The AG can’t be thrilled by the prospect of ruling on Chisum’s request for an opinion of whether public or private entities that receive state funds can use those funds to pay a registered lobbyist. As Chisum has drafted the question, his inquiry includes even the question of whether an
Chris Bell was in Austin overnight and we had breakfast this morning. The 2006 Democratic nominee for governor didn’t sound like a guy who was running for governor, or for any state office. “I’ll never run in a race where there are unlimited contributions again,” he said, adding the obligatory
In Sunday’s post, “Toomey or Not Toomey, That Is the Question,” I wrote about Judge Joe Hart’s ruling in the lawsuit brought by Democratic legislators who lost races for reelection in 2002 and filed suit against the Texas Association of Business, TABers Bill Hammond and Jack Campbell, lobbyist Mike Toomey,
The inevitable and too long delayed end of Alberto Gonzales’s tenure as attorney general came to pass this morning. The surprise was not that he left but that he had held onto his job for so long. As long ago as last March, when Congress began looking into the firing
The Quorum Report today posted two high powered endorsements for Rick Noriega in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate seat currently occupied by Republican John Cornyn. One is from former governor Dolph Briscoe, the other from former lieutenant governor Bill Hobby. Neither should be regarded as a surprise. Both
“The wheels of justice grind slowly but exceedingly fine” is a venerable saying about the law. I don’t know about the “exceedingly fine” part, but they definitely have ground slowly in the case of the Democratic legislators who filed suit against the Texas Association of Business, TAB’s Bill Hammond and
Got nailed by pinkdome today, who was commenting on the program for a forthcoming meeting of the trade association for lobbyists at Barton Creek:Panel Background: Discussion of the practical, political and ethical issues arising from real-time news and legislative communications in the process of governing. Included are issues such as
It has never been easy to figure out what Kay Bailey Hutchison is thinking about her future, but folks are really scratching their heads after the story that ran last week in the Houston Chronicle. Here’s how it began: Vice president? Doesn’t want it. A run for governor? Quite possibly.
Recommended reading: Royal Masset’s take on Karl Rove in the R&D section of the Quorum Report. Masset is a former political director of the Republican party. He begins by saying that he doesn’t like Rove and calls him a “hyper college Republican who never grew up.” That’s an interesting observation,
A Republican consultant offered me these numbers about Tom Craddick. The consultant would not allow the firm’s name to be used and mentioned only round numbers. Feel free to discount the credibility of this report accordingly.1. Craddick’s name ID is “higher than any speaker of the modern era,” which means
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
The Texas Education Agency flunks out.
What 2008 means for Texas.
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
When I learned that Lady Bird Johnson had died, I went back to the first volume of biographer Robert Caro’s life of Lyndon Johnson, The Path to Power, and read his chapter about her, and the subsquent story of their early married life. The Path to Power is the best
First Drew Nixon is charged with illegally committing acts of offical oppression following an investigation by the attorney general’s office. Now the Texas Bar Journal, the official publication of the State Bar of Texas, carries this notice:“On April 23, 2007, H. Tati Santiesteban, 73, of El Paso, accepted a
A group of around twenty House conservatives is looking for a speaker candidate in the event Craddick doesn’t make it. They don’t see any of the announced candidates as acceptable, and their first choice is Warren Chisum. A lot of folks will be horrified by the idea of Chisum as
Tom Craddick’s decision to name Terry Keel as House parliamentarian was a signal–if anybody needed one–that Craddick’s governing style in 2009, assuming that he retains his position, will be hardball all the way. Keel’s mastery of the rules is not in question, but he is a political gut-fighter and a
The commutation of Scooter Libby’s sentence is the big story of the day. No one who knows George W. Bush should be surprised. I was amused by earlier speculation that Bush would not grant clemency to Libby because he seldom granted pardons in Texas (26 pardons in six years
Every since Rick Perry was reelected to a second full term, I have been hearing stories that it may not be a full term after all. There is persistent talk that Perry may not serve out his term, that he would leave — after setting the record for being the
All nine judges on the Court of Criminal Appeals are Republicans. This fact might lead a cynical reader — or a cynical blogger — to conclude that the Court’s decision to uphold lower court rulings quashing a conspiracy indictment against Tom DeLay (as well as aides John Colyandro and Jim
“Al Qaeda would not have been able to come back to life, in my opinion, had we not invaded Iraq. That action breathed life back into the movement.”
After spending a few days at the Capitol among the operatives and the onlookers, I began to draw some … conclusions.
The eightieth session began with a Speaker’s race, ended with a Speaker’s race, and was consumed in between by the usual mix of nuanced issues and nasty politics. Along the way, a handful of lawmakers put the common good ahead of all else. And a handful of lawmakers didn’t.
Thursday looms as a crucial moment in the fight over local primacy in toll road construction. At an Austin hearing, the Texas Highway Commission will decide whether to award the contract for the lucrative Route 121 to Cintra or the North Texas Tollway Authority. The THC has said that it
In Monday’s posting about Perry’s line-item vetoes (See, “Assessing the Vetoes: The Line Items”), most of which involved higher ed, I made this comment:Perry threatened to veto Article III this session and he says in his statement that he is more persuaded than ever that higher education funding is flawed.
Phil King, the author of SB 3281, released this statement on the governor’s veto of House Bill 3281, addressing the issue of what happens when the insurance company gets a reduced, negotiated rate on the medical bills of an insured person. The bill allowed an injured plaintiff to receive the
The decision by the lottery commission to allow electronic pull-tab bingo flies in the face of an Attorney General’s opinion issued in April in response to a request by Jane Nelson, a staunch opponent of the expansion of gambling. AG’s opinions are advisory and not binding, but this one
The most important line-item vetos involved higher education. I presume everyone is well aware of Perry’s belief that special items are pork. The best counter-argument I can offer is that they are good pork–pork loin instead of bacon–but it is hard to argue the fundamental issue. Perry’s veto messages about
This post will conclude my assessment of the 49 bills Perry vetoed.H.B. 3457 — Hochberg/Zaffirini. This has to be the most inscrutable veto message ever. The bill prohibited school buses from idling when parked on school property or at a school event. Maybe the idea was to save fuel. Maybe
