It’s time for the Friday 5, that day of the week when I get to gripe about Ted Cruz, city council members and overpaid CEOs in the same column. It’s like liberal Christmas!

1. Ted Cruz shoots self in foot over gun filibuster.
See what I did there? Yeah, my favorite “smart” U.S. senator promised he would have the votes to prevent debate on bipartisan gun control legislation. Turns out, no, not so much. (Which was really problematic for me, because I wrote an entire column that hilariously imagined what that filibuster would have sounded like, then scrapped it after hearing that Cruz’s efforts failed.)

As Cruz will now be forced to deal with the bill, we’ll be getting plenty of chances to mock his feeling that the Second Amendment is sacrosanct and shouldn’t be touched. For example, we’ll point out that the only thing we’re messing with is the modern interpretation of that amendment, that his “slippery slope” arguments against any gun legislation are textbook examples of logical fallacy arguments, and that changes in society and technology should make us review even the First Amendment. (Example: Apple is now a publisher, and its drone-app censorship should be considered as such.)

For now, though, let me just leave you with the other Cruz news of the day: the politically neutral fact-checking site PolitiFact deciding to reexamine Cruz’s statements about Medicaid. The site had rated as “False” this statement from Cruz:

Cruz’s people argued that rating and sent supporting documents. So the site reconsidered and conducted more extensive interviews and research. The result? Still “False.” Why? Because he’s a liar.

2. It still looks like Sunset’s kick-ass principal will leave.
In Tuesday’s column, I told you about how blogger/activist Bill Betzen broke the news (in an online comment) that Anthony Tovar may be leaving the school he turned around. Unfair Park follows up on this sad development.

3. Is a non-endorsement an endorsement?
The Dallas Morning News editorial board says that District 3 should vote for Vonciel Jones Hill. Why? Because even though she isn’t very effective and lets city leaders run all over her, the other candidates are awful. Put that in your LinkedIn endorsement.

4. Tom Horton looks up from his iPad, where he’s been shopping online at TheBillionaireShop.com, and reads his Google News alert.
He then gets very sad, closes that tab and fires up Angry Birds.

5. Are we sure the JC Penney customer is right?
I get why the DMN says that ousted CEO Ron Johnson should have done more testing of his concepts before implementing them. Because that might have saved his job. But I think we’re overlooking that perhaps Johnson was just trying to prevent the tragedy of more people buying clothes from JC Penney. Hero?

Retweets

Skeeters! Gaaahhh!

Phrasing.