On Monday, a U.S. District Court judge didn’t buy the state’s legislation defunding Planned Parenthood, putting a temporary stay on the enforcement of the law. But within a day, there was another judge who found the argument persuasive: Fifth Circuit Judge Jerry Smith, last seen obnoxiously demanding that a female Justice Department lawyer ”submit a three-page, single-spaced letter by noon Thursday addressing whether the Executive Branch believes courts have such power.” (Kevin Drum memorably compared it to “a middle school teacher handing out punishment to a student because of something her father said at a city council meeting the night before,” and you wouldn’t have to look hard to find the sexist condescension.)

The District Court judge had written 24 pages on the constitutional merits, focusing on Planned Parenthood’s First Amendment rights of association. Smith issued two sentences two hours after the state’s petition, undoing that, and apparently buying the state of Texas’ argument that Planned Parenthood’s alleged “abortion promoting” mission justified discriminating against a qualified provider of healthcare.  (The clinics receiving WHP funding don’t even provide abortions, but other Planned Parenthood clinics do.)

In an election year, these posturings take on new meaning; by today, Planned Parenthood was proclaiming in a news release, “What would Mitt Romney’s America look like for women’s health care?  We need look no further than Texas,” and highlighting the policy similarities of Romney and Perry on women’s health. Romney, of course, has pledged to defund Planned Parenthood, which during the primaries became a consensus Republican issue. The last federal attempt to do so, last year’s Pence Amendment, nearly shut down the entire government, though Obama held the line — as he pointed out in a recent campaign video supporting the organization.

The presidential policies matter, but as we can see from Texas, the judiciary, prompted by state legislatures that are coming off a wave of abortion restrictions, is currently wielding the most power when it comes to women’s everyday lives, and the 5th Circuit in particular has been unrepentantly hostile to reproductive rights. When they failed with Pence, right-to-lifers turned to the states, primed by the 2010 election of even more anti-choice legislators and governors. In Texas, the conservative 5th Circuit has become a brick wall, previously allowing enforcement of the most extreme ultrasound law in the country, one that requires a woman to listen to the results.

Smith is a Reagan appointee, as is his fellow 5th Circuit conservative gadfly Edith Jones, who wrote the opinion in the ultrasound case, though if they’re feeling particularly emboldened lately, you can’t really blame them. After all, the Obama administration has shown little interest in prioritizing the judiciary, even after Bush’s ambitious effort to fill federal appellate courts with movement conservatives. A January Brookings Institution report showed that Obama has nominated fewer federal trial judges than his predecessors, even as a wave of judges retires. (Unprecedented Senate intransigence is a major factor in confirmations, but doesn’t explain the nominations.)  And Dahlia Lithwick has argued that “Obama, like Bill Clinton before him, has selected lower court judges more notable for their racial and gender diversity than their hard-left judicial orientation.”

All of this is to say that as long as states like Texas keep passing laws that punish women and stretch the boundaries of constitutional interpretation, to put it mildly, the buck is likelier than ever to stop at a judge like Jerry Smith.

The business card he handed me during the sheriffs meeting identified Sikes as the director of the Border Security Operations Center (BSOC) – which is a type of fusion center for border-security operations in Texas. It’s a project of the Texas Rangers Division, which in turn is a branch of the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS).

However, Mac Sikes is neither a Texas Ranger nor a DPS employee. Like most of the other key figures behind the Lone Star State’s border security campaign, Sikes is a contract employee.

A “senior operational analyst” at Abrams Learning & Information Systems (ALIS), Sikes became director of BSOC as part of the firm’s $3-5 million annual contracts with DPS since 2006. The recent DPS decision — in response to a public records request — to release the ALIS contract revealed the true identity of Sikes.

The Border Security Operations Center is the nexus of the Texas’ own border security initiatives, collectively known as Operation Border Star. ALIS, a homeland-security consulting firm with offices in Arlington, Virginia, was founded in 2004 by Ret. Army Gen. John Abrams to cash in on the billions of dollars in new government contracting funds that started to flow after the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2003.

Since 2006 ALIS functioned as the hidden force behind virtually all non-federal border-security operations in Texas. Whether it’s strategy formulation, border crime-mapping, operations management or public relations, ALIS and its team of consultants have been closely involved in creating what Governor Rick Perry calls the “Texas model of border security.”

ALIS, which has received $22.7 million from DPS and the Governor’s Office for border-security operations in FY 2007-FY 2011, describes its mission in Texas as follows:

ALIS was commissioned to improve border security strategy and operations along the U.S. – Mexico border through the development of an epicenter for security operations. The objective of the operational center is to plan, coordinate, implement, and evaluate interagency border security operations to counter the threat of organized crime, terrorism, and the flow of contraband and human trafficking to foster a secure border region.

