A single-malt whiskey from Waco, Texas beats all the Scottish competition blind-judged by British experts.

Single-malt whiskey distilling is now a big deal in the United States... despite the impediment of "a federal law, enacted in 1938, requiring that they be at least partly aged in previously unused oak barrels."

Unfortunately, malted barley is delicate and prone to lose its flavor in new oak, which is why Scottish distillers prefer barrels that once held sherry, port or bourbon.

To compensate, American distillers often start with a more robust, flavorful mash than a typical Scotch, which can better stand up to new oak, flavor that continues to shine through after the whiskey is bottled.

They also rely on America’s higher temperatures, and bigger temperature swings, to speed the aging process. “A hot day in Scotland is 75 degrees,” said Mr. Tate, of [contest winner] Balcones. “Seventy-five degrees isn’t even a hot day in January here.”

As a result, even Balcones, despite its peat and smoky notes, is unlikely to be confused with an Islay Scotch. “A lot of what we do is riffing on old traditions in new ways,” Mr. Tate said....

That's America! Full of innovation and ingenuity... and stupid, overreaching federal regulation.

"A federal court on Thursday rejected a Texas law that would require voters to present photo IDs to election officials before being allowed to vote..."

"... in November's election, unanimously ruling that it imposes 'strict, unforgiving burdens on the poor,' who are often racial minorities."

Ted Cruz — a big Tea Party victory and the GOP will have another Hispanic Senator.

He wasn't what the party insiders wanted. (He crushed their guy, David Dewhurst, 55% to 45%.)

[Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, a Washington-based group that helps finance conservative anti-establishment candidates] said Cruz’s win is the biggest this year for tea party activists, calling it “an 11 and Indiana a 10” on the scale of importance. The reason, according to Kibbe and other tea party leaders, is because of the sheer size of Texas.

In the 2010 primaries, the movement fared best in smaller states without large media markets — places such as Delaware, where neophyte Christine O’Donnell used grass-roots support to sweep past a 30-year veteran of state GOP politics. Just 50,000 people voted in that primary. The tea party’s feat was repeated in other small-turnout states, such as Nevada and Alaska.

This year, tea party leaders sought mostly pure conservatives but also candidates with more political and professional experience, aiming to appeal to activists as well as independents in the general election. “You’re not going to see any Christine O’Donnell train wrecks,” Kibbe predicted, noting O’Donnell’s defeat by nearly 20 points in that fall’s election.

Cruz epitomized that effort. Unlike some of the anti-intellectual candidates of the tea party past, he boasted of his undergraduate degree from Princeton University, his national debating championship, his Harvard law degree and his Supreme Court clerkship.

“I think he’s got the pedigree, he’s got all of it,” [Rand] Paul said. “In fact, we’ve joked that he’s too smart for the Senate to fit in.”

So now the Tea Party has it: A really big state and a really big brain. And Hispanic!

ADDED: I think we'll see a lot more of the effort to distinguish Cubans from other Hispanics. That has already come up in the context of Marco Rubio.

"There's a lot of different scenarios. We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it."

"But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we're a pretty independent lot to boot."

Said Rick Perry... a while back.

"The Tea Party's Senate Insurgency Hits Texas."

Have you noticed Ted Cruz?

A former state solicitor general and clerk to Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, the 41-year-old Mr. Cruz... is a staunch defender of states' rights, or what he calls the "forgotten Ninth and 10th amendments." He was the lead lawyer representing Texas before the Supreme Court in Medellin v. Texas (2008), after the International Court of Justice had tried to override Texas's justice system, and in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) he wrote the amicus brief on behalf of 31 states challenging a gun-control law on Second Amendment grounds.

He favors school choice, personal accounts for Social Security and a "low uniform tax rate—either a flat tax or the FairTax," he says, and his goal in the Senate would be to "cut federal spending as much and as quickly as possible." He's contemptuous of congressional Republicans who suggest that some of the popular features of ObamaCare can be retained. "I will work to repeal every last word of the law," he insists.

Mr. Cruz's Hispanic surname also isn't a liability when many Republicans seem to be searching for the next Marco Rubio. Like the Florida Senator, Mr. Cruz is of Cuban descent and has a gift for communicating his conservative credentials to right-leaning audiences. (At the same time, some Texans grumble that the Princeton and Harvard Law grad has the Barack Obama disease of coming across as a slick know-it-all, "the smartest guy in the room.")

Too smart? Not the right kind of Hispanic? We shall see. The primary is tomorrow. The "establishment" guy is David Dewhurst, the Lt. Gov. He calls Cruz "Washington lawyer Ted Cruz."

