From the Texas Tribune: Analysis: A Peculiar Way to Disenfranchise Voters

Rapid turnover undermines the ability of a district to get a representative that has enough seniority to become powerful. Is this intentional?

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Texas lawmakers have designed a congressional district that is so slippery that neither political party can hang onto it, and where it is impossible for anyone to stay in office long enough to build up enough clout to get much of anything done for the folks at home.

You will get an argument about that from the people who have held the seat. Will Hurd, Pete Gallego, Francisco "Quico" Canseco, Ciro Rodriguez and Henry Bonilla will all say, in one way or another, that they have been effective representatives for the people who sent them to Washington, D.C.

Bonilla, a Republican, was there for 14 years. Rodriguez, a Democrat, was there for four, but served in Congress for eight more years representing another district — another redistricting tale for another day.

. . . Kevin Brady, a Republican from The Woodlands who served in the Texas Legislature with Rodriguez and Gallego back in the day, was elected to Congress in 1996. He is now poised to become the chairman of the powerful tax-writing Ways & Means Committee.

Midland Republican Michael Conaway was elected to Congress in 2004, and he’s chairman of the House Agriculture Committee. Jeb Hensarling, R-Dallas, went to Washington after the 2002 elections and chairs the Financial Services Committee. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, who was first elected in 2004, chairs the Homeland Security Committee. Pete Sessions, R-Dallas, who heads the Rules Committee, he joined Congress in 1997.

First thing to notice there is that you have to be a Republican to have a chairmanship in the current Congress. But the second is that nobody from the 23rd congressional district has had a chance to stay long enough to get into the line, even for the top minority positions. And their voters, it follows, have that much less power in Washington than other Texans from more stable districts.

Now he's a bomb thrower

It looks like Senator Cruz continues to make quite the impression in the Senate. Here's the latest:

“I made promises to the people of Texas that I would come to Washington to shake up the status quo,” he said in e-mailed answers to questions, in lieu of speaking. “That is what I intend to do, and it is what I have done in every way possible in the responsibilities that have been granted to me.”

In a body known for comity, Mr. Cruz is taking confrontational Tea Party sensibilities to new heights — or lows, depending on one’s perspective. Wowed conservatives hail him as a hero, but even some Republican colleagues are growing publicly frustrated with a man who has taken the zeal of the prosecutor and applied it to the decorous quarters of the Senate.

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said that some of the demands Mr. Cruz made of Mr. Hagel were “out of bounds, quite frankly.” Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, issued a public rebuke after Mr. Cruz suggested, with no evidence, that Mr. Hagel had accepted honorariums from North Korea.

“All I can say is that the appropriate way to treat Senator Hagel is to be as tough as you want to be, but don’t be disrespectful or malign his character,” Mr. McCain said in an interview.

Democrats were more blunt.

“He basically came out and made the accusation about money from North Korea or money from our enemies, and he just laid out there all of this accusatory verbiage without a shred of evidence,” said Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri. “In this country we had a terrible experience with innuendo and inference when Joe McCarthy hung out in the United States Senate, and I just think we have to be more careful.”

We'll keep tracking these stories as they come. Will these tactics come back to haunt the Senator or is he blazing a new trail for newly elected Senator? Is this proof that the Senate is becoming as divided as the House?

Texas Tribune: New Legislative Faces — and an Experience Deficit

The Texas Tribune looks ahead to the 83rd Legislature, which contains 43 new members - in addition to 23 who were elected in 2010. This is an unusually inexperienced legislature, so there's no telling what it might do:

The new members aren’t stupid, and some are quite smart. But they are inexperienced, and that will become evident as they run into issues they prepared for during the campaigns — things like voter ID and women’s health and standardized testing in public schools — and issues they have never encountered, like the intricacies of tax exemptions and the state budget.

New members have new ideas, and many of them are elected by people who are tired of what has been happening in government and who want their new representatives to fundamentally change the way things are done.

It takes time. All a new member gets is a parking place, an office and a chair in the House. New members get a vote when things come up. They don’t have much to say about what comes up, when it comes up and what’s in it when it gets to the full Legislature. They don’t have the knowledge yet about which legislators are powerful, which ones are bullies, which ones are smart, which ones are honest and which ones are just decent human beings.

Robert Byrd Dies

Background from the NYT.

Wikipedia - note the update.

His Senate Website continues.