That’s the number of times Harris County housewife Susan Wright stabbed her husband in a brutal 2003 murder that riveted the nation and landed her in prison for 25 years. But should the butcher of the burbs be freed?
Thai SpiceCorpus Christi Chef Pennee Chanyaman and her host-husband, Paul, have moved their thriving operation one block to a freestanding building that’s larger, more visible, and more accessible, all the while maintaining the emphasis on personal attention that made their previous spot so well liked. A subsequent increase in patronage
Plano
The music exec, who lives in Austin, is the co-owner of Matador Records, a label with a huge presence in the indie rock world: Its artists have included Teenage Fanclub, Pavement, Liz Phair, Yo La Tengo, and Cat Power, plus Austin acts Shearwater (see review) and Harlem (which has a
Midlake, the acclaimed psychedelic folk band from Denton, has a curious background. All five of its members were jazz musicians at the University of North Texas; they formed in 1999 to play Herbie Hancock–influenced fusion. Leader Tim Smith has been up front about having to educate himself about the
If someday a history is written of Patty Griffin’s recordings, 2007’s Children Running Through will no doubt stand as a milestone: The Austin songstress discovered she could really thrill her audiences by letting loose. It was that album combined with another, a session with her idol Mavis Staples, that
While many groups wear their influences on their sleeve, Austin’s Shearwater defies typecasting. The band’s dramatic musical arsenal spares it from making mere pop Xeroxes: Singer Jonathan Meiburg plays with eerie falsettos and operatic growls; the group’s swoops and leaps in volume are like a symphony’s (albeit one with
The founder of the Texas Innocence Network, who is also the litigation director at the Texas Defender Service and a professor at the University of Houston Law Center, uses his hard-won knowledge of the state legal system to maximum effect in his fifth book, The Autobiography of an Execution.
First-time author and Austinite Robert Jackson Bennett takes a solemn approach to genre fiction, with nary a light moment in his allegorical horror novel, Mr. Shivers. Set in the Depression-era Southwest, the saga follows Marcus Connelly, who leaves his wife and Memphis home to ride the rails west
One Amazing Thing is a beautiful novel, a tapestry of nine stories from Houston’s Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, whose short fiction earned her an American Book Award in 1996. Seven potential travelers in an unnamed U.S. city are applying for documents at an Indian Consulate when an earthquake razes
The blind side of The Blind Side.
1. Sweet TangerineFrom the outside, this off-the-beaten-path white stucco house looks like someone’s lovingly preserved Spanish Revival. But a step behind the neon-orange door reveals a seasonally chic gift store manned by Carmen Austin and her mother, Sarah Jenkins. Fans of Sid Dickens’s timeless hand-painted tiles can get their fix
As the director of the Baker Institute Energy Forum at Rice University, Amy Myers Jaffe is one of the few women at the forefront of energy research and policy. Armed with an Arabic studies degree from Princeton and hundreds of published academic articles, the 51-year-old former editor and mother
Before waltzing into a Tejano nightclub—or into any big party in South Texas, for that matter—you should know how to dance cumbia. Originally a folk dance from Colombia, the cumbia shuffled across Latin America, picking up small changes along the way, and has comfortably settled here with a distinct Tejano
A San Antonio native, Matcek runs Heart and Soul-Mates, a personalized matchmaking service for clients across South Texas. She is also a licensed relationship coach.After becoming single again in late 2006, I started to do the online dating thing. I had heard the horror stories, and I quickly realized
Adelina Anthony on performing comedy.
