Good morning,

The printed word matters, and protecting our founding documents is a noble endeavor – a point driven home to me at Qumran near the Dead Sea.

But first, here is today's Texas Minute.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

Friday, January 10, 2020
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• Texas Lawyer magazine reports all but one member of the legislatively created Texas Commission on Judicial Selection believe party labels shouldn’t be applied in judicial elections. Many see this as a step toward eliminating the public election of judges altogether in Texas. 
       
• Seems like what commission members really want is for a state committee in Austin to pick the judges, rather than the people. Either way, get ready for a bunch more Democrat and Democrat-like judges.
     
• The platform of the Republican Party of Texas states: “We support our right to select our judges by direct vote.”
         
• The case of “Baby Tinslee” has captured the attention of the nation. A hospital in Fort Worth is attempting to withdraw life-support over her family’s objections. In this week’s edition of Texas Scorecard Radio, Tony McDonald visits with the lawyer representing Tinsley Lewis in her life-and-death battle with a hospital bureaucracy.
     
• As Robert Montoya reports, Texas hospitals are given broad latitude under law to withdraw medical care based on their own beliefs about what constitutes an acceptable quality of life. It is known as the 10-day Rule, in reference to the notice hospitals must give when they decide to deny life-sustaining treatment. Reforming this policy has been a goal for pro-life activists, the conservative movement, and the platform of the Republican Party of Texas for years.
     
• “My biggest priority is getting Tinslee appropriate care so I can make the best decision for my baby. But my voice and my wishes for my daughter mean nothing under this 10-day rule.” – Trinity Lewis, Tinslee’s mother
     
• McKinney voters moved closer to removing a city council member they say is hurting the city with divisive rhetoric and unethical behavior, but Erin Anderson reports the councilman is promising he’ll take the matter to court. Unless Councilman La’Shadion Shemwell resigns within the week, the city’s charter requires the council to schedule a citywide recall election to decide whether he stays or goes. Shemwell has said he won’t step down.

Friday Reflection

Two years before Israel became a nation in 1948, the first ancient scrolls were discovered by Bedouin shepheds in the caves of Qumran, near the Dead Sea. 

Nearly a thousand scrolls were eventually uncovered by archeologists, covering most of the Old Testament, commentaries on those texts, other religious documents, and even some information about the community that lived in Qumran before it disappeared into the sands of time.

Who these people were dwelling in the Qumran caves near the Dead Sea continues to be a topic of debate. It is believed many of the scrolls were placed in clay jars in the caves during the Great Jewish Revolt in the late 60s and early 70s A.D. They wanted these documents preserved from the ravages of war with Rome.

Two lessons spring to mind. First, the scrolls themselves provide a stunning testimony to the power of devoted transcription. These ancient copies of even more ancient texts mirror the translations we use today.

Second, the people at Qumran – the Essenes? a sect of Sadducees? – clearly wanted to preserve these writings, the fundamentals of their faith. They did so the very best way they could.

Even in an age of text messages and emoticons, we can relate. Original copies of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution sit in special cases at the National Archives, set to drop safely into special chambers at a moment’s notice of a natural or manmade disaster. We do this for the same reason they did: to preserve the words that define who we are.

It’s not that thousands upon thousands of copies of the Constitution don’t exist. (I have three different copies within arms’ reach as I type this!) No, we protect those original copies in the event something happens to all the others. They are meaningful representations of what we believe and who we are as a self-governing people.

Before the discovery of the scrolls at Qumran, it was very fashionable to question whether the translations we read today were authentic. We preserve important literature for the same reason we are thankful the people of Qumran did. 

Words matter, and maintaining faithful translations and copies of important works remain as important today as 2000 years ago.