Many are rejoicing at Karl Rove’s exit from the White House. I’m not, but neither am I sorry to see him go. The time had come, and the country and the president are better off for his leaving. He had been caught up in too many dark episodes–the Valerie Plame
This just in from the conservative Web site NewsMax.com about Rove’s appearance today on Rush Limbaugh’s talk show:Appearing by phone on “The Rush Limbaugh Show,” President Bush’s chief political strategist Karl Rove slammed Bush’s critics as “elite, effete snobs.”In his first interview since announcing he was leaving the White
In this case, the Rose is named Charlie. I was invited on his PBS show today to talk about Karl Rove’s departure. We taped it this afternoon and it will air tonight, supposedly at 11:30 p.m. in Austin. My fellow panelists were Mark Halperin, editor-at-large for Time and ABC News
This was passed along to me by a Democratic operative with contacts in Washington. I cannot vouch for its veracity. All I can vouch for is that I got a phone call. The call began, “Before you praise Karl Rove, you need to know that ….” I report this as
The Texas Heritage Alliance has published its rankings of legislators according to their percentage of conservative votes cast. This is the group founded by Richard Ford, whose infamous Free PAC specialized in scurrilous campaign mailings that included, among other things, photos of men kissing. The list for the House
A confession: When the Court of Criminal Appeals decided in late June, by a vote of 5 to 4, to throw out an indictment against Tom DeLay and two codefendants for conspiracy (regarding an alleged violation of the state’s election laws). I paid little attention to Earle’s press release in
The only two media outlets in Texas that subscribed to (if that is the proper term) SurveyUSA, WOAI in San Antonio and KEYE in Austin, no longer participate. I will not be able to provide monthly approval rankings for President Bush, senators Hutchison and Cornyn, and Governor Perry. I spoke
The state prosecuting attorney has joined the Travis County District Attorney in filing a motion for rehearing in the Tom DeLay case. (The lead defendant is actually John Colyandro.) The current status of the case is that the Court of Criminal Appeals threw out the conspiracy indictment against DeLay and
Republican megadonor James Leininger continues to unload the stock in Kinetic Concepts, the San Antonio-based medical supplies company he founded. On July 28, the Houston Chronicle reported that Leininger, a director of the company, sold 153,300 shares at prices between $63.01 and $64.04, a pretax haul of between $9.67
Author Denise Gee comes from a long line of Southerners who like to imbibe. Growing up in Natchez, Mississippi, she observed her fair share of Southern belles and seersuckered gentlemen with drink in hand. Eventually, cocktail hour became a distinctly personal and cultural experience for Gee, who set out
The Houston Museum of Natural Science curator of anthropology talks about this month’s new exhibit, Lucy’s Legacy: The Hidden Treasures of Ethiopia.
True-life tales from the files of one of Houston’s top divorce lawyers.
The blues harmonica giant, who is now 72, reunited with his former boss Muddy Waters in 1977 for the Grammy-winning Hard Again, which was spearheaded and produced by Beaumont’s Johnny Winter. After the success of the album, the three went on the road, but until the tapes that make up
This year marks the fortieth anniversary of the fabled Summer of Love, and the four-CD Love Is the Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965—1970 (Rhino) commemorates the occasion with a thrilling showcase of the Bay Area sounds that defined a generation. These sounds weren’t just Californian, however. “Everybody
The members of Austin’s Li’l Cap’n Travis are an unlikely bunch: With multiple writers and singers in place of a front man and a bevy of backing musicians, this is a real band—and they’ve been that way from the beginning. They aren’t conventional (no hitting the road in a
Before “Miss Misery” took the Duncanville-raised singer Elliott Smith from indie cult to mainstream pop status, Smith fronted a band called Heatmiser, one of a hundred acts looking to be the next Nirvana. With his fragile voice and persona, Smith made an even more unlikely grunge rocker than Kurt
Butcher, born in San Marcos and raised in Fort Worth, has spent most of the past fourteen years as a reporter at the Big Bend Sentinel, a weekly newspaper in Marfa with a readership of three thousand.I moved to Marfa from Austin in 1993. At the time, Marfa had
I was thrilled to see Lucinda Wierenga and the “Amazin’ Walter” McDonald’s sand castle on the cover. I’m glad to see that Texas Monthly is still looking for and honoring our more interesting citizens. We are what make Texas so great.S. TUCKERAlvinI recently returned from a five-day visit to
Houston
Monarch, Houston and Sangría Tapas y Bar, Dallas.
William Martin reviews our places of worship.
