Exhibit B.

Today in the Boston Globe, we have an editorial by Joan Venochhi entitled "Tilting at Alito", referencing the potential filibuster of the current and future man in black's ascendancy to the next judicial level that was threatened beginning with the end of last week by the likes of Senators John Kerry, Ted Kennedy and Barbara Boxer.

Which we predicted would occur (which elicited much audience consternation for its alleged crazed inaccuracy) on January 10th, proffering that despite the obviousness of its pronounced boobery, they would engage therein anyway.

Today they tried to do so, and failed, for the very reasons we stated would send them careening off Mount Filibuster.

Two NewsoftheDay.org reduxes on a Monday. Even if we do manage to locate a third (or more), we will spare you the additional exercise(s) in self-aggrandizement.

... in its approach to news regarding and its editoral outlook on the Texas Governorship of Rick Perry.

(Editor's Note: We have spent, and will continue to spend, a tremendous amount of time documenting the woeful inadequacies of the Austin Press Corps in this and many other regards. This is a particularly and egregiously pathetic effort, and therefore deserves pronounced stand-alone analysis.)

For yesterday, we had the simultaneous Statesman publication of a news story and an opinion piece ostensibly reporting and disdainfully editorializing on the fact that the state of Texas had hired a lobbying firm to pitch for itself in our nation's capitol.

The Statesman finds this conceptually shocking (imagine, joining the likes of fellow states Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Nevada, New Jersey and Oklahoma, the California Office of Military Support, the Illinois Department of Transportation, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources and a number of Texas cities in lobbying a federal government that spends $2.6 trillion per annum), and is flabbergasted by many very rudimentary facts in the process story process.

When the state first approved hiring a new lobbying firm with close ties to lobbyist Jack Abramoff in 2004, it rejected competing bids that met more of the state's selection criteria and cost less, according to documents obtained by the Austin American-Statesman.

What the winning firm, Cassidy & Associates, did have was access — all the way to presidential aide Karl Rove, according to memos and e-mails that were obtained through a Texas Open Records Request.

Discombobulated

You mean they hired a lobby group, with the intention of gaining greater access, with the most access? How incredibly nefarious of them.

(The emboldened portion about lower cost bids becomes very relevent a little later ... .)

"Cassidy is the best fit for Texas," Office of State-Federal Relations associate director David Pagan said in a May 25, 2004 e-mail to staff. "Firm is (the) leader in DC on approps. (acquiring federal funding)."

Exhibit A, Ladies and Gentlemen. Cassidy assured Texas the greatest access to the federal largess, which is what one seeks when retaining a lobbyist. Again, shocking.

Seven Texas House Democrats also sent a letter to Gov. Rick Perry last Friday demanding that Cassidy's contract be cancelled, because the firm has not bothered to reach out to them.

Donkey Divagation

We believe Lone Star Donkeys bemoaning their political irrelevance best look first within.

But the Democrat and Statesman accusation that the winning firm was too overly Elephantary collapses under the weight of the next selected excerpt.

More political balance was needed, the state's office in Washington reasoned in a Dec. 10, 2004 memo. "An additional firm can help ensure (Texas) maintains a bipartisan strategy on certain issues."

... "Cassidy & Associates is headed by a Democrat founding name partner, and is considered to be a bipartisan firm."

Ummm ... . So when they were retained, they came recommended by the Washington office as bipartisan, as they were "headed by a Democrat founding name partner". Sounds like just the sort of across-the-aisle outreach for which the Statesman is chastising the Governor and the hire for lacking.

(Editor's Note: Again, in the capitols of Texas and the nation, Democrats are decidedly irrelevant, as their minority-ness knows no bounds in either locale. Governor Perry was being indisputably more bi-partisan than we would have been.)

Our only thought is that Miss Tara Copp, the author of the news portion of this bad two-part program, began the piece, went away to have lunch (or a stiff drink), and then returned to finish the job, failing in the second half to recall what she quilled in the first.