Here is what I would do if I had been running the Hutchison campaign. I would not just sit back and let Perry punch us with the bailout day after day, week after week, month after month. I would follow the old rule: “Hang a lantern on your problem.” I
On the air Perry looks more comfortable so far. First question, the corridor. Was it a mistake? Perry says, wasn't a mistake to have a vision. Blames governors who didn't do anything before him. We had to come up with a way to move people. He had a big smile,
Perry’s ads are usually first rate, but anyone with a memory going back four years will recognize that the message, the scenery, and even the clothing is recycled from 2006. Still, having a border sheriff give a testimonial for Perry is very effective, even if Perry did direct a
This mass e-mail was sent to me by SREC member Mark McCaig. Dear Texas Republicans, Like the vast majority of Texas Republicans, I am a strong supporter of legislation that will require photo identification to vote. As a member of the State Republican Executive Committee, I supported efforts by the
I received this information about polls that were taken in two House districts, HD 3 (Homer) and HD 47 (Bolton). The first poll is from HD 3. The pollster was Chris Wilson. Fair warning: Both polls were sent to me by a source close to the Perry campaign: Perry 47
This is what Pulitzer prize-winning food journalist Jonathan Gold wrote on Dec. 27, 2009. “While nobody was paying attention, food quietly assumed the place in youth culture that used to be occupied by rock ‘n’ roll–individual, fierce and intensely political, communal yet congenial to aesthetic extremes: embracing veganism or learning
This was the headline for a story I wrote about the battle over changes that were taking place at Texas A&M, in the heyday of the Gates presidency (“Corps Values,” May 2004). Current A&M students have no historical memory of this period. So that readers may understand the
Have you noticed that no criticism of Rick Perry seems to stick? It is very clear now that nothing Hutchison has done has moved numbers, except maybe to reduce her own. He nails her on the bailout and it sticks like flypaper. (Does flypaper still exist?) She tries to nail
The Hill Country Wine and Food Festival is Austin’s big food event of the year. Read all about it at the web site—lots of fun events this year, which is the twenty-fifth anniversary—including vineyard luncheons, a star-chef dinner, a wine tasting/talk on taking your cellar
This is the lead of the story from The Battalion, the student newspaper at A&M: After seven and a half years as commandant of the Corps of Cadets, Lt. Gen. John Van Alstyne resigned Friday [January 22]. "There are good young men and women in the Corps," Van Alstyne said.
PERRY The Perry campaign issued a release attacking the veracity of Hutchison's ad on securing the border. The Perry release follows: Latest False Hutchison Ad Perfect “Match” For Dishonest Senator Media Already Labeling Ad A “Distortion” That “Clouds Some Of Her Record” And “Deviates From Facts” Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison
Hutchison The daily blast from the Hutchison campaign includes this discussion: Texas had the 4th highest teen pregnancy rate in the country in 2005, according to a new study. That’s up one notch from 5th highest in 2000, according to new data from the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights
This is the taxpayer advocacy headed up by self-appointed Republican enforcer Michael Quinn Sullivan. All of the endorsements went to Republicans. I am not publishing the full list of endorsements. It includes Kolkhorst, Taylor, Zerwas, P. King, Phillips, Crownover, Madden, Smithee, Chisum, Branch, Harless, and W. Smith, and a lot
I came across this discussion on scotusblog [Supreme Court of the United States] about the personhood of corporations and how far it might reach. I mentioned in my discussion of the Citizens United case the argument that corporations cannot vote and thus should not be regarded as persons in the
The Sunday papers had two not-so-good stories for Perry. The more damaging story was an exclusive by Gromer Jeffries about a program by the Perry campaign, known as "Perry Home Headquarters," in which workers were paid for signing up voters who pledged to vote for Perry in the
It had been some time since my last visit to Cooper’s in Llano. This haven for bikers out on their Saturday stroll isn’t on the way from Dallas to anywhere, so I made a special road trip of my own. There was some BBQ sampled along the way, but
I was told about this poll by a lobbyist who was familiar with the poll. It covered just District 127 (Crabb’s seat), which is primarily Kingwood and other parts of east and northeast Harris County. It’s my understanding that the governor’s race question was added to the poll. This is
