Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) has vetoed legislation that would have advanced the cause of pay equity for women in a move that will lift chances for Texas Democrats in the election for governor in 2014 and lift the chances of Hillary Clinton carrying Texas if she runs for president in 2016.

A friendship, now years in the making, between New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former President Bill Clinton counts as huge political news. As Christie takes the stage at the Clinton Global Initiative summit in Chicago, as intriguing as it is, one has to ask: Huh?

For anyone interested, I will be doing an interview over the weekend on Israel National News’s "Tamar Yonah Show," making the case that we now have two Americas, as per in the most recent elections, the abstraction of “red” and ”blue” America has concretized with the election of conservative governors in red states and liberal governors in blue states. 

And Israel will have to choose the better friend: The heartland or the Northeast. And Texas and the American heartland will be the better friend than New York.

In my latest column, I suggested Democratic donors begin a national effort to define key 2014 races and support — generously — massive new initiatives to register and turn out voters. 

Here I suggest Texas Democrats put the Lone Star State at the forefront of key races in 2014 by supporting and potentially drafting State Sen. Wendy Davis (D) to run for governor of Texas and end the arrogant, far-right and crony capitalist era of Texas GOP rule.

As I write these words, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) and Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott (R) are using a special session of the Legislature to pursue their pet projects of disenfranchising Texas Hispanic and blacks voters, and destroying abortion rights for women.

Enough is enough. The House Oversight Committee under Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has been discredited as a fair and neutral source of investigations. 

The abuses of the committee majority have descended into a derecho of undocumented innuendo, petty slanders, political cheap shots, false charges, partisan propaganda and abuses of power that bring discredit to the committee, the Congress and the Republican congressional leadership. It is time for reform. 

NSA snoop turned social activist Edward Snowden has become key now to American destiny. 

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) spontaneously responded, “He’s a traitor!” But one visiting commentator on Fox dispassionately suggested a comparison to Martin Luther. A more vengeful introvert, Gavrilo Princip, briefly crossed my mind, not because Snowden has the dark and murderous yearnings of the Serb assassin who triggered WWI but because Snowden’s actions may have popped the bubble of the unbearably light globalist illusion of American total world cultural dominance.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is in the extra-hot seat at the moment, what with the shocking news of the government dragnetting our phone calls and emails and Skype sessions, etc.

Calls for the President to deep-six the 72-year-old retired military officer are mounting. Clapper has not done well in trying to explain his apparent lie under oath at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing last March. The exchange with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore) went like this:

Wyden: “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?”

Clapper: “No sir ... not wittingly.”

His subsequent justification of the answer, in an interview last Sunday with NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, only made things worse:

The Hill's A.B. Stoddard shifts from NSA surveillance to immigration and border security as the Senate begins debate on comprehensive immigration reform.   

It is ironic that when American civil liberties are under attack, the mechanism employed would be called a "patriot" act. It is equally ironic that when the final legacy of President Obama is written, it will include his championing of a surveillance state of a kind that that his predecessor, President George W. Bush, established over the objection at that time of Barack Obama.