Gov. Rick Perry has boasted to both President Obama and DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano that Texas has created a new model for border security. In a letter to the president, Perry hailed his state’s “proven and successful multi-agency border security strategy,” while the governor invited Napolitano to visit the Texas border to see the “Texas model of border security.” DPS Director Steven McCraw, who was appointed by Perry and also served as the governor’s homeland security director from 2003 to early 2012, says that Texas is creating its own “paradigm” of border security.

Perry and McCraw support an aggressive, militarized border security strategy. They claim that Operation Border Star – their name for the Texas model or paradigm – is succeeding in securing the Texas border whereas the Obama administration’s border-security operations are, they charge, a manifest failure.

That’s a claim that was highlighted in a September 2011 report on border security commissioned by the Texas Department of Agriculture. The report, “Texas Border Security: A Strategic Military Assessment,” was written by Gen. Robert Scales (ret.) and Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who have their own Washington Beltway consulting firms, Colgen and BR McCaffrey Associates.

In their highly alarmist and unabashedly militaristic report, the retired generals describe the border as a “war zone” and contend that purported success of Operation Border Star and the Texas Rangers “should serve as a template for the future” of border security operations nationwide. Such a model, they argued, should be “based on proven joint military operations” and the type of “layered ‘defense-in-depth’” strategies employed by the Rangers and Operation Border Star.

But the generals failed to offer any evidence, other than anecdotal testimonies collected by Texas Commission of Agriculture Todd Staples to document the achievements of the Texas model. That’s not surprising, given that after nearly seven years Perry and McCraw have also failed to offer any substantial documentation to back their claims about the success of the Texas model of border security.

The “made-in-Texas” boasts about the state’s model of border security and the “can-do” braggadocio about “Texans protecting Texans” don’t stand up to close scrutiny.

Border Star operations and programs are funded by a combination of DHS grants, Justice Department criminal-justice assistance and economic-stimulus funding, and Texas general revenues.

The first funding for Operation Border Star came from the Obama administration’s border-security programs to aid local and state law enforcement. Although the state legislature, starting in 2007, started appropriating about $100 million annually for BSOC and other Border Star operations, federal funding has been the main stay of the Texas model. It’s also an operation that has been almost wholly outsourced to Washington Beltway consultants.

Outsourcing Texas Border Security

The Public Safety Commission has repeatedly approved DPS contracts with ALIS without any public discussion and without any evaluation. The commission, whose director is a major donor to Perry’s election campaigns, have allowed Perry and McCraw to run Operation Border Star without any oversight or review. ALIS contracts – including emergency contracts – have been routinely approved without any evaluation of its cost and impact.

With no discussion, the Texas Public Safety Commission at its Aug. 12, 2010 meeting in Austin approved an “emergency contract for providing strategies and plans to support the management of the Texas Border Security Operations Center (Abrams Learning & Information Systems).”

The commission also extended another DPS outsourcing contract held by APPRISS for another information and technology-driven project called the Texas Data Exchange (TDEx). DPS has paid APPRISS $30.9 million in FYs 2008-2012 for information systems of dubious worth.

Meanwhile, DPS in 2010-2011 repeatedly rejected requests by the Center for International Policy for the various strategy statements, operations plans, and performance reports that ALIS was contracted to produce, arguing that the information was “law enforcement sensitive.” DPS has contended that the release of the classified documents to a nonprofit education organization would place law enforcement officials at risk.

However, these same documents that were denied CIP were apparently accessed by the for-profit security consultants contracted by Texas Ag Commissioner Staples.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has upheld the DPS rejection of the public records requests for documents that would shed light on the structure, operations, and achievements of Operation Border Star and the role of ALIS. The only documents that DPS did release to the Center for International Policy were the ALIS contracts themselves.

The DPS contract with ALIS, which was signed Aug. 31, 2010, delegated not only the inner-workings of Operation Border Star to the Beltway contractor but also gave the contractor the responsibility for formulating border-security and homeland-security strategy statements, running public-relations operations, and directing law-enforcement operations.

Questions about the value of Operation Border Star and about its political character have been repeatedly raised over the past few years by several Texas media outlets and by the Texas American Civil Liberties Union. Texas border communities that have been adversely affected by the redirection of state and local law-enforcement agencies into border-security campaigns and away from public-safety missions have also criticized the cost and focus of the Perry administration’s border-security programs.

Gross Mismanagement in Texas of Federal Homeland and Border Security Funds

The Texas State Auditor recently raised new questions and concerns about the unprofessional DPS management of federal funds and about the agency’s dubious contracting practices under the stewardship of Steven McCraw.

The independent report, which was commissioned by the state auditor and released in February 2012, found, among other violations, cases of stunning material weaknesses in DPS accounting, a pattern of noncompliance in following federal procedures, and an array of alarming deficiencies in reporting and monitoring federal funds.

The report highlights a pervasive and systemic mismanagement of federal funds by DPS, including eight duplicate payments to contractors, sloppy accounting, failure to open contracts to competitive bidding (while in at least one other case bypassing low bidder for a preferred one), routine reliance on emergency contracts to avoid contract renewal and bidding processes, and a persistent failure to communicate accounting and reporting guidelines to subrecipients of more than federal funds managed by DPS. (In 2010 DPS administered $397 million in federal revenues for subgrants and contracts.)

The audit reviewed a representative selection of cases among the $265.9 million in federal grants and subgrants to DPS — in the areas of homeland security, border security, emergency management and law enforcement interoperability.

Among the findings of negligence and incompetence were these startling instances:

•  A draw-down of $755,509 in federal funds to issue a duplicate payment to one subgrantee.
•  Five of the six procurements (83 percent) examined by the auditor in the cluster of federal grants for homeland and border security were not bid competitively as required.
• DPS categorized four of the five procurements examined by the auditor as “emergency procurements,” and in three of those four DPS was unable to document why they were processed as “emergency” contracts.
• DPS has no system to track, administer, monitor federal subgrants – as federal guidelines require, leading to routine occurrences of duplicate payments, dipping into one federal fund to pay for unrelated programs, and failure to submit required reports and audits.
• Complete failure to track interest rates on unused federal funds and to remit those funds, as required by federal grant guidelines.
• Access to law-enforcement databases by contract programmers who lacked proper authorization or clearance.

Texas officials, including the governor, DPS chief, attorney general and agriculture commissioner, frequently charge that the federal government has failed in its responsibility to control the Texas-Mexico border.

It is rarely acknowledged, however, by these same critics how dependent Texas law enforcement and criminal justice agencies – including state’s homeland security department, DPS, governor’s criminal justice division, border sheriffs, agriculture department and state prosecutors and courts – are on the continuing flow of federal funds into Texas.

In fiscal year 2011 Texas received $57.5 billion in federal funding. That same year DPS relied on federal funding for approximately half its annual budget — down from the 60% funding in 2010 when federal stimulus funds were still flowing. The audit did not include the names of the private and local government recipients of DPS contracting and subgranting funds that were reviewed in the audit.

However, DHS and DOJ funding for homeland security, border security, and law enforcement interoperability have all been used to prop up the Texas model of border security – and to pay for the outsourcing of the building of the model and its implementation. It’s likely that the DPS contracts with ALIS, being one of the top-ranking DPS contractors, came under the scrutiny of the auditor.

The audit, which occurred during 2010, underscored problems with the type of DPS emergency contracting that benefited ALIS. The audit and its alarming findings have contributed to mounting cynicism and criticism about the Texas border security model and its outsourcing.

The audit raises fresh questions about McCraw’s ability to manage the large state agency. The shocking findings of DPS management of DHS and DOJ funding to support Texas homeland and border security programs also underscores rising skepticism about the “go-it-alone” and “can-do” boasting of the Texas border hawks critical of the Obama administration.

Outsourcing Strategy and Propaganda

It would be hard to exaggerate the degree to which Governor Perry and DPS Chief McCraw have outsourced state border-security, homeland-security and public-safety programs to Washington Beltway contractors.

ALIS, according to the August 2010 “emergency contract,” was, among other things, hired to do everything from formulating strategy to running operations to managing public relations – not only for Operation Border Start but also for the Texas Rangers and DPS itself.

The “emergency” contract for $1.5 million ALIS services, which was signed by McCraw and ALIS Chief Operating Officer on August 31, 2010, underscored the central role of ALIS in shaping and directing border security operations in Texas.

Echoing the expansive scope of the language used in earlier contracts, DPS once again hired ALIS to:

Develop and refine border-wide security strategies and plans for seamless integration of interagency law enforcement border security operations in the State of Texas.

With a staff of at least 17 analysts and information specialists — many with military backgrounds –ALIS was contracted to provide the vision and the structural foundation for Operation Border Star. Initially, Border Star had been little more a commitment by the Perry administration to support the newly formed Texas Border Sheriffs Coalition and its Operation Linebacker, using federal criminal-justice funds controlled by the governor’s office, along with an occasional show of force by DPS police in Texas border counties.

Over the years, with each successive contract, the extent of responsibility outsourced to ALIS expanded dramatically. One of the first contracts gave ALIS the task of developing a computerized crime-mapping system for the greater Texas border region, which is known as TexMap. By late 2010, however, DPS was paying ALIS to, among other things:

• “Define and write a Border Security Strategic Vision.”
• “Manage and operate the Border Security Operations Center (BSOC).”
• “Develop border-wide strategies and plans to support interagency effectiveness.”
• “Refine and update Operation Border Star 2012-2013.”
• “Develop plans for border-related Mass Migration contingencies.”
• Develop plans for “Texas Ranger operations,” and develop standard operating procedures for “Ranger Renaissance Teams” (including the new gunboat operations).
• “Facilitate creation of the Border Operations Planning Group.”
• “Develop a Border Security media/public information outreach strategy.”
• “Provide sufficient manpower to provide leadership, subject-matter expertise, and quality assurance/control in areas of border security planning and operations.”
•  “Support and sustain the six Joint Operations Intelligence Centers (JOICs),” which are situated along the Texas border and Gulf Coast.
•  “Conceptualize a Sensor Master Plan for the border region,” as part of the “web-based” electronic surveillance systems created by the governor’s officer and   DPS.
•  “Develop and refine DPS Agency Strategic Plans,” including the DPS Strategic Plan 2011-2015.
•  “Facilitate development of a DPS policy document outlining roles, responsibilities, and authorities of Regional Commanders, Ranger Captains, DPS Divisions, and JOICs with regard to countering crime and terrorism in the border region.”

The Aug. 31, 2010 emergency contract with ALIS built on earlier contracts, which steadily reinforced the centrality of the homeland security contractor not only to execute assigned tasks but also to formulate strategy and direct operations. An earlier contract had empowered ALIS to formulate the drafts of the Texas Border Security Campaign Plan, the governor’s 2010-2015 Homeland Security Strategy Plan, and the DPS Agency Strategy Plan 2010. That’s worth repeating. This little-known, upstart consulting agency from the Washington Beltway had been hired by the state’s public safety and homeland security director to: write the campaign plan for the governor’s border security campaign, conceptualize and write the state’s strategy statement for homeland security, and produce the strategy plan for DPS itself.

One of the most striking and disturbing components of the August 2010 contract was the new public relations and outreach role given ALIS contractors. According to the contract, ALIS would assume a new role that would combine public relations, communications and policy-advocacy functions.

Instead of merely being a hired gun contracted for predetermined border-security operations in Texas, ALIS contractors were expected to develop strategies, gather information to support these strategies, and then work to shape public opinion and public policy about border security threats and responses. The only border experience that ALIS brought to the table when it was hired was that its founder General Abrams had in the late 1980s commanded a regiment that was responsible for protecting the German “inner-border” prior to German reunification.

Specific tasks outsourced to ALIS included producing “reports, briefings, studies and recommendations” for “Texas leadership.” ALIS was also tasked to “orient senior government leaders on border security issues,” with possible options including “public affairs strategy and plans, fact sheets, talking points, speeches, presentations and testimony.”

The stipulated goal of the “Border Security media/public information outreach strategy” was, according to the DPS contract, to “build support for border security” among the public, media and policy community in Texas. As noted in the contract, ALIS would at times also be expected to leverage its BSOC fusion center staff “to surge for 24/7 information operations.”

Rather than gathering intelligence and analyzing information, DPS tasked ALIS to provide DPS and the Texas Rangers with “the necessary information to assist the ongoing operations.” Its BSOC staff were expected to “discipline the information operations process by serving the state information operations ‘net control’ station for border security.”

The BSOC and the JOICs would be tasked, according to the contract, to “provide needed information products as required by Texas Rangers” and to produce “effective information products.”

In review, in the interests of border security and homeland security, ALIS was contracted by DPS – with the approval of the Public Safety Commission and the governor – to manufacture “information products.” What is more, DPS wanted ALIS to ensure that the information was “effective” as well as “necessary” for ongoing operations. There has been absolutely no review by policy makers or by the public of DPS outsourcing of border-security strategy and operations.

It’s likely, though, that if there were ever such transparency and accountability, at least a few policymakers and concerned citizens would caution that structuring information as an instrument may replicate the information- and psychological-ops of the military and intelligence agencies but may not be an appropriate way to consider information gathering and dissemination on the home front. The term propaganda might arise in any public review this type of outsourcing.

Similarly, the concept that a private contractor should participate in information surges that would parallel operational surges by law enforcement officers and state troops might also have sparked discussion about the proper use of state and federal funds.

As is, it seems that the directors of Operation Border Star – Governor Perry and DPS Director McCraw – view information and intelligence as fungible commodities that can be created, manipulated and shaped to serve the greater good of the nation and Texas border security.

The Republican presidential hopeful was in Florida for a fundraiser and told Bay News 9’s “Political Connections” and the St. Petersburg Times that, “we don’t need to be opening old wounds.”

The actual decision on the plates will be made by a Texas Department of Motor Vehicles board, but the board — like most boards in the Texas government — is made up entirely of Perry appointees.

This is something of a “flip-flop” for Perry, who in the past opposed efforts to remove Confederate symbols and monuments from public property. Perry likely wants to avoid another round of headlines connecting him to the South’s ignominious history of white supremacy and racial tension, following the “rock with the word ‘Niggerhead’ painted on it” story. This is why white Southern Republican politicians use vague language like “reopening old wounds” — it’s best to just let that shit stay buried, where it can’t embarrass anyone.

But the fact that it’d be embarrassing for Perry to endorse the Confederacy is something of a positive sign. For years, Republicans seeking the presidency have been expected to embrace Confederate symbolism to prove their conservative bona fides, and the political press largely excused these endorsements as simply part of the path to the nomination. John McCain got some grief for endorsing the South Carolina flag, but that’s because he waffled on the issue, not because embracing the battle flag of anti-American racist separatists is morally horrific.

The fact that Perry would rather quietly make the issue go away than quietly signal his approval of the neo-Confederate movement means progress is being made in the campaign to educate everyone as to the actual meaning of certain symbols of “our heritage.”

Under current law, three conditions that must be met for a minor to donate to a political campaign: that the donation was made knowingly and voluntarily; that the funds donated must belong to the minor in question; and that the parents may not reimburse the child for the donation. A Perry spokesman declined to say whether there is an age that the campaign considers too young to knowingly and voluntarily donate.

Those rules are, of course, widely ignored by everyone, because they’re effectively impossible to enforce, and so kids become just another way rich people can donate more than is legal to their favorite candidates.

Not that that’s what’s going on with these donations to Perry! I am sure the middle school-aged daughter of Texas Railroad Commission Commissioner Barry Smitherman genuinely supports Governor Perry (she probably calls him “Uncle Rick” and everything) and the $2,500 she sent his campaign is surely money she received from the Tooth Fairy and then prudently invested. Same for her high school junior brother. And for the children of Perry appointee Dan Friedkin and the children of oil executive and Perry appointee Steve Layton.

The thing these liberal smear artists simply don’t get is that children love Rick Perry. He is basically the Texas Santa Claus. Except the kids send Rick Perry presents, instead of the other way around.

The story isn’t actually that Rick Perry is a KKK-style racist. It’s about how Rick Perry grew up in a very homogenous region in an era of white supremacy, and how that upbringing is reflected in the fact that he and his father regularly went hunting at a place named for that most powerful and despicable racial epithet, because to many people there was nothing offensive about it. And that name was eventually, literally whitewashed over (though some recall seeing it as recently as in the last 10 years, most agree that the rock was painted over decades ago). Ta-Nehisi Coates says the story says more about America than it does about Rick Perry.

But conservatives don’t do “nuance” when it comes to the modern legacy of America’s history of race hatred, so here’s Erick Erickson attacking the Post for running the story in the first place. (The most head-scratching line: “Stephanie McCrummen, a Washington Post based reporter formerly stationed in Nairobi has a history of fanning racial flames out of context.” What, exactly, does her being stationed in Nairobi have to do with anything, Erick?)

Before conservatives could close ranks, however, one of Perry’s opponents jumped on the story. Herman Cain, the former pizza magnate who has promised his white, conservative audience that their support for him absolves them of the charge of racial resentment, may have made a terrible mistake on Sunday by “playing the race card” against a fellow conservative instead of against a white liberal.

On Fox on Sunday, Cain said, “for him to leave it there as long as he did, before I hear that they finally painted over it, is just plain insensitive to a lot of black people in this country.”

Erickson called Cain’s remarks “a slander Herman Cain is picking up and running with as a way to get into second place.”

Unless Herman Cain reverses himself and absolves Perry of insensitivity, this could be the biggest misstep he’s made in his quest for the Republican nomination. Daily Intel rounds up numerous conservatives on Twitter lambasting Cain for “smearing a good man.” The Daily Caller calls Cain “at worst, highly irresponsible.” The mostly subliterate RedState commenters have convinced themselves that Cain is the real racist for going after Perry.

Herman Cain is going to very quickly learn that the modern conservative movement only wants to hear good, happy stories about how they successfully eradicated all white racism many years ago.