Sarah Palin, who seems to have the magic touch, has endorsed Cruz. I'm making a tag for Cruz (and not for Dewhurst), so that's something like making a prediction.

ADDED: You can listen to Cruz arguing for the independent power of the states in Medellin here. (His turn begins about halfway through.)

"The Obama administration has blocked Texas’ new law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls..."

"... saying it would suppress Hispanic voter turnout, and the United Nations is now investigating the fairness of such laws in Texas and other states."

But voters in this country still overwhelmingly support voter ID laws and don’t think they discriminate.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 72% of Likely U.S. Voters believe voters should be required to show photo identification such as a driver’s license before being allowed to vote.

Are you from Texas?

"Smokin' the Competition."

(Somewhere in the middle of Texas.)

At the Sweetwater Café...

... on a Tuesday...

"Next time Holder speaks, someone should run to a judge for a TRO."

"And file a race-discrimination suit against whoever’s hosting him. Every single time...."

That's mainly a joke, but this isn't:

... I anticipate that South Carolina (and Texas) will take the preclearance decisions to a three judge court in DC, with direct appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.  I further expect that in this litigation, South Carolina (and Texas) will argue, among other arguments, that Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional...

If review is expedited — which seems likely — the Supreme Court will be looking at this question and perhaps striking down the provision during the 2012 campaigns. Which party would be helped by that issue? Democrats will be positioned to preen about their concern for racial equality, and that puts Republicans in the position of championing the importance of leaving states alone to do things their own way, which — for some people at least — is a reminder of the bad old days when there clearly was discrimination and some states — mainly the states that are now stuck with the preclearance procedure — pontificated about "states' rights."

Nevertheless, I think the Republicans will be better off if this becomes an issue. First, people who reflexively impose that "bad old days" template are probably already voting for Democrats. Second, huge majorities of Americans support voter ID requirements, which means that few people buy into the race pandering. Third, playing the race card backfires once people clearly see that's all that's going on. And fourth, there really is something screwy about treating a few states differently from the other states, and if if a high-profile Supreme Court case makes people notice this strangeness, they'll be suspicious of the politicians and lawyers who strain to make the argument that it's right.

The Supreme Court will hear the Texas redistricting case — quickly, in time for the 2012 primary.

Adam Liptak reports:

The court stayed orders from a special three-judge court in San Antonio, which issued electoral maps late last month that seemed to help Democrats and Hispanic voters.

“This thrusts the Supreme Court right into the partisan thicket,” said Richard L. Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine. “It is no exaggeration to say that with three or four additional Democratic seats at issue under the original court-drawn plan, the decision could help decide control of the House.”

In typical fashion, the NYT forefronts the Supreme Court's intrusion into politics when it runs counter to Democratic Party interests. But the lower court intruded itself into the matter, redrawing districts originally made by the Texas legislature (which is controlled by Republicans). The Supreme Court is reviewing the work of a court that shifted power toward Democrats. Officially — legally — what they're arguing about is whether the Texas legislature shortchanged Hispanic voters under the standards of the Voting Rights Act.

ADDED: From the Austin American-Statesman:

"We are hopeful that the Attorney General and his team will be able to demonstrate to the Court the necessity of throwing out the panel's maps," [said Steve Munisteri, the chairman of the Republican Party of Texas]. "Further, we hope the Court will either restore the original district lines of the Legislature, or at the very least, make revisions to the district court panel's maps which are more in tune with the legislative intent."

"The shift of the Astros into the AL West, a division that includes their state-rival Texas Rangers..."

"... will give each league 15 teams. All six divisions will then be inhabited by five teams."

Houston had long been an NL market. The Astros expanded into the NL as the Houston Colt .45s, along with the Mets, in 1962 and are about to celebrate their 50th anniversary.

MLB will realign for the first time since the Brewers moved from the AL to the NL in 1998, ushering in the era of Interleague Play with those games primarily fit into the schedule during May and June. The new 15-15 format will necessitate playing an Interleague game virtually every day...

"I came to 15-15 a little slower than many of my colleagues," [Commissioner Bud] Selig said. "I worry about that. I love Interleague Play... The fans enjoy it, which is all I really care about...."

"As I name a few Republican candidates for president please tell me the ONE word that comes to mind..."

It's a WaPo-Pew poll, eliciting the first reaction to the names Herman Cain, Rick Perry, and Mitt Romney. For each man, there is one word that clearly comes out on top. Can you guess?


9-9-9, Texas, and Mormon, respectively. It's interesting that the first 5 words for Cain in rank order are positive. In fact, "interesting" is the 3d word. The first negative word, #6, is "inexperience/not experienced."

Perry does much worse in the mental reflex test. After Texas, we come to "no" and "idiot/idiotic."

