"U.S. Homeland Security officials are working with groups around the United States to head off any possible anti-Muslim backlash following the shootings at Fort Hood in Texas."

The Department of Homeland Security is in good company in its confusion. Gen. George Casey, the Army's top general, also worried that "this increased speculation could cause a backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers. And I've asked our Army leaders to be on the lookout for that." And President Obama cautioned against "jumping to conclusions."

The backlash trope is trotted out after every episode of terrorist violence. But it is as false as it is dangerous. This image of a nation on a hair trigger for violence against Muslims is a calumny. Even in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, though millions were inflamed by grief and outrage, there was no broad-based "backlash" against Muslim Americans. There were a handful of crimes including the murder of a Sikh who may have been mistaken for a Muslim, a few broken windows, some insults, and some hurt feelings. But the overwhelming majority of Americans did not seek out scapegoats, nor engage in vigilantism.

The repeated invocation of this libel has had an effect, though. It has succeeded in intimidating many Americans about the proper bounds of discussion. Gen. Casey reinforces this timidity when he frets that "our diversity" may be a casualty of the attack at Fort Hood. He and the Obama administration are obscuring the real challenge Americans face.

Our challenge is not to transcend the demons of vengeance clawing at our souls. Our challenge is to deal intelligently with a threat that arises from religious convictions. Non-bigoted observers can see that while the vast majority of the world's Muslims are not extremists, a significant minority are. And it matters what people believe.

We don't like to pass judgment on others' religious convictions. That's fine. But when a religious belief spurs violence and mass murder, it becomes political, and it becomes a proper concern of the military and security services.

Worldwide, Muslims believing themselves to be advancing the faith have committed more than 14,000 acts of violence just since 9/11. You know the litany: Madrid, London, Bali, Jerusalem, Mumbai, Amman. The list is long and bloody -- and it includes many innocent Muslims.

Many hit home. In 2003, Hasan Akbar, a Muslim convert, rolled a grenade into the tent of his fellow soldiers in the 101st Airborne Division on the eve of the invasion of Iraq. In June, Abdulhakim Muhammad, another convert, killed one Army recruiter and wounded another in Little Rock. Naveed Haq shot six women at the Seattle Jewish Federation office in 2006.

Federal agents have thwarted planned terror attacks on Fort Dix, N.J., folded up a terror ring in Lackawanna, N.Y., and uncovered plots against the nation's financial centers, the World Bank, the Sears Tower, the New York subway system, the Los Angeles airport, the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles, 10 airliners landing in the U.S. (the liquid bomb plot), JFK airport, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the Prudential Building in Newark, N.J., among others.

So shall we arrest all the Muslims in America? That's the caricature that is encouraged by the "backlash" peddlers. Obviously not. But what we must do is to discriminate -- that is, to make distinctions based on what kind of Islam Muslims embrace. We have created a climate in which members of the military were afraid to raise questions about the bald and blatant Islamist comments Major Nidal Hasan expressed over many years. He was overhead saying, "maybe people should strap bombs on themselves and go to Times Square." He was caught proselytizing his patients. He argued frequently to colleagues that the U.S. was engaged in a "war against Islam."

Yet no one raised a red flag. Might be interpreted as anti-Muslim bigotry. And so the military took no action against a man who loudly advertised his extremist sympathies. Thirteen Americans paid for that with their lives.

If any good were to come out of the Fort Hood massacre, it would be a new clarity about what we are fighting. Islamism is the enemy. Moderate Muslims are allies in the cause. We should no more shrink from confronting and battling Islamism than we would from any of the "isms" we destroyed in the 20th century.

Muddled thinking and misplaced delicacy have proved deadly. 

I've held back on this because I wanted to give readers a chance to read the initial analysis of Proposition 4. There are a lot of arguments out there in favor of it (the Fort Worth Star-Telegram has their endorsement here). I think you need to know, Prop. 4 is a bad idea.

I really wish government officials would be intellectually honest with constituents and call tax increases by their name. We've got Obama and his ilk referring to their government-option health care initiative as a "public" option, and tax-and-spenders in the Legislature, cities, and counties in Texas clamoring for a "local" option tax increase. The "local" option is dead, thank goodness - or is it?

