United States Representative, District 18

Wendell Champion is an impressive independent conservative. He graduated from West Point and came from a family on welfare. A new generation Republican who asks why are we not making progress under the so-called leadership of career politicians like Sheila Jackson Lee. Wendell is a future star in Congress.

United States Representative, District 22

Kathaleen Wall is a longtime conservative grassroots activist who has served as a precinct chairman and member of the State Republican Executive Committee. Wall and her husband have also given financial support to the Republican Party and numerous Republican candidates. Wall is running on a conservative platform of increasing border security, stopping illegal immigration and protecting human life, including the lives of the unborn. TCR believes Kathaleen Wall will be an ally to other conservatives looking out for our interests in Washington, D.C.

Justice, 1st Court of Appeals District, Place 5

Judge James Lombardino is a practicing attorney, former Assistant District Attorney and former Judge (with eight years on the bench) who has experience in civil, criminal and family law cases, all of which are heard before the 1st Court of Appeals. Lombardino's family law experience would fill a huge gap on the court, since such experience has been absent from the Court since 2009 when Justice Eva Guzman exited.

Sheriff

Joe Danna has deep roots in Harris County along with decades of experience as a Master Peace Officer and Constable’s Deputy. Danna’s passion for law enforcement, his extensive experience working together with numerous law enforcement agencies in and around Harris County and his commitment to applying technology to the office make him the best choice for the next Sheriff of Harris County.

Justice of the Peace, Precinct 5, Place 1

Judge Russ Ridgway has served as the Justice of the Peace for Precinct 5, Place 1 since 2003. Since taking office, he has handled over 1 million new cases including over 390 criminal and civil jury trials through December 2019. Ridgway has run an efficient court and eliminated an inherited backlog of over 128,000 civil cases, making him worthy of re-election.

When the liberal Democratic Washington Post runs an opinion piece trashing the Democrats and their hateful filibuster of the Tim Scott police reform bill one takes notice. Democratic Number 2 leader Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois called the Scott bill "token," Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) called the bill "trying to get away with murder, actually the murder of George Floyd."

Here are the facts, the Democrats in the Senate, save for three - Senator Doug Jones (D-AL), Senator Angus King (I/D-ME) and Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), voted to not even debate the bill.

The Scott bill the Democrats wouldn't even debate, includes - (1) banning chokeholds, (2) halting federal money for police departments that don't report chokeholds, (3) making lynching a federal hate crime, (4) creating a National Policing Commission to review criminal justice in America, (5) assemble a database on use of force by police. All good ideas and Senator Scott went above and beyond to offer up to 25 amendments.

And the Democrats response was to shut down and eliminate any floor debate.

By the way, in the House bill, no Republican amendments were allowed. If you are wondering where the so-called "work with the other side" Congresswoman Lizzie Fletcher (TX-Dist. 7) did? She is consistent with what she has done since her election in 2018, do what the uber-partisan Speaker orders. Once again, given a chance to vote to allow amendments and make the House bill bipartisan, Fletcher voted no. Wesley Hunt is knocking on the door and would be a breath of fresh air in the House replacing the present Speaker Nancy Pelosi clone.

This year's Presidential election should be about the future, the next four years.

So far, we have gotten little information from both sides except platitudes.

What are each side's plans to get the economy going again? What are each side's plans of how to deal with violence and declining law and order? What about taxes and spending, foreign policy and national defense? The issues go on and on.

Joe Biden hiding in his basement and not talking about his vision and essentially not saying much is unacceptable. President Donald Trump's future vision and the case of why he wants four more years needs to be articulated.

The voters are waiting.

As a reformed libertarian, I still have an instinctive dislike of governmental totems, monuments, and statues of politicians and military leaders. But I have come to understand that for a nation to hold together, it needs such tangible displays, as well as intangible myths, fables, and heroes. Tear these down, and the nation will be torn apart until new totems, monuments, statues, myths, fables, and heroes are established.

But I'll go with the current zeitgeist and recommend the tearing down of anything that directly or indirectly honors slavery, oppression, brutality, racism, and misogyny.

A good start would be the artifacts from the pharaohs and the Roman Empire at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. All of them should be taken away by garbage trucks and buried with other New York trash in a landfill in Pennsylvania or the South.

At the same time, the history of the Roman Empire should be scrubbed from the City of Rome, especially the Coliseum, as well as from all of the former territories of the empire, ranging from the British Isles to Jerusalem.