The #1 word for Romney — "Mormon" — is also #1 by a wide margin. Is it strange that "black" for Cain is only #8 when "Mormon" is so clearly the first attribute assigned to Romney?

"Lots of photos of Perry having nothing whatsoever to do with this story, and not a single one of the rock. Well done, WP!"

The first comment at a Washington Post article about how Rick Perry, early in his career, used to host events at a hunting camp where there was a rock that had the word "Niggerhead" painted on it.

Ranchers who once grazed cattle on the 1,070-acre parcel on the Clear Fork of the Brazos River called it by that name well before Perry and his father, Ray, began hunting there in the early 1980s. There is no definitive account of when the rock first appeared on the property. In an earlier time, the name on the rock was often given to mountains and creeks and rock outcroppings across the country. Over the years, civil rights groups and government agencies have had some success changing those and other racially offensive names that dotted the nation’s maps.

Does this have anything to do with Rick Perry (who, asked about the rock, said the word is an "offensive name that has no place in the modern world")? Well, yes, if you're inclined to think that Perry's rural Texas background has bred something nasty into him:

Perry has spoken often about how his upbringing in this sparsely populated farming community influenced his conservatism. He has rarely, if ever, discussed what it was like growing up amid segregation in an area where blacks were a tiny fraction of the population.

So what's he hiding, eh?

Reading on, we see that — according to Perry — Perry's father leased the property in 1983, and the first thing he did was paint over the word on the rock. And every time Perry saw the rock, it was painted over. But WaPo found 7 individuals who say they remember seeing the name on the rock during the time when Perry's father's name was on the lease. And:

Longtime hunters, cowboys and ranchers said this particular place was known by that name as long as they could remember, and still is.

“The cowboys, when they were gathering cattle, they’d say they’re going to the Matthews or Niggerhead or the Nail” pastures, said Bill Reed, a distributor for Coors beer in nearby Abilene who used to lease a hunting parcel adjacent to the Perrys’. “Those were all names. Nobody thought anything about it.”...

“You know, Texas is a little different — you go where it’s comfortable,” Reed said. “. . . It would have been one thing if [the Perrys] had named it, but they didn’t. So, it’s basically a figure of speech as far as most people are concerned. No one thought anything about it.”

No one thought anything about it. Those who are looking for a racial issue to play know how to jump on a phrase like that. Okay, then, let him who is without sin cast the first rock.

"We have had several Texas presidents, but none so deeply, intensely Texas as this guy would be."

Man, Rick Perry is freaking out the New York Times. Gail Collins is all:

You think of Rick Perry, you think of Texas. And more Texas. Perry the cowboy coyote-killer, the lord of the Texas job-creation machine, the g-dropping glad-hander with a “howdy” for every stranger in the room. He barely exists in the national mind outside of the Texas connection.

And Maureen Dowd is all over the place talking about Perry with references to an obvious and old Hollywood movie.

Do these New York women realize that this kind of elitist contempt makes Rick Perry more appealing... to a lot of people... including me?

ADDED:

Well, do they?
	No, and if they'd widen their perspective on America, they'd be more successful.
	No. But their blinkered view works well to serve the interests of the NYT.
	Yes. But their goal is to feed the prejudice of the kind of folks who subscribe to the NYT.
	Yes, and they're great at stirring up trouble and getting links from friend and foe alike.
pollcode.com free polls

"There exists a visceral John Wayne kinship between Israelis and Texans, and Rick Perry gets it."

"As a Jewish cowboy (or “Juusshh,” as we say in Texas)" Kinky Friedman says "Hell, yes!" he'd vote for Rick Perry.

[Rick Perry has] visited Israel on many more occasions than Obama, who’s been there exactly zero times as president. If I were Obama I wouldn’t go either. His favorability rating in Israel once clocked in at 4 percent. Say what you will about the Israelis, but they are not slow out of the chute. They know who their friends are. On the topic of the Holy Land, there remains the little matter of God. God talks to televangelists, football coaches, and people in mental hospitals. Why shouldn’t he talk to Rick Perry? In the spirit of Joseph Heller, I have a covenant with God. I leave him alone and he leaves me alone. If, however, I have a big problem, I ask God for the answer. He tells Rick Perry. And Rick tells me.

(Via Instapundit.)

What's the Joseph Heller quote he's channeling?

1. "'And don't tell me God works in mysterious ways,' Yossarian continued, hurtling on over her objection. 'There's nothing so mysterious about it. He's not working at all. He's playing. Or else, He's forgotten all about us. That's the kind of God you people talk about - a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a supreme being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when he robbed old people of their power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain?'"

