Another bill has been filed at the Texas Legislature that would allow breweries to sell their product on-site, as wineries are already allowed to do. This one is by Houston State Rep. Jessica Farrar; it appears to be more limited than Lon Burnam's bill. Read it about it on my personal blog.

After the Voter ID debate last night/this morning, here come the press releases explaining why this saves/damns democracy in Texas. Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst was first out of the gate on post-vote statments. Rather than taking the opportunity to explain why he decided to briefly put down the gavel to take part in the vote, he instead praised Sen. Troy Fraser, R-Horseshoe Bay, for "preserving the integrity of one person one vote." While the debate was still roiling, the Republican Party of Texas railed against the Democrats' "childish rants ALL DAY AND ALL NIGHT LONG!" (because using bold is so very, very mature.) They then pleaded that supporters watch "brief video from a handful of our Republican activists." But before that, any chance of a campaign contribution? Texas Democratic Party Chair Boyd Richie simply condemned the GOP for using this non-issue to indulge in "destructive partisanship over preserving the most fundamental cornerstone of our democracy." The full statements after the breaks.

Thank the Beatles for the latest from the Willie Nelson camp. Naked Willie arrives in stores next week, and Mickey Raphael, “unproducer” and longtime harmonica player with Nelson, maintains that hearing Let It Be … Naked sparked the idea in him. “They took off the strings that Phil Spector put on," he explains from his home in Nashville. "I thought it would be great if we did the same thing to some of songs that Willie did. I knew that he had no say in the production. I mean he was happy to be doing it, but back then Chet Atkins produced him, and the artists really didn’t get involved in the production of their records. Knowing Willie like I do now, his mantra is ‘less is more.’ He likes things simple. I thought, ‘These are great songs. It’d be heresy to cut them again. I wonder what would happen if we just stripped everything off and kind of do it like Willie had produced himself.’” When Nelson recorded for RCA from 1965 until 1971, Atkins was famous for his trademark Nashville sound, which included lush orchestral arrangements and backing vocals that often ran counter to the mood or message of the song itself. “It’s not to say that Chet’s production was wrong or bad, I just wanted to look at them through another lens,” Raphael clarifies. “I love these songs. I listen to the RCA era all the time. It’s the first batch of Willie recordings that I ever heard. I didn’t really know about him until I went to work for him. Darrell Royal introduced me to Willie in '72,'73. I was just a struggling harmonica player, hanging out in coffeehouses in Austin. When Willie hired me, I had to do a crash course in country music. So this era was my education.”

Time to clean out that electronic morgue but know better than to throw your stuff in the dumpster? Then bring your tired, your worn, your no longer fired up hardware to the electronic waste and recycling drive to be held on the University of Texas campus on Saturday, March 28, 8am to 4:40pm in the LBJ Parking Lot. The UT Student Engineering Council is looking for some volunteers for the event and are offering t-shirts and food for all the helping hands. Click here to sign up. For more information email volunteer.ewaste@gmail.com.

It’s finally over. After a ridiculous 24-hour session, the Senate passed SB 362, Troy Fraser’s voter ID bill on a 20-12 vote this morning (Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst took the unusual step of casting a vote, and of course, the Republican voted yes.) The vote was strictly on party lines, with the GOP favoring. (I’ll assume if you’re enough of a Lege junkie to be reading this blog, you already understand what the term “voter ID” means; if you don’t, read this post.) The “committee of the whole,” an unusual process in which the entire Senate hears testimony instead of a normal committee, began yesterday morning. The Democrats immediately began delaying tactics.

Talking to Austin ISD during the Hurricane Ike evacuation, their prime concern was making sure the district provided shelter space while not interrupting the education of their students. So it's not surprise that districts are pushing back against House Bill 727. This measure would "close a school campus used as an emergency evacuation shelter while the campus houses evacuees." That's exactly the opposite of what happens at the moment. AISD Intergovernmental Relations Director Christy Rome told Newsdesk the district was concerned that the proposals don't reflect the successes the district had shown of running temporary emergency shelters within its schools without sending students home. "We feel that we can do both," she said. City of Austin Homeland Security and Emergency Management Assistant Director Scott Swearengin echoed that to the House Public Education Committee yesterday. Austin is geared up to take 25,000 evacuees, he said, so the district has arguably the most "experience of using schools [as shelters] in the state of Texas." If the rules were changed, he said, either schools would refuse to become shelters or parents would have to take time off to look after their kids.

For the fourth time in as many sessions, legislation proposing the creation of an innocence commission is up for consideration. On March 9, a House subcommittee on criminal procedure heard House Bill 498, San Antonio Dem Rep. Ruth Jones McClendon’s bid to create the Timothy Cole Innocence Commission. Cole was wrongly convicted of a 1985 rape at Texas Tech University and died in prison before his name was cleared. He was finally exonerated last month during a special proceeding in the court of Travis Co. District Judge Charlie Baird. “As lawmakers, we have a responsibility to change Texas law to prevent this outrageous miscarriage of justice,” McClendon told the members of the criminal jurisprudence subcommittee. Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, who has been proposing an innocence commission since 2003, has filed similar legislation again this session (SB 115) that is still awaiting hearing in the Senate’s Criminal Justice Committee. McClendon’s bill is the same as Ellis’ in intent – to create an entity to investigate wrongful convictions and identify procedures to prevent future miscarriages of justice – but also proposes giving the commission subpoena power and allowing the commission’s findings to be used in court proceedings as corroborating evidence. McClendon’s bill was left pending in committee.

Seriously. I went home, got some (not enough) sleep, got up and turned on cable access channel 22, and the Senate "committee of whole" is still going, hearing expert testimony on the voter ID bill. I assume this will wipe out the Senate for getting much work done later today. All this effort to fix a voter impersonation "problem" that does not exist. And how many other truly crucial issues – education, the TYC problem, the economy – aren't being dealt with? Good job, Republicans. You've really got your priorities straight. UPDATE: 6:49am – they just finished the invited testimony. Now they're supposedly going to hear the public testimony, although I can't imagine there's many people left in the gallery.

We just got word that Sen. Robert Duncan, chair of the "committee of the whole" that is hearing testimony on SB 362, Troy Fraser's voter ID bill, is determined to get through all the witnesses tonight. We are on witness No. 4 of 16, so that means they'll be here all night. But sorry, faithful readers – I won't be joining them. Since this bill is a done deal in the Senate anyway – Democrats don't have the numbers to stop it – it's just not worth killing myself over. If you're a truly dedicated junkie and want to hear expert testimony that bad, watch the hearing live on cable access channel 22 (see update below), or online at www.senate.state.tx.us. I'll probably catch some more myself after the bus gets me home, but I'll get fully caught up in the morning.

We're also getting word that there almost certainly will not be a vote tonight.

UPDATE: I'm home now, and apparently Austin ISD's cable access channel 22, which airs all the Senate sessions, completely shuts off in the evening. As does the city of Austin's Channel 6, which shows the House. That really torques me off. I don't think that was always the case. So we'll have to watch online.

Speaking right now (10:51pm): a really good witness from the Brennan Center for Justice, which as I noted in an earlier post, put out a really good report called "The Truth About Voter Fraud," which demonstrated that there is no "epidemic" of voter fraud as the GOP would have you believe.