The assessment in 2004, though, did not initially favor Cassidy, which was ranked fourth. Two of the firms ranked ahead of it would have charged Texas between $300 and $833 less per month than Cassidy's initial offer of $15,833 a month. (Once the contract was signed, Cassidy's fee was down to $15,000 plus expenses.)

Cassidy and Associates

So in other words, Cassidy's fee was THE CHEAPEST on offer.

If the lowest bid was $833 less than Cassidy's, and he then came down $833, he made himself, and therefore was, the cheapest of them all.

Again, from the pre-adult beverage first half of the piece we have:

When the state first approved hiring a new lobbying firm with close ties to lobbyist Jack Abramoff in 2004, it rejected competing bids that met more of the state's selection criteria and cost less, according to documents obtained by the Austin American-Statesman.

Again, there was NO ONE that cost less than did Cassidy, as per the second half of Miss Copp's article, first half Miss Copp assertions contradicting herself notwithstanding.

Twin Columns of Vacuity

The editorial board's contribution to this inanity is just as woefully inaccurate and self-contradictory, redundantly so in fact, as it makes the same series of errors that Miss Copp does in her pseudo-effort.

The other thing these two columns have in common is their pronounced disdain for the art of lobbying now that Republicans are in charge and able to avail themselves thereof, a contemn we are quite sure they did not profess when Donkeys ruled the roost in Austin and Washington, D.C.

And the ongoing Statesman editorial position calling for ever more governmental spending has largely been answered in Washington, and is the reason lobbyists exist today in the overly exaggerated numbers that they do, to maximize their clients' access to said additional cash.

Should Texas begin to spend at the state level the way the Statesman wishes and the federal government does, we would have a greater lobbyist issue in Austin as well. The answer is not to assault these couriers for availing themselves of their Constitutional rights, but to instead avoid having the government spend the ridiculous amounts of money that draws them to the Capitol in such copious quantity.

Lunch is Served

As we have often stated before, reduce the governmental monetary outlay, and away go a great many of the lobbyists the Statesman now finds so distasteful.

Now, if only we could ascertain a similar solution to the Statesman problem (although with pieces such as these, they are doing an excellent and unremitting job of self-dimmunizing).

In the analysis of the deconstruction of the Democrat Party and mind, one must expend a great deal of ratiocinative time and effort on the perpetual Donkey nostalgia for the heady days of Woodstock yore. Every aspect of their attempts at the application of power and influence over the last forty years, both within government and without, has been executed within the ideological parameters of the era of tie-dye, lava lamps and hashish.

And who can blame them? Back in the day, the youthful recovery from intoxicant binges was swift, many were in the midst of their responsibility-free, parentally bill-footed seven-year undergraduate plans, and shows, the likes of the Monterey Pop Festival and the Max Yasgur Farm Extravaganza, were simply a gas (and a trip).

All of this mere national security folderol has been deemed to be of lesser import than another, long and desperately sought Leftist political win.

But as the Calendar began to wreak its slowly interminable havoc on the Woodstock cadre, and they begrudgingly entered the realm of adulthood (at least chronologically), they had to convert their exuberance into some sorts of pseudo-utilitarian lifelong endeavors.

During those times of hedonistic glee, the Great Unwashed and Unshaven actually scored two unfortunate, wrong-headed, nationally and internationally damaging "victories" over the System and the Man. What they then set out to do was beat their 1960s-era swords into lifelong political plowshares.

Congratulations Senator Kerry, Et.Al.

The one win about which we have always heard the most was their success in 1973 in ensuring the death of three million Vietnamese at the hands of their beloved Communists by forcing our premature withdrawal from the Asian subcontinent.

It has since been their self-assumed prerogative to place every foreign war undertaken by Republicans (as Democrat by-products of the arts of peace, such as Bosnia and Haiti, are allowed to be waged unchallenged) within their myopic Vietnam War prism.

Their end-it-at-all-costs objective with all Elephantary conflict, gloriously free of any intellectual analysis of its national security meritoriousness, is predicated upon their past "success" in horrifically ending the Donkey-induced Indochinese police action.

