudomedicine and ivermectin in the wingnut world. And, per the story, it's likely a boondoggle.

Allen West: Not wingnut enough for Dallas County GOP. 

The Monthly visits the annual confab of the Philosophical Society of Texas, which can't be too philosophical if Shrub Bush is a member. 

Tech being sued over free speech and Charlie Kirk's death. 

Ten years ago, Elizabeth Bik upended the scientific research publication world. 

Mondoweiss says that Israhell is rushing to do more West Bank settlements because an opportunity is closing. I am skeptical of Dems, if they regain Congress, cutting off aid pipelines that much, especially if Trump vetoed any bill they were a part of. 

Neil at the Houston Democracy Project said we must show up for ourselves to speak, or in protest, at Houston City Council at Public Comment Session, Tuesday, 4/21. We must contact Council. Repeal of the ICE ordinance at command of Abbott means Houston is run by the far-right such as the police union.

The Texas Signal wonders what will happen when Texas experiences another disaster.

Pete von der Haar contemplates the Pope.

Your Local Epidemiologist expounds on EKGs and women's health, with a story line on The Pitt as a starting point.

The Dallas Observer checks in on Fort Worth ISD as it starts its taken-over journey.

Franklin Strong presents the Book Loving Texans' Guide to the May 2026 Elections, which this time allows for more of a focus on good candidates than on bad ones.

Proposition 4 will really, really be a boondoggle

I warned you, even before Charles Perry's plan reached constitutional amendment size.

I warned you after the state admitted it didn't know how much water data centers would use. 

Beyond the boondoggle, I also warned you that environmental orgs and the Texas Green Party weren't telling you it was also an environmental disaster in the waiting, and also warned you that High Plains farmers and ranchers like Suzanne Bellsnyder needed to look in the mirror and admit, per the bible, "physician, and rancher, heal thyself."

Well, without even talking about Prop 4, we know Tex-ass' water needs are a lot more pricey than we knew earlier:

Texas communities will need to spend $174 billion in the next 50 years to avert a severe water crisis, a new state analysis revealed Thursday. That’s more than double the $80 billion projected four years ago, when the Texas Water Development Board last passed a state water plan.

Oops.

Per a Trib link, Prop 4 would be a drop in the bucket on that, but the Perrys of the world may see it as an invite to shovel more cash. 

 

Earth Day 2026: And?

As I noted on Shitter, and in comment to a good piece of snark on Substack by friend Lyle Lewis?

Earth Day is the day when pseudoenvironmentalists and environmentalists lite pretend to deeply care about environmental issues. 

But, it's true?

Look at Jared Huffman, claiming to be an environmentalist, except when it comes to letting cows continue to shit in Point Reyes. Result? Cows drive away tule elk. Ravens eat plover eggs when they run out of worms in cow shit. Park Service ignores the former and ropes off a section of Drake's Beach as critical nesting habitat for the latter rather than addressing the actual problem.

Per a piece I heard on NPR this morning, asking listeners what they saw as the biggest problem?

For me, No. 1 is the climate crisis. And, we're past "climate change." The Colorado River is drying up and will continue to do so the rest of this century. We're on target for 4°C, maybe 5°C, of increased heat from pre-industrial times within 100 years. That's 7-9°F. That latter faces neoliberal climate change Obamiacs like Michael Mann, perhaps worse at times for the cause than climate change deniers.

That said, the climate change deniers don't help. And, in the western US, that means increased wildfires, like the KNP Complex Fire in Sequoia five years ago:

Or the Dixie Fire blowing up in Lassen the same year. I was there the day it blew up.

No. 2 is the Sixth Mass Extinction. Besides megafauna and lesser fauna, globalization and related issues threatens a lot of flora. So does mass monocrop agriculture. The chemicals behind that threaten many birds.

No. 3, as Lyle talks about in that piece and elsewhere, is "overshoot," the overextraction of vital resources. Beyond petroleum, water is an obvious one. Overusing the Colorado River is a clear example. Another, as I said in calling out Suzanne Bellsnyder over Proposition 4, is groundwater — in her case, the Ogallala Aquifer.

No. 4 is what's behind all of this — neoliberal capitalism. That's the bottom line.

So, with Earth Day now 56 years old, we can celebrate accomplishments, like the Endangered Species Act in the US, while at the same time note failures, such as US politicians of both duopoly parties, not just Republicans, undercutting it and other environmental issues when they get in the way of capitalist economics. We can globally note Dear Leader conspiring with Xi Jinping to keep the Paris climate accords entirely voluntary. And, we can note climate change Obamiac scientists overselling Paris in the past.

Don't be fooled again. 

That said, a side note or two, riffing on my Earth Day 2016 piece.

National parks not only can get loved to death, they do. This has gotten worse in our COVID and post-COVID world, abetted not only by Trump slashes to federal nature funding, but death by a thousand paper cuts or stasis from Obama and Biden.

Second, Earth Day was founded about urban environmentalism. The record there since 1970 isn't perfect either. But, to be better? Start at home. In cities and towns, pick up trash. Homeowners, businesses and apartment complex owners? Stop overwatering and overfertilizing lawns. Plant native plants. Stop using petroleum-wasting Amazon so much.

Third, lets note that "wilderness" areas don't stay wilderness without management, and at least since not the development of agriculture, but organized pastoral nomads and even large-scale hunter-gatherers, "natural" environments have been managed by humans. Stop calling American Indians "Roussellian noble savages." It tain't so. 

Am I perfect on this? No. I just took a big old jet airplane on vacation, per the Sequoia photo. But, I have a reasonable amount of striving. I boycott a few companies over environmental issues, just like others over Israel. I fight the temptation to use artificial intelligence, and its electricity consumption, beyond already being here on the Net. I stay attuned to local nature.