Is Ted Cruz the future of Texas?

[DonViejo]

The Tea Party favorite embodies the debate that will determine the Lone Star State's political direction

BY ERICA GRIEDER

Excerpted from "Big, Hot, Cheap, and Right: What America Can Learn from the Strange Genius of Texas"

On a summer night in Houston in 1993, Jenny Ertman and Elizabeth Pena, aged 14 and 16, respectively, left a pool party. They were worried about getting home late, so they decided to take a shortcut.

Cutting through a park, they came across six men drinking beer. The men had recently finished a gang initiation ceremony and decided to celebrate by having “fun,” as one of them would later put it. But after raping and beating the girls for about an hour, the men started to worry that the girls might recognize them. So they strangled the girls to death. They used a belt. Then the belt broke, so they used shoelaces. Then they started stomping on the girls’ necks, to make sure.

All of the men were arrested several days later. The three who were older than 18 at the time would eventually be executed. But one of them, Jose Medellin, challenged the sentence all the way to the Supreme Court. The issue was that he was a Mexican national, having only moved to the United States when he was three, and none of the Houston police had bothered to notify the Mexican Consulate when he was arrested.

This was, of course, a blatant violation of the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. Or that was what the United Nations thought, anyway, prompting George W. Bush, then the president, to order Texas to review the case. You can guess how well that went over. In March 2008’s Medellin v. Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with Texas in a rebuke to the federal government, the United Nations, and the pieties of international law. “Amazingly, however, three justices did not agree,” Rick Perry would later write, “perhaps believing instead that international law should trump the laws of Texas.”

full article
http://www.salon.com/2013/05/04/is_ted_cruz_the_future_of_texas/

[MjolnirTime]

1. No. Cruz is the last gasp, extreme reaction to the actual oncoming future of Texas. Blue Texas.

[Zen Democrat]

2. Ted Cruz is the poster boy for the Southern Baptist Church in Texas.

He slams his Harvard education, but his learning experiences originated with his years at the Second Baptist Church School in Houston, from which he graduated. He's close to SBC's demigod, "Dr." Ed Young. Ed Young is one of those mega-church preachers who wears designer suits and has teens from his church clean his freaking pool, among other things. His followers WORSHIP him and his prosperity theology. Ted Cruz is undoubtedly a part of the Dominionist group who work to end the separation of church and state. When the pious Baptists of Texas get enough of the apostasy, THEN Ted Cruz and his ilk will be thrown off.

[BlueStater]

3. More like Texas is the future of Ted Cruz.

Because he'll never hold elected office anywhere else, thank god.

[DFW]

4. Many of us hope that Cruz is rather the past of Texas.

We'd prefer that the Castro brothers be the future of Texas.

[TheDebbieDee]

5. Is it true that Sen Ted Cruz was born in Canada?

Ted Cruz was BORN in CANADA. Did you guys know that? BORN IN CANADA?

I think this should question should become part of his title, as in: Canadian-born Sen. Ted Cruz.

[efhmc]

8. Yes, but since his mother was a us citizen, he thinks it doesn't matter.

[TheDebbieDee]

10. But it does matter that Canadian-born Sen. Ted Cruz was born in another

COUNTRY, regardless of his mother's US citizenship status. Canadian-born Sen. Ted Cruz should get very, very tired of explaining why he should be allowed to run for President of the United States, considering that he's Canadian-born, that is.

[efhmc]

11. Yes, but he says this concept has never been challenged in the SCOTUS.

He says that native born does not mean citizenship. Just look at McCain. Not born in US but on a US base in Germany. (What I was told that if one was born of US citizens on a foreign base it is the same as US soil.) I find the whole idea so ironic. Different strokes for the right wing than for President Obama, who was actually born in the US but has black skin. This obviously must mean he is not an American!!!

[Rstrstx]

12. That can't be right

Unless he was born after WWII (which I doubt) he couldn't have been born on a US base in Germany. I thought he was born in the Panama Canal area. There or Kenya, can't remember

[efhmc]

17. You are funny. Was being lazy and not looking up the right base

[TheDebbieDee]

13. I thought McCain was born on a US base in Panama.........

Either way, a US military installation, no matter where it is, is considered federal property, even if it is property that is being leased by the US government in another country.

[efhmc]

16. I'm sure you are right. I was too lazy to look it up, just knew it was some base

and that as such it considered to be US soil.

[blkmusclmachine]

15. We call him Calgary Cruz down here.

I had the pleasure of twice voting against that Christian Dominionist.

[LeftInTX]

6. Article is worth the read. Author seems to have good grasp on the issues.

[Rstrstx]

14. Agreed, it's a good read, and the author seems astute on most points, but...

...I did get a slight impression she may not be adequately factoring in future changes to the state's demographics.

[struggle4progress]

7. Texas voters often heap an extra helping of wackadoodles onto their plates

They've been doing that for years

[efhmc]

9. We were all set to oust Rick Perry until the rw got scared and serious

with their money and sent Bill White to the "money is free speech and we have the MOST" democracy is dead garbage heap. Before that it was that freaky Kinky who did us in.