Hence the Democrats' all-consuming monolithic fascination with a unilateral pull-out of an Iraq in and over which we are incrementally but inexorably winning.

The other age-old Leftist triumph was domestic in nature, and a thousand similar efforts have been launched in its vainglorious wake (and that has been just during the George W. Bush Administration). They succeeded, in 1974, in taking down a sitting Republican President, Richard Milhous Nixon, for in large part using governmental agencies to spy on the nation's citizenry.

Mister Liddy, The Door Lock Tape Should Be Vertical, Not Horizontal

Watergate received the lion's share of the ink, but the perpetually paranoid Nixon was bugging innumerable telephone calls in addition to the condo Party office for a failed Democrat Presidential candidate. In and amidst the avalanche of post-Nixonian topple legislation, Congress foisted upon us the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which is (almost in)arguably an unConstitutional Legislative lein on the enumerated war powers of the President and the Executive branch.

But the chasm of delineation between the Nixonian extravagances and President Bush's adventures in tapping is capacious. President Nixon listening in on calls between Toledo and Topeka is not nearly the same thing as the present Administration tracing globtrotting terrorists and then paying particular attention once some of them let their fingers do the walking to those currently residing in Toledo or Topeka.

It can be very reasonably argued, as the Bush Administration and its every predecessor has since the law's inception, that the FISA Court statute, quilled to prevent warrantless domestic-to-domestic wire tapping, has no applicative bearing on the efforts to overhear international Islamofascist to domestic Islamofascist calls.

But it is certainly this road-to-Hell enactment that in large part built the "wall" between international and domestic surveillance that made pre-September 11th, 2001, dot connecting virtually impossible.

Incepting the Span

President Bush received a great deal of Liberal scorn and consternation for his inability to surmount this artificially, Liberally erected intelligence partition and preempt the attacks.

It is this same band of Burros that is now chiding the man in the White House for availing himself of his Article II Constitutional powers to connect said terrorist dots and thereby prevent any subsequent September 11th-esque besets.

This is yet another example of the Left wanting it both ways, only so long as the Right can have it neither.

If a known terrorist overseas, whom we have been watching, places a telephone call to someone within the (thankfully still) friendly confines of the United States, the President has since September 11th, 2001, had the audacity to actually keep tabs on said call recipient for a little bit, to ascertain why he would be on Al Qaeda speed dial.

If the member of the international thug ring dialed a wrong number, the inside America receiver is briefly watched, and then is no longer. But should he be a wide awake member of an internal sleeper cell, we have just jumped the wall and connected the dots.

President Bush did not bother to obtain warrants for said acts of erection-hurdling, fleck-coalescing surveillance. His attorneys had rightly informed him that Constitutional authority, and Presidential precedent, made doing so unnecessary.

He did, however, brief the Congressional leadership, as well as the heads of the two Select Intelligence Committees, of both Parties, about these activities at least a dozen times since the effort's inception. If the Donkeys in their apprised midst had a problem with the program, they never once voiced it, waiting instead for the New York Times to do their breaching dirty work for them. Their four year silence hereon until then was deafening.

Anyone Have a Problem This Time?

As the President (finally) said yesterday, "You know, it's amazing, when people say to me, well, he was just breaking the law -- if I wanted to break the law, why was I briefing Congress?"

An excellent question, one for which the Donkeys and the Left surely have no answer. But they are never ones to allow Reality to stop them from trying to turn these sow's ears into silk political purses.

The reasons for the eternal Liberal endeavor to reblast to the past are myriad, but the commonality amongst them all is victory, or the decided lack thereof. It has been a very long time since they have had one of any consequence, so their rueful reminiscences are to be expected and understood.

What is neither is their willingness to directly undermine our self-defensive actions or engage in words and deeds of a seditionary nature in order to achieve that which has for so long been beyond their short-armed and short-sighted grasp.

