Freedom to Preach

          In Charles Blain's article "Freedom to Preach", Blain describes how the city of Houston is attempting to subpoena many local religious leaders for speaking out against a new city ordinance. The author argues that the city does not have any standing to subpoena the clergymen, as this would be a violation of their first amendment rights. He claims that the pastors were speaking out on moral grounds, which is allowed by the church's tax-exempt state. However, the city argues that the pastors "used their pulpit to do political organizing".
          The author is speaking to his fellow Christian conservatives. He believes that their rights, especially free speech, are being restricted, specifically in Texas. He cites how Tea Party groups were also targeted by the IRS in 2010. What he fails to say, however, is that Texas is perhaps the most Christian conservative state in the Union. With some urban exceptions, the vast majority of Texas is Christian Conservative, and you cannot get elected to office without wholeheartedly endorsing those same views. Their freedoms are not being restricted in any way. In fact, I would argue that they attempting to force their views on the rest of Texas, and getting away with it. The author is a credible source, having an undergraduate degree in Political Science which makes his claims all the more incredulous.
          The author may be correct in saying that the city has a hard case to make, but many of his reasonings and other assertions appear just as shaky. A church may speak on political issues based on moral grounds, but they cannot organize the congregation for political purposes. The city will have a hard time proving that the pastors were attempting to organize politically, but the church has been known to push the limits of what they can and cannot say from the pulpit. Since most of the members of both the national and local legislatures are Christian, I don't foresee any changes being made to restrict or better monitor what pastors say.

What Abbot and Davis' ads say about them

          In Bethany Albertson and Joshua Blank's article, they attempt to define the campaign strategies of the two main gubernatorial candidates based on the ads they have been running leading up to the November Election. They argue that since the Democrats, hence Davis, have not been in power for many years, they are attempting to use anxiety driven ads to prompt the electorate into taking a second to pause and think about how things have been done the last decade or so. They assert that the Davis campaign's logic behind this is that maybe the voter will do more research, and see that the status quo isn't all it's hyped up to be. In Abbott's case, the authors claim that his ads have a more hopeful message. They say that according to his ads, things have been going well for Texas, so there's no need for a change in leadership.
          In this op-ed piece, the authors are attempting to dissect the emotional strategies behind the two campaigns for the voters. They are providing an analysis for the electorate to better understand what emotions each campaign is trying to play on in order to drum up support. The authors appear to be credible sources, one an assistant professor at UT, the other a grad student at UT, and also the manager of a political research project.
          However, while both respectable author's make a valid point, they fail to take to entire picture into account. Recently, I have personally seen negative ads from Abbott's campaign, and Davis does have hopeful ads on her website. The authors may have been accurate when the political ads first started rolling out months ago, but their article is only a week old. The authors do concede at the end that neither side is running a strictly positive or negative campaign, but they fail to provide any evidence of this. The author's should have done a more thorough search of the differing ads available,  especially from the Abbott campaign, and not just stuck with the original ads that came out. While the die-hard politico's from each side will remember the old ads, I think much of the electorate will have forgotten them come November. The majority will only remember the last ad they saw, so we can expect an upturn in frequency of both positive and negative ads from both sides in the month ahead.