State House Rep. Elliott Naishtat, D-Austin, is heading to Massachusetts this weekend to deliver the keynote speech at the Bay State’s Democratic Party convention. Naishtat plans to discuss his experiences as a Killer D, one of the House members who skipped town — and Texas — to thwart U.S. House Majority Leader (Hot Tub) Tom DeLay‘s “Redistricting for Republicans” crusade. In addition to sharing the excitement of the four-day retreat to Ardmore, Naishtat will discuss redistricting as an issue and the use of federal homeland security personnel to pursue duly elected state officials. “My main message will be [that] if we can organize 52 Texas Democrats — from good-old-boy Bubbas to radical Hispanics from San Antonio and the Valley, urban blacks, and one transplanted New Yorker” — that would be Naishtat — “in Ardmore, evading Texas Rangers, the Dept. of Public Safety, and U.S. marshals, then you can do anything.” — L.A.
Lareatha Clay, a Dallas businesswoman and member of the Texas Historical Commission, has been accepted as the first black member of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas. Membership in the century-old women’s group that operates the Alamo is limited to women who can trace their ancestry to persons present at the founding of the Republic in 1836 — in Clay’s case, one Joseph Odom, a slave on the Texas-Louisiana border. Clay is now asking the DRTs to accept a second black member — her mother. — M.C.M.
Wanted: new lease on life for Texas’ most famous convex lump of concrete. Harris Co. leaders have put out a request for proposals for projects to adapt and reuse the Astrodome; the nearly 40-year-old miracle of postwar booster architecture sits derelict now that Houston’s pro teams have decamped to Reliant Stadium and Minute Maid Field. Possible uses include a hotel and concert venue built inside the shell of the world’s first indoor stadium, which now costs Harris Co. citizens about $1.5 million to heat, cool, and maintain (one idea floated: an indoor lake). Proposals are due Aug. 8. Rep. Ron Wilson, D-Houston, whose bill to turn the ‘Dome into a casino died in committee, might be watching. — M.C.M.
In case your head is spinning like Naked City’s from all the backsliding down the memory hole by the White House and its sycophants over Iraq’s extremely threatening weapons of missing destruction, Counterpunch has collected a useful compendium, “Weapons of Mass Destruction: Who Said What When,” on its Web site at www.counterpunch.org/wmd05292003.html. Since the lies and exaggerations have flown thick and furious for months, it’s a little overwhelming, but here are the bookends: “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction” (Sen. Joe Lieberman, Sept. 4, 2002); “For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction [as justification for invading Iraq] because it was the one reason everyone could agree on” (Paul Wolfowitz, May 28, 2003). — Michael King
This article appears in June 6 • 2003.