Thumbs up, down

Legislative tomfoolery, Pearland’s political phenom, and the Rockets run out of gas.

How could another session of the state Legislature unwind without our biennial regurgitation of a quote from long-departed, Houston congressman Bob Eckhardt. The state Capitol in Austin, he opined, was “built for giants and inhabited by pygmies.” As the 85th meeting of our elected officials sprints to conclusion without a budget adequately funding public schools and after passing plenty of discriminatory bills, what are the little people doing? In the state Senate, they began strictly enforcing a ban on wearing blue jeans in the chamber.

It could be worse than a denim ban. At the West Virginia Capitol this week, a reporter was arrested. The offense? Willful disruption of governmental processes. He apparently asked too many questions of Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, who was visiting Charleston. Price refused to answer whether domestic violence was a pre-existing condition in the new Trumpcare plan, and the reporter persisted.

Our early favorite for the Texas Monthly magazine’s worst legislator list is state Rep. Bill Zedler, a Republican from Arlington. Attached to a bill that would reform the foster care system, Zedler offered an amendment that would restrict doctors from vaccinating those children. “The vaccination is only for that child to protect that child,” he said. The polio virus was not around to respond. All jokes aside, Zedler and the 73 people who joined in the vote are themselves the threats to public health. Austin legislators appear to be hanging a welcome sign to new tropical diseases like Zika and Chagas as well as to those once thought defeated like measles. Is there a vaccine for idiocy?

As long as we’re quoting historic Texas politicians, we turn to early 20th-century legend John Nance Garner as we reflect on a millennial winning a 21st-century election in Pearland. “Elect ’em young and honest and keep ’em forever,” Garner said. Dawson High School senior Mike Floyd won a seat on the Pearland ISD Board of Trustees last weekend. He credits his success to knocking on 5,500 doors, supporting LGBT rights and calling for more transparency. His opponent, Rusty DeBorde, cratered after making Islamophobic posts on social media. For the record, we couldn’t verify the Garner quote. It came to us from state Sen. John Whitmire. He was elected to the Texas Legislature at 22.

In other down-ballot races, Susan Sample was re-elected mayor of West University with more than 80 percent of the vote. Normally a bedroom community doesn’t make an exclusive column like “Thumbs,” but we were appalled by the remarks of challenger Sonny Brandtner in a debate. “Susan has two toddlers. … I believe Susan has too much on her plate (to be mayor),” he said. To lawyer, mayor and mom Sample, we say, “Happy Mother’s Day.”

This page has long advocated for the removal of tributes to the Confederacy from the public sphere. We say put statues of Civil War generals in museums and take the names of the treasonous off schools and street signs. So, it is with pleasure we see the signs for Dowling Street coming down and those for the updated Emancipation Avenue going up. They also matched up with the shiny and new Emancipation Park, which will have a grand opening on Juneteenth.

We approach the end with this passage from a recent online obit for McKinney attorney Glenn Talmadge Nix: “His true love was sports. He specifically requests six Dallas Cowboys pallbearers so that the Dallas Cowboys can let him down one last time.”

P.S. Speaking of being let down, the Rockets broke hearts again when they were blown out of their own arena by the Spurs in a series that ended Thursday. “They were not just whipped,” wrote the Chronicle’s Jonathan Feigen, “they were humiliated.” Houston’s superstar, James Harden, who this year signed a four-year, $118 million contract extension to go along with his $200 million shoe deal, basically didn’t show up at the game.