Three-Point Shots, Vol. 3, No. 6: April 24, 2025
Today, children, let’s talk about intelligence … and the remarkable lack of it in the top echelons of Texas politics.
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Friday, April 25, 2025
Quote of the Day:
“If you really think about it, it’s a dystopian world we could live in. I think our challenge is, how do we get out there and put in those safeguards?”
Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, musing on what could happen if she is elected to higher office.
Let’s see, what have we got here? The tariffs are, then aren’t, then are again. The end of FDA food inspections. Yet another Signal group national security leak, this time the SecDef’s wife and lawyer among them. National registries of people on the autism spectrum.
With such unrelentingly bad news emanating from Washington, Deceit, I thought I’d focus on some Texas news in this edition of Three-Point Shots. But don’t worry – you’ll still be horrified.
1. Artificial Intelligence Comes to the Legislature
The words “intelligence” and “Texas Legislature” are not often seen together. For years, the Lege was dominated by good ol’ country boys who were, to use one syllogism, “dumb as a bag of rocks.” Over time, urbanization changed the makeup of the Legislature so that it became increasingly dominated by people who were “dumb as a bag of hammers,” which some people thought was an improvement.
Of course, any stereotype overstates things. Many men and women of exceptional intelligence have served in the Lege. Most of them chose to keep that brainpower a secret, at least from their constituents. Former Speaker Pete Laney could “aw, shucks” you with the best of them, but he understood policy and was a tactical master of the House’s rules. So was his nemesis and successor as Speaker, Tom Craddick.
A few members in both chambers, on the other hand, luxuriated in their intelligence and rhetorical skills. Dreary hours of House floor debate could suddenly turn electric if Steve Wolens or Sylvester Turner (R.I.P.) stepped up to the microphone. And members like Carl Parker and Ike Harris brought both passion and subject matter mastery to the sometimes florid and insubstantial debates on the Senate floor.
Overall, though, the Texas Lege truly represented the state’s culture of inbred anti-intellectualism and under-education. And it gets worse session by session. Consider the progression of House Speakers this century: Laney to Craddick to Joe Straus to … Dennis Bonnen to … Dade Phelan to … Dustin Burrows. Even more depressing, consider the lobotomies performed on Senate members by Dan Patrick since he took over that body in 2014.
All of which excited me when I read this week that the Legislature was bringing in some artificial intelligence to backstop its own, uh, brainpower. Unfortunately, I’d misread the initial news stories. The House has passed the Texas Responsible AI Governance Act (TRAIGA), authored by Rep. Giovanni Capriglione (R-Southlake). Although it was originally written to govern the burgeoning AI industry, it has been scaled back to mostly regulate governmental use of AI. This pulls many of the teeth from the original proposal, but what can you expect from the Texas House?
(Who really wrote the bill? Giovanni Capriglione … or his digital avatar?)
The bill now goes to the Senate, where it expected to undergo a grueling inquiry: what does Lieutenant Dan want?
2. Artificial Intelligence Comes to Marfa
As the Grey Lady[i] will tell you every time she writes one of her paeans to its simple pleasures and sophisticated folk, Marfa is “a little jewel” that “offers a siren song to travelers intrigued by its blend of dusty cowboy culture, high-brow art and wide-open horizon.” All in all, She gushes, “you can expect to leave Marfa starstruck.”
And now, if the siren song of Progress calls the tune, you can expect to leave Marfa after drinking recycled water from an 80,000-acre AI data center to be built southeast of town[ii]. The electricity intensive data center (an AI internet search requires 10 times the amount of energy used in a traditional internet search) will be run off solar power and, perhaps, natural gas, although plans have not been finalized.
(Artist’s rendering of the machine city, er, AI data center to be built outside Marfa.)
The plant will also consume massive amounts of water. They are planning to use 800 acre-feet of water per year, an increase of between 10-20% of the aquifer’s historic pumping levels. And nobody knows whether they can do that, or for how long, in the drought-stricken Trans-Pecos.
And Marfa will not be a customer for all this artificial intelligence. Instead, it will be shipped off to other points more in need of it. Maybe even the Texas Capitol.
3. Paxton v. Cornyn, 2026
Speaking of intelligence … The suspense, if ever there was any, is over: Disgraced Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has announced that he will run against Somnolent Senior Senator John Cornyn in next year’s Republican primary.
This is one of those races where you’d be happy if the earth opened up and swallowed both of them. Cornyn has been an undistinguished senator for 22 years, after an undistinguished career as a district judge, Supreme Court justice, and Attorney General. He will never receive a “Profile in Courage” award, and has gotten more spineless during the decade that Trump has dominated American politics.
Paxton, on the other hand, is what you get when you take Trump’s id and ambition and graft it onto a third-rate probate lawyer from Collin County. In the House, we was the ultimate backbencher – he passed almost no bills, and ran for Speaker against Joe Straus, amassing only six pledges from the 150-member House. After his local senator was elected to Congress, Paxton failed upwards into the Senate, where he remained only two years before failing upwards to Attorney General.
As Attorney General, he became the darling of various special interests trying to bend the legal system to their own ends. That was especially true of Austin developer Nate Paul, whose corrupt and curious relationship with Paxton led to his 2023 impeachment. Only a 2023 contribution (cough bribe cough) to Dan Patrick saved his ass.
Cornyn, of course, represents what used to be the GOP in Texas: conservative, small-government, pro-business, pro-free trade, mildly racist. Paxton is the MAGA obverse of all of those: reactionary, pro- using government to punish his enemies, racist, xenophobic, protectionist. And in that, he perfectly mirrors the sentiments of the Texas Republican Party. Their contest will be a good barometer of the GOP’s mood in a deeply red state after two years of Trump 47.
If Paxton does win, Ted Cruz has better watch out: he will have serious competition for being the Most Loathed Member of the Senate.
Measles Update (an ongoing service to our readers)
624 cases in Texas; 884 cases nationwide
Cases in 26 Texas counties; cases in 30 states
Two fatalities in Texas, of three nationwide
64 patients hospitalized since January, of 94 nationwide
[i] Or is it “Gray” Lady? Artificial Intelligence seems to think so.
[ii] Better go see the Marfa Lights while you can.