Nice piece on the New York memorial service for the late Texas columnist. [NYO]

The Legislature provides us with an array of verbal treasures. During a debate on a bill to stop out-of-wedlock children from getting welfare, Bob Eckhardt said, "It is not so much the natural bastards I worry about as the self-made ones." Craig Washington, filibustering one of those idiot flag-burning amendments, said, "I prefer those who would burn the flag and keep the Constitution to those who would tear up the Constitution and keep the flag." After yet another unsuccessful effort to modify the Texas sodomy law, the authors of a successful amendment were slapping backs and high-fiving. A voice from the press box said, "Sergeant, you must go over and reprimand both those men. Because under the amendments just passed by them, it is now illegal for a prick to touch an asshole in this state." The annual Waring Blender Award for Mixed Metaphor is always appreciated, as in: "If you throw the baby out with the bathwater, it will let the head of the camel into the tent." Then there was the special time we were having Disability Day to honor the handicapped, and Speaker Gib Lewis said to those in the wheelchairs wedged up into the balcony, "And now, would y'all stand and be recognized?"