As we reported this week, HB 8, potentially allowing the death penalty for repeat child molesters, hit the House floor for a hastily pushed-through debate. Thankfully, cooler heads have prevailed and the bill will be vetted over the weekend, before returning Monday.

Criminal justice blog Grits for Breakfast highlights a pretty glaring logical fallacy on the part of its sponsor Rep. Debbie Riddle. She says:

"A) HB 8 will 'send a message, loud and clear, to child predators' that will prevent their heinous acts, and B) 'People who commit this kind of crime do not go around with the same rational reasoning process as you do. They did not think about it,' she said in response to criticisms that giving the death penalty to child molesters made them more likely to kill their victims."

"So which is it?," asks Grits. "Will repeat child molesters learn of HB 8, quaver in their shoes, and change their dastardly ways, or will they not even be aware of the new law and disregard it entirely without drawing the obvious, rational conclusion under the law that they're better off if they murder the witness to the crime, in this case the child victim?"

As the sponsor's inability to keep her own spin straight illustrates, HB 8 is bad law which will endanger the people it deigns to protect. Let's hope its more odious aspects get fully aired out over the weekend.

Poor John Edwards. First he has to deal with the bullshit Catholic League faux-controversy, and now we see his campaign headquarters in the alternate-reality game Second Life (basically, The Sims meets the Lawnmower Man) was vandalized by virtual Republican toughs. Let's see, there's some commie posters, him in blackface, a giant rainbow-penis thingy, and that huge doo-doo starfish hovering above it all.

Can you imagine Lincoln or Washington planning for this type of thing?

This SXSW band/blog/wristband blow-up keeps generating all sorts of juicy tabloid yuks for people with way too much time on their hands, as Chronicle captain Louis Black stokes the flames in this week's "Page Two" and Austinist still has plenty to say, of course. It's even spilled over to our politically minded sister blog Chronic, where on the comment thread of the "South by Oh Snap!" post, TCB discovered this little gem courtesy of one "nad lover":

"I rather talk about Chris Grey's balls…he's dreamy!"


He always thought they were rather nice himself, but spelling aside, TCB is so overcome with pride he can hardly type. This must be what it feels like to be Kid Rock or something.

Just a quick break from Louis Black's balls for this: As City Council gears up the morbidly obese zoning procession that consumes the better part of every single meeting, wouldn't it be nice if, instead of having to micromanage every construction debate in the city, the Zoning and Platting and Planning commissions (and whoever the hell else) could take a more aggressive, proactive role in smoothing some of the rough edges out there, ensuring that most cases before council can sail out on consent?

I can't help but think that with our growth explosion, council can't see the forest for the trees. If they had more time to look holistically at city planning instead of having to troubleshoot each PUD or VMU redesignation or neighborhood plan, they'd have the time to look at the bigger issues driving development in this town. Because what we have now is government by crisis – which benefits no one, except those satisfied with the status quo at City Hall.

A Chron News staffer writes in with their "seventh-grader's firsthand news":

"Her breathless report: About 300 (I heard 250-400) kids did a walkout at Kealing at 9:20 this morning, to protest the school splitting. It seemed like it was about equal between magnet and neighborhood kids, maybe more magnet kids. There were about four major fights on the way there, and one kid was hospitalized from a fight, and they walked 6 miles to the AISD board of trustees headquarters, and they talked to the Forgione guy about what they believed. Buses were sent to bring the students back to Kealing, and they got back at 12:30. But about 13 kids decided to keep walking and protesting and refused to get on the buses, and they went to the police station, and then they were served with court papers, and now they have to go to court because they were truant.

"Mr. Gonzalez announced over the loudspeaker beforehand that the protesters should all gather in the football field, but they could only stay for 10 minutes. But instead, they did the walkout because they thought that was stupid. What's the point of a walkout if you're going to be received by the principal!"

TXU Corp. has confirmed it's suspending the applications for eight of its proposed coal power plants. It contacted the State Office of Administrative Hearings yesterday and asked for a stay on the paperwork for seven plants and has also pulled the plug on an eighth.

However, pay close attention to the wording of the press release: "The stay request is for a period of up to six months upon approval. Upon closing of the merger agreement with Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR) and Texas Pacific Group (TPG) announced earlier this week, TXU plans to formally withdraw the eight pending air permit applications."

Which translates as, "Hey, Texas, if you don't let us go through with the merger, we reserve the right to keep building the coal plants."

This comes after yesterday's decision by the U.S. District Court that TXU can continue to build the 581-megawatt coal-fired Sandow Unit 5.

Omigod – turn to cable Channel 6 right now for an installment of "Tech Talk," a city-produced quasi-infomercial on the city's new development tracking software for the "one stop shop" at City Hall (so named as the all-in-one location developers hit to pull permits to rape the city).

The Statesman's got a write-up on the program here.

The actual site itself isn't online yet, though.

Touching on my column today about bargaining rights for rank-and-file city employees, there's a pretty funny comment buried in the otherwise trollish Talk of Austin archives. (A note on that to Chron commenters: If you haven't figured it out already - and some of you dunderheads haven't - engaging the troll is no better than being the troll. C'mon people.)

Where were we? Oh yes:

"I recently retired from the Fire Department as a non civil service dispatcher - I earned $13 AN HOUR LESS than my civil service counterpart for doing the same job!!!!! When I asked the Chief, why? He told me “we don’t have anything to say about your pay.” I retired - got tired of being shafted by the city - and I knew the difference between bar-b-q and burning building smoke…"

In a story straight from the "only in Texas" files, the Texas Animal Health Commission is requesting that it be allowed to pay its inspectors $50 per day if they use their own horse for work.

Hey, you get your travel allowance, they get theirs.