All of this mere national security folderol has been deemed to be of lesser import than another, long and desperately sought Leftist political win.

It is this grotesquely warped set of priorities that will be ultimately prohibitive of any such victory coming to pass any time soon.

... for we now have the Maryland version proselytizing about the poor disenfranchised felon, and endeavoring to reinstate his right to vote Donkey.

Aside from the incredible acuity Democrats exhibit by accurately identifying a large cadre of their potential electoral base, they sound simultaneously politically ridiculous, racist and hypocritical.

Behold.

"This law seriously disenfranchises a large number of African-Americans," said Delegate Salima Siler Marriott, a black Baltimore Democrat who is gathering sponsors for a voting-rights restoration bill she plans to submit.

"Their disenfranchisement impacts the power of African-Americans in this state."

This pseudo-assessment begs several questions.

Republicans could campaign as the pro-military, anti-felon vote Party, and leave the counter supposition to the opposition.

Does not Mrs. Marriott realize that the average American voter, whether a Terrapin or not, finds it more than a bit disconcerting that someone prematurely paroled or furloughed by our overly lenient justice system, after convictions for the likes of rape and murder, has an entire political Party fighting for his vote the minute he rehits the mean street?

Is it true, as she implies, that only Blacks are convicted of felonies in the Old Line State?

Or is she only interested in restoring the vote to those felons of melanin?

In actuality,

... an estimated 150,000 felons would be able to cast ballots in Maryland. About 85,000 of them are black and likely Democrats, according to Justice Maryland, a penal reform group that supports felon voting rights.

The Land of the Free, And the Vote for the Felon

One would hope that any politician, black or not, would be a little more predicated towards addressing the woeful fact that blacks make up 13% of the Maryland general population, but consist of 57% of its felonious prison contingency.

These numbers are far too egregiously large to be merely attributable to a "racist system", as the Mrs. Marriots of the world would have it.

One would think that someone so myopically focused on skin color as is she would attempt to do something about the myriad bad life decisions made that have landed so many Maryland blacks behind bars, rather than instead worrying about their ballot ability after doing (a small fraction of) their time.

But that would require a Donkey call for the personal responsibility necessary to end the cradle to cell to grave life cycle (with ample interspersed welfare disbursement), which is anathema to the Party platform, especially when it comes to the "aggrieved" minorities who must be kept down so that Democrat elective prospects may continue to be propped up.

There are, in fact, only a few states that do not allow felons to vote.

Maryland is one of 11 states that disenfranchise some felons for life. The others are Alabama, Arizona, Delaware, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nevada, Tennessee, Virginia and Wyoming. Three states -- Florida, Kentucky and Virginia -- deny the vote to all felons for life.

We have to wonder why this disenfranchisement is not a more widely practiced practice.

It would be interesting to see Republicans in states with ballot-ready felons propose legislation to rescind their vote. Again, which side of that argument do you want to be making to Average Joe Voter, even more so to Average Jolene Voter?

Should Elephants wish to eradicate any Media fixation on the "gender gap" this next electoral go-round, they should campaign promise to Soccer Moms everywhere that they will work to ensure that child rapists and murderers will not be able to stand in adjacent booths and cancel out their non-felon votes in future elections.

First the Parole Board, Then the Polls

Democrats as in Maryland come across as the UnLaw and DisOrder candidates when pitching to reallow the Menendez Brothers' of the world to cast their ballots upon release, while Republicans arguing to remove felons from the voter rolls rebolsters their presentation as the Party that actually cares about protecting Average Jolene and Joe Voter, both from felons directly and the horrendous candidates they would most likely choose.

(And someone should ask these pro-malefactor suffrage Donkeys whether other pre-felony rights, such as the one to keep and bear arms, should also be reinstated. They have, after all, paid their debt to society, have they not? Why limit this societal reimmersion to just the polling booths?