Tax-and-spenders in the city of Denton have decided to keep pushing for the "local option" tax increase transportation bill, which failed during the 81st session despite best efforts of taxpayer-funded lobbyists and power-hungry legislators.

Unsurprisingly, it is not a citizen's group that wants this tax increase at all, but Denton Mayor Pro Tem Pete Kemp. Clearly, the lesson wasn't driven home when the citizens of Denton County joined protests against the legislation during session. Hopefully it will come back to bite officials during elections.

For more on why the TLOTA bill was a bad idea last session, and why it's still a bad idea, check out the following:

Lutz: Astroturf, anyone? (Lone Star Report)

Sullivan: Paying Lobbyists to Oppose You, Again (Empower Texans)

The High Cost of High-Speed Rail by Randal O'Toole, August 2009 (TPPF)

The Effect of Higher Gas Taxes on Texas Motorists by The Honorable Talmadge Heflin and James Quintero, May 2009 (TPPF)

House member challenges local option petition (Lone Star Report)

The Existing Local Option for Transportation (Heflin, Quintero: TPPF)

Testimony on Local Option Transportation Legislation (Heflin, Quintero, Keener: TPPF)

Senators who stood up for fiscal responsibility

Pics in this post were taken by myself and members of my household throughout the legislative session. I think they capture the theme quite well. Please excuse the blurriness in some - cell phone cameras only do so much.

Snakes! Provided by the Sweetwater Chamber of Commerce in honor of the annual Rattlesnake Round-Up.

Two lobbyists having a lightsaber duel.

Citizens lined up to testify on SB 362, the voter identification legislation, before the Committee of the Whole Senate in March.

Passing HCR 16, changing the official state dinosaur. Yeah.

 

A citizen holding up the Republic of Texas flag at Rep. Creighton's press conference on HCR 50, the sovereignty/10th Amendment legislation, in early April.


Governor Perry addressing the RightOnline blogger conference on May 23.


The first-ever rally for tax increases (the TLOTA) at the State Capitol, held on May 29. In this photo are Senator Wendy Davis (D-Fort Worth), Senator Kirk Watson (D-Austin), Senator John Carona (R-Dallas), Rep. Vicki Truitt (R-Fort Worth) and Rep. Mike Villareal (D-San Antonio). The "Texas Not Taxes" sign is being held up behind Sen. Carona by Americans for Prosperity's Peggy Venable - about 30 grassroots activists showed up to be "anti-protesters" against the taxes proposed by Carona and Truitt.

Dead legislation! This is a stack of dead bills the morning of sine die on June 1. The black spot you see is an eyepatch, put there in honor of Rep. Rene Oliviera (D-Brownsville).

Mourning some dead legislation on sine die.

The Texas State Capitol on sine die, June 1, 2009. Beautiful day in Austin!!

After 2005's Summer of the Special Session(s), I think it's perfectly natural for Texas political junkies to take about a five minute breather when the gavel falls on sine die before they begin wondering if the governor is going to call everyone back to address some major issue.

The chaos and headaches that came out of the 80th legislative session in 2007 were enough to hold us over for two years, and the last couple of weeks certainly seem like plenty to hold us now until 2011. Unfortunately, the Democrat shenanigans in the House and the mudslinging from a certain Dallas senator wreaked enough havoc to leave some serious unfinished business behind.

Now, Governor Perry said several times in the last few weeks that the one thing he would be ready to call a special session over would be windstorm insurance. I was at an event over Memorial Day weekend at the Capitol where he said that very thing to a room full of bloggers and live-Tweeting activists. The legislature passed a windstorm insurance bill, and it seems like that crisis is averted.

But the legislature adjourned sine die without addressing the sunset problem. Five state agencies hang in the balance because legislation enabling them to continue was left to die on the vine. TXDOT, for instance, died at midnight Sunday night, when the bill was postponed in a wrangle over the conference committee report - it was likely to die regardless, with Carona's filibuster threat, and Pickett saved us all from that nightmare. There was still a chance to save TXDOT, the Texas Department of Insurance, and the others with HB 1569, the "safety net" bill that would allow the agencies to continue operating and undergo the sunset process again in 2011. But that bill was, for lack of a better word, chubbed into oblivion on Sunday night as well, by Rep. David Leibowitz (D-San Antonio).

