Is Congress getting a little crazy, or is it just Texas? 
 
 Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., thinks it’s just Texas, and that’s just how he feels. 
 
 Not only that, but he wouldn’t live in the Lone Star state “for all the tea in China.” 
 
 Huh? 
 
 This was no bar room brawl, or schoolyard fight. 
 
 It was a scene from a House Rules Committee hearing Monday night over the latest GOP effort to repeal Obamacare. 
 
 The antagonists were Hastings and Texas Republican Michael Burgess, jousting over the decision of states like Texas to forego state insurance exchanges under the Affordable Care Act, a matter that’s now before the U.S. Supreme Court. 
 
 The bad blood started when Hastings intoned, “I don’t know about in your state, which I think is a crazy state to begin with, and I mean that just as I said it.” 
 
 That brought down a gavel from Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., who was chairing the meeting. It also prompted a protest from Burgess: “That’s a very defamatory statement about my state, and I will not stand here and listen to it.” 
 
 “Well fine,” Hastings interjected. “Then you don’t have to listen. You can leave if you choose. I’ve told you what I think about Texas. I wouldn’t live there for all the tea in China, and that’s how I feel.” 
 
 Well. 
 
 By Tuesday, all 25 Texas House Republicans, in a show of solidarity, demanded that Hastings apologize to the citizens of Texas. They also issued the following four-word statement: 
 
 “Don’t mess with Texas.” 
 
 There’s a hashtag too: #DontMessWithTexas. But Hastings hasn’t backed down yet. 
 
 Footage of the drama is here. ||||| FACT CHECK: Are dildos really illegal in Texas? 
 
 Earlier this week, i09.com published the above map illustrating “the weirdest sex laws in the United States.” While acknowledging that many sex laws you read about online are “urban legends,” i09.com went on to say that in Texas, “you can’t own more than six dildos.” 
 
 Up until 2008, this was actually true. Under Section 43.21 of the Texas Penal Code, first passed by the Legislature in the 1970s, it was illegal to sell “obscene devices” — or any device “including a dildo or artificial vagina, designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs.” 
 
 However, in 2004, two adult store chains challenged the law, and in 2008, a federal appeals court struck it down as unconstitutional. A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals based its decision on the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2003 ruling in Lawrence. V. Texas. 
 
 “Because of Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003), the issue before us is whether the Texas statute impermissibly burdens the individual’s substantive due process right to engage in private intimate conduct of his or her choosing,” the majority wrote. “Contrary to the district court’s conclusion, we hold that the Texas law burdens this constitutional right. An individual who wants to legally use a safe sexual device during private intimate moments alone or with another is unable to legally purchase a device in Texas, which heavily burdens a constitutional right.” 
 
 Republican Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott defended the dildo ban, arguing that the state had “morality based” reasons for the law, including “discouraging prurient interests in autonomous sex and the pursuit of sexual gratification unrelated to procreation.” Following the 5th Circuit ruling, Abbott’s office requested a rehearing en banc, but the court declined. 
 
 Although the i09.com map is technically wrong, it serves as a timely reminder about the Republican frontrunner for Texas governor in 2014. 
 
 As the Texas Tribune noted recently, while the attorney general is charged with defending state laws, he has discretion over how aggressively to do so. For example, former AG Jim Mattox once withdrew an appeal defending the state’s sodomy law because he agreed it was unconstitutional. 
 
 In the case of the dildo ban, Abbott’s decision to appeal — and then request a rehearing en banc — indicates that he agreed with the law. 
 
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 comments ||||| Washington (CNN) Rep. Alcee Hastings, citing a dildo law, among other things, has some harsh words for Texas lawmakers. 
 
 That's the rationale he used in an interview with CNN, in response to outrage from the Texas delegation over his comments this week that Texas is "a crazy state." 
 
 "I love Texans, but I do not like their policy makers who are in the majority," he said. "The simple fact of the matter is, evidently, I touched a nerve deep in the heart of Texas. And I would ask them to tie a yellow rose around it and do like 'Frozen' and 'Let it go.'" 
 
 On Tuesday, all 25 Republicans in the Texas delegation demanded Hastings apologize for the comments, which he made during a Monday House Rules Committee debate over a bill repealing Obamacare. 
 
 Commenting on Texas' decision not to participate in the state health care exchanges established by the Affordable Care Act, Hastings said, "I don't know about in your state, which I think is a crazy state to begin with, and I mean that just as I said it." 
 
 Read More ||||| WASHINGTON – Rick Perry embraces the crazy. 
 
 Earlier this week, Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., ridiculed Texas as “a crazy state” because under Perry’s 14-year governorship, it rejected the federal health care expansion. 
 