Of course, these Burros do not like even lifelong law abiders to carry, so the dichotomy of this question, and the resulting squeamishness in the queried, will be more than worth the asking. Their quixotic enamor of the guilty, and their addled disdain for the innocent and the very concept of firearms, will leave them tied in a merit badge's worth of knots.)

This pitch to reenfranchise the most felonious amongst us is being made by the same gaggle of Donkeys who fought so vociferously in the 2000 Bush v. Gore overtime thriller to disqualify and disallow as many overseas military ballots as was necessary to steal victory from the jaws of defeat.

Which certainly plays less than well for the Convene du Burro. Republicans could campaign as the pro-military, anti-felon vote Party, and leave the counter supposition to the opposition.

And we think we know how Average Jolene and Joe Voter would behave in the hopefully felon-free ballot booth faced with such a selection as this.

The 65,000-member Texas State Teachers Association (TSTA) is already getting much more than their money's worth from their Chosen One in the Gubernatorial campaign, as Texas Comptroller of (Exclusively) Public Schools and Accounts Carole Keeton McClellan Rylander Strayhorn yesterday came out vociferously (does she, of late or later, come out in any other fashion?) against incumbent Governor Rick Perry's desire to grant pardons to some of the state's poorest children currently conscribed in the educational backwater prisons that masquerade as public schools.

"We're at a critical crossroads. We're either going to have public education or we're not, and Rick Perry looks to vouchers as the only solution to a public school system that he has doomed to failure," said Strayhorn.

This short statement has a remarkable number of gross factual errors and incorrect assertions, so let us now begin the dissection forthwith.

"We're either going to have public education or we're not..."

Not once, ever, has Governor Perry called for the demise of public schools.

Destination Government School

(Editor's Note: We have, incessantly, but he has not.)

This flawed premise is, however, to be found on, and is directly lifted from, the TSTA anti-voucher talking points memorandum, which most assuredly came in the TSTA Official Endorsement Packet Madame Comptroller must have received, and she is now parroting large chunks of it verbatim for reasons beknownst only to her and anyone paying any attention to her perpetually politically expedience.

The TSTA, as have unions such as this throughout the nation, have continually used this completely factually devoid assertion as a means to maintain their total monopolistic status, as they seek to continue to failingly lord over as many children under their bureaucratic thumbs as possible.

And yet (Strayhorn) feels completely free to question the motivations of her opponent, who in this regard has consistently sought nothing more than parental autonomy in determining what is best for their children's educations, something she herself once sought in less desperate, less approbation-needy political times.

But the effort to begin to parole a small number of the minors in government scholastic jail is by no means a stone's throw, or even a justifiable rhetorical leap, from the complete destruction of public schools. If this charge were actually so, it would speak far more to the glass house status of the governmental educational edifice, were it so readily susceptible to this merest of operational alterations, than to any effort on the part of the Governor or any of the myriad other school choice supporters who seek to improve the futures of as many children as possible by allowing their parents, rather than teachers unions, to do the deciding.

Onward ... .

"... Rick Perry looks to vouchers as the only solution to a public school system that he has doomed to failure."

Nary a Voucher Amongst Them

In actuality, the Governor has proffered many solutions to the Good Ship Titanic status that is the governmental school system, both during the legislative process (both regular and special in session status) and by Executive Order after these facts.

Though well outside the ordinary parameters of the Lone Star Gubernatorial purview, the Governor in 2004 proffered a comprehensive financial outline for how to simultaneously increase the coin poured into the educational bureaucracy whilst substantially cutting the egregious property taxes made necessary by said scholastic Monolith.

One regular and three special convenes later, no agreement, on his plan or any other, had been reached, so Governor Perry then issued three separate Executive Orders requiring the following:

(1) 65% of school money be directed (a meager percentage, and undoubtedly only a Gubernatorial beginning, where in actuality far more should be) to the classroom,

(2) the implementation of a teacher merit pay program, and

(3) a statewide enhancement of college readiness standards and programs.

One will note that this is, in point of fact, a great many ideas of an educational nature having been put forth by the man in the Mansion, not one of them having anything to do with the school vouchers with which Madame Comptroller accuses him of being myopically focused.