Then there are all of statues, monuments and roadside historical markers that honor Native Americans, or more specifically, the majority of tribes that engaged in slavery, oppression, brutality, racism, and misogyny against other tribes - which they did long before the white man came on the scene and engaged in similar atrocities against them.

Some of the best descriptions of inter-tribal atrocities can be found in the award-winning book, The Heart of Everything That Is: The Untold Story of Red Cloud, an American Legend. It is a New York Times Bestseller, a Salon.com Best Book of the Year, True West Magazine's Best Biography of the Year, a finalist for the Reading the West Book Award, and finalist for the Western Writers of America Spur Award.

Here is what the book says about Indian cruelty:

The Natives' astonishing capacity for cruelty was like nothing the whites had ever experienced. The Plains Indians had honed their war ethic for centuries, and their martial logic was not only fairly straightforward, but accepted by all tribes without challenge - no quarter asked, none given; to every enemy, death, the slower and more excruciating the better. A defeated Crow, Pawnee, Cheyenne, Shoshone, or Sioux not immediately killed in battle would be subjected to unimaginable torments for as long as he could stand the pain. Women of all ages were tortured to death, but not before being raped - unless they were young enough to be raped and then taken as captive slaves or hostages to be traded for trinkets, whiskey, or guns. Crying babies were a burden on the trail, so they were summarily killed by spear, by war club, or by banging their soft skulls against rocks or trees so as not to waste arrows.

Captured whites got similar treatment:

Captured whites were scalped, skinned, and roasted alive over their own campfires, shrieking in agony as Indians yelped and danced about them like the bloody-eyed Achilles celebrating over the fallen Hector. Men's penises were hacked off and shoved down their throats and women were flogged with deer-hide quirts while being gang-raped. Afterward, their breasts, vaginas, and even pregnant wombs were sliced away and laid out on the buffalo grass.

The Sioux were particularly vicious:

A Sioux brave would wager his last breath against the most courageous adversaries, and no matter the outcome, he won. A good death did honor to an entire life, and thus on the battlefield and afterward he was an exhibitionist with no sense of mockery. When he took a scalp, hacked off a hand, gouged an eye, or severed a penis, he screamed at the top of his lungs to proclaim his own greatness. Later, when he handed the scalp to his woman, she too sang his glory while dancing with the bloody skull piece suspended from a pole.

The Comanche were even crueler than the Sioux, but I'll spare you the sickening details.

Of course, as any educated person knows, but the woke generation apparently doesn't know, such cruelty has been a constant in human history and transcends all races. Somewhere, at some time, just about every human on earth has a recent or distant ancestor who practiced slavery, oppression, brutality, racism, and misogyny.

An educated person also knows, but the woke generation doesn't know, about the sources of the humanist ideas and moral philosophies that addressed and reduced this dark side of human nature. A good start for the woke would be Civilization, by Niall Ferguson.

But in the absence of an education, the woke, to be consistent, should destroy the history of all peoples that practiced slavery, oppression, brutality, racism, and misogyny. This means that they will have to destroy all human history.

Houston Public Media News 88.7 on the FM dial will feature a Point-Counterpoint segment starting this week with your editor and Dallas Jones.

Red, White, and Blue featuring TCR Editor Gary Polland on Fridays at 7:30 pm on Houston Public Media TV 8, replaying Saturday at 6:30 p.m. on Channel 8, Monday at 11:30 pm on Channel 8.2 and on the web at www.houstonpublicmedia.org.

Red, White & Blue, Like all business and education campuses, our show is off the air as we can't meet to tape. We hope to be back as soon as possible.

Gary Polland is a long-time conservative and Republican spokesman, fund-raiser, and leader who completed three terms as the Harris County Republican Chairman. During his three terms, Gary was described as the most successful county Chairman in America by Human Events - The National Conservative Weekly. He is in his twenty-fifth year of editing a newsletter dealing with key conservative and Republican issues. The last nineteen years he has edited Texas Conservative Review. As a public service for the last 17 years, Gary has published election guides for the GOP primary, general elections and city elections, all with the purpose of assisting conservative candidates. Gary is also in his 18th year of co-hosting Red, White and Blue on Houston Public Media TV 8 PBS Houston, longest running political talk show in Texas history. Gary serves on the Board of Directors of American Values, a national pro-family, pro-faith, conservative organization supporting the unity of the American people around the vision of our founding fathers and dedicated to reminding the public of the conservative principles fundamental to the survival of our nation. Gary is a practicing attorney and strategic consultant. He can be reached at (713) 621-6335.