Links to Your World, TEXAS PRIMARY EDITION

Every Tuesday I post some links to a few of the articles I've read the past week that I found thought-provoking or entertaining. Since the Texas Primary is today, and since this primary has turned out to be pivotal for the Democrats, I'll limit today's "Links" to politics:

"When Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton issued her gunslinger’s invitation to Senator Barack Obama recently, challenging him to 'meet me in Texas,' the question many people here asked was, Which one? The frontier-conservative Texas of Amarillo, in the Panhandle? The vast, immigrant-heavy Texas of Houston, where more than 100 languages are spoken in the city’s schools? Maybe the one of East Texas, with its Deep South ethos, a region one Democratic consultant described as being more like Mississippi than Texas? Or the profoundly unpredictable one in the central part of the state, among the most heavily Republican areas in the country (and home to President Bush’s ranch), yet represented in Congress by Chet Edwards, a well-liked Democrat who recently endorsed Mr. Obama? ‘It’s like running a national campaign,’ said one veteran Texas Democrat.” (from the NY Times article, “Pieces of Texas Turn Primary Into a Puzzle”)


From the Christian Science Monitor: "In red-state Texas, new signs of rising Democratic tide."


"Candidates Reaching Out to Evangelical Democrats" (The Dallas Morning News posted this story from Austin)


“‘We don’t know exactly how or why it’s happening, and the Senator won’t talk about it. He usually insists that people keep it quiet and just report it to their pastor or priest.’ . . . They say Obama has told them privately that his time has not yet come.” (“Obama Heals Hundreds”)


Julie Lyons (aka "Bible Girl") is a remarkable writer for the Dallas Observer, sort of the Austin Chronicle for the Metroplex. She has generated a lot of comments on her provocative blog entry, "Obama and the Hand of God."


The Wall Street Journal covers "The Search for the Next Soccer Mom."


"The real story of the evangelical political movement today involves neither its death nor its triumph, but rather its slow (and ongoing) shift from insurgent to insider, with all of the moderating effects that transition implies.” (from The Atlantic Monthly’s article about the state of evangelicalism, “Born Again. It’s an interesting—if somewhat cynical—view of evangelicalism as an ever-evolving movement intent to connect the gospel to the masses.


Some wisdom (har, har) from a young Bob Hope for this political season (In Internet Explorer, click once to activate and again to play):