House, Meet Senate

The Madame assertion that her opponent is exclusively responsible for the failure of these repair endeavors is to either woefully or willfully ignore the facts on the ground lo these last two years. There was a great deal of consternation and in-fighting on this issue within the confines of Big Pink. The House and Senate sometimes could not come to even rudimentary agreements, and at times when they did these best laid plans were undone by a petrochemical mud Constituency of One.

All of this lack of production has very, very little to do with the Governor upon whom Madame Comptroller seeks to place all of the blame.

Moving beyond this Chock Full of Nuts mini-statement, we now turn to the vaingloriousness that is Madame Comptroller's past. Her disdain for school vouchers is, in addition to being a horrendous policy position, also a decidedly newfound one.

Let us trip down Strayhorn Memory Lane, back to her tenure as Railroad Commissioner circa 1997, when she uttered the following:

"Parents know what's best for their children, and that's why I support more charter schools and vouchers. No child should be forced to attend a failing school, and right now hundreds of thousands of our children are being held hostage in failing schools.

"I challenge any opponent of parental choice to put their child or grandchild in the worst (school) for one year, and then we'll debate the issue.''

No ambiguity here. She is proffering a clear, concise and completely accurate assessment of the rights of parents to determine what is best for their children, in all things generally and in their scholastic endeavors specifically.

It is All Left Turns for Madame Comptroller From Here On Out

The nebulousness only arises when one compares her assertion then with her TSTA-tainted statement now. It is amazing how inexpensively some politicians' moral clarity comes unclear. All this one took was the endorsement of one traditionally Democrat, continually liberal union.

And yet she feels completely free to question the motivations of her opponent, who in this regard has consistently sought nothing more than parental autonomy in determining what is best for their children's educations, something she herself once sought in less desperate, less approbation-needy political times.

Ronald Wilson Reagan, our 40th President, was inaugurated on January 20th, 1981, joining Pope John Paul II and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on the world stage. President Reagan was the last and greatest piece of this holy anti-Communist trinity that began finally the bell tolling for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the patriarchal font of global Communism, the greatest evil of the 20th Century (despite the ignoble mid-centum efforts of one Adolf Hitler).

On this same day, we also had an all too impermanent victory over what was to become the greatest evil (we hope) of the 21st Century, Islamist terrorism, as the insufferable 444 days sixty-six American hostages spent in Iranian captivity came to an end.

A quarter century hence, we have many of the U.S.S.R.'s bastard offspring still with us, but the tiger has largely been tamed, and the greatest Communist cat of all is no more, all in very large part because of President Reagan's lifelong passionate obsession with bringing about the demise of this fetid ideology.

But nature abhors a vacuum, and unfortunately these two events have retrospectively more in common than merely the tremendous influence of Ronaldus Magnus. That to which we were privy, although unbeknownst to us at the time, was the birth of the new evil, rising and rushing to fill the impending void, just as we inaugurated the beginning of the end of the old.

A Totalitarian Tin Ear

(Editor's Note: This affords us yet another opportunity to thank our 39th President, Jimmy Carter, for his myriad contributions to world peace and stability, this time for his tremendous forethought in allowing the Shah of Iran to be overthrown by the Islamofascist mullahs who then immediately abducted the contingency they held until a man they actually respected (Read: feared) arrived via orderly succession. Thank you, again, Mister Nobel Peace Prize.)

Ronald Reagan began his pursuit of Communistic implosion in 1946, which culminated with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. We face similar calendarial longitude in fighting this new form of totalitarianism. May we now show the same dedication, determination and resolve in ending the scourge of our time as Reagan amply exhibited in his forty-three year pursuit of the demise of his.

Freedom demands, and victory requires, absolutely nothing less.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram today proffers the following headline regarding the Lone Star Gubernatorial campaign:

Strayhorn, Perry lead money race

But now let us turn to the relevant excerpts.

