December 2009

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Features

Step Right Up

Press your jeans, pull on your boots, shine up your buckle, and come along on this two-stepping tour of classic country dance halls, from Tom Sefcik Hall, in Seaton, to Club Westerner, in Victoria.

by John Spong

Plus:

Kick Up Your Heels

A slide show of images featuring our state’s classic dance halls, from the John T. Floore Country Store, in Helotes, to the Stampede, in Big Spring. Photographs by Jeff Wilson.

During his three terms in office, Houston’s Bill White has been one of the most popular big-city mayors in America. Now he’s just the latest in a long line of Texas Democrats trying to win a statewide election. What makes Mayor Bill think he can break a fifteen-year losing streak?

by S.C. Gwynne

People We’ll Miss—2009

A fond look back at 22 Texans who died in 2009, from Farrah Fawcett and Walter Cronkite to Brandon Lara and Joe Bowman.

by Jordan Breal, Pamela Colloff, Michael Hall, Katharyn Rodemann, Jeff Salamon, Patricia Sharpe, Jake Silverstein, Mimi Swartz and Brian D. Sweany

Perversion Of Justice

Cathy McBroom loved working as a case manager for Samuel Kent, Galveston’s brilliant, charismatic, all-powerful federal district judge. Then he started attacking her.

by Skip Hollandsworth

Columns

Behind the Lines

The Terminator

Rick Perry’s record nine years in the Governor’s Mansion have made the office more powerful than ever before. That’s why we need term limits.

by Paul Burka

Patricia Kilday Hart

Wealth Care

Why does our health insurance system treat a small part of the Rio Grande Valley differently from the rest of the state?

Sarah Bird

Hedda Garbler

Help! My voice recognition software is making me save airy funnel things witch nobody wonder Stans.

Letter From Midland

Separated At Death

Ernest Willis spent seventeen years on death row for a crime he didn’t commit. And he has a few things to say about the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in 2004 for a strangely similar crime that many experts believe he didn’t commit either.

by Michael Hall