“i think/i am going to die tonight./and some-thing inside me/looks forward to it./and something inside me/is twisting my intestines around,/trying to make letters out of them,/trying to spell the word/NO.” When sixteen-year-old Chelsea Marie wrote those chilling words a little over a year ago, she had also composed a
The Austin journalist and linguistics expert ponders the nature of speech imperfections and what verbal gaffes reveal, or don’t, in Um…Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean.What qualifies as a “verbal blunder”?It can be a slip of the tongue or any moment where something we’ve planned to
In a case of coincidental plot devices, two of Texas’s favorite fictional gumshoes recently swore off the detecting business because of an unfortunate tendency to call down death on their nearest and dearest. But quitting the private-eye racket is easier said than done, and the summer reading pile finds both
The Texas Education Agency flunks out.
An open letter to Ethan Hawke.
The RationaleWhy make a lasting impression on your cattle? To fend off cattle rustlers, whose pilfering of literal cash cows is hardly a defunct business (ranchers in the Southwest lost $6.2 million in livestock in 2005). “Think of branding as a license plate on your car, a means of identification,”
The gospel according to Yolanda Adams.
Westheimer Road, Houston
Sweat 101.
In the ninth-largest city in America, boring is the new exciting.
Austin, Los Fresnos
What 2008 means for Texas.
Where the great silent majority is taking politics, here and elsewhere.
This month’s cover story is one for the history books—in two ways. First, because executive editor Sam Gwynne’s report on the myth, majesty, and future of the King Ranch (“The Next Frontier,”) is as sweeping as the ranch itself, and second, because it’s a report from the inside.
Texas Southern University’s missed opportunity.
Let’s go to the science fair!
As the legal and ethical complaints against Texas Supreme Court justice Nathan Hecht pile up, the question must be asked whether the court’s intellectual leader will be able to serve out his term, or whether he will be forced to resign–or worse.Article XV of the Texas Constitution, which deals with
A staffer to a Democratic state rep sent me a gleeful e-mail today upon hearing of Talmadge Heflin’s appointment as executive director of the state Republican party:It’s as if someone walked into the Texas Democratic Party HQ and said “Hey guys. Surprise! It’s your lucky day. You get to pick
Can anyone explain why the Texas Republican party named Talmadge Heflin as its new executive director? Is it because the former chairman of the House appropriations committee is a brilliant electoral tactician? Apparently not, since the reason he’s a former chairman is that he lost his race for reelection in
Things may have taken a turn for the better for embattled U.S. attorney general Alberto Gonzales. On the same day that the New York Times editorialized that Gonzales should be impeached if Solicitor General Paul Clement declines to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate allegations that Gonzales lied to
In Part II, I discussed the legal aspects of Craddick’s position, as stated in his brief to Attorney General Abbott, that he has the power to deny recognition to a member seeking to make a privileged motion and that he is an officer of the state and therefore can be
Lots of chatter about Perry running again in 2010. The reason for the chatter, of course, is the amount of money, more than $800,000, that Perry raised in the short interval between the end of the twenty-day period for signing and vetoing bills on June 17 and the July 15
In my previous post on the Craddick brief, I covered the issue of whether the attorney general should rule on the questions posed by Jim Keffer and Byron Cook in requesting an AG’s opinion. In particular, I agree with the Craddick brief that Article II, Section 1, of the Texas
Tom Craddick has submitted his brief to attorney general Abbott in response to the opinion request asking the AG to determine the correctness of his rulings that effectively insulate him from removal as speaker during a legislative session.My ability to comment on this is somewhat limited, since I am in
Sarah and I are visiting relatives in New Orleans this week, and we took a couple of days off to drive into Mississippi–up to Oxford on Wednesday, then to Vicksburg and the Civil War battlefield on Thursday. Since Mississippi is our competition for being last in everything, I thought I’d
Is it possible that Kay Bailey Hutchison may win–may have already won–the 2010 race for the Republican nomination for governor without a fight? There sure is a lot of talk coming out of the Senate that Dewhurst may not run for governor after all and has had conversations with senators
It’s hardly news that Nick Lampson is the number one target nationwide for Republicans among freshman Democrats. Lampson won with only 52% of the vote against a write-in campaign in Tom DeLay’s old district. Now, CQ Politics has posted a chart indicating that not only Lampson but also Ciro
The Amarillo Globe News today features an op-ed piece by Governor Perry defending his veto of some $153,979,799 in health benefits for community college employees. Many Republican lawmakers are upset by this veto; Phil King told me that he is concerned it will hurt the party in the ’08
Tomorrow, July 15, is the deadline for the semiannual campaign finance reports. The word is that Rick Perry will report have raised around $900,000. I’m reporting talk, not solid confirmation, but, just for grins, let’s assume it’s in the ballpark. That’s a lot of money, considering that state law prohibits