The ink was hardly dry on the Supreme Court opinion before the Texas Ethics Commission gave its blessing to independent expenditure advertising: [I]t is our position that corporations are allowed to make all types of direct campaign expenditures (referred to in Citizens United as independent expenditures). A normal person would
The argument of the majority is that current law allows the government, in the form of the Federal Election Commission, to penalize certain kinds of political speech, and by doing so, Congress has violated the portion of the First Amendment that states, “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom
Don’t delay, you have just about a week left to sign up to attend the ‘Shroom Throwdown in Houston on Monday, February 1, at Vic and Anthony’s Steakhouse. What the heck IS a ‘Shroom TD? A cookoff–with fungi as the not-so-secret ingredient—pitting ten of the city’s most fabulous chefs against
HUTCHISON George H.W. Bush will endorse Hutchison, following Cheney and Baker. The Cheney endorsement was worse than useless; it was self-defeating, because it didn’t help her with conservatives who hate all things Washington, and it hurt her with moderate R’s who saw him as a sinister figure who undermined the
From the AP: WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies are conceding for the first time that they may have to accept a less ambitious health overhaul bill than the massive one they’ve struggled for a year to assemble. If Obama had done this six months ago, when
Sarah Palin’s appearance at a Perry campaign rally is set for February 7–Super Bowl Sunday.
The call had to do with my post yesterday ("Was the Hutchison poll phony?") in which I expressed my concern about whether their poll, which the campaign has said showed them two points down, was on the level. Obviously, the campaign was none too happy about what I wrote, and
Texas Monthly senior editor Michael Hall has followed the case of Sharon Keller, presiding judge of the Court of Criminal Appeals, and files this commentary on the findings of fact in the case, which was just released by Judge David Berchelmann, the Special Master in charge of figuring out what
Patricia Kilday Hart and I were joint recipients of an e-mail tonight from a friend who lobbies in the health care area. It reinforces the point I made in a previous post, which is that the health care issue may be dead for now, but the problems are not going
Politics is so amazing. Who would have thought that Teddy Kennedy would be succeeded in the U.S. Senate by a Republican? The GOP now has the necessary 41 votes to block anything that the Democratic Senate majority wants to do, from passing legislation to confirming judges. The White House has
In the light of Monday’s Rasmussen poll, which showed Perry with a ten-point lead—one point less than he had in November—one has to wonder: What was the Hutchison campaign up to when they announced on January 12 that their internal polling showed KBH with a two-point lead? (Hutchison 34.9%, Perry
The poll surveyed 798 likely Republican primary voters. These results tracked a poll I wrote about last night: the leaders lost ground, Medina gained ground. The main difference is that the “undecideds” did not gain as much ground as they did in the unnamed poll that I reported on. The
This report comes from a polling firm that did a post-debate survey of Republican primary voters. I am authorized to publish these numbers. I have no further information to provide other than what I am publishing here. –Perry and Hutchison lost support as a result of the debate. Perry fell
…or else he would not have pulled the plug on the Governor’s Mansion addition. Perry has gotten himself out on a limb with all the bragging about Texas, and it may come back to haunt. Add up the boasts about how he balanced the budget (no mention of those stimulus
Here are some more recent figures on who pays the sales tax and why it is regressive: FINAL DISTRIBUTION OF TAX— BY HOUSEHOLD INCOME DECILE, FISCAL 2006 (dollar amounts in millions) By income deciles (each decile = 1/10 of Texas households, by ascending income range): (1) = Percent
Transportation is going to be a major battleground in the governor’s race. The two camps exchanged fire after the debate. Perry spokesman Mark Miner put out a statement that accused Hutchison of making misleading statements on her TV ad about transportation policy. What the Perry camp says (from spokesman Mark
In my post after the debate, I wrote that Debra Medina, in advocating eliminating all property taxes and replacing them with the sales tax, had failed to address the issue of regressivity of the sales tax. That is not quite accurate. As a commenter pointed out, she did address it