 “He called Texans crazy. He is right,” Perry said Thursday night. “We’re crazy about jobs. We’re crazy about opportunity….And we’re particularly crazy about the Second Amendment and the 10th Amendment. What we’re not crazy about is a government that taxes too much, borrows too much, spends too much.” 
 
 Perry’s riff on Texas, gun rights and states’ rights went over well as he courted conservatives at a gala dinner a few blocks from the White House. And he dropped lots of hints that he’d like to call that mansion home. 
 
 “While I do have a quarrel or two with my government, I love my country,” he declared during a 25-minute speech that left little doubt he sees a future president in the mirror. “There is nothing wrong with America that can’t be fixed with a change in leadership. The next two years are about hope and revival.” 
 
 Perry took a number of jabs at President Barack Obama — for neglecting border security, maltreating Israel, issuing empty threats to Syria and Iran, and abusing executive power. He linked the Islamic State’s incineration killing of a captured Jordanian pilot this week to Obama’s foreign policy blunders. 
 
 But while the nation “is on a slow glide path to decline,” Perry said, “I’m kind of skeptical that an agent of change can come from Washington.” 
 
 Like other current and former governors, he touts his executive experience, and that sounded very much like a shot at the many senators jockeying for the nomination – especially Ted Cruz, his fellow Texan. 
 
 “When we look at 2016, we need to remember we’re not electing a critic in chief. We’re electing a commander-in-chief,” Perry said. 
 
 Perry delivered the keynote speech at the annual Red, White and Blue gala of the American Principles Project, a group that promotes a combination of libertarian and social conservative policies. More than 300 conservative activists filled a ballroom of the Renaissance Mayflower Hotel, at $300 per head. 
 
 Sean Fieler, chairman of the American Principles Project, introduced Perry by saying that unlike most politicians, he hasn’t waffled. 
 
 “Gov. Perry is undoubtedly, unafraid of what he believes,” he said. 
 
 The group’s founder, Princeton University legal scholar Robert George, spoke before Perry, arguing that the distinction often drawn between social and economic conservatives is artificial and misguided. 
 
 The American family is disintegrating, he warned, citing a 40 percent rate of out-of-wedlock births nationwide, and a rate topping 70 percent among black Americans. 
 
 “If you want a free economy… you darn well better have healthy families,” George said, because otherwise the state is forced to step in, “and the state will do it badly, and expensively, and the state will grow, and it will become more intrusive.” 
 
 So he said, “as we go forward, especially into 2016, let us reject the voices that tell us to go silent on social issue and only talk about economic issues. Or the reverse.” 
 
 Perry’s White House ambitions are clear, though like other likely 2016 candidates, he hasn’t made a formal announcement. He will spend two days next week in New Hampshire, site of the nations’ first presidential primary next February. He was in Iowa last month and will return in March. 
 
 In late 2012, when Texas Sen. Ted Cruz spoke to the same group, he was introduced by George – who served as Cruz’s undergraduate adviser at Princeton on a thesis about federal overreach, a topic of great interest to Perry, as well. 
 
 “In Ted, we have someone who will not sell out,” George said then. 
 
 That was three weeks after Cruz’s election. With the sting of President Barack Obama’s reelection still fresh, Cruz lamented that “Republicans were curled up in the fetal position” during the campaign, terrified to defend the legacy of George W. Bush or even to utter his name. 
 
 Over lunch on Thursday, the same group heard from Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana – another possible contender. He supported Perry before his 2012 campaign crashed to an abrupt halt. 
 
 Jindal blasted the Common Core education standards, which he had lauded a few years ago, complaining of federal meddling in local schools. “What happens when the U.S. history our children are taught is not the American exceptionalism that you and I were taught – but rather a history of our grievances?” he said.
– A Florida lawmaker says Texas is just plum "crazy"—and he cites a state dildo law to make his point, CNN reports. Rep. Alcee Hastings started the fracas Monday at a House Rules Committee debate when he called Texas "crazy" for rejecting federal health care expansion. Well, Texas Rep. Michael Burgess said the remark was "a very defamatory statement about my state. And I will not stand here and listen to it." The Florida Democrat then suggested that the Republican get up and leave, the Houston Chronicle reports. "I’ve told you what I think about Texas," says Hastings. "I wouldn’t live there for all the tea in China, and that’s how I feel." The Texas delegates' 25 Republicans demanded an apology the next day, but Hastings chose to further his argument in a CNN interview. "I love Texans, but I do not like their policy makers who are in the majority," he says, citing a Texas law "that you can't shoot bears out of the second floor of a window." He also noted a law in "one of their cities ... that women can only have six dildos, and the certain size of things. And if that ain't crazy I don't know what is." Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry fired back at a gala dinner last night in Washington, saying Hastings "is right," the Dallas Morning News reports. "We’re crazy about jobs. We’re crazy about opportunity," says Perry. "And we’re particularly crazy about the Second Amendment and the 10th Amendment."