To say the 3-8 Wranglers are struggling is like saying chocolate tastes OK. Losing on the final play of the game at home against Orlando last week was a blow that knocked the breath out of fans and players alike. Maybe the middle-of-the-pack 5-6 Philly Soul are the perfect candidates for win No. 4. It would be embarrassing for a team from the live music capital of the world to lose to a team owned by Jon Bon Jovi. Stevie Ray's statue would surely shed a tear. So grab your face paint and your beer money, and head on down to the Frank Erwin Center for a 3pm kickoff and for more on the Wranglers please see "Arena Rock." The game will be broadcast live on 1300AM the Zone with a TV replay on Fox Sports Net at 11pm. Vs. Philadelphia: Sunday, May 27, 3pm. Frank Erwin Center, 1701 Red River. 339-3939 for tickets.

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway was built in 1909 with nothing but gravel and uneven ground. Buckets of collision and death came on this site with fearless lads looking to move faster. The track was paved with more than 3 million bricks in 1932 to help the drivers from crashing into the walls and one another. Although now covered in asphalt gravy, this is how the Indy 500 got the nickname "Brickyard," a holy word in the heart of Hoosier country, a place where speed and guts mean more than the stars and the moon.

The Brickyard is a coliseum of velocity. It is the largest sporting venue on the planet, able to hold more people than the entire population of Omaha, Neb. Dukes and queens fly into the heartland from the likes of Spain and Brazil and hard-to-pronounce countries in Africa just to watch the fastest show on Earth. Kentucky may have their famed horses running in a circle, but the Brickyard is about chrome and rubber spinning to a vortex of ungodly speeds, with the slightest mistake leading to sudden death.

In the wake of a speakership that even his onetime allies have described as dictatorial, Speaker Tom Craddick is not simply alienating fellow members of the House but his own appointees – and using this as an opportunity to load the offices of the House with more loyalists.

On Friday night, Craddick's office had to explain why Parliamentarian Denise Davis had resigned. In its two lines, it said that Craddick had been using advisers other than Davis on "intricate and complicated constitutional issues" and that Davis had quit because of this.

It is a simple statement that means that the speaker has been, for some time, systematically ignoring his own in-house legal advice for the voices of unnamed others. This should be put in the context of many state agencies being savaged in their budget negotiations this session for daring to use external counsel, rather than the cheaper option of the Attorney General's Office. The parliamentarian serves no purpose other than to answer exactly the kind of questions the speaker may pose.

Davis had served as deputy parliamentarian in the 78th session and was appointed by Craddick as parliamentarian in 2004. However, it will be impossible for her deputy to succeed her; Christopher Griesel, who came to the office after eight years on the Texas Legislative Council and four years as Texas Supreme Court’s rules attorney, has also resigned.

According to Speaker Tom Craddick Saturday morning, those that seek his removal are getting in the way of running the state as its founders intended.

Craddick's press secretary, Alexis DeLee, churned out a press release that simply excoriated his detractors for distracting him from "the important business of state."

Craddick then issued an amended House Journal entry that called the attempts to remove him unconstitutional and that basically he wasn't going anywhere, and no one can make him.

Partisanship? Unconstitutional challenges by democratically elected representatives? How many pages from the current presidential administration's playbook has he copied? Let's just see if he can claim that, by mounting their challenge over Memorial Day weekend, they are not supporting the troops.

It is with a sense of history that, on the weekend of the anniversary of the release of the first Star Wars movie in 1977, we note the tenacious grasping at power shown by Speaker Tom Craddick over this weekend – a weekend that is supposed to commemorate what is best about this democracy and to pay tribute to those that fought and died to defend it.

Therefore, it seems strangely apposite to quote from the prologue to the 1978 hardback edition of the novel Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker by George Lucas.

"Like the greatest of trees, able to withstand any external attack, the Republic rotted from within though the danger was not visible from outside.

"Aided and abetted by restless, power-hungry individuals within the government, and the massive organs of commerce, the ambitious Senator Palpatine caused himself to be elected President of the Republic. He promised to reunite the disaffected among the people and restore the remembered glory of the Republic.

"Once secure in office he declared himself emperor, shutting himself away from the populace. Soon he was controlled by the very assistants and boot-lickers he had appointed to high office, and the cries of the people for justice did not reach his ears."

Good night, and good luck.

From the fine folks at PinkDome, this picture truly sums up what's happening right now in your Legislature.

Holy smokes – the House is in full meltdown tonight, following Speaker Tom Craddick's announcement that he might not (update: won't) recognize a motion to vacate his chair, nullifying any challenge to him. To howls, he left the House at rest after the announcement, just recently reconvening at 11pm. In the interim, the House parliamentarian and her assistant resigned (i.e., left after Craddick refused to follow her advice saying he had to recognize a motion to vacate), to be replaced by former Reps. Terry Keel and Ron Wilson – with opposition members in high dudgeon over the selection. We're late to the party, so get more background and coverage at Burnt Orange Report and the Houston Chronicle blog; cable viewers can watch the House live on Channel 17. We'll just note this exchange:

A moment ago, Rep. Pete Gallego put forth a parliamentary inquiry over the selection of the speaker; swatting it down, Craddick said, "We're gonna follow the House rules." To thunderous applause, Gallego responded, "When?"

It's an incredibly volatile and historic night.

Update: Rep. Fred Hill has made a motion to vacate the chair. Craddick is refusing to recognize his motion, citing his "absolute discretion" to recognize any member – with no appeal. All his lines are being fed to him by his spanking new parliamentarians. It's an incredibly bleak scene. C'mon, Terry Fucking Keel? If that's not the face of a hired hack, what is? Obvious conflicts-of-interest he has were pointed out earlier (representing Rep. Harold Dutton on his driving under the influence charge, leading the challenge against Rep. Hubert Vo's narrow election victory), to no avail.

This evening has been an obscene farce, rife with the most dictatorial, anti-democratic impulses you could imagine. If this isn't a low point in Texas history, what the hell is?

The move to give Texas a law to protect journalists and whistle-blowers from vindictive prosecution was stabbed in the heart this week – and in the back. Rep. Debbie Riddle, R-Tomball, called a procedural motion on journalist shield law Senate Bill 966 and stopped the bill dead in its tracks.

It's not just that; in killing the shield law, she scuppered a concept that has been adopted in the majority of states and is on the way to becoming a federal statute. It's not just that just about every journalist and editor in the state plus 27 senators have backed this bill and that the only vocal opposition, unsurprisingly, has come from district attorneys. It was the way that it was done. The House didn't let the bill come to a clean vote, instead taking it down with a bureaucratic point of order about how it was handled in committee. Because then they might have had to explain their opposition to protecting whistle-blowers.

To set the time frame out, the House has had the bill since May 1. It has been out of the House Judiciary Committee since May 17. And now Riddle uses a pen-pusher's tool to a block yay or nay decision, knowing there is no further chance for debate before session's end.

What a difference three weeks make …

"The way we're going, that's not the only agency that's going to be underfunded come 2013." – Sen. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, while debating Senate Bill 1, the state budget for the next two years. He was talking as chair of Senate Finance Conference Committee to Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Houston, on May 3 on fears for the bankruptcy of the Crime Victim Compensation Fund.

"In many areas, it addresses problems that the state has needed addressed for a long time. It's still balanced, the state can afford it and I hope people vote for it." – Ogden on SB1, May 25.

So, has Ogden mystically solved the budget? Find out when the final version of SB 1 comes to a vote near you before sine die.