Letter to the Houston Chronicle Comics Editor

Comics Editor
Houston Chronicle

To Whom it May Concern;

I am writing to you today in response to today's Prickly City strip, which depicts a waterboarding.

I presume that you are going to get a lot of letters of complaint, saying that such material is not suitable for young readers, or not fit material for a comic or cartoon.

This is not one of those letters.

The only outrage of this strip is that our government is doing these things and worse to people we have imprisoned, people who cannot appeal to the courts for release, people who, according to our leaders, are non-persons. Too many people are complacent on this issue. Too many people believe the weasel words of our government, who repeatedly claim, despite all evidence, that what they are doing is not torture, not cruel, and not un-American.

It takes great courage for a nationally syndicated newspaper cartoonist to present this issue, in graphic and explicit fashion, next to cartoons about cute dogs and cats or mischevious children or cultural icons. The fact that you- a newspaper in the home state of George W. Bush- support this artist demonstrates your own courage, for which I commend you.

Thank you for printing this strip. Thank you for taking a stand.

And thank you for remembering that, in order to educate the public, it is often necessary to shock and outrage them.

Kris Overstreet
Livingston, Texas

And Two Years From Now, the Houston City Council Will Outlaw Sex Completely.

Remember this post?

Remember when I predicted that the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, being overwhelmingly conservative, would uphold the district court?

I told you so.

Dammit.

Strip Club Owner Gets OK to Buy Small Town

It's the town of Mustang*, 75 acres of nearly nothing just south of Corsicana.

It's been in the works for two years, muddied up by the death of Mustang's founder and the interference of his widow.

So why is it important?

You might remember this post I made a few days ago about Houston finally getting the go-ahead to enforce its Draconian** sexually oriented business law, which would make it virtually impossible for most such businesses to operate within Houston city limits. Such businesses would effectively have to relocate outside the city limits- which continue to expand every year- and accept Harris County laws, which could enact equally prohibitive restrictions.

But one of the peculiarities of Texas law is that county-level ordinances, for the most part, have no jurisdiction in cities. Cities have local option- a city in a dry (no alcohol sales allowed) county can elect to be wet, for instance.

Prostitution is illegal by statewide law, not county ordinance, so that would still be illegal... but pretty much anything else would be acceptable.

So somebody tell all those strip club, adult bookstore, etc. owners getting shut down by the Houston Vice Squad: there's a lot of unincorporated and undeveloped land in Harris County- land around Cypress out US 290, land around Katy and the Grand Parkway, land between Sugar Land and Richmond (though that's going fast), and land up towards Atascosita and Crosby on Beltway 8 and US 90. Get together, buy up a bunch of it, and incorporate it. Form your own city, make your own laws...

... and shoot the bird to those who want to run you out.

* MapQuest lists four cities in Texas named Mustang.

** "Draconian" is intended to be capitalized. It's named after an ancient emperor named Draco, remembered for the extreme severity of his laws. He was the kind of person who made a capital crime out of Looking At Me Funny. Unfortunately, since he was Emperor, or king, or whatever, nothing could be done about it.

Houston Sex Ordinance Upheld; Clubs and Bookstores Effectively Outlawed

Typically Houston has been paranoid about any measure which might constitute zoning, even a little bit. Houston is the largest city not just in the United States but in the entire world which does NOT have an organized property use zoning code and enforcement bureau. This lack of bureaucracy is in no small part responsible both for the prosperity of the city and its unique nature.

But if anything could be the camel's nose in the tent in Houston, it's sex.

Ten years ago the Houston city council, led by a strange coalition of Democratic feminists and Republican religious conservatives, passed a new and highly restrictive ordinance to limit where any sexually oriented business may operate. As reported in the Houston Chronicle, with a ruling by a Federal court upholding the ordinance in full, Mayor Bill White- elected nonpartisan but strongly associated with the Democratic Party- has pledged aggressive enforcement of the ordinance, shutting down 120 or more businesses.

Sex industry advocates estimate that between 9,000 to 12,000 people will lose their jobs as a result of this law.

Here's the ordinance itself. Salient points:

* Permits are good only for one year, cost over $400 for initial application, and about $250 for renewal.

* There is no grandfather clause whatever.

* No sexually oriented business- no strip club, no massage parlor, no nude modeling studio, no adult novelty store (except clothing, clothing's specifically exempt), and no adult bookstore- may operate within 1500 feet- a bit more than a quarter mile- of the property line of any school, church, public park, or day-care center. (For example, if a school district owns a vacant lot, say as a result of foreclosure for failure to pay property taxes, then any adult business within a quarter-mile of any corner of that lot is in violation.)

* No adult business may be within 1000 feet of any other adult business.

* If 75% of the property tracts within a 1500 foot radius of the adult business are residential- with apartment buildings counting as one tract per apartment- then the business is in violation. This includes land with no improvements whatever which has been platted for future residential development or otherwise designated as residential by ordinance.

* Adult businesses must be painted all one color, and no bright colors may be used- only grays, browns, or earth tones.

* Adult businesses may not have neon signs, flashing signs, or indeed any sign except plain rectangular signs with all text the same size, color, and typeface- and furthermore only the name of the business and one of a short list of descriptive phrases may appear on the sign. Billboard ads are absolutely prohibited.

* Dancers working at adult businesses must wear a badge showing their personal license at all times; furthermore, their actual names, addresses, and telephone numbers will be made available upon request to all comers at Vice Squad headquarters in accordances with the Texas Open Records Act.

And yet the people (those still living) who wrote this ordinance, and who still back it, claim their purpose is NOT to destroy such businesses.

(Oh, one other note: one of the businesses sent a cease-and-desist warning this week was a Hyatt hotel- specifically the Hyatt Regency Houston downtown. That hotel had got a permit under older ordinances to host a party which featured nude entertainment. It's turned the old permit in and announced a no-nudity policy for events. In effect, all adult entertainment industry and other similar events have just been outlawed from the city of Houston.)

So, considering the Houston city council is dominated by Democrats, considering the original authors of the ordinance in 1997 were Democrats... why is it the vast majority of sexual professionals continue to vote Democrat?