A last-minute Hail Mary by Rep. Jim Pitts (R-Waxahachie), HCR 291, passed the House but didn't get traction in the Senate. HCR 291 was a resolution that would extend through 2011 the agencies that would receive federal stimulus funds - meaning TXDOT and TDI. Despite the overwhelming support in the House, there were serious questions raised about the constitutionality and legality of HCR 291 - the 29 members who voted against it were very concerned about this, and a point of order was raised and overruled. After passing the resolution, the House did some more ceremonial singing and dancing before adjourning sine die just after 6pm.

Meanwhile, the Senate was immediately concerned about HCR 291. They recessed for the better part of two hours, each of the caucuses met twice to consider what to do, and ultimately the entire Senate rejected HCR 291 before adjourning around 9pm (the resolution was not even brought up for a vote). The post-sine die response to all of this from newly-elected President Pro Tem of the Senate Sen. Steve Ogden (R-Bryan) was that the blame for the Legislature's failure to save TXDOT, TDI, and the others lay with the House. Speaker Straus brushed off that criticism.

While most politicos and political junkies are now either literally or figuratively sleeping off the 140 day wrangle, the questions have already been asked.

1 - Are the Texas Dept. of Transportation, and the Texas Dept. of Insurance, and the other agencies, effectively dead? - More or less. There are things that can be done, including an executive order from the Governor, to keep these agencies alive. The way sunset works: an agency undergoes sunset review during the interim prior to the session before the official sunset date set for that agency. The Sunset Review Board gives recommendations, and a bill is crafted and filed to fine-tune the agency. The legislature debates and votes on that legislation. The agency is then either shut down or continued. If the bill does not pass, for whatever reason, the agency is then subjected to a systematic shut-down. The date of sunset for TXDOT, TDI, and two others is Sept. 1, 2010. This means that unless something is done, beginning Sept. 1 of 2009 (this year), the agencies' services and duties will be assigned to other agencies, and they will operate on "skeleton crews" through the final sunset date. The Texas Racing Commission has an extra year; their sunset date is Sept. 1, 2011.

2 - Will there be a special session? According to Governor Perry in this morning's press conference, maybe and maybe not. As stated above, the windstorm insurance legislation that primarily concerned the governor passed and is being sent to his desk. Scuttlebutt at the Capitol yesterday held that if there is a special, Gov. Perry will wait until after the veto period (the 20 days after sine die) and the July 4 holiday to call it. Speaker Straus has stated that he doesn't think there's a need for a special. Lt. Gov. Dewhurst is mum so far. But the final authority lies with the governor, and so far, he's playing it down. I'll have another post on a special session and what it could mean for Gov. Perry later today.

3 - Whose fault was this, really? Lots of fingers to point, and I'll probably miss a few, but the first one has to aim at Sen. Carona. The TXDOT sunset bill, HB 300, passed the Senate with his local option tax increase attached, and the House was adamantly opposed to the tax from the get-go (they let the House version die without a floor debate prior to the chubbing, grassroots efforts and the chubbing killed the Senate version while it was in the House, and the House voted to instruct the conference committee on HB 300 to reject the tax provision). TXDOT died because of DFW rail and taxpayer-funded lobbying efforts to raise taxes unnecessarily. The Texas Dept. of Insurance bill died thanks to chubbing - it's only hope was the safety net bill. And finally, Rep. David Leibowitz, and doubtless some of his Dem colleagues in the House, get a portion of the blame as well. Killing the safety net bill ensured the final death of those agencies and if we get a special session, that's the ultimate reason why.

Honestly, the chubbing was the big killer and big problem of the final days of the 81st session. Time-wasting in the House in an effort to prevent legitimate debate on voter identification legislation (read: Democrats trying to avoid taking a vote on a popular issue that would have cost them seats) also prevented a good deal of important legislation from passing, both good and bad. If the legislature is called back, if Governor Perry overlooks the possible political backlash from a special session to address these major issues, it won't be difficult to figure out who is to blame, but it also won't matter. The work has to get done, whatever that looks like, and the fact remains that neither chamber came out of this smelling like spring bluebonnets.

Just sit back, relax, watch and listen: