Not content to let the artsy types be the only bloggers on their block, the Austin American-Statesman now also has a political blog called The Lasso. It's a one-person blog that appears to be mostly a news-roundup kind of thing. The good news: Daily archives, organized in a calendar format (one presumes there will be a link to previous months' archives; we'll see tomorrow). The bad news: Only one permalink per day, no categories or blogroll. If it weren't on a newspaper's site, I'd think it was hand-rolled HTML code.
Found via Byron. Hope had mentioned this in the comments to my earlier post, but I didn't go looking for it at the time.
I'm fairly sure that this is a weblog unlike any other you're used to reading. It's by a college classmate of mine, Arthur Diggins, who is...well, I'll let him explain it:
OK, to be totally honest, Im not technically Schizophrenic and I dont live in a Mental Asylum. I am Schizoeffective, which is like being Schizophrenic delusional, paranoid, subject to The Voices but with the added bonus of making me vulnerable to the symptoms of any number of other mental illnesses: Manic-Depressive Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, Avoidant Personality Disorder, etc.As to the Mental Asylum part, my home is actually a half-way house for people recently discharged from a Psych Ward or from jail. As you may read about in the General category, it is filled with a constantly changing pirates crew of psychos; I am one of the longer term residents here, being possibly the most acute psycho of all the residents combined. I have frequent sobbing spells, fits of unprovoked rage in general, I am totally unstable and can never count on going to bed in any place other than the Quiet Room of a Psych Ward on any given day. This last year has been good, though: I have been hospitalized only twice for two days each time. You can read about the residents of the house in the General category, and about the experience in being in a Psych Ward for a day separately.
[...]
It is my hope that this weblog will not only provide a few cheap thrills, but will also educate people on the experience of being mentally ill, and the treatment of the mentally ill. See the Insane Poetry category for my insiders musings on these subjects.
Arthur's condition is the result of a meth addiction. He has a BA in English and an MA in Cinema and Television (Screenwriting) from USC, so his musings will surely be worth reading. Take a moment and check it out.
That $244 million projected cost overrun on the Katy Freeway expansion seems to have spooked our venerable County Commissioners' Court.
Commissioner Steve Radack sent a letter Wednesday to Art Storey, Harris County public infrastructure director, asking him to meet with the Texas Department of Transportation to address "continued participation in the project using toll-road funds."Harris County signed an agreement with the state March 14 to contribute $250 million in Toll Road Authority revenue bonds toward construction of a four-lane tollway down the middle of the Katy Freeway between Texas 6 and Loop 610.
[...]
"Obviously if you're a government putting $250 million into a project and you see that the project is already more than $200 million over budget -- almost what the county has put in -- it's prudent to ask some questions," Radack said Wednesday in a phone interview from Hilton Head, S.C.
[...]
Radack said the freeway project is "in jeopardy" because the Toll Road Authority can't repay its debt until the toll lanes are open and generating revenue. That is supposed to happen in late 2008 but could be pushed back if right-of-way acquisitions don't speed up or funds dry out.
"I want to see that freeway done," he said. "But I'm not going to sit there and see the taxpayers gouged."
[...]
County Judge Robert Eckels said he planned to huddle with Storey on Wednesday evening.
"There may come a time when it's appropriate to withdraw from this project if it is not going to be financially viable for the Toll Road Authority, but I don't believe we're at that point yet," Eckels said. "We need to get together with TxDOT and get to the bottom of the problem."
This project isn't going anywhere if the Court doesn't give its full support to it. Since the Commissioners clearly want this project to succeed, the next article you see will very likely be about how they have come to an agreement with Art Storey and are now confident that the issue has been resolved. (Hell, I could probably write that piece right now.) They'll be careful not to leave any visible marks, too.
This does not fill me with a warm feeling:
Eckels and Radack both called on Gov. Rick Perry to add two bills to the special legislative session agenda that would make it easier to condemn parcels needed for the freeway widening.
I thought these guys believed in limited government and property rights. Am I missing something here? If you have to pass a law to make it easier to throw people out of their homes in order to build this freeway extension, is that not a sign that maybe your plan is flawed? I'm just asking.
UPDATE: Charles M points out this Chron article in the comments which describes the bill that Eckels and Radack are shilling for.
(Note: the title (now corrected, thanks to Omar in the comments) is a hat tip to Angry Bear, who recasts the Democrats' getaway as a Dukes of Hazzard episode. I can't tell you how disquieting it is to realize that I was able to do as he suggested and read his post in the voice of Waylon Jennings.)
The mind games and he-said-she-said battles continue on across the Texas-New Mexico state line.
Dewhurst and the dissidents couldn't even agree, at least publicly, that they were speaking to each other."We're talking. I'm urging our colleagues to come back to the table," Dewhurst told reporters in Austin. "I've encouraged them to come back, sit down with us, work with us on a plan that's fair."
In Albuquerque, Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, of San Antonio, chair of the Senate Democratic Caucus, said that, as far as she knew, Dewhurst had spoken only with Sen. John Whitmire of Houston since the Democrats arrived in Albuquerque Monday afternoon.
Whitmire said he returned a message that Dewhurst had left on his cell phone but that the conversation was short and insignificant.
Dewhurst spokesman Dave Beckwith said later that the lieutenant governor had heard from more than one of the missing Democrats but wouldn't say how many.
"It appears that some senators are not leveling with each other," Beckwith said.
Dewhurst has his own problems with confusion in this odd episode:
Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said Wednesday that AWOL Democrats could face Senate expulsion if they ignore an arrest warrant for their return but he said he's not recommending it, and a spokesman said it won't occur."Quite frankly, there are ways to bring back senators without using physical force," Dewhurst said when asked how the Democratic senators' return could be compelled.
They fled to New Mexico to block action on a GOP-backed congressional redistricting plan.
Senators who stayed in Austin have ordered the Senate sergeant-at-arms to return their missing colleagues. Dewhurst has indicated there's not much that can be done while they're out of state.
But if they come back to Texas, he said, the sergeant-at-arms would be sent out. He said there's "no question legally" that the sergeant-at-arms can present an arrest warrant signed by the secretary of the Senate.
"When a warrant of arrest is handed to a senator, if they do not comply, that's a very, very serious very serious violation," the GOP lieutenant governor said. "I'm not recommending this, but ultimately it could result, if the Senate so chose, with the expulsion of that member."
Soon after Dewhurst made those comments, his spokesman, David Beckwith, phoned to say expulsion wouldn't be tried and that "nobody's suggesting it."
"He (Dewhurst) was asked a hypothetical 'What could happen?'" Beckwith said. "But it will not happen."
The Republican leadership has also attempted to ratchet up the pressure on the missing Democrats by highlighting other agenda items that are also being affected by the walkout.
Republicans have said the Democrats have jeopardized a slew of other bills.One measure would allow the state to make $800 million in payments to school districts a month earlier August rather than September. School districts say the delayed payments aren't a problem.
Other measures would give the governor and legislative leaders freedom to spend more than $470 million in newly available money, although the state budget might already give them that power.
And the latest must-solve problem to reach the Legislature's agenda Wednesday was school finance.
Of course, as Dave McNeely points out, this leads to a question that the Republicans don't have a good answer for: if these things are so important, why are we bothering with redistricting?
Dewhurst said more than $1 billion in appropriations and funding shifts are needed to avert calamity.A drafting error that made a one-month payment shift in $800 million of school funding from the intended 2005 to 2003 must be fixed, Dewhurst said.
As 14 TV cameras rolled tape, naturally came the next question: Are those issues such a priority that Perry should pull down congressional redistricting?
"These issues of appropriating a billion dollars, addressing government reorganization, school finance, I think, are critical to all of us here in Texas," Dewhurst replied.
"I've had a number of conversations with the governor, and my conversations with the governor remain private.
"He has chosen to call us back into a second special session. We all took an oath of office to uphold the duties and the laws of the State of Texas," Dewhurst said, "and I think that part of those duties . . . is to show up for work."
So, since even Texas' GOP attorney general says the current districts can be used until 2011, are those issues so critical that Perry should lay redistricting aside?
"Well, I think they're incredibly important, and I think the governor's made a decision to have the Senate and the House address redistricting, and so he's already made his decision," Dewhurst said.
Regarding those other agenda items, I'm rather surprised to see school finance reform on there. Honestly, I thought that was going to get a special session of its own, maybe early next year. The good news is that any hard feelings from the boycott don't seem to have carried over to other business like this yet, as two Democratic Senators were named to the Senate Select Committee.
Finally, as Byron notes, there is an effective deadline for redistricting: October 6, which is the latest that a map could be submitted in time for Justice Department approval prior to December 3, which is the deadline for candidates to file for the primaries.
Editorials and op-eds:
The DMN praises David Dewhurst for his initial attempts at a compromise.
The Chron runs an op-ed by Dewhurst in which he defends his decision to suspend the 2/3 rule.
The Quorum Report has a press release from the GOP (PDF) which touts a survey done in Austin that says 53% of Texans oppose this Democratic boycott, a series of quotes (Word doc) by Lt. Gov. Dewhurst which shows his evolving opinion of redistricting and the blocker bill (compiled by a Democratic strategist), and an editorial roundup (Word doc) compiled by Rep. Martin Frost, which is a subset of the editorials I've pointed to so far.
Barry Bonds, whose many skills do not include tact, generated some controversy at the All-Star Game when he talked about eclipsing Babe Ruth.
The San Francisco slugger leads the majors with 30 home runs at the All-Star break and has hit 643 in his career, putting him just 17 shy of matching his godfather -- Mays -- for third on the all-time list."Willie's number is always the one that I've strived for," Bonds said before Tuesday's All-Star Game.
"And if it does happen, the only number I care about is Babe Ruth's. Because as a left-handed hitter, I wiped him out. That's it. And in the baseball world, Babe Ruth's everything, right? I got his slugging percentage and I'll take his home runs and that's it. Don't talk about him no more."
This generated the predictable outraged response from the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum, as well as from some sportswriters. Adrian Wojnarowski's overly emotional but totally unconvincing response is typical.
Bonds does have his defenders, such as the Dallas Morning News' Kevin Blackistone, who makes a provocative case.
The greatest compliment that can be paid a baseball player is to call him "the only man," as in: Hank Aaron is the only man to hit as many as 755 home runs in a major league career. Or as can be said of first baseman and new Hall of Famer Eddie Murray: He is the only man to have 3,000 hits and 500 home runs as a switch hitter.In fact, the only other men to have as many hits and home runs in a career are Aaron and Willie Mays, both one-time Negro League players.
Babe Ruth was once an "only man." He was once the only man to have hit as many as 60 home runs in a season. He lost that designation over two generations ago and now stands behind four players on that list, which is topped by Barry Bonds.
Ruth was once the only man to have knocked in as many as 2,213 runs in a career. Aaron left him behind in that category, too, almost a generation and a half ago.
In fact, Ruth was once the only man who could, without question, be called the greatest offensive weapon the game has ever seen.
He isn't anymore. He hasn't been for quite a spell. The biggest record he has left is career slugging percentage. It is time to take a deep breath and move on. Earth won't careen into the sun.
The simple fact is black baseball players such as Aaron, Mays, Murray, Rickey Henderson and, yes, Bonds have erased many of the most revered offensive records in what was once America's pastime. These marks, established by Ruth and Ty Cobb, were thought carved in stone. Home runs. RBIs. Walks. Runs scored. Stolen bases. Season slugging percentage. Black players hold them all now.
Yet, those black players aren't afforded nearly the reverence, if any at all, of the folks whose records they obliterated.
Blackistone is, I think, more right than wrong in what he says, but he's far too casual in his insistence that Ruth has been eclipsed. He makes a common error in argument-by-statistics, which is that he doesn't present enough context to the stats he's giving.
I'm not going to get into the serious stathead world of Equivalent Averages and Value Over Replacement Players, both of which are heavy-duty stats that try to even out differences in era and ballparks. I'm not qualified for that, and it wouldn't change anyone's mind anyway. I just want to point out that we've got a fruit basket of numbers here, and we need to sort through them a bit more carefully.
Since Blackistone mentions Hank Aaron and Willie Mays, the other two sluggers that Bonds is chasing, let's take a closer look at them. There's a key difference in the career stats of Aaron, Mays, and Babe Ruth, and it can be summed up in four numbers:
Name Games At-bats HRs
=================================
Aaron 3298 12,364 755
Mays 2992 10,881 660
Ruth 2503 8,399 714
Aaron and Mays played far more games than Babe Ruth did, mostly because Ruth spent his first four seasons as a pitcher. Both had many more at-bats than the Babe did. Ruth hit a home run in 8.5% of his at-bats, while Aaron and Mays went yard 6.1% of the time.
To put it another way, how would the career numbers stack up if Mays and Ruth had had Aaron's 12,364 at-bats, assuming that they hit home runs at the same rate over the extra time?
Name Projected HRs
======================
Ruth 1051
Aaron 755
Mays 750
The thing about Babe Ruth is not only that he hit a ridiculous number of home runs, it's also that he hit an even more ridiculous number than his contemporaries. The Babe out-homered whole teams many times. Someone on ESPN.com (it might have been Rob Neyer, I can't find it any more) once determined that if every season had been as homer-happy as 1998 and Ruth had hit them at the same relative rate to the rest of the league, he'd have wound up with over 2000 for his career. He really was a giant among Lilliputians in his time.
(Astute statheads may be grumbling at this point about Aaron and Mays playing in the pitcher-dominated 1960s, and how they might have done in a more offense-friendly era. I acknowledge the dissonance but cannot give you a good answer. I recommend pestering someone at the Baseball Prospectus.)
Now let's add Barry to the mix. As it happens, his stats through 2002 are a pretty decent match for the Babe's.
Name Games At-bats HRs
=================================
Aaron 3298 12,364 755
Mays 2992 10,881 660
Ruth 2503 8,399 714
Bonds 2439 8,335 613
Name Projected HRs
======================
Ruth 1051
Bonds 909
Aaron 755
Mays 750
Bonds goes deep 7.4% of the time, meaning the advantage is still Ruth's.
Of course, there is a player who does outdistance the Babe by this measure. Any guesses who?
Name Games At-bats HRs
=================================
Aaron 3298 12,364 755
Mays 2992 10,881 660
Ruth 2503 8,399 714
Bonds 2439 8,335 613
McGwire 1874 6,187 583
Name Projected HRs
======================
McGwire 1165
Ruth 1051
Bonds 909
Aaron 755
Mays 750
Yep, Mark McGwire, who merits not a mention in Blackistone's column (how quickly they forget) despite his record-setting 9.4 HR percentage. I will not be uncharitable and suggest that had McGwire been as healthy as Aaron (and mind you, staying healthy is a skill as much as it is luck) and shattered Aaron's career record as many expected him to do before his sudden retirement, Kevin Blackistone would have muttered dark imprecations about steroids and asterisks. Feel free to do so yourself, however.
Someone once said that statistics are like a string bikini: What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is crucial. I believe the record shows that Barry Bonds is one of the greatest players to ever play the game, and that he doesn't get the recognition he deserves for it. I believe that Hank Aaron and Willie Mays, as great as they were, are also often sold short. I believe that Babe Ruth is still the pinnacle to which everyone aspires and against whom everyone will be measured. And I remain confident of the Earth's ability to maintain its orbit. I hope Kevin Blackistone does as well.
UPDATE: In the comments, Joe asks for the same comparison with plate appearances (at-bats plus walks, hit by pitches, sacrifices and sac flies) instead of just at-bats. I aim to please:
Name PA HR HR % Proj HR
==========================================
Aaron 13940 755 5.4 755
Mays 12493 660 5.3 736
Ruth 10617 714 6.7 937
Bonds 10417 613 5.9 820
McGwire 7660 583 7.6 1061
They've barely begun to move dirt and already the cost estimates for the massive boondoggle-ish expansion of the Katy Freeway have been increased by 17%. That's $244 million, for those who prefer real numbers.
"We're concerned that perhaps some of these unanticipated events and extra costs might delay the project," said John Johnson, state transportation commissioner. "The department is doing everything possible given the circumstances to move the entire project from 610 out to the Fort Bend County line forward on the time schedule."
Boy, you could just knock me down with a sledgehammer there. Whoever heard of unanticipated events in a multi-year rush-job construction project?
The rest of the article has the usual Serious Concerns and whatnot. I expect there to be more in the near and not so near future. Maybe a better plan might mitigate things, not that I expect the powers that be to consider one. BTW, those powers don't include Houston Mayor Lee Brown. Better find a scapegoat quick, guys!
(Note: the subject is cribbed from a commenter on Atrios or Daily Kos, I can't remember which at this point. Someone other than me came up with it and I thought it was funny.)
Rob has a decent answer to my question about the House passing the same ol' map. I think his scenario makes a lot of sense, but I have my doubts that it will happen. Giving in on the blocker bill just has to be seen as a defeat for the GOP, and at this point I'm not sure how much trust the Dems are willing to put into any promises that Dewhurst will make them. Still, Rob is absolutely right about the fact that sooner or later, these guys have to come back to Austin, whether it's next week or 2005.
This DMN article offers a suggestion that Rob's hypothesis may come true:
While maps under consideration during the regular session and the first 30-day special session would have boosted GOP seats in Congress from 15 to 20 or 21, the Republican lieutenant governor suggested he was open to a more modest gain."A fair map is one that reflects the voting trends of the state, that protects our minority rights and our minority communities, that doesn't cut communities of interest and to me this is simply to me has about 19 seats," Mr. Dewhurst said in an interview on TXCN (cable Channel 38).
(Psst! Dave! Check out the Wentworth and Armbrister plans. And burn this note!)
Byron has a good roundup to get your morning started, along with a post on Polstate. I posted an afternoon news update there yesterday. Josh Marhsall is bemused by several aspects of this story. Julia has an appropriate response for the Governor's current they're-hurting-the-children! attack on the Dems, which you can read about here. This is my favorite bit from the article:
Democrats and Republican Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn said they found the governor's newfound interest in health care spending surprising.Strayhorn had been rebuffed when she repeatedly asked Perry to let lawmakers appropriate the money for health care during the first special session.
"Let me tell you on the record, after the governor's statement from yesterday, I fully expected for the governor to let the Legislature vote on health care funding," Strayhorn said. "I was surprised that this was not added to the call today."
Indeed. Elsewhere, the Chron describes the Dems' getaway, which like its Ardmore predecessor was done in secret and in haste. The El Paso Democrats have vowed to help the boycotting Senators with any supplies they might need, while New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson says he may consider some redistricting of his own if the Texas GOP doesn't back down.
Redistricting should be done only after new U.S. Census Bureau numbers are reported every 10 years and not rammed through the Legislature by a dominant political party just because its members disagree with election results, Richardson said."I have refrained from taking those steps. I will leave the door slightly opened because I'm concerned about Republican efforts in Texas, Colorado and other parts of the country to disenfranchise voters," he said. "I don't want redistricting. I think it's wrong, especially in a year that is not a redistricting year."
Keep an eye on that one.
More editorials:
The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal calls Governor Perry a disappointment and compares him to a "spoiled 2-year-old child".
The Chron calls the endless fight for redistricting madness.
The Waco Trib really smacks the Governor, whom they call a "well-pressed con man". This needs some quoting:
How hypocritical is Perry in light of the partisan meltdown over redistricting? Let us count the ways.----1. His silence was deafening----
Perry speaks now about $800 million in newly freed-up money that could go to human services if the Democrats would only come back. What was he saying during Special Session No. 1? Nothing.
[...]
If Perry really wanted to direct $800 million to social services, all he had to do was put it on the agenda. Instead, legislation he supported would have routed the extra money into an "emergency fund" under the control of the governor and the Legislative Budget Board.
Just how many Texans would benefit from that, Mr. Governor?
----2. He dropped ball in 2001----
Perry is the very last person on the planet to be saying, "It is lawmakers' responsibility, not the courts', to redraw congressional lines." That responsibility sat snugly in his lap in 2001. He brushed it off like lint.
[...]
----3. He would dispense with rules----
Whenever Perry uses the words "fair" or "fairness," he isn't thinking that way when it comes to the legislative process and redistricting.
Harsh.
The Lufkin Daily News compares the whole thing to the movie Groundhog Day.
The Corpus Christi Caller-Times also uses the term madness, but they're actually pretty mellow about the whole thing.
Finally, the El Paso Times, which was nearly alone in condemning the Democrats for the Ardmore walkout, condemns everyone for the current boycott.
I've heard it said many times that the Congressional redistricting performed by the Texas Lege in 1991 was a masterful job of gerrymandering by the Democrats. After the 1992 election, the first one held following that session, the Texas Congressional delegation had 21 Dems and 9 Republicans.
In 1994, Steve Stockman ousted 20-term veteran Jack Brooks in the 9th CD, while Mac Thornberry unseated Bill Sarpaulius in the 13th.
In 1996, Pete Geren did not run for reelection in the 12th, opening the door for Kay Granger. Greg McLaughlin changed parties after the 94 election, then lost a Republican primary challenge to Ron Paul. John Bryant abandoned his 5th CD seat in an unsuccessful bid for the Democratic nomination for Senate, and Pete Sessions swooped in. Meanwhile, Nick Lampson made the loopy Stockman a one-termer.
That's the last time an incumbent was defeated, though several others have had close calls, and it's the last time a seat changed parties. There were a few retirements (Bill Archer, Dick Armey, Jack Fields) and other open seats (Ken Bentsen), but in each case the same party held the seat.
Thus, in the two elections immediately following the "great gerrymander" election of 1992, the Republicans picked up four seats. They got two more after the 2001 reapportionment, bringing us to the current total.
I don't really have a point to make here, I just thought this was interesting. Make of it what you will. You can find all of the data here; please note that there was a "special" election and a runoff election in 1996, which accounts for most of the several missing Congressional election results in the November general election.
According to Byron, the State House has apparently managed to scrape up a quorum, and almost immediately afterwards passed redistricting bill HB1 (2) by a 75-26 margin, with one member voting "present". I suppose this has to be the same House bill that the Senate pooped on last session - how else could it have gotten out of committee so fast? - but I can't say for sure just yet. Here is the bill, as noted by Rob. I'll try to find a map later.
Meanwhile, the Chron has an article on Sen. Ken Armbrister, the lone Democrat to remain in Austin (with the apparent blessing of his colleagues), and an article on the House Dems, who are expressing their solidarity with their Senate colleagues. The Statesman has a timeline from yesterday and an update on the Burnam lawsuit. Other newspapers are still reporting that the House did not have a quorum today. I expect they'll catch up soon.
UPDATE: The Chron confirms that the House passed the same bill that the Senate rejected in the first session.
[A]t about 12:55 p.m., the House had the necessary 100 members to restore the quorum and get back to work. Then 20 minutes later, at 1:15 p.m., the House agreed to suspend all rules and passed a congressional redistricting bill on final reading without referring it to a committee first. The bill is the same one the House passed in the first special session.That means the issue now goes to the Senate for consideration, but there has been no quorum in that chamber since Monday, when 11 Democratic senators fled to Albuquerque, N.M., to block any effort to pass a redistricting bill this session.
Stupid question: given that the House bill is no more likely to pass the Senate in this session than it was last session even if the Dems come back, wouldn't it make more sense for them to either pass the Staples bill from last session or to draw up another bill? What exactly have they gained from this, other than the ability to adjourn and say they did their piece? Assuming, of course, that Craddick et al are willing to let any of the Dems who are currently present out of their sight.
My head hurts.
UPDATE: More on the House bill, how it passed so quickly, and reaction from House Dems, who appear to be ready to head home.
And now for a short break from the re-redistricting follies to catch up on some other wacky zealotry, this time up in Montgomery County, which is north of Houston. Some of you may recall the efforts of a group called the Republican Leadership Council to ban certain books from the local libraries, and also to censor some men's room murals at a restaruant. (Read about it here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.) Today, the Chron reports that the RLC is at it again, but this time they were thwarted by the Commissioner's Court.
The Christian conservative Republican Leadership Council suffered a setback Monday when Montgomery County Commissioners Court voted to keep the county's membership in the American Library Association and to leave county library book-selection policies unchanged.The 3-2 showdown vote ended weeks of momentum for the divisive issue, which ostensibly centered on whether the ALA, the national organization for professional librarians, has too much influence on what books go onto county library shelves.
ALA opponents say the group is atheistic, communistic and supportive of homosexuality.
[...]
RLC leaders sought to make the vote a referendum on the moral views of county leaders. Last fall, the organization raised the same issues on the eve of a $10 million library bond proposal, which later passed with 52 percent of the vote.
This time around, RLC speakers targeted the county's approximately $1,000-a-year ALA membership and urged commissioners to support Sadler's proposal to drop the affiliation in what one ALA foe, Mark Cadwallader, called "an ultra-liberal, atheist-based organization for the advancement of pornography and homosexuality"
Well, at least they toned down the rhetoric this time around. I just want to thank the RLC for reminding all of us that no matter how crazy things may get up in Austin, the real foolishness is always at the local level.
As everyone knows by now, the "Texas 11" Democratic State Senators are holed up in Albuquerque, thus denying the Senate a quorum and scuttling (for now) the second special session which was called yesterday afternoon, immediately after the first session was adjourned. Though there is no organized boycott on the House side, that chamber may also have quorum problems:
On the House side Monday, members remained in the chamber between special sessions. Only 85 members were present, 15 short of the quorum that's needed to conduct business, when the second special session began.Both chambers plan to reconvene this morning, though there's little chance the Senate will have enough members to do business. The House also might be out of business for awhile. Democratic leaders said they don't think the House will have a quorum any time soon.
"I would hope not. There's no reason to be here," said Rep. Jim Dunnam of Waco, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus.
But [House Speaker Tom] Craddick assured reporters the House would be ready to do business today with 100 members.
Democrats made their move amid fear that they would have been locked in to the Senate chamber otherwise.
[Sen. John] Whitmire said that Democrats -- who had prepared a contingency plan that included two chartered planes -- feared that [Lt. Gov. David] Dewhurst would then have moved quickly to order the Senate doors locked to prevent a walkout.By the time Dewhurst convened the Senate for the second session about 4 p.m. Monday, the 11 Democrats were already airborne. The only Democratic senator to stay behind was Ken Armbrister of Victoria, who said he supported his colleagues' effort but preferred to try to work out a redistricting compromise.
Dewhurst spokesman Dave Beckwith denied that the lieutenant governor had been preparing a trap for the dissidents.
"There wasn't going to be a surprise where they got locked in. There were no surprises planned," Beckwith said.
It seems unlikely that any extraordinary measures will be taken to track the Texas 11 down, but they're wary anyway.
Sen. Mario Gallegos, D-Houston, said the dissidents would remain in Albuquerque, where they checked into a Marriott Hotel, "as long as it takes.""We've got lawyers," he said, adding the Democrats were prepared to fight any steps to get them back. He said they already had notified the office of New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat, that they were visiting his state.
Gallegos said the Democrats had heard that Republican officials back home were planning to hire "bounty hunters," or private investigators, to round them up. But Beckwith replied, "I don't think it will come to that."
Before he knew for sure that the Democrats had left Texas, Dewhurst said Senate officials were considering hiring off-duty police officers to assist in tracking down the missing senators. He said he doubted that Texas Department of Public Safety troopers would be used.
The use of DPS troopers and Texas Rangers to aid House officials in tracking down the Democrats who fled to Oklahoma created controversy.
The state attorney general's office advised Dewhurst on Monday that the Senate sergeant-at-arms or officers appointed by him "have full legal authority to arrest absent senators 'wherever they may be found.' "
And Assistant Attorney General Jeff Boyd told reporters that he would advise the DPS to go after the absent senators.
But as long as the senators are in Albuquerque, Dewhurst added, "From a practical standpoint, there's not much we can do."
However, a stalled ruling in the lawsuit by Rep. Lon Burnam against DPS leaves the matter open from a legal standpoint.
When 51 House Democrats went missing in May, Republican House Speaker Tom Craddick ordered DPS officers to locate and haul them back to the Capitol.State Judge Charles Campbell ruled on July 10 that Craddick overstepped his authority and could not use DPS officers as a resource. Campbell was expected to make a final ruling in the lawsuit filed by Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth, on Monday, but postponed his decision for further review. Burnam filed the lawsuit in May to stop what he alleged was the destruction of documents that were gathered to find the missing House Democrats.
Campbell, a visiting judge who once served on the Court of Criminal Appeals as a Democrat, said he would not consider how the outcome of the lawsuit would affect the Senate.
"This lawsuit is not on behalf of the Texas Senate," Campbell said. "There is no reason to include them because they're not a party of the suit."
Attorneys for Burnam argued that because the House and the Senate are members of the Legislature, they are under the same rules and should be considered in the suit. If a senator approached Burnam to be added to the suit, Senate members could be added quickly, said Art Brender, a lawyer for Burnam and chairman of the Tarrant County Democratic Party.
The stalled ruling gives Dewhurst the option of asking for DPS assistance in bringing the senators back because the case would not apply to the Senate, only the House.
However, Dewhurst said he would not use DPS officers to bring them back.
One tack the Republicans will take this time is to protray the Democrats as being on vacation.
Mr. Dewhurst predicted the wayward Democrats "will lose the public relations battle" by traveling to a vacation spot.Asked whether he considered Albuquerque a vacation destination, the lieutenant governor said, "I certainly think it's more of a vacation spot than Ardmore."
[Sen. Leticia] Van de Putte said Democrats chose Albuquerque because of available medical facilities that could aid Sen. Eddie Lucio of Brownsville, recuperating from a heart attack earlier this summer.
"Even though my doctor opposed it, I knew how important it was to have 11," Mr. Lucio said.
FWIW, I've been to Albuquerque, and with all due respect it's as much a vacation spot as Houston is. Santa Fe or Ruidoso, now those are vacation spots.
The Democrats say they will stay away for as long as it takes, but they will return if the 2/3 rule is restored.
"We did not want to be here," Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, said here at a news conference, hours after two private jets delivered the 11 senators safely out of state.Texas Gov. Rick Perry's call for a second special legislative session to consider redistricting forced them to break a Senate quorum the same afternoon, Van de Putte said, and breaking a quorum was "one of the tools granted to us under the Texas Constitution."
She said the Democrats would return home if Gov. Rick Perry canceled the redistricting effort or if Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst agrees to restore the Senate rule that allowed them to block that effort in the special session that had ended just hours earlier.
The rule that keeps the Senate from debating bills without a two-thirds majority also has been used by Republicans in the past to block redistricting proposals by Democrats in the majority, Van de Putte said.
Senators said they were prepared to stay away the full 30 days the special session may last.
"Anything to kill this session," said Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo.
The Dems also note that the 2/3 rule has killed redistricting efforts before.
The Democrats noted that former colleague Republican Sen. David Sibley of Waco and a coalition of Republican senators used the Senate's two-thirds rule in 2001 to block a congressional redistricting bill."Two years later, now that every single African-American and Hispanic member of the Texas Senate wants to use the same rules to stop consideration of the same issue, suddenly they want to change the same rules," the Democrats said.
As always, stay tuned for more.
Editorial spotlight:
The DMN has the Top Ten Reasons why this second special session is a bad idea.
The Statesman says there's simply no need to redraw the lines.
The Express-News says Gov. Perry should pull the plug.
The Star-Telegram says this is a bad investment which is costing the state money it can ill afford.
No opinions on this subject today from the Houston Chronicle (which has been strongly anti-redistricting from the beginning), Waco Trib, El Paso Times, Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, Corpus Christi Caller, or Midland Reporter-Telegram.
Some of these are AP wire reports, but they're all different, so here you go:
Statesman
Morning News
Star-Telegram
Express-News
Chron
More tomorrow.
The special session is ending a day early, with another to start almost immediately afterwards. However, it may be a moot point, for it appears that 11 Democratic Senators have left town.
One Democratic senator who asked not to be named, told the Chronicle in a phone interview that senators were apparently on their way out of town."I have no idea where we're going. I just know in a little bit we will be out of pocket," the senator said.
He would not say how many senators had left but called it an "adequate" number to break a quorum and keep the Senate from conducting business.
The Senate requires two-thirds, or 21 senators, to be present to conduct business, meaning the absence of 11 senators could break a quorum. There are 12 Democrats in the Senate.
The senator said the action was precipitated by Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst's decision to bypass a traditional Senate rule that requires a two-thirds vote to debate any bill.
That rule, which has been in effect during the current special session, has so far blocked redistricting in the Senate.
The senator said the Democrats fled because they feared Perry would immediately call a second special session and Dewhurst would lock down the Senate chambers and prevent members from leaving.
The first session was to end by midnight Tuesday, but the Senate adjourned at 2:30 p.m. and the House was expected to adjourn minutes later.
Dewhurst earlier had told reporters Perry was expected to call a second special session minutes after both houses adjourned.
Of the 12 Democratic senators, the only one to show up for a 2 p.m. session today was Ken Armbrister of Victoria.
According to the Quorum Report, the House Democrats have also vamoosed. This is going to get out of hand in short order.
What happens next? According to the Quorum Report, Lt. Gov. Dewhurst will "put out a call on missing Democrats", which I'm guessing means an announcement that if they come back now, he'll pretend nothing happened, and if they don't, he'll take whatever steps are at his disposal to bring them back. He only needs one, after all. Judge Charles Campbell is expected to rule shortly whether or not Dewhurst can use DPS to find them.
If Campbell rules that DPS is off limits, I can't really see what Dewhurst can reasonably do. I doubt he'll send out bounty hunters, though at this point I'm leery to make any unqualified remark. If DPS is in play, then I'd expect this to be over quickly, though the apparent re-disappearance of the House Dems greatly complicates things.
If at some point both houses have a quorum, then a bill still has to be passed in each chamber. The House bill from the first session was rejected by the Senate, and the Senate bills did not create separate districts for Midland and Lubbock, a point of contention for House Speaker Tom Craddick, who wants two different districts, and almost everyone in Lubbock and Abilene, who likes things as they are.
Man. And I thought May was a crazy month.
UPDATE: Byron reports at Polstate that the Dems are off to New Mexico, another state with a Democratic Governor and Attorney General. Fasten your seat belts...
UPDATE: According to the Quorum Report, the House Dems did not walk out, they just were scattered at 2 PM. It's just the Senators that have gone missing.
UPDATE: According to Byron, the renegade Dems are in contact with the Republicans in Austin and will come back if there is a blocker bill. That would be a major victory for the Dems, though I expect they'd have to agree to rescind their "unalterable opposition" letter in order for this to be worth the GOP's consideration.
UPDATE: Here's a partial statement from the "Texas 11" as posted on the Quorum Report:
"Today, we 11 Democratic senators have availed ourselves of the tool granted to us under the Texas constitution to break the quorum of the Texas Senate."This is not about Democrats or Republicans; this is about democracy. It's about civil rights.
"This is not an action we take lightly. There are not many issues that would rise to the level of importance as this one, but we do not take giving minority Texans a voice lightly, either.
"When the congressional districts of those Democrats targeted by Republicans are eliminated, over 1.4 million minority Texans will have no advocates because their homes will be drawn into districts in which they will have no voice in choosing their member of Congress.
"In these targeted districts, minority Texans know that the Democrats who represent them, elected with a coalition of minorities and Republicans, are the last advocates in Congress they will ever have if the Republican leadership has its way.
Confirming what Byron noted earlier, they say they'll be on the "first flight bacK" if the 2/3 rule is restored.
Stephen Bates, in the comments to this post, asks a couple of darned good questions about electronic voting machines:
[W]hat compelling argument can any corporation offer that its vote-counting software should be proprietary? What gives any nonpublic entity the right to count the votes without a close inspection of the means by which they do so, by any interested parties?
Anyone want to take a crack at them? Personally, I think he's dead-on right.
You know that the Dallas Morning News has a Corner-style political blog written by its editorial board, but did you know that the Austin American-Statesman has an arts and entertainment blog written by its arts and entertainment staff? It made its debut on July 15. The good news: Actual archives (sort of) and a bio of each blog writer. The bad news: No permalinks on each entry, archives only for the days of that week and all of the previous week, no blogroll. The depends-on-your-perspective news: Each entry is a self-contained unit with its own subject, so no confusing references to previous entries that may have scrolled off the page and no "conversation". I do predict that eventually they'll figure out to add permalinks, if for no better reason so that they can refer to an earlier post.
That's two major Texas dailies with blogs. What's everyone else waiting for?
On Saturday, I discovered Tiffany sitting at the computer, logged into a webpage called BookCrossing, which is some kind of crunchy-granola peer-to-peer book swapping network. (My first question to her: Does the RIAA know about this?) She was busily entering the ISBN's of her soon-to-be-liberated paperbacks, applying BookCrossing stickers to them (they had arrived in the mail on Friday), and plotting where she'd set them free. We dropped off a couple at Rudyard's later that night, she's got jury duty today and will be depositing a couple others there, and so on. All of this was entered into the BookCrossing database - title, category, "release notes", where released, etc. I've been greatly amused by the whole thing.
You never know what this sort of thing can bring, though. Tiffany has a fondness for trashy paperback romance novels (best recent title: Nerd in Shining Armor). BookCrossing allows you to search for books by category, and on Sunday she had received an email from a woman in Tehran who was very interested in getting her hands on any of these books. Apparently, trashy American romance novels are a rarity there (go figure), so having noticed Tiffany's recent entries, this woman wanted to know if she'd reconsider her release strategy. As such, Tiffany has decided to mail some books to this woman instead. (My second question to her: Are you sure this won't land us on some Ashcroftian blacklist?)
Anyway, if you're overburdened with paperbacks and find this sort of thing appealing, read about BookCrossing and see if it's for you. You never know where your books may wind up.
One of the effects of adding Sitemeter code to my archive pages was to move up by about a month the date on which my 100,000th Sitemeter hit would arrive. Counting the roughly 18,500 hits I got on my old Blogspot blog, that hit came this morning at 7:52 on a referral from Calpundit. That seems fitting, as it was a couple of links from Kevin that helped spike my traffic even more this month. With two different counters, two different blog locations, and a long stretch of not seeing search engine requests in my Sitemeter stats, this is of course a totally arbitrary event. But then so is most of blogging, so what the heck.
Thanks as always to everyone for reading and for coming back for more. Now on to seven digits! Just don't ask me to estimate a date for it.
So that Ramirez cartoon which has caused such a kerfuffle is in today's Chron. I can't wait to see the letters to the editor. I make it even money that at least one person will write to say that he will cancel his subscription because of it. Whatever else you may say about Ramirez, any cartoon that can be this grossly misunderstood has to be considered a flop.
(On a side note, both of the comics on Page 2 of the op-eds were Ramirez cartoons. How about a little variety, guys? There are plenty of other cartoonists out there. One Ramirez cartoon is more than enough.)
I thought there'd be some editorial action regarding the effective end of this special session in the major dailies today, but pretty much all there is can be found in the Chron, with one minor exception: This Star-Telegram piece attempts to analyze the claim that state legislatures should draw Congressional boundaries to reflect the state's political landscape. The conclusion is that this is not the norm around the country, but unfortunately it's missing a link to a graphic that depicts this. A shame, that.
Anyway, in the hometown fishwrap we have yet another unsigned editorial calling for the end of the GOP's attempts to redraw the lines and a Clay Robison column that mocks Comptroller Strayhorn for her braying about losing some power in the Death Star government reorganization bill, the fault of which, he tells Carole, lies not in the stars:
The audits, begun by former Comptroller John Sharp under a 1991 state law, are designed to save taxpayers money, and they have, to the extent that the Legislature and local school boards have adopted the comptroller's recommendations.But equally important for the politically ambitious Strayhorn, the high-profile tasks also provide frequent publicity opportunities. She can brag about saving tax dollars, even though the comptroller's main job is something far less attractive -- collecting taxes.
Could the audits be performed as efficiently and thoroughly by the Legislative Budget Board? Perhaps. But would the LBB, which is an arm of the Legislature, be as independent as the comptroller? Maybe. Maybe not.
It is an issue that would be better left for the next regular session of the Legislature to address in 2005. But political retribution doesn't like to wait.
Strayhorn said she was the victim of "political payback" because she was a "staunch protector of taxpayer dollars."
The comptroller's primary enemy, however, is her obvious political ambition. She seems constantly on the prowl for higher office, which makes both Perry and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, the Senate's presiding officer, wary, since either -- under the right circumstances -- could stand in her way.
Perry, Dewhurst and countless legislators of both parties also are still miffed that Strayhorn, with little warning, doubled her projected revenue shortfall on the eve of the regular session last winter and then ranted -- ludicrously -- about the Legislature throwing a spending "party" two years ago.
A better person than me would not gloat about such things. Good thing I have such low standards.
On the op-ed side, we have this slap at Governor Perry for denying $300,000 in discretionary funds to the American GI Forum, and this call by an "independent" voter for an "independent citizens' redistricting commission". Not directly related to redistricting but of interest nonetheless is this piece about the Democratas Unidas project and its attempts to woo Hispanic voters in 2004.
Happy reading. I feel a nap coming on.
I'm a season ticket holder for the Houston Comets and have been for four years now. I generally enjoy the experience - the price is right, the fans are into the action, the team is good - but there's one part of every game that makes me cringe. I speak of the singing of the "Star Spangled Banner".
Almost every singer of the National Anthem at these games is some kind of pop-singer wannabe who gives a breathy, wants-to-be-soulful-but-comes-off-as-tacky version of the song, and it always just sounds wrong to me. Today's rendition, performed by one of the Comets' "Team NRG" dancers, was the most egregious I've yet encountered. I swear, I thought the girl was going to start writhing during the bridge. The Comets have had a color guard present the flag before each game, and I can't help but wonder what they think of this.
Now, I don't believe that the only proper arrangement of the Anthem is based on John Phillip Sousa's. It's still a piece of music, and and that means it's a valid means for creative exploration by different artists. But as my friend Eve once remarked, the Star Spangled Banner isn't supposed to sound sexy. That's just not appropriate.
I think what bothers me the most about these singers is that their performance of the Banner sounds to me like it's about them rather than about the song. Every added pause, every trill and fermata, and especially the sky-high octave on "land of the free", often comes across to me as the performer's ego. Again, there's nothing wrong with adding some color to the song, but it should be in the interest of the song and not the singer. This isn't "American Idol", dammit. It's a sporting event, and you're fulfilling a ritualistic obligation. Sing the song and take your seat.
I admit, I'm an old-fart classic-rock-listening stick in the mud whose taste is very much out of step with most of the audience at these games. But know this: When the revolution comes and I'm put in charge of this sort of thing, any singer who commits an offense against good taste in performing the National Anthem will get five years on the chain gang. You have been warned.
The Western Athletic Conference, home of your 2003 National Champion Rice Owls Baseball Team, is thinking about expanding to 12 teams.
Speaking at the WAC preseason football media gathering, [WAC Commissioner Karl] Benson said the league's athletic directors expressed interest during a meeting last fall of adding two teams and splitting into eastern and western divisions.The WAC has 10 teams, only four of which are in the Central Time Zone -- Rice, SMU, Tulsa and Louisiana Tech. Adding two more schools from the Central Time Zone would allow the conference to have two six-team divisions and reduce travel.
Boise State, Hawaii, Fresno State, San Jose State, Nevada and Texas-El Paso would be in the west, with Rice, Louisiana Tech, SMU, Tulsa and two other schools in the east.
Benson said the conference toyed with the idea of splitting into divisions in 2000 but shelved the idea until last fall. Now that the dominoes have been put in motion for nationwide realignment with Virginia Tech and Miami leaving the Big East for the Atlantic Coast Conference, Benson believes the WAC needs to be proactive.
"From a timing standpoint, everything rests in the Big East's hands, and we're waiting for the Big East to decide what their structure is going to be," he said. "We are prepared that if the Big East goes in the direction they're headed and extends invitations to some Conference USA schools, that we'll be prepared to react in a way to put us in a positive position."
Benson wouldn't identify which schools the WAC would target, but Houston -- which currently competes in C-USA -- is believed to be on the list. TCU, which left the WAC for C-USA following the 2000 season, and Tulane are options.
"We have identified some particular schools we thought could be a good fit," he said. "The six-team Central Time Zone division is still a top priority for us, but I've been able to say as the dominoes fall that there may be schools available to the WAC that weren't available to us in 2000 when we started to go down the division route."
Interesting. It's not quite the Yoda Plan, which calls for expansion to 14 teams and leaves UTEP in the Eastern division, but I like the fact that the conference is at least being proactive about its future. After all the years we've had to hear about various schools flirting with with Mountain West Conference, it would be nice to try and get some actual stability. I applaud them for that.
Redistricting is dead...for now.
Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst on Friday declared congressional redistricting dead for the current special session but said it will pass even if it takes two more sessions."Sooner or later, we're going to have a new plan," Dewhurst said.
Dewhurst said he expects Gov. Rick Perry to call a second special session on congressional redistricting soon after the current session ends.
Each special session costs taxpayers an estimated $1.7 million.
Dewhurst said it would be almost impossible to pass redistricting in the current special session, which ends at midnight Tuesday, because there are not enough votes in the Senate to bring the bill up for debate.
"In essence, redistricting in this session is dead," Dewhurst said.
Whether the Democratic Senators will boycott another session, and whether anyone has the authority to drag them back to Austin if they do boycott, is open to debate.
When House members fled to Ardmore, Okla., in May, House officials sent the Department of Public Safety in search of them. A lawsuit sparked by that action has produced a preliminary ruling by a state district judge saying that the DPS cannot hunt down AWOL lawmakers.Although the Texas Constitution gives the Legislature the power to compel attendance, it leaves it to each chamber to decide on enforcement.
Austin attorney Keith Hampton, advising Senate Democrats, has told them that the Senate's GOP leadership cannot have them arrested and returned to establish a quorum.
"They can just go home," Hampton said. "I don't think one member or one group of members could exercise any force against the others."
Attorney General Greg Abbott's office is expected to ask state District Judge Charles Campbell on Monday to narrow or change his ruling on the use of law enforcement agencies, and Abbott has said he will appeal the decision.
Hampton also thinks the Senate's sergeant-at-arms cannot use his staff or hire private investigators to track down senators.
"If the senators aren't doing what the people want, then the people can throw them out of office," he said.
On apparent side effect of all this is the death of SB22, the Death Star government reorganization bill, and its provision to remove power from the Comptroller's office.
It remains unclear whether the government reorganization legislation would return in a second special session. The bill's House sponsor watched as a variation of the bill died during the regular session."I don't know how many times a bill can die, but that one has a long and storied history of being dead," said Rep. David Swinford, R-Dumas.
The bill's apparent death on Friday was a major blow to Perry, because it would have given him greater authority over state agencies, and to Dewhurst, because his responsibilities would also have expanded.
But the demise of Senate Bill 22 was a huge victory for Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn, who managed to beat back an attempt to strip her agency of the authority to audit the state's bureaucracy and transfer the duties to the Legislative Budget Board, which Dewhurst heads.
She had blamed Dewhurst for the legislation, saying the lieutenant governor had ushered the bill through the Senate on Thursday. Strayhorn had earlier angered her fellow Republicans leading the Legislature by criticizing their budget priorities.
"This is political payback -- and it has no place in state government," Strayhorn said.
If nothing else, all this has been good for the various pollsters and political scientists who get quoted in analytical articles like this one.
Political scientists and polltakers agreed that few voters care deeply yet about the prolonged redistricting battle, though they differed about whether the public eventually will punish one side or the other."It's an activist fight," said Bruce Buchanan, a political science professor at the University of Texas at Austin. "The mass public does not have a way to relate to how redistricting is affecting their interest."
Mr. Buchanan said he was surprised that Republicans and Democrats are not spending advertising dollars to sway the public to their side.
Democrats packed field hearings with critics of the push for a new redistricting plan by such Washington Republicans as U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Sugar Land and senior White House adviser Karl Rove.
For instance, at seven meetings the Senate held across the state, 89 percent of the 2,620 witnesses opposed any change in the congressional maps drawn by federal judges two years ago, after the Legislature failed to produce a plan.
Ordinary Texans may not be aware of the redistricting battle at all, said Mr. Montgomery and Mike Baselice, a GOP pollster in Austin.
However, Cal Jillson, political science professor at Southern Methodist University, said he thinks a good many voters are watching the spectacle at least sporadically and with casual interest.
"The public is sitting back, sort of bemused at this point," Dr. Jillson said. "It's having a hard time sorting out fact from fiction. Republicans say it's a matter of fairness, that they've got 58 percent of the vote in this state. ... Democrats say this is a heinous act of political hardball."
Tune in Monday for more.
I've not really covered the subject of electronic voting and the problems that are inherent to its implementations - several other bloggers have done yeoman's work on the topic - but I'd still like to point out the newfound interest that the mass media has taken on the subject. None of this is really news to anyone who's followed the story - in fact, experts have warned about the problem for years. It's not that this can't be done properly, it's that the way the leading vendors have chosen to do it is flawed, both from a security perspective and an auditing one.
Rob puts his finger on the issue.
This story points to a bigger problem in the way people approach technology. Many problems that we encounter in the business world are not "technology-solvable" problems, they're process problems. For example, a given person's roles and responsibilities are not defined. Whatever the nature of the problem, technology will not solve it. People solve problems.Same with the voting systems we use here. If we just used the machines and no other tools, fraud could run rampant. Just like with punch cards. There has to be a process for verifying a person's identity and ensuring that they only vote once.
That's exactly right. What was the problem that all this technology was supposed to solve? It was that punch card and optical scan ballots often did not record votes properly and the people who cast those votes had no way of knowing it. You could have largely solved this problem by giving people a way to check and correct their ballots before they relinquished control of them. I'll grant that some electronic voting schemes, such as the e-Slate system in Harris County, do allow for that, but at the cost of losing an unassailable audit trail and opening the door to more subtle and sophisticated means of fraud. How exactly is that improving anything?
And the crazy thing is that a lot of the issue vanishes if the voting machines simply printed out a hard copy of the ballot after the voter has checked and approved it. Drop the hard copy in a bin like before and count those. You still have the identity question to deal with, but at least now you've got ballots that people will have confidence in and a surefire way of verifying them. Seems like a slamdunk to me.
Anyway, the full report by the researchers is here. Like Ginger, I'm acquainted with Dan Wallach; in fact, one of his students, whom I also know, tipped me to these links (thanks, David!). Houston's a big ol' small town sometimes.
Back in January, just after 'fessing up that her projection of a $5 billion budget shortfall was off by a factor of 2, Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn uttered the following words: "The last Legislature had a party and left this Legislature with a hangover." Quite a few Senators took umbrage to this assertion. Yesterday, they extracted a bit of revenge.
The Texas Senate on Thursday stripped the state comptroller's office of two major components, including one that has served as a platform for the comptroller to cite waste in state government.Senate Bill 22 included a host of measures aimed at streamlining state government and broadening the powers of the governor.
[...]
But the most controversial measure was moving the comptroller's e-Texas division and state school performance audits to the Legislative Budget Board.
Supporters said the move will save the state $14 million a year.
Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said the Legislative Budget Board already performs efficiency audits for other state agencies.
"Why in the world would we have a group in the Legislative Budget Board and a group in the comptroller's office doing virtually the same thing?" Dewhurst asked.
Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn hinted that the move was "political retribution" for her criticism of the Legislature for not showing more spending restraint during strong economic times.
"I believe the lieutenant governor is misguided, and I hope this is not some form of political retribution for my efforts to be a staunch defender of taxpayer dollars and an honest 'tell it like it is' watchdog for all the people of Texas," she said in a statement.
Pardon me while I gag. Strayhorn sandbagged everyone in January - well after the elections were safely over, mind you - with her "revised" estimate of the budget shortfall. She refused to recognize economic reality and kept up the happy talk until it was too late to have an honest debate about what was happening. She's an opportunistic, grandstanding hack, and I have no sympathy for her.
Sen. Rodney Ellis puts it best:
Ellis chuckled at the suggestion that he had any political motivation for including the provision stripping away Strayhorn's so-called E-Texas operation, which conducts agency audits and recommends money-saving measures to the Legislative Budget Board."I'm sure she was not referring to me," Ellis said with a grin. "Although I was chair of [the budget-writing Senate Finance Committee] at the 'party' she made reference to. I don't know if it was [another lawmaker] or me who said if there was a party, she must have been the bartender."
You might notice, by the way, that Lt. Gov. Dewhurst supports this provision. If nothing else, that gives Ellis some cover from Strayhorn's attack.
Of course, payback comes in many forms. The American GI Forum strongly protested against redistricting, and now they face major cuts in thier Veterans Outreach employment program.
Because of a $300,000 loss in funding that some have blamed on partisan politics, the San Antonio-based outreach program will close three of its six statewide offices today.Offices in Austin, Dallas and Fort Worth will shut down, while operations in San Antonio, El Paso and Houston will remain open.
"This is not hurting the American GI Forum; this is hurting veterans period," said Ram Chavez, state commander of the civil rights group, composed primarily of Hispanic veterans.
The forced closures have sparked a political backlash from veterans and Democrats who charge that Republican Gov. Rick Perry cut the funding as retaliation to the GI Forum's boisterous opposition to Texas' congressional redistricting plan.
Democrats from Austin to Washington immediately registered their disapproval.
U.S. Rep. Ciro Rodriguez, D-San Antonio, questioned whether "political reasons" caused Perry to yank the funding that every governor has approved since the 1970s.
He was joined by state Rep. Ruth Jones McClendon, D-San Antonio.
"It is beyond me why the governor would choose now to stop a federally funded program to aid veterans in their return to society," she said. "The only reason I can think of is retaliation for the GI Forum demonstrations against redistricting."
Politics is such fun, isn't it? I'm so glad we've got another 30 days of the Legislature to look forward to.
Despite continued wooing from Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and redistricting map author Sen. Todd Staples (R, Palestine), Senate Democrats continue to make hints and allegations that they will not stick around for another, blocker-bill-free, special session. Testimony from a defense attorney who asserted that the state Constitution says they can't be arrested for not showing up can only bolster them.
Criminal defense attorney Keith Hampton also told the Senate Democratic Caucus that an arrest by a Senate sergeant at arms or a private security agency to force senators to the Senate floor for a vote might be prosecutable as kidnapping under state law."And it gets worse than that. If someone in the Legislature directed them to do that, there is the crime of conspiracy to commit aggravated kidnapping," punishable by up to life in prison, Hampton told the Houston Chronicle Thursday.
I presume this is a logical extension of the state court ruling by Judge Charles Campbell that rebuked Speaker Tom Craddick for using the DPS to hunt down the Killer Ds. Republicans were noncommittal in response to Hampton's warning.
Dewhurst, who presides over the Senate, evaded questions about whether he would order the Democrats arrested if they broke the Senate quorum."I will continue to follow state law. I understand that (Campbell's) ruling has been appealed by the attorney general," Dewhurst said.
Campbell's ruling applied state law, and Hampton said it will provide a starting point for any challenge to Department of Public Safety authority to bring in legislators who break quorum.
Dewhurst is slightly mistaken - Campbell's ruling hasn't been filed yet, and so it hasn't been appealed yet - but I imagine that's not a big deal.
Several Senators have explicitly declared their intentions.
"I'm ready to walk," said Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, the Senate's longest-serving member."For me, there is no benefit to staying for another special session," said Sen. Mario Gallegos, D-Houston. "I can tell you as far as breaking a quorum, 11 will break it."
Neither Sen. Bill Ratliff, the lone Republican to "unalterably oppose" redistricting, nor apparently Sen. Ken Armbrister (D, Victoria), who was the first to mention a walkout in response to a suspension of traditional Senate rules, will boycott another session, meaning it's the 11 other Senate Democrats, which would be exactly enough to prevent a quorum. There's not a whole lot of margin for error there. It's also leading to a sense of paranoia:
Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, said some senators are afraid Perry will call a new special session immediately after the current session ends on Tuesday, while Democratic senators are still in the Capitol."You get a strong paranoia or concern that they are going to sine die (adjourn) at noon and call us back an hour later so they can lock us up in here," Whitmire said.
Mr. Gallegos, a former firefighter, said Democrats are aware that Mr. Dewhurst could lock members in Senate chambers, especially if a special session is called immediately after the current one adjourns. It can end no later than midnight Tuesday.
"I do keep ties with my firefighters that have the Jaws of Life," Mr. Gallegos said. "They can bolt any door open here in the Capitol."
(Note: the Whitmire quote is from the Chron, the Gallegos quote from the Morning News.)
We will know soon what the Democrats plan to do, and then presumably what if anything the GOP will do in response.
Democrats are expected to meet within the next day to discuss the logistics of skipping a second special session."I think there are 11 who are extremely firm in their view that this is not an issue that warrants us coming in for a special session," said Leticia Van De Putte of San Antonio, chairwoman of the Senate Democratic Caucus.
"All senators need to make their own decisions, then we will make a collective decision."
There is one possible bargaining chip that I can see, which is Sen. Jeff Wentworth's less aggressive map, perhaps in addition to Wentworth's bill to create a nonpartisan redistricting commission. That bill is starting to pick up public support.
The continued fuss prompted government watchdogs, voter groups and religious groups to push for a proposal by Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio, to have redistricting done in the future by an independent commission rather than lawmakers.The groups include the League of Women Voters, Campaigns for People, Common Cause, Public Citizen, Independent Texans, the Texas Baptist Christian Life Commission and Texas Impact.
"In a democracy, the voters are supposed to be supreme and they're supposed to choose their representatives," said Fred Lewis of Campaigns for People. "Under our redistricting process in Texas, the politicians are supreme and they choose their voters" through the way they draw districts.
Wentworth's bill is SJR2, the slightly-unreadable text of which is here.
UPDATE: Redistricting is officially dead this session, without a map being brought up for a vote. A second session will be called (my guess: next week) and there will be no blocker bill. The Chron just has an AP wire story right now, but the Statesman has a slightly fuller staff report. I'll survey the news stories tomorrow morning.
Just a few things that caught my eye recently...
Cowboy Kahlil does some electoral math.
You've probably already seen Calpundit's pointer to the Medpundit's Road to Damascus moment (scroll down to that title) regarding tort reform and malpractice insurance, but you probably haven't been reading Hope's recent posts on various related topics. Check out Socialism? Or Common Sense?, Play Or Pay?, Controlling Health Care Spending, with "Tort Reform" right underneath it. Her links are screwy, so scroll down to the given title for each.
The Minute Man has a useful timeline of the Valerie Plame affair.
Pete has a troubling report of a big sequel that may be in the works.
Mark Evanier reminisces about Ray Bradbury.
David discovers a novel way to boost revenue in Pennsylvania.
Ginger talks about ideology, character, and blog-reading.
And Dwight at P.L.A. has three top-notch posts, about frivolous lawsuits, balancing the budget, and pork-barrel spending.
Happy reading!
Rob comes through again in the comments on this post, by finding this report on the Montgomery poll regarding redistricting and Governor Rick Perry's popularity. It ain't pretty:
Surveyors told respondents, "Governor Perry has called an unusual special session to change current congressional districts, although they were redrawn just two years ago," and then asked "Do you support or oppose this redistricting effort?" 45.5 percent of Texans opposed redistricting; 30 percent supported it. One in four respondents (24.5 percent) did not have an opinion.Strongest opposition came from Democrats (70.9 percent), East Texans (55.7 percent), African-Americans (55.7 percent), Central Texans (52.5 percent), and Hispanics (51 percent). Self-identified Republicans were the only demographic group who were more likely to support than oppose the redistricting effort (47.9 percent supported, 24.8 percent opposed). Texans aged 18-34 were in a statistical tie on the issue, 36.9 percent supporting and 35.4 percent opposed.
Margin of error is plus or minus 3.1%. I wish that we could see a full breakdown of the numbers, but the message is pretty clear: this effort is not popular with anyone.
So how's Perry doing?
On the Governor's job performance rating, 7.4 percent of respondents said Gov. Perry was doing an excellent job; 38.1 percent said a good job; 34.1 percent said "only fair"; and 14.5 percent said the Governor was doing a poor job. 5.8 percent had no opinion. That's an overall 45.5 percent positive, 48.6 percent negative rating. Except for a bump among Republicans (64.4 percent positive), Perry did not do particularly well among any group. He did particularly poorly among African Americans (73.4 percent negative) and Democrats (68.4 percent negative).Perry's impression numbers were mixed. 33.7 percent had a favorable impression of him, while 24.6 percent had an unfavorable impression. 38.7 percent were neutral. These numbers held fairly steady among most demographic groups, except for the expected shifts among self-identified Republicans (51.9 percent favorable, 10.4 percent unfavorable) and Democrats. (15.8 percent favorable, 43.1 percent unfavorable).
This comes with a couple of big caveats. First and foremost, Perry doesn't run for reelection until 2006, which is an eternity from now. Second, these numbers are not all that different from what they were just before the 2002 election.
The [Scripps Howard Texas] poll also showed that only 44 percent of the people approved of the governor's performance in office -- his lowest mark since taking office. It was down 23 percentage points from fall 2001, when Perry enjoyed a 67 percent approval rating.
In other words, the Democrats would still have to field a good candidate in 2006 in order to take advantage of Perry's lukewarm ratings, and that's just a start.
Still, though, if the Democrats play their cards right, they should have a good campaign issue on their hands in 2004. If no map gets passed on a majority vote, or if a map does get passed but then gets thrown out by the courts, they can make a lot of hay about what a waste of time and money this all was, and they can tie individual legislators with Perry for the blame. If nothing else, this poll indicates that it ought to be better for the Dems to talk about the redistricting issue in 2004 than it will be for the GOP.
One of the interesting possibilities resulting from the House "fruitcake" flap last week involving Ways and Means Committee Chair Bill Thomas (see here for some background) is that it just might give the national Democratic Party a platform on which to campaign for regaining control of Congress. Here's Dick Armey to explain it to you:
"There's an old adage in politics," said former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, a retired Texas Republican who helped lead Republicans to their majority. "Only get mad on purpose."Armey said Thomas, whom he called "abrasive," handed Democrats an opportunity to showcase their new strategy to wrest back control of the House.
"The theme is 10 years of one-party rule is enough," Armey said. "They (Republicans) have had control for 10 years, they've gotten arrogant, they demean the institution, they demean democracy by virtue of the heavy-handed way they run the House, minority rights are downtrodden, and it's time, Mr. and Mrs. America, to make a change.
"That isn't a whole lot different from the case we made in '94, after 40 years," Armey said, recalling the stunning GOP takeover engineered by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Keep an eye on that. Republicans had some advantages in 1994 that Democrats may not have next year, but motivation and message shouldn't be among them.
Well, now that a map has finally passed out of the Jurisprudence Committee, we enter the next stage of the game. With a second session that will feature no blocker bill looming, what will the Democrats' strategy be? The Republicans, who may have unity problems on their side, are making conciliatory noises.
Sen. Todd Staples of Palestine, who chairs the Senate Republican Caucus, sponsored the bill and encouraged his colleagues to work with him as the bill makes its way to the floor."My door is open," Staples said. "I want to be completely unambiguous. Come join us."
Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who has already given the Democrats a now-or-never ultimatum, says they're starting to see it his way.
"I see some movement by both Republicans and Democrats in coming together," Dewhurst said. "Will it happen tomorrow? I doubt it. Do I see momentum? Yes. May it take us another week or two? Maybe."
Democrats are not yet convinced.
Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, chairwoman of the Senate Democratic Caucus, warned again that abandoning the Senate's two-thirds rule could destroy the chamber's traditions of bipartisan cooperation.But she said the 12 Democratic senators have not decided whether to boycott the proceedings their last resort to try to kill redistricting, much as House Democrats blocked it during the regular session that ended June 2 by going to Oklahoma.
"Nobody relishes having to exercise that extreme option," she said, referring to a possible walkout, which would require 11 senators to break a Senate quorum.
"But it's there, and it's there for a purpose," Ms. Van de Putte said.
Ratcheting up the pressure on Mr. Dewhurst, she said, "This is a real test for our presiding officer."
And more:
Sen. John Whitmire, the longest-serving Democrat, said he would not vote for redistricting and would not rule out the possibility that 11 senators would boycott so the Senate could not conduct business.Yet the Houston Democrat said redistricting opponents are discussing whether it's better to negotiate a better map from Republicans or hope the courts will strike down the maps the GOP have offered so far.
My best guess is that the Dems will not break quorum, for unlike the Ardmore adventure there's no artificial deadline to hold out for. That seems to be the party line right now.
The perception that a Republican victory is inevitable seems to be a factor in any discussion of how to end the redistricting debate."If you break a quorum," Whitmire said, "ultimately they get everyone back in."
In May, House Democrats left the state for four days so the House could not conduct business. But a boycott during a series of 30-day special sessions is another matter.
"How do you win if everybody walks?" asked Sen. Ken Armbrister, D-Victoria. "You can't be gone 60 days; you can't be gone 180 days."
Armbrister contends there are Republicans who don't want to vote for the redistricting map as it stands now.
"If the D's run off, then it lets other members off the hook who don't want to vote on this, either," he said.
Armbrister had threatened to lead a boycott if Dewhurst changed a Senate rule requiring a two-thirds vote to debate the redistricting bill.
We all know by now how hard it is for the GOP to draw a map that enough of them like. Maybe it's time to make them play the hand they've dealt themselves.
Whatever happens, a lawsuit will surely follow. Scenarios like this one will lend credence to the Democratic case.
In addition, Houston Democratic Reps. Chris Bell and Gene Green and Eddie Bernice Johnson of Dallas might be vulnerable to primary challenges because of the ethnic breakdown in their redrawn districts. But their districts likely would continue to elect Democrats in the general election.[...]
Johnson, who is black, is elected from Dallas' predominantly black 30th District.
In Staples' map, the black voting age population in her district would stay at about 40 percent, but Hispanic population would increase from 28 percent to 37 percent. That enhances the possibility that Johnson could face a primary challenge from a Hispanic.
I think the state will find it hard to argue that they're enhancing minority representation if one reasonable end result is the replacement of a black legislator with a Hispanic one.
Another argument will be that minorities will not be as well served if the districts are changed to elect more Republicans. Along those lines, Dave McNeely examines the record of the current delegation.
For example, Democrat Charles Stenholm of Stamford has fewer minorities in his district 23.8 percent are African American or Latino than recently retired Republican Larry Combest in the adjoining West Texas district, which has 40.2 percent.Yet Stenholm's ranking on votes on issues important to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for the past two sessions of Congress was 60.5 percent and it was 60 percent on the scorecard of the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda, which comprises a half dozen Hispanic groups, including the League of United Latin American Citizens and the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.
Lubbock-based Combest scored 21 percent with the NAACP and 7 percent with the Hispanic leaders.
The comparison is the same for almost all of the white Texas Democrats in Congress and their Republican colleagues, although only three of the Democrats represent districts in which blacks and Hispanics are the majority.
The rest have districts ranging from 21.5 percent to 44.8 percent minority. Only three districts held by Republicans have minority populations of less than 20 percent.
Except for conservative Democrat Ralph Hall of Rockwall, who often votes with the Republicans, Stenholm's is the lowest score among the white Democrats.
Republican Ron Paul of Surfside, once the Libertarian Party's presidential candidate, has the best ranking among the Republicans, scoring 33 percent with the NAACP and 44 percent with the Hispanic leaders.
I still don't know where those numbers come from, but they at least are consistent with what Sheila Jackson Lee said back at the hearing I attended last month.
Back in 1981, then-state Rep. Craig Washington, an African American Democrat from Houston, said it made no sense for minority lawmakers to join Republicans in packing minority voters in one district.Washington said that would simply mean the replacement of two white Democrats sympathetic to minorities with one black Congress member and a Republican one, whose vote might cancel out the black member's votes.
Yo, Ron Wilson. Did you hear that?
Finally, the Austin Chronicle lays it all out:
Until then, the public game is chicken. Dewhurst is telling Senate Democrats that if they want to have any input on the map, they'd better seize their chance in this session, or Perry will call another, and the lite guv will then invoke "the Bullock precedent" and dispense with the two-thirds rule currently keeping a map from the floor. (In 1992, under a court order, the Senate drafted a map by simple majority -- and neither Republicans nor Democrats objected to Bullock's dropping of the two-thirds rule.) In response, the Senate minority says it will either refuse to appear again or break the quorum should Dewhurst try to force the issue. That's one reason why Jurisprudence Committee member Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, told reporters this week the Republican plan "is dead. It's dead, it's dead, it's dead."We don't know yet if all that is false bravado. Meanwhile, the private game -- among Senate Republicans -- is where the real action is right now, as Todd Staples, R-Palestine (to whom the map-drawing task fell when Chris Harris, R-Arlington, abandoned it in a mysterious huff), attempts to come up with a map that can even win a 16-vote majority in the Senate. The public committee testimony has been all about racial minority retrogression -- but the real, backroom struggle is for a Republican map that can please Harris, Staples, Lubbock's Robert Duncan, Waco's Kip Averitt, maybe even San Antonio's Jeff Wentworth, who has proposed his own map to accompany his perennial proposal to turn the whole job over to an independent commission. (What? And give up show business?) The Republicans (except for Ratliff) are playing NIMBY -- they all say, "Yes, I support redistricting 100% -- but leave my congressman alone."
The article also mentions the negative poll numbers for redistricting but doesn't cite a source. I still can't find anything in Google about the Montgomery poll, which I noted after it was mentioned on the Quorum Report. Perhaps this mention will be the first of several in the mainstream media.
Thanks to Rob Booth for the McNeely and AusChron links.
UPDATE: Here are the NAACP and National Hispanic Leadership Agenda scorecards for the Texas Congressional delegation.
Texas Monthly has an article on Rice University President Malcolm Gillis (requires free registration) in which he shares his thoughts on the state of college athletics and how a school like Rice fits in. A few excerpts to whet your appetite:
MALCOLM GILLIS, THE PRESIDENT of Rice University, likes to tell the story of the football player who was being recruited by Rice and another Texas university of, shall we say, less intellectual rigor. The coach of the other school asked the prospect about his scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test. "Fifteen-fifty" was the answera breathtakingly high score that is close to the maximum score of 1600. There was a moment of stunned silence, and then the coach said, "Hell, son, you could get into school here twice for that."[...]
There are three issues that Gillis and other reformers would like to see addressed to slow the movement toward professionalization: academic reform, reduced spending (especially for multimillion-dollar coaching salaries), and less commercialization of athletics (for example, banning the display of corporate logos on uniforms). These were the principal recommendations of the Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, which issued two reports a decade apart, in 1991 and 2001, producing much publicity but little action.
[...]
"There are two scenarios for the future," Gillis told me. "Scenario number one is increasing commercialization until, over a period of ten to fifteen years, the teams in the big conferences will be semi-professional, with athletes getting paid. Scenario number two is that presidents and boards come to their senses and institute some reforms." He paused for a moment, and then he said, "Do you know how much I am willing to bet that never happens?"
Gillis and Rice have joined a coalition of non-BCS schools to lobby for change in how college football operates. I wish them well.
Haven't seen this on any of the usual Saddam-coddling lefty sites, so I figured I'd air it here.
Want to know how far off the rails things have slid at the Pentagon? Recently, the Army wanted to tally up how much money it had been forced to divert to private contractors as part of Rumsfeld's rush to privatize military tasks. The Rummycrats forbid it. They refused to let the Army balance its own books because the privatization mafia knew what they would find: Contractors cost more, not less, than soldiers.
That's Retired Military Officer Ralph Peters venting a little spleen. Thanks to Justin Slotman for the link.
I missed the mayoral debate that was on PBS last night (oddly, there's no Chron coverage of this), but thankfully Greg Wythe was paying attention. He's got a fine overview of the candidates' performances, and one of the better zingers I've seen lately, regarding a challenge that each candidate was given to apportion 100 $1 bills as they would for the city budget:
[Michael] Berry was a big spender on the category that favored infrastructure, but low (ironically) on public safety. So while the streets will be paved over, this will allow for fleeing criminals to get away quicker.
Heh. If you want to see the entire debate summarized in this fashion, then Alex is your man.
More on the is-Dean-electable debate, for the three or four of you who aren't already obsessed with it and/or sick of it, from Teixeira, MyDD, Demosthenes, Yglesias, Democratic Underground, and a Canadian perspective from Ikram Saeed. Check them out.
One erratum from my own entry: The states that Bush won in 2000 are now worth 278 electoral votes thanks to the reapportionment that followed the 2000 Census. As such, any Democratic candidate would need to either peel off more than one red state (just New Hampshire wouldn't be enough) or would need one of the bigger ones, such as Missouri. That makes the South a bit more important to consider, but still not vital and in my opinion not as potentially lucrative as the West. I should note that The Scrum says it all comes down to three states - Florida, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, in what they call their FlaPaMi hypothesis. That's good news and bad news for both sides. They have some more detailed Bush approval numbers from those states as well.
Rob Booth is off the redistricting reservation:
I've got to say this is getting a little nuts. The last two maps from Sen. Staples (1324 and 1325) have really messed up west Houston. Putting CD 7 into any county other than Harris is wrong, no matter what the goal. And any version of CD 7 that doesn't include the old Taco Bell on Memorial near Kirkwood is a travesty. You see, that was the Culberson for Congress headquarters, from which a bunch of us busted our butts to get John Culberson in the Congress representing Harris County.I guess that the driving force behind these maps is the belief that we can jettison the 2/3rds rule during a second special session. That's making these map-drawers get as bold as Rep. Frost in 91. I'll just put it down in writing, what I've been thinking. We lost by the 2/3rds rule for many years. We should win by the 2/3rds rule as well. And we ought not draw maps with the only purpose being to increase the number of Republicans.
I'll repeat something I've said before: It didn't have to be this way. If redistricting had been on the menu from the beginning, if there had been an honest effort to draw reasonable lines rather than play the maximalist game (funny how no one seems to spout the 56% rationale anymore amidst all these maps that are designed to give Republicans somewhere between 62 and 68% of the seats, no?) along with statewide hearings that actually paid attention to the feedback received, I think the GOP could have increased its body count to 18 or 19 without much of this fuss. I wouldn't have liked it, but I'd have been hard-pressed to argue against it.
I think the GOP leadership, having committed to taking whatever action it deems necessary to achieve the result it wants, is finding that they're out on a limb. The rank and file isn't rallying to support them, while the opposition is united and the media is unimpressed. I've got to wonder if any of them are starting to ask if this is really worth it. (Answer: apparently not.)
Let's assume that there is another special session as seems likely, and that there is no blocker bill. Given that every single Republican-drawn map has generated opposition from Republican senators whose districts are carved up in that particular map, can anyone say with assurance that the Senate actually will pass something on a straight majority vote? Do these guys really want to risk being held responsible for what might happen in a joint House-Senate committee? Maybe they will, I don't know. The question is, do Perry and Dewhurst?
The longer this drags on, the more I become convinced that whatever the outcome, the Democrats will get more out of the experience than the Republicans will.
In our last episode, the fair maiden Ekaterina Dmitritv was issued a marriage license by Fort bend County so she could wed her handsome prince, the cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, who is currently orbiting the Earth in the International Space Station. The wedding, which is scheduled to take place while Malenchenko is still up in the sky, will be via a communication link, or will use a proxy if the technology fails them.
But suddenly, there are dark clouds on the horizon:
Could it be the Russians have not quite shed their suspicions and secrecy from the days of the Cold War? Or could it be he's upstaging superiors in the space program?The Russian Space Agency has said repeatedly that the wedding between Yuri Malenchenko, 41, the orbiting cosmonaut, and his fiancee in Texas has been postponed.
The bride-to-be says not so. "Nothing is going to stop us from getting married. It is still going to happen," Ekaterina Dmitriev said Tuesday. Besides, the invitations are in the mail.
American and Russian officials could not offer clarification on the conflicting information.
"We haven't barred him from doing that, we simply told him that it was unclear how he could do that from the point of Russian law," Sergei Gorbunov, a Russian space agency spokesman, told The Associated Press. "He (Malenchenko) gave it a thought and said that he would wait until October," when the current space station crew is set to return to Earth.
Could some intrigue be at work here?
Malenchenko is an air force colonel and under Russian law is considered the holder of state secrets. He can marry a foreigner only after getting permission from his superiors, Gorbunov said. The secrecy rules, which date from Soviet times, theoretically could force a person to wait for five, maybe 10 years to get such permission, he said.
Dmitriev was born in Russia and moved to the United States when she was a child. She is now a U.S. citizen.
It's a Commie plot against them! Run for your lives!
Or could it be (cue dramatic music)...something else?
Russian air force chief Col.-Gen. Vladimir Mikhailov reportedly was angered by Malenchenko's plans and told the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda that a "cosmonaut mustn't behave like a movie star."Malenchenko quietly arranged to have his tailcoat and wedding ring flown to him aboard a Progress cargo ship that arrived at the station in June.
Jealousy in space! Intrigue in the ionosphere! Where's Alexis Carrington when you really need her?
Will the maiden marry her spaceman on schedule? Will the bumbling bureaucrats pillory their plans for conjugal contentment? Will I be able to scrape together another alliterative allegory to portray their plight? Tune in next time and find out.
There's not much redistricting news to report on right now. Sen. Todd Staples has submitted two new maps that will get voted on in committee tomorrow, then die without debate on the floor thanks to the "unalterable opposition" of 11 Democrats plus Bill Ratliff. Even if there is a second special session with no blocker bill, Staples' maps would run into problems:
Sen. Chris Harris, R-Arlington, the original Senate sponsor of redistricting, gave up his efforts last week. Harris has opposed measures that cut his hometown into more than two congressional districts.Sen. Todd Staples, R-Palestine, took over the map drawing from Harris. He has problems with supporters in his district over various maps designed to knock off U.S. Reps. Max Sandlin, D-Marshall, and Jim Turner, D-Crockett.
Staples said developing maps agreeable to a Senate majority is difficult.
"Any time you change one area, it seems to have a rippling effect on other areas," Staples said.
"What I'm trying to do at this point is incorporate the various concerns that I've heard and get a greater level of consensus among the members."
Sen. Kip Averitt, R-Waco, has faced local opposition from Republicans and Democrats who want his home county of McLennan kept in one district with Bell and Coryell counties.
Local officials also oppose plans that eliminate U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco, because he is the ranking Democrat on a House committee key to military base funding. Edwards has been an advocate for Fort Hood.
Edwards, whose district also includes the Crawford ranch of President Bush, is a target of the Republican push for congressional redistricting. Almost every effort to redraw his district either splits McLennan County or separates it from Bell and Coryell counties.
Constituents of Sen. Troy Fraser, R-Horseshoe Bay, also want him to protect Edwards.
Fraser and Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, face similar pressure to protect U.S. Rep. Charles Stenholm, D-Abilene, the ranking Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee. If he loses his seat, the post goes to a representative from Minnesota.
Fraser and Duncan have another problem in West Texas.
Abilene and Lubbock are in two congressional districts now, but Texas Speaker Tom Craddick, R-Midland, won House approval of a plan that gives Midland its own congressional district. That means Abilene would be dominated by Lubbock in a new district.
About 30 West Texas mayors recently met with Fraser, Duncan and Dewhurst to oppose redrawing West Texas. The latest Senate maps reflect the wishes of Duncan and Fraser, not Craddick.
"I've learned in the legislative process there are no guarantees," Duncan said, "but, hopefully, Senator Fraser and I can work with Speaker Craddick and resolve those differences and reflect the needs and wills of our constituents."
And more objections:
Under the current map, drawn by federal judges, Williamson County is split between U.S. Reps. John Carter, R-Round Rock, and Chet Edwards, D-Waco. Even though Staples' latest version again splits Williamson County between those two representatives, it upsets the state lawmakers who represent that county.Sen. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, said he cannot support a map that splits Williamson County, but he is working on amendments. Rep. Mike Krusee, R-Round Rock, also objects to putting a portion of Williamson County in a district that could be dominated by Travis County.
"My goal is for Williamson County to remain the political center of its congressional district," Krusee said.
Lt. Governor David Dewhurst has promised that a map will pass eventually and says he's working towards a deal that enough Senators can live with, but so far the Democrats aren't buying it.
Twelve senators 11 Democrats and one Republican have banded together to block the redistricting effort. Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, is leading the group and has said they will not be moved.Asked if there was room for compromise, Van de Putte said: "I don't believe there is one at this point."
Van de Putte and others continue to speak of breaking quorum if the next session has no blocker bill. I find this possibility to be unlikely, since Governor Perry can keep calling sessions as he sees fit. There's no artificial deadline to wait out, as was the case in the Ardmore exodus. But who knows?
Sen. Ken Armbrister (D, Victoria), the lone Democrat to not sign the opposition letter, and Sen. Jeff Wentworth (R, San Antonio), who also has a bill to create a nonpartisan commission for future redistricting chores, have also submitted maps, but neither are likely to pass out of committee.
The current special session ends on July 29. Assuming that no map is approved by then, another session will likely be called to start that weekend, probably on August 1. The neverending stint in Austin is starting to wear on people, especially since almost all legislators do other work for a living:
Most lawmakers have jobs away from the House and Senate chambers. The majority work in the business field: are lawyers or consultants. Among the exceptions are a retired a firefighter, a car dealer, a horse breeder and a flight instructor."I'm in the consulting business, and if I'm not working, I'm not earning," said Rep. David Swinford, R-Dumas.
State lawmakers earn $7,200 a year for their service, about $600 a month. In addition, on days they are in session, they are granted $125 per diem.
Swinford said he is living off his savings during this special session.
He would rather be home with his wife, who suffered a ruptured disk in her back. But the trip to Austin from the Panhandle makes it difficult to visit often.
Such sacrifices, he said, are part of the job.
"I'm going to be here any time I'm needed," he said. "That's what I ran for."
The last time there was a Senate session without a blocker bill was in another special session, in 1992. Dewhurst has cited this as a precedent for his anticipated action, since that session dealt in part with a court order to redraw state Senate boundaries. Dave McNeely provides some context.
On Dec. 24, 1991, three Republican-appointed federal judges threw out the plan that 19 Democratic senators had agreed to in settling a court challenge by minorities. The judges ruled the plan illegal because it had not cleared the full Legislature. They drew their own map, just for 1992.Gov. Ann Richards had already called a special session on redistricting, to begin Jan. 2. A majority of the senators all Democrats revived the settlement plan and hoped to use it for primaries on March 10.
Bullock, a Democrat, did not have the traditional "blocker" bill atop the calendar, which usually means other bills need a two-thirds vote to come up out of their regular order.
Although there were 22 Democratic senators and just nine Republicans at the time, three Democrats opposed the Senate map, and one Democrat was absent.
Without a blocker bill, when the bill came out of the Committee of the Whole on Redistricting comprising the entire Senate it went straight to the Senate floor, where it required just a majority vote. It passed the full Senate 18-12. But Senate Dean John Whitmire, D-Houston, said there was unofficial agreement at the time that a two-thirds vote wouldn't be required.
Indeed, Republican senators who had planned to filibuster decided not to.
"I am going to oppose this bill," explained then-Sen. Buster Brown, R-Lake Jackson. "But I hope that it gets out of here quickly and into the courts. . . . The best chance of having a March 10 primary is to get this bill out of here."
Finally, a surprise from the Quorum Report: A new poll shows that most Texans oppose redistricting.
Pollster Jeff Montgomery has released some surprising poll numbers showing tepid support for redistricting -- including among Republicans -- and generally weak numbers for Governor Rick Perry.It is about here that your erstwhile reporter eats a little crow. Although Montgomery typically represents Democrats, his polling has not always been kind to them.
In fact, we questioned Montgomery's polling nearly two years ago when he consistently showed Perry beating Democratic challenger Tony Sanchez by 20% or more.
When the votes were counted, Perry beat Sanchez by 19%.
Like his polling eighteen months ago, this poll was independently financed by Montgomery & Associates so it is beholding to no clients.
According to Montgomery, 45.5% of Texans oppose redistricting and 30% support it.
Even a majority of Republicans were ambivalent on the issue with 47.9% supporting the effort whereas 24.8% opposed.
But the bigger news is Governor Perry's soft approval numbers.
Sadly, the rest of that tantalizing story is behind their paywall. One hopes that it will eventually get picked up by the regular press. I did Google for more but came up empty.
I can't say I'm surprised at Perry's soft numbers, whatever they may be. The redistricting issue has dragged out for weeks, is costing the taxpayers money in the wake of a $10 billion budget shortfall, and has given him a regular beating on the editorial pages for over two months. No one could survive that intact, whatever the eventual outcome. Perry should be very glad that he doesn't need to run for office again until 2006. If he's lucky, this will all be a distant memory by then.
UPDATE: Forgot to mention that some state Dems are in DC using their newfound fame to raise some money:
Money collected from the two back-to-back receptions -- to be held at The Hotel George, a trendy Capitol Hill establishment -- will go to MPACT, a political action committee of the state Democratic Party.Bringing their fund-raising needs to Washington shows Texas Democrats are willing to deploy tactics originated by their political nemesis, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land.
[...]
Ted Royer, Texas GOP spokesman, said Democrats are hypocrites for raising national money to influence the state redistricting process, particularly "while they are hypercritical of D.C. Republicans taking an interest in the process."
But Democrats say today's fund-raisers are different because they seek to protect Democrats in office, not unseat Republicans.
"The Killer Ds are heroes who stood up to Tom DeLay, and a lot of people want to support them," said U.S. Rep. Martin Frost, D-Dallas.
He and other congressional Democrats from Texas are listed on the invitations as honorary co-chairs. Texas House Democrats in Washington for the event include [Rep. Garnet] Coleman, Reps. Trey Martinez Fischer of San Antonio and Pete Gallego of Alpine.
This is good tactics on their part. They'll need the cash in 2004.
Believe it or not, there are other political stories in Texas right now, and the biggest one is the upcoming race in Houston to replace term-limited Mayor Lee Brown. There are six candidates in the race, four of whom can be counted as serious. The race promises to be the most expensive ever, probably by a wide margin, as I noted earlier.
Today, Orlando Sanchez picked up an endorsement from Gov. Rick Perry, who sent out a fundraising letter on Sanchez's behalf.
The mail-out came shortly after campaign finance reports submitted last week showed candidate Bill White with more than a 2-1 campaign funding edge over Sanchez, who was second."Orlando Sanchez is serious about making Houston great again, and he needs your support in realizing that vision," Perry wrote. "If you can, I hope you'll take the time to donate to his campaign by giving $50 or $100 today. It's important to Houston and important to Texas."
Three weeks ago, Sanchez won support from the Associated Republicans of Texas, a GOP business lobby that has pushed for congressional redistricting and limits on civil lawsuit damage awards.
In the coming weeks, Sanchez is expected to announce backing from Republican Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and other statewide Republican elected officials.
This will probably help Sanchez more in fundraising than in converting undecided voters. He ran as an unabashed Republican in 2001, running TV ads with endorsements from President Bush, former President George HW Bush and former First Lady Barbara Bush, and then-Mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani. Though he's toned down his anti-rail rhetoric somewhat, there's no question about his party membership or his political perspective - I mean, he practically has "HEY! I'M THE REAL REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE!" in blinking neon over his head.
I consider this race a must-win for Sanchez. If he wins, he's a rising star - a Republican Hispanic who won in Democrat-friendly territory - and will have a decent shot at statewide office in 2006. (Yes, Houston is Democrat-friendly. Harris County, which includes the heavily Republican independent townships of West University Place, Hunter's Creek, Spring Valley, Bellaire, and Southside Place, among others, is not. Subtracting all of that out leaves behind Houston and a modest Democratic majority.) If not, he's a two-time loser who couldn't oust an unpopular incumbent or win an open seat despite a ton of party support. I believe the question of whether he will ever run for elected office again will be settled this fall.
The other candidate making his second attempt at this office is State Rep. Sylvester Turner, who has the ghost of the 1991 campaign and a strong challenge for progressive and minority voters from Bill White to overcome. The latter is likely to cause him more grief than the former:
Turner's new team was quickly put to the test when the Tejano Democrats met to endorse candidates in the coming municipal elections. [Consultant Frank] McCune had predicted that [former Lanier and Brown campaigner Marc] Campos would be able to pull strings with elected officials in his client stable to snatch the endorsement from White, a charter Tejano member. But Campos was unable to deliver the support of allies such as City Councilwoman Carol Alvarado, who spoke in favor of White.Turner forces tried to make the best of a bad situation by getting a joint endorsement, but only a few members voted for that, so the endorsement went to White.
That's as much a function of the four-way race, in which everyone expects Sanchez or Michael Berry to face Turner or White in an inevitable runoff. Much bet-hedging will occur between now and the first race. Sanchez has also felt the effect of this, as the Houston Firefighters Union board declined to endorse him, despite their strong support of him in 2001.
So sit back and relax, this will be a loud and expensive campaign, and if anyone tells you right now they know who will win, don't believe them.
The WaPo has a nice overview of how Tom DeLay has gotten to be so powerful - in a word, money and the ability to raise oodles of it. I'll say this for the guy - he's the best example of the futility of campiagn finance reform you'll ever find. Until and unless we require all campaigns to be publicly funded, I doubt there will ever be a law that DeLay can't work around. Read it and weep. (Thanks to Alfredo Garcia for the tip.)
Well, what do you know? The Dallas Morning News has a blog, a real, live Movable Type-powered blog in the style of the Corner, not some faux, imitation, not-really-blog-like thing that can be easily mocked. It's pretty crappily implemented - no categories, no archives, a conversational style that refers to prior entries without linking to them (in some cases, the earlier entry has scrolled off the page) - but it's a start.
Via Kevin and Byron. Unlike Kevin, I would like to see the Chron try a real blog. I can think of several writers - Leon Hale and Ken Hoffman, to name two - who'd thrive in that format, though I'd greatly prefer a standard one-writer weblog to this disorganized style. I do agree that the Houston Press has no good reason not to set Richard Connelly up with a blog. There's no telling what he'd come up with.
If you tried to leave or read a comment here after about 9 PM last night, you probably saw an "Invalid Entry ID" error message. Took me long enough to figure out that Dreamhost had changed server names on me, which broke my MT.CFG file. This support forum thread gives the answer. Basically, if you're on Dreamhost and you use the Berkeley DB, you probably have a line that looks like this in your MT.CFG file:
DataSource /home/.servername/username/domain.com/blog/db
which is the UNIX path to your MT database, as reported to you by MT-CHECK.CGI. Unfortunately, that ".servername" can change without warning on you. When it does, various things can happen, including being unable to log in to Movable Type. All you need to do is to remove the "/.servername" piece, so the entry looks like this:
DataSource /home/username/domain.com/blog/db
and you'll be forevermore free of this type of glitch.
(This is the second time it's happened to me. Like an idiot, I didn't fix it properly the first time. I'm making a public confession here to shame myself into never doing that again. I'm also now swearing on a stack of O'Reilly books to upgrade to 2.64 and switch to mySQL by this weekend.)
As always, one of the interesting things about travel is seeing a different daily newspaper. Today's top story in the Sun-Sentinel is about Sen. Bob Graham's "NASCAR strategy" for winning the Democratic nomination.
The NASCAR gambit, the bluegrass music, the down-home campaign style -- all are designed to expand the base of Democratic voters and propel Graham to his party's presidential nomination.Inescapably an urbane policy wonk in a suit, Graham gamely reaches out to voters through music, including his own campaign CD and warbling singing voice, his "work days" in ordinary jobs and his boyhood experiences with the family dairy farm back in Miami Lakes. He burnished these credentials and took them on the road to southwest Virginia last week and plans similar ventures to the countryside in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Roanoke reflects a culture that can be found in hill country throughout the Appalachian region.
"This is where we start a mountain campaign," declared David "Mudcat" Saunders, a drawling good-ol'-boy political operative who works for Graham.
"The Appalachian range runs from Maine to Georgia, and there's not 50 cents' worth of difference between any of us," he said. "We love NASCAR, we love our sporting culture, and we only like two kinds of music: country and Western. Actually three, counting bluegrass.
"Rural America is forgotten America. Do we have a chip on our shoulders, a lot of us? Damn right we do. We'd like to be paid attention to a little bit. These people have been voting for Republicans, no doubt, but will they vote for a Democrat? Damn right, they will. If you get through the culture, they are going to listen to you."
I wish him well in courting these voters, but I have to agree with the expert here:
"In general, there aren't that many of this kind of Democratic voter left," said Earl Black, a political scientist at Rice University in Houston, who two decades ago correctly predicted the Republican realignment of the South. "They are poorly educated, older white voters. Most of them don't have the Democratic Party on their radar any more. These primary elections for the most part attract hard-core party activists. I don't see how this strategy would work unless it was accompanied by a ton of money for advertising."
I think Graham is pursuing a shrinking pool of voters, and I think that's a losing tactic. I believe the Democrats have better prospects and a larger target out West than down South. A Southerner (especially a Floridian) as Vice President might be a decent idea (even if candidates's geography is overrated), but I don't think the 2004 election will hinge on it.
Sue Bird of the Seattle Storm, one of the fresh, marketable faces of the WNBA, has a bet with a radio DJ in her town that involves...I'll let Steve Kelley of the Seattle Times describe it:
Sue Bird has agreed to be spanked. In public. By sports talk host Mitch Levy. Bird has even agreed, if she loses a bet with the morning maven of misogyny, to cry, "Harder, Daddy, harder," during the spanking.[...]
The bet goes like this: If Bird has better than a two-to-one assist-to-turnover ratio at the end of the season, Levy, a broadcaster's Bobby Riggs, will buy a Storm season ticket next year. If the ratio is lower than two-to-one the spanking will begin.
Bird believes that if she can get Levy to a Storm game, she can make him a convert.
"He symbolizes that guy the league is trying to attract," she told Seattle Times staff reporter Jayda Evans. "He's talking to that guy every morning. I believe that if I can get him in a seat to attend a game, then maybe his opinion will change and he'll talk about it on the air."
Kelley does a good job explaining why this is a really bad idea on Bird's part. I tend to get less wound up about this sort of thing than perhaps I should - when in doubt, I prefer to err on the side of "all in good fun" - but this is one of those times where we should listen to all of those naysayers. The thing is that Sue Bird loses just entering into a bet like this. Now the DJ gets to talk for the rest of the season about what he gets to do to Sue Bird if she loses. He gets to take calls from his mouhtbreathing listeners who'll egg him on and probably boost his ratings in the interim. He gets to do O'Reilleyesque selective editing and microphone cutting on any detractors who call in if he so chooses. In short, he's a media-savvy attention hound smack in the center of a potential feeding frenzy, and any way you look at it he's going to come out a winner.
In return for all this, if she wins the bet (as it appears likely she will), the guy has to buy one lousy season ticket to the Seattle Storm. Even if he actually uses that ticket for himself next year, the most likely result will be that he'll generate more material for his show. When Lisa Harrison comes to town, he can talk about how she won Playboy's Sexiest WNBA Player poll. He can speculate about which players are gay (Sue Wicks, the one openly gay player in the league, retired before the 2003 season). The one thing I'm sure he won't talk about is the quality and style of the game, the athleticism of the players, the enjoyability of the games - in other words, all of the things that Sue Bird would like for him to talk about. You can bet on that (whether spanking is involved or not is up to you).
Thanks to Women's Hoops and Eric McErlain for the tip.
UPDATE: As Eric notes, Bird has backed out of this bet. Good for her.
We're back, meaning that I get to be busy unpacking, doing laundry, checking email, spending quality time with the dog, etc. Posting will be back to its usual schedule later tonight or tomorrow morning, time permitting. I see that the Texas Senate hasn't done anything too stupid in my absence, and we can all be grateful for that.
I'm off to Florida for what should be my last wedding road trip of the year. Not my last wedding, mind you - there's one in Houston in two weeks - but the last one that requires a plane ticket. I'll be disconnected during this time, so have a great weekend and please check back Monday when I return.
I'm about to take off to a wedding, so I don't really have time to say much about this, but it looks like the current redistricting strategy in the Senate is to do more or less what the House did, which is divide up urban areas and South Texas. Why this is more palatable - or less likely to violate the Voting Rights Act - than what came from Phil King is unclear to me.
Here are the various newspaper accounts:
Houston Chronicle, which had a great chart that doesn't appear online that gave the number of people who testified for and against redistricting at each of the hearings. The story does note that 89% of the 2620 people were against it.
Fort Worth Star Telegram, which has the one thing that I want to quote:
In a news conference Thursday, Dewhurst attempted to cast the debate as a referendum on President Bush's popularity in his home state."It's kind of hard to argue the fact that the majority of voters here in the state of Texas support President George W. Bush and his policies and the majority of our congressional delegation do not," Dewhurst told reporters.
When it was pointed out that at least five Texas Democrats who represent Republican districts were easily re-elected in November, when Bush's popularity at home was sky-high, Dewhurst tersely replied: "Next question?"
Good answer, Dave. Exactly what I'd expect.
Former Texas Attorney General Dan Morales has pleaded guilty to mail fraud and filing a false tax return and will serve a four-year prison sentence.
U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton said as part of the mail fraud plea, Morales admitted backdating a government contract and forging government records related to the state's tobacco lawsuit. Morales is accused of trying to funnel millions of dollars in legal fees from the $17.3 billion settlement to his friend Marc Murr, who is awaiting trial.Morales, 47, also admitted he filed a false income tax return in 1998 when he claimed taxable income of $39,734. That was the year he allegedly transferred $400,000 from his campaign funds to his personal account.
Sutton, attorney for the Western District of Texas, said Morales' plea should send a message to citizens and other public officials.
"It doesn't matter how powerful you were. Nobody is above the law," Sutton said.
The plea culminates more than four years of investigation by the FBI and Internal Revenue Service. However, Sutton would not say how the plea might affect Murr's case.
The indictments were returned in March against Morales and Murr, and both had pleaded not guilty.
Mike Ramsey, who represents Murr, said that Morales' plea could benefit his client.
"If Dan tells the truth, it's very, very good for us. Murr earned every cent he ever contracted for. I don't think there's any case left," said Ramsey, a Houston lawyer.
Ramsey said he had a meeting already scheduled with prosecutors for today.
The indictment charged that Morales and Murr fabricated and backdated a bogus contract to make it appear that Murr was entitled to 3 percent of the state's settlement, or $520 million.
Other lawyers in the case said Murr did little, if any, work on the litigation. An arbitration panel awarded those lawyers $3.3 billion in legal fees, paid by the tobacco companies, and awarded Murr only $1 million.
After then-Attorney General John Cornyn started investigating the contract, Murr waived his claim to the $1 million award.
I can't say I have a lot of sympathy for Morales, but it's still sad to see this. At least for the sake of his wife and kids, I hope he gets his act together.
Houston Police Chief C.O. "BAMF" Bradford has announced his resignation in September, saying he needs to spend more time with his pregnant wife. It's been a rough year for Bradford, and it's hard to imagine the next mayor keeping him on - both Sanchez and Berry had pledged to get rid of him - so this is just as well. I suppose his departure before the start of heavy politicking may blunt his tenure as a campaign issue, but not too much. He's just a proxy for Mayor Brown in that regard anyway, and the problems associated with his service will still be plenty fresh in people's minds.
You can mark this as the beginning of the end of the Brown Administration, a prospect that is no doubt being celebrated about now.
Two new maps wee presented in the Senate today, one by Sen. Florence Shapiro and one by Sen. Jeff Wentworth.
Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, on Wednesday said the map being considered would create 18 Republican-dominated districts; 11 Democratic and three that would be a toss-up.Austin's District 10, represented by U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, would go from 60 percent Democratic to 60 percent Republican, based on how voters cast their ballots in the 2002 statewide elections. The district currently includes only the central and eastern portions of Travis County.
In the proposed map, District 10 would stretch to the east from northwest Travis County, through Lee County and southeast toward Houston. Almost half of the population would live in Travis County.
Travis County's other current district, 21, now encompasses western Travis County and the hill country. It's considered a 71 percent Republican district and is represented by U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio. The redrawn district would stretch south from western Travis County to San Antonio.
District 25 would stretch from southeast Travis County to the Texas-Mexican border, taking in numerous counties including Caldwell.
The map was one of two presented Thursday.
State Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R- San Antonio, represents portions of southern Travis County. He presented a map that would largely leave Travis County's districts unchanged.
"I believe that every urban county that can support a full congressional district should have one and not be divided," Wentworth said.
However, Wentworth appears in the Senate minority in that view.
The Legislature is meeting in special session because many Republicans want to increase their share of the state's 32 congressional districts. The Democrats now hold a 17 to 15 majority.
Wentworth said his map probably would produce 19 Republican districts and 13 Democratis ones.
The map leaves Williamson County whole in District 31that includes Bryan-College Station. Bastrop would be split between District 31 and a Gulf Coast district now represented by U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Clute. U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio, and Paul would share Hays County. All of Caldwell County would be in Paul's District 14.
While he leaves Travis County virtually the same, Wentworth draws McLennan County north into a Fort Worth district. He would pit U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco, against U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Ennis.
Commenters on the Political State Report think that Shapiro's map violates the Voting Rights Act, while Wentworth's map is probably legal but less likely to satisfy Tom DeLay. I'm not an expert on the VRA, but I tend to agree that Wentworth's map is an underdog.
According to the Quorum Report, Dewhurst and Perry have said there will be no blocker bill in the next special session:
In a press availability this afternoon, Lt. Governor David Dewhurst laid his cards on the table.Senate protocol and tradition will be honored meaning the 2/3s rule. But he was quite clear. If the Democrats use their numbers to block redistricting during this special session, the Governor will call another special session.
In the next special session, there will be no blocker bill. Referring to the "Bullock precedent", Dewhurst said that the redistricting bill would be the first one filed next time around. Responding to a court ordered redistricting in 1992, then Lt. Governor Bob Bullock put redistricting as the first bill in sequence. That meant that a 2/3s vote was not required to bring the bill up.
It appears, and the Statesman article I linked to above implies, that there is enough support among GOP Senators for this to be a viable threat. Meanwhile, as Byron noted earlier, Democrats are making their own threats:
State Sen. Juan Chuy Hinojosa, D-McAllen, who authored the [unalterable opposition] letter, said senators opposed to redistricting include both Democrats and Republicans, and they are in constant contact with each other to discuss strategy.The situation in Austin is so tense, hand-to-hand combat could be a possibility, he said.
I think as soon as a map is voted out of committee, they (Republicans) will find they do not have a quorum on the Senate floor, Hinojosa said.
The statement implied that senators opposed to redistricting would stage a walkout, much like the one in the House during the regular session. A group of Democratic state representatives, now known as the Killer Ds, led an exodus from Austin to prevent a quorum on the House floor. As a result, redistricting legislation died in the regular session.
DPS (The Texas Department of Public Safety) no longer can arrest a legislator, Hinojosa said. We would resist arrest. They would have to handcuff us and we would use physical force to defend ourselves, because they have no authority to do that (arrest a legislator).
I think Sen. Hinojosa overstates when he says there are Republican Senators opposed to redistricting. There are clearly Republican Senators who are opposed to aspects of redistricting, namely chopping up their own counties, but I doubt any of them, even Sen. Ratliff, opposes the theoretical concept. This makes it hard for a specific plan to pass, as it's a near certainty that someone's constituents will be unhappy, but that's a much lower level of commitment than a walkout. Unless he's got Republican Senators in mind who'd walk out over the lack of a blocker bill, I've got my doubts about his assertion.
We're rapidly approaching a crossroads here. Something's got to give. I've had my moments of optimism this week, but I fear there are dark clouds rolling in. We'll know soon enough.
Bandits Use Backhoe To Steal ATM
SAN ANTONIO -- Bandits have used a backhoe to steal an automatic teller machine from a Central Texas bank.A witness called police early Wednesday after watching two men in black using the backhoe to break the machine out of a Bank of America building. The suspects fled after they were spotted.
Police spokeswoman Sandy Gutierrez said it was the third heist of its kind since January.
"Because of the similarities in these cases," she told the San Antonio Express-News in Thursday's editions, "the same suspects may be committing the ATM thefts."
Bank officials would not disclose how much money was in the stolen machine, which was taken away in a pickup truck.
"One of the suspects saw the witness and started chasing him with a gun," said Gutierrez, adding that the witness escaped unharmed.
I think the part that boggles me the most is that this was the third such robbery of its kind. You'd think the police might have some leads, since the suspect pool has got to be pretty limited. You'd also think that a backhoe tooling down the road with an ATM in its shovel might attract some attention. And it's not like you'd need to engage in a high speed chase to catch up to them. Not exactly the SAPD's greatest moment here.
Okay, not really: A woman who plans to marry a Russian cosmonaut who is currently orbiting the Earth on the International Space Station has been issued a marriage license in Fort Bend County. Close enough!
Yuri Malenchenko, a member of international space station crew since April, will still be on the job in August when he marries an Earth-bound Soviet immigrant, 26-year-old Ekaterina Dmitritv.Malenchenko, a 41-year-old Russian air force colonel, proposed to Dmitritv in December but doesn't want to wait until his return in late October or early November to seal their extraordinarily long-distance relationship.
The couple will try for a telephone linkup during a wedding ceremony on both the space station and in Clear Lake, but if that doesn't work, there's a backup plan for a wedding by proxy, which is allowed under Texas law. A familiy friend, Houston attorney Harry Noe, will be on hand at the terrestrial ceremony to stand in for the groom if needed.
Somehow, I can just picture a FOX executive reading this story and mulling how to turn it into a reality show.
Anyway, all of us here at Off the Kuff send our best wishes to the happy couple. Mazel tov!
Let's take a few minutes and talk about Howard Dean's chances in a general election matchup with President Bush in 2004. Everyone else seems to be talking about this (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and probably many other places that I'm too lazy to look for), but no one has quite addressed a couple of points that I think are important.
First, let's talk geography. A common theme among the Dean doubters is that parts of the country, especially the south, will not cotton to a Yankee like Dean. That may be so, but c'mon - the deep red South is going to be a tough nut for any Democratic candidate to crack, including the two who are from the South. The only Southern state that anyone is going to really pay attention to is Florida, anyway, and as we all know Florida is (how shall I put this?) different. More seriously, Florida is filled with retired Northerners, which makes it reasonably hospitable territory for someone who talks funny like Dean.
Secondly, so what if the South is basically unwinnable? Even counting Florida as GOP territory, the Democratic nominee can win the election by carrying the same states that Al Gore did plus any one more. That includes states like traditionally Democratic West Virginia, Ohio and Colorado, both of which will have high-profile Senate races to boost interest, Montana, which features a Republican governor whose popularity numbers make Gray Davis look like George Washington and a Democratic candidate for that office that nearly unseated Conrad Burns in 2000, and lest we forget, New Hampshire, a state whose residents ought to be reasonably comfortable with a candidate like Dean. Sure, it'd be nice to make Bush play defense, and sure, if he throws $200 million at the blue and swingy red states he'll have an effect. But let's not throw in the towel just yet because South Carolina and Alabama are Bush country.
Next, I have to question whether the conventional wisdom about the importance of geography and balance in a Presidential ticket isn't out of date. Everyone said that Clinton was nuts to pick a fellow Southern baby boomer as his VP. Everyone said that Bush was nuts to pick a fellow oilman from a deep red Western state as his VP. Both of them were thought to need a running mate who had appeal to other geographic areas to counter their own perceived weakness. Neither of those choices seemed to do them any harm. Is it maybe possible we're overvaluing where a candidate comes from these days? People move around a lot now. Are there that many people who are that suspicious of someone who's not from their neck of the woods? I'm not saying this isn't a factor at all, just that maybe it's not as big a deal as it once was.
And why are we so sure that Dean's home state is a geographic problem?. If John Judis' point is that Dean's primary appeal is to urbanites, I don't see why this is considered a limitation. 80% of Arizona's population is in Maricopa and Pima Counties, where Phonix and Tucson are. 70% of Nevadans live in Clark County, home of Las Vegas. Half of Colorado's population comes from the three counties that surround Denver plus the Colorado Springs area. Who needs the South if the West can be won?
Finally, let's not forget that the most important thing any candidate brings to the table is his or her ability to connect with voters and get them to punch the chad for them in November. Right now, Dean is doing that. He's got people excited, especially the base, which as we all know failed to turn out last year. He's got a good story line going in the press, and has donned the "straight talker" crown. Any number of these things could change between now and the election, but I'm gobsmacked at how people can look at all of this and think "electoral train wreck".
All that said, it's a long way from concluding that Dean is an electable candidate to concluding that he's the most electable one. Dean's newfound top-tier/media darling status is hazing the view of some other candidates who can make a good claim of electability. Mary Beth was impressed by John Edwards. Kris Lofgren thinks Dick Gephardt is The Man. Amy Sullivan is rooting for Wes Clark. Nathan Newman thinks we'll get John Kerry regardless. The first primary is still six months away, for crying out loud. Let's all take a good look at every candidate while we have the time so when we do choose we can feel good that we're picking the right one.
Dean supporters need to keep an open mind, too. Just because claims of Dean's unelectability can be reasonably argued away doesn't mean the issue is settled. There are legitimate concerns about Dean, such as his stance on the death penalty, his appeal to blacks and Indians, his support for non-Iraq military interventions and even his desire for a balanced federal budget. Dean supporters, and more importantly, Dean himself, need to take such concerns seriously. Ignoring such criticism, or worse being defensive about it, is a sure loser.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'm supporting the Democratic nominee in 2004, whoever that may be. If the primary were to be held right now, I'd vote for Dean as I did in the MoveOn poll. But the primary isn't being held right now. Give everyone the time and patience needed to make their case, and may the best candidate win.
"Late" in the sense that it was breaking several days ago, and I'm only just now getting around to mentioning it. I blame a combination of TS Claudette and Howell Raines, and I note that my headline is technically true.
Anyway, please welcome Pete Von Der Haar and his perfectly cromulent blog to the blogiverse. Pete's your one stop shop for all your high-end pop culture smart assery needs. Pete watches way too many bad movies and writes about them when he thinks no one is looking. Stop by and say Hi.
And welcome back Alex Whitlock, who's at a new home with some new software. Alex is on hiatus from having no lyfe, and returns to his political and cultural roots here. Plus, he has a cool black and white head shot that for reasons I can't articulate makes me think of Hunter S. Thompson. Check it out.
It's probably taken a lot longer than it should have, but I'm finding it hard to describe what's happening in the redistricting wars with a straight face. Let's recap the highlights from this week:
- Eleven Senators - ten Democrats plus Republican Bill Ratliff - hand Lt. Governor David Dewhurst a signed letter announcing their "unalterable opposition" to redistricting. This means there are now enough votes to prevent floor debate of a bill.
- Dewhurst and Governor Rick Perry drop hints of varying subtlety that they will try to find a way around the 2/3 rule, including calling another special session at which that rule will not apply.
- Ratliff warns that this would be a huge mistake and would destroy the normally collegial atmosphere of the Senate. Some Republican Senators agree with Dewhurst, others do not. Democrat Ken Armbrister, who was not one of the ten to sign the letter and who has been willing to play ball on redistricting all along, announces that he would lead a Senate walkout if Dewhurst tried to circumvent the 2/3 rule. The other Democrat, Sen. Frank Madla, finally announces that he, too, is now opposed to redistricting after realizing that nearly everyone in his district hates it. He eventually signs the letter.
- Meanwhile, Sen. Chris Harris, who had been working on maps all weekend, announces that he has two maps ready, then says the Attorney General's office found glitches in them, at which point he resigns as map-drawer and walks out of the Senate hearing. The Attorney General's office denies Harris' claim that they drew any maps. Sens. Royce West and Mario Gallegos continue their criticism of the AG's office for hiring lawyer Andy Taylor, who is defending Texans for a Republican Majority in a civil case and the Texas Association of Business in a criminal case, and suggest that the Democrats need an attorney looking out for their interests to go along with him. The AG insists that Taylor is not involved in mapmaking.
- Sen. Florence Shapiro comes out of nowhere with a map that she and 11 other Republicans drew up. No members of the redistricting committee were involved, though they did have committee member Sen. Todd Staples present it. This map was then withdrawn, with Staples announcing that he needed to rework it.
- Sen. Jeff Wentworth, who has stated that he would support suspending the rules for this specific issue, presented his bill to create a non-partisan citizen committee to handle redistricting in the future, a bill he's presented at every session since 1993. No one paid him any attention.
That's about it. In retrospect, it's hard to believe that the bill that was killed by the Democratic walkout in May would have been passed by the Senate, though something may have emerged from the eventual joint committee. It's also hard to believe that any such bill could have passed