2. "God does have this self-serving habit of putting all blame for His own mistakes on other people, doesn't He? He picks someone arbitrarily, unbidden, right out of the blue so to speak, and levies upon them tasks of monumental difficulty for which we don't always measure up in every particular, then charges US for HIS error in selecting imperfectly. He tends to forget that we are no more infallible than He is."

3. "Now THERE'S a hollow state to be in, isn't it — to believe in God and get no sign that He's there."

Help me out here.

Or maybe thisis a better place to look.

Perry's in: "I full well believe I’m going to win.”

Good!

I liked this piece about him in the UK Telegraph, by Toby Harnden:

The cotton fields at Paint Creek are empty this year because of the fearsome drought. But amid the dust and searing heat, beneath a vast blue sky, the farmland of Mr Perry’s youth is still being worked. Life here is as hard as ever.

At the school, from which Mr Perry graduated third in a class of 13 in 1968, Don Ballard, the school superintendent, reflected on the place that had made Mr Perry what he is.

“We had farm values,” he said “We got up, we worked and we knew what the dollar meant. There was no squandering money here there and yonder. Everybody struggled.

“You’d have a good crop one year and maybe a bad crop the next. Rick Perry understands being up and being down and that if you’re down you’ve got to work to get back up. Most of the families round here want their kids to be better and have more than what they had growing up.” Mr Perry is descended from Confederate veterans of the Civil War on both sides. In an old interview, his grandfather Hoyt Perry, who died in 1992, recalled how his father arrived at Paint Creek in 1887.

“The whole country was covered with prairie dogs. The buffaloes were killed in about the 1870s. I did a lot of farming with the mules. We made our own toys. We made a wheel with an axle and rolled it around.” The future Texas governor spent his teens living in a brick bungalow that his father built a field away from the wooden frame home. J.R. “Ray” Perry and his wife Amelia, now in their mid-80s, still reside there.

We made a wheel with an axle and rolled it around....

"Lone Star State secedes from incandescent light ban."

The North County Times reports:

Texans can keep buying traditional incandescent light bulbs, under a bill allowed to become law this week by Gov. Rick Perry.

The bill, HB 2510, states that it avoids the federal phase-out specifying that traditional incandescent bulbs are legal to sell in Texas as long as they are manufactured in that state. That means the bulbs are not part of interstate commerce, removing the rationale for their regulation under the U.S. Constitution, according to the bill.

I love my incandescent bulbs, but the law is obviously preempted by federal law. The argument that the Commerce Clause doesn't give Congress the power to ban light bulbs manufactured and sold within one state is plainly wrong under the Supreme Court case law. But I appreciate the gesture, because I want my light bulbs. Why I would travel through the channels of interstate comments to get to Texas to fill up my car with boxes of light bulbs and drive back across the continent to replenish my horded supply.

Mockery from the Austin newspaper (Austin being the Madison of the southern United States):

Only in Texas could people get worked up about using a certain light bulb because the other bulb is too liberal. But I'll bet there are people out there who don't use the new fluorescents because they think members of their bridge club will call them commies.

Maybe what the Legislature ought to do to send a message is get a great big incandescent light bulb and screw it into the Goddess of Liberty's head on top of the Capitol.

Perry was up in New York City the other day, banging his chest about how great the Texas economy is doing. Funny how he didn't mention the light bulb bill. Oh, well, I guess he just didn't want to come across as a dim bulb.

Grrr.

Buy some light bulbs here and support the Althouse blog. Althouse has been against the incandescent ban from the very beginning.

Obama views...

... tornado destruction.

And gets criticized for failing to respond to wildfire destruction.

Obama: "Texas has always been a pretty Republican state, for, you know, historic reasons."

That's from an interview is getting a lot of press because it supposedly shows Obama's "prickly" side. Frankly, I don't think there's anything wrong with Obama's saying, after an interview, “Let me finish my answers next time we do an interview, all right?”

I question whether it should have been aired at all. The TV station — WFAA — seems to be taking advantage of its access to the President, but given the attention this local TV reporter — Brad Watson — has received, there's an obvious incentive to exploit after-interview material like this. And it's not like Brad Watson will get access again. Obama's reference to "next time" is, essentially, a joke.

But I want to talk about the quote I extracted. What "historic reasons" is he referring to? It's actually not true that "Texas has always been a pretty Republican state," unless by "Republican," you mean something other than the Republican Party. I suspect that his stumbling — "you know" — covers some thought processes. My guess: He knew he was fudging, and he was deciding how clear or veiled he wanted to be in insulting Texas.

ADDED: Instapundit says:

Apparently, when Obama taught Constitutional Law he never got around to teaching the Texas White Primary cases. Or talking about which side was which in the Civil War...