Chad’s Morning Brief: Back From Vacation, Obama’s War Against Texas, & More
Here is your Morning Brief for the morning of July 29, 2013. Give me your feedback below and tune in to The Chad Hasty Show for these and many more topics from 8:30 to 11am. Remember, you can listen online at KFYO.com or on your iPhone/Android with the radioPup App.
1. I'm Back!
It's good to be back in Lubbock and good to be back on the air. I want to thank Paul Beane, Ysidro Gutierrez, and Matt Crow for doing a great job sitting behind the mic while I was gone. I also appreciate the listeners who emailed me their feedback on the job my fill-ins did.
I have to admit, I enjoyed unplugging and being away. For a day or two... okay maybe longer than that, I didn't watch the news or check out any news sites online. It was great! Though news of the royal baby being born did somehow get to me. I blame Twitter. While I always talk about informing yourself and how important it is to know what is happening in the world, I think it's just as important to unplug and just live life. Vacations are great for doing just that.
Over the past 10 days or so, my wife and I spent time in Dallas, Austin, and Fredericksburg. It was a mix of work and vacation but we had a great time. In Fredericksburg we had the chance to stop at some of the great wineries Texas has to offer. At each of our stops, West Texas and the High Plains were a source of many of their grapes. While many were effected by the late freezes we had this year, it's really cool to hear about how the wine industry in Texas is doing. As a special treat, Kim McPherson of McPherson Cellars will join me today to talk about the Wine and Vine Festival and the wine industry in general.
I always enjoy taking road trips and driving the roads of Texas. Throughout the week, I'll be doing some reviews of the places we ate and stayed while in Dallas, Austin, and Fredericksburg.
2. Obama vs. Texas (link)
Oh I can't wait to talk about this on Monday's show. The DOJ is going after Texas because of Voter ID. Democrats believe that making everyone show an ID to vote is somehow racist and wrong. As Politico points out, this administration loves going to war with Texas.
They might as well put a “Mess with Texas” bumper sticker on the presidential limo.
Attorney General Eric Holder’s announcement Thursday that he’s taking Texas to court over its voting laws is the latest battle between the White House and Lone Star State Republicans — and one that both sides are eager to have.
Texas vs. the Obama administration is one of most reliable shows in politics. Right from the start of President Barack Obama’s first term, Gov. Rick Perry refused to take stimulus money. He helped lead the opposition to Obamacare and has since refused to set up a state insurance exchange or expand Medicaid in his state. He never came across an Obama EPA regulation he didn’t challenge. And State Attorney General Greg Abbott has sued the federal government 27 times on everything from Obamacare to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
Both sides have political motivation to keep going: The White House gets applauded in many parts of the country for casting Texas as the evil outlaw, and Republicans in the state count the money and the votes they get back home for telling the federal government to stuff it.
“Texans want to fight. They love to fight. The Obama administration is willing to get in the ring with us, and we’ll never step out of the ring,” said Bill Miller, a Texas lobbyist and political consultant who’s worked with both Republicans and Democrats in the state. “Ten rounds, fifteen rounds, we’ll keep going. As long as the two sides are standing, they’re going to swing at each other. And both sides benefit from the fight.”
The latest round began last month, when hours after the Supreme Court struck down of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, Abbott immediately moved to start implementing the state’s controversial new voter ID laws. . Thursday morning, Holder countered, announcing in a speech to the National Urban League in Philadelphia that the Justice Department would ask a court to consider a new avenue to force those laws to go through federal pre-clearance, since he says they are clearly discriminatory.
I will have a lot to say about this on today's show.
3. Feds Force School to Allow Transgender Student to Use Boys' Locker Room (link)
Is this a new trend? Parents who sue because their boy/girl thinks they aren't a boy/girl and feel discriminated against? How about this, if you are born a boy you're a male. If you were born a female, you're a female. Use the bathroom and locker room that you were genetically assigned to.
It’s all the rage these days for transgender students (or their parents) to sue or make a big fuss because their genitalia doesn’t match the bathrooms and locker rooms they prefer to use.
The latest flare-up occurred in a quiet, expensive suburb northeast of Los Angeles. The Arcadia Unified School District in Arcadia, Calif. finalized an agreement with the U.S. Department of Education to terminate a Title IX investigation into allegations of discrimination against a transgender middle schooler, reports the Los Angeles Times.
The agreement resolves a complaint pressed by the Department of Education and filed on behalf of an unnamed student who was born female but wants to be a male.
The complaint alleges that school officials prevented the female student from using the boys’ bathrooms and locker rooms in sixth and seventh grades just because she doesn’t have a penis. The complaint also alleges that school officials didn’t allow the student to stay in a cabin with boys during a district-sponsored overnight camp. Instead the student was allegedly required to stay in a cabin separate from both male and female students.
The Arcadia school board unanimously approved the agreement this week, promising to take immediate steps to ensure that the transgender student will now be treated like other male students. In addition, the district promised to treat gender-based discrimination as a form of sex discrimination henceforth.
“I am glad that my school district has agreed to put in place the protections that I, and other transgender students, need to feel safe and welcome in school,” said the student in a press release circulated by the National Center for Lesbian Rights. “Knowing that I have the school district’s support, I can focus on learning and being a typical high school student, like my friends.”
An eight-page agreement letter from the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights summarizes many additional details of the original complaint. The student has “identified as a boy from a very young age” and “began consistently to assert” the hairstyle, clothing choices and manners typically favored by males in elementary school. The student adopted a masculine first name, started identifying with masculine pronouns and used a gender-neutral bathroom.
It was apparently in the sixth and seventh grades when the student wanted to use the boys’ bathrooms and locker rooms, and was denied. The cabin incident occurred in seventh grade
Other Top Stories:
These and many more topics coming up on today’s edition of The Chad Hasty Show. Tune in mornings 8:30-11am on News/Talk 790 KFYO, streaming online at kfyo.com, and now on your iPhone and Android device with the radioPup App. All guest interviews can be heard online in our podcast section after the show at kfyo.com.
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