You've got to remember that hanging around downtown Austin, with the Bill Burkett types, the Friends of Dan Rather and an area where Lloyd Doggett (waylayed by Phil Gramm in the Senate race 21 years ago) is the local congressman for life, Earle's comments are completely in the mainstream of the people he sees every day. They really think the Republican Yahoos in DeLay's Sugarland, or even nearby Round Rock, are out to factionalize and destroy the country.

Whether or not he's still in the mainstream of Travis County as a whole, given the growth of the suburban areas, remains to be seen, but Ronnie's still got 38 months left in his current term, which is plenty of time for people to forget he's obsessively partisan and incompetent at the same time.

"Earle argued that removing judges under these circumstances could lead to a country split "into Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds."

I wanna be a Sunni.

It's not very common to recuse a judge without some evidence of actual bias against the defendant (by which I mean statements by the judge to the effect that Republicans are crooks, or some such). That makes me think that the removed judge has manifested bias in more ways than just making donations to the Democrats, because if that were enough there would a lot more recused judges. I might have missed something here, but usually a motion is first made to the judge himself to recuse himself, and then appealed if the judge refuses. Here it looks like they brought in an outside judge from the outset. There's a lot going on here in terms of atmospherics.

mr earle reveals more than he realizes, with his analogy. saddam is the father he never had.

Mark my words: this piece of junk of a case won't go to trial.

It's my understanding that they did ask the judge to remove himself, and he refused, which is when the appeal was made. Of course the judge was correct to not step down, because Leftwing Progressives always see themselves as fair, unbiased and objective while giving those Evil Rightwing Republicans what they deserve..

Perkins stepped aside when they ran this same scam on Kay Bailey Hutchison.

Perhaps Judge Bob Perkins is Lucy Ramirez. Or George Conn. Or the mystery man in black, at the county fair. Only Bill Burkett knows for sure.

That makes me think that the removed judge has manifested bias in more ways than just making donations to the Democrats, because if that were enough there would a lot more recused judges.

Well, AIUI, in this case the judge gave money to Moveon.org when they were running their "Let's Get Tom DeLay!" fundraising campaign, but who knows.

Being that Molly Ivins used to call the future majority, "Shiite Baptists" that sounds about
right.