You can fool some of the people all of the time, especially if they're reporters

From an AP story printed in today's Houston Chronicle:

In the first session that started June 30, 12 senators, including one Republican, opposed bringing up redistricting in the Senate. But in the second special session called July 28, the lieutenant governor removed a rule that requires two-thirds of senators to agree to take up a bill. That took away Democrats' blocking power, so they fled the state.

(Emphasis added.)  How a major newswire — along with the biggest daily newspaper in the state that's published in the nation's fourth largest city — can consistently swallow this claim is simply beyond my comprehension.  This isn't a fuzzy issue upon which reasonable minds can disagree.  It's a matter of straightforward fact, on which the AP, the Chronicle, and virtually all the other national and Texas media are repeating as gospel the outright lies told by the Truant Texas Dems™.

The Austin American-Statesman repeats the same lie:  "He [Lt. Gov. Dewhurst] decided to junk the Senate's longstanding rule requiring two-thirds of its members to agree to bring a bill up for debate, which is what provoked the 11 to leave."

And it's repeated again in another AP story reprinted far and wide, this one about whether the "average Texan" understands the issues:

In the first session, which began June 30, a dozen senators, including one Republican, opposed bringing up redistricting in the Senate.

Under Senate rules at the time, those numbers were enough to block consideration in the 31-member chamber.

But in the second special session called July 28, Republican Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst removed the two-thirds rule so Democrats no longer had that blocking power.

The average Texan would stand a better chance of understanding the issues if the news media weren't willing mouthpieces for the telling and retelling of this particular lie!

This is so very Orwellian.  It is an obvious — yet effective — ploy to play on Americans' instinctive sense of "fair-play," the notion that you shouldn't "change the rules mid-game."  But in Truant Texas Dem™-speak, "enforcing the rules as they're written" = "changing the rules" = "removing a rule."

Given the particular way I'm hard-wired, though, what I really want to do is not to punch each of the Truant Texas Dems™ in the nose, nor even shout at them.  No ...

What I really, really want is to quietly and methodically cross-examine them under oath.  Isn't that weird?  That's my natural reaction when I see someone telling huge lies.  I want each of them in the witness chair, one by one, and I'll start by asking permission to approach the first witness to hand her a copy of Beldar Exhibit A, the Rules of the Texas Senate.  And then someone's gonna be sweating some bullets.  Then someone's going to be ... vivisected.

Would that it could be.  Alas, it cannot, and I will only cross-examine Sophie — errrrr, Leticia, Gonzalo, and the gang in my fantasies.

But if you see me running naked and slobbering down the street, screaming and plucking out clumps of hair, this kind of story will likely be the explanation.  I sure hope that Judge Kazen in Laredo will speak out as clearly and forcefully on this matter as Judge Chin in New York did on Fox News' lawsuit against Al Franken.