(Rick) Perry, who has been (Texas) governor since December 2000 and is seeking his second full term, received $4.6 million during the past six months and has $11.5 million on hand, including money raised before the current reporting period. (Carole Keeton) Strayhorn, the state's comptroller and a prodigious fund-raiser, raised $2.4 million during the reporting period and has $8.1 million in her account.

Why on Earth does Madame Comptroller receive top headline billing in this piece? She has raised less of late and has less on hand than the man garnering second showing on the marquee. She is hailed as "a prodigious fund-raiser", yet Governor Perry doubled down and lapped her during the most recent reporting period.

And it is not as if her campaign to oust the man in the Mansion was just recently sprung on the public, and she therefore did not have full time and opportunity to wave around her fiscal prodigiousness. She has been running for Governor, incessantly, since November of 2003. Yet she has now fallen behind him on a 2-1 cash basis.

(Editor's Note: This ratio is more than a little ironic (with apologies to Alanis Morissette), as it is precisely how far from accurate Madame Comptroller has consistently been in the only endeavor for which her current gig calls, Texas governmental revenue estimation. If you live by the 2-1 miscalculation, you die thereby as well.)

And the campaign coin trend is surely going against her.

Most of Strayhorn's money came in while she was planning to challenge Perry in the March 7 (Republican) primary. She abandoned that plan Jan. 2 and restarted her candidacy as an independent.

Welcome, Madame Comptroller

One might think that she can now avail herself more fully of Democrat money as an Independent (as she already waded in to those fetid and festering waters long ago), but there are numerous other Burros at what in Texas is a very small Donkey trough, and the newcomer to the receptacle may find the already onced-over pickings a bit slim.

And the providers thereof may be more than slightly wary of the consistently inconsistent Madame Comptroller and withhold their more generous profferings.

Of course, both Republicans that have thus far contributed to her effort, and all the others that prodigiously populate the state, will from this point forward be directing their fiscal efforts elsewhere.

She is certainly "a prodigious" something, but this descriptive will most certainly harm, rather than help, her attempted political ascendancy.

But she receives primary mention in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

And so it goes ... .

The statewide Texas Press call is going out for Gubernatorial candidate debates, with the perfunctory claims laid to high-minded democratic ideals, and the Media impetus being placed on Governor Rick Perry to acquiesce to the field's demand for heads-up oratory action.

Perry Campaign Spokesman Robert Black summed it up concisely and accurately when he said, "It's way too premature to talk about debates. (Comptroller and leading [though still distant] challenger Carole Keeton Strayhorn) is not even on the ballot."

(Editor's Note: Nor is fellow challenger, and third in the polls, Kinky Friedman.)

Enough said. Or at least it should be.

And this is the point of this little journalistic exercise. Were the Austin Press Corps at all professional, and thereby impartial, they would not take Madame Comptoller's request for debates to the Governor, or seriously, unless and until she is actually a member of the race. This Press preemptive strike for these tete-a-tetes is geared to assist any and everyone seeking to unseat their Public Offical Enemy #1, the incumbent Governor.

As stated in one of the aforementioned siren song stories, it is always the electoral underdog(s) that seek to debate in the hopes of scoring points and gaining ground on the favorite. The leader procures nothing in offering his trailing opposition a chance to nip at his heels in the presence of a moderator.

This is not to say that debates should not or will not transpire, nor that the Governor is at all apprehensive to so engage (for whom, amongst this field, is there to fear?), it is merely an inherent reality of every political campaign.

Would You Want to Stop to Debate People Not Yet Even On the Track?

All this being said, we are quite sure Governor Perry will participate in a, or several, debates before the November election. But it is certainly not too much for him to ask that his debate adversaries be actual electoral adversaries in the effort to next man the Mansion.

The Media, in toto, calling for disputations before the two "leading" opponents, neither of whom are in his Party primary, even fit the bill, is more than a bit premature. But anything to help the cause of ousting their celebre is in play, logic, calanderial and ballotary considerations to the contrary notwithstanding.