At the start of this century, Laredo gained an unfortunate reputation as a haven for border solubility, narco-gang violence, and the appearance of a truck stop without the trucks. As it happens, only two of those things are true, but even those of us who love Texas, and have pleasant memories of Laredo (it’s a town full of decent, hardworking people; the nicest drug dealer I’ve ever met gave me directions to a book store in town and even told me about the special discount) have thought, “Does Laredo have no crown jewel of its own? No sparkling quartz to mount the bejeweled diadem of Texas? Nothing on the level of Dallas’s Lee Trevino?”

The answer, my friends, is that it does: State Senator Judith Zaffirini, Ph.D.

Many of you, whom I must presume are literally troglodytes, have not heard of this woman. Fortunately, the internet has. Indeed, one might even say that the internet itself was created explicitly to carry the message of Senator Judith Zaffirini, Ph.D., much as an errant supernova might light up over some Jewish kid in an occupied territory for no particular reason — but this time, with a reason.

We could dwell on the controversy that has surrounded Senator Judith Zaffirini, Ph.D., these last few days, but that would be to ignore the transcendent importance of Senator Judith Zaffirini, Ph.D. in the greater light of history. And what a light of history it is, for though much of her past is shrouded in the mists of myth (as is true for most people who graduate with a 3.9 GPA from each course of study they undertake) we know that her birth on the north bank of the Rio Grande was foretold by a swallow, and heralded by the appearance of a double rainbow over the river and three new stars and the shadow of another in the heavens, one for each of her future grade point averages. (Native Texans know that if one points one’s telescope at a 3.9 degree angle in the direction of Laredo, no matter where one is situated, those new stars appear as a nearly perfect right triangle.)

Her legendary work ethic manifested at the age of a mere eight days, when most children are still working on nursing; it was then that she took and passed an elementary course in communications and political science, scoring the first of several 3.9 out of 4s in her lifetime. Indeed, so impressed were the local university wise men that they traveled to her birth place by the light of those three stars to give her the first of her over 650 awards, including the first of her over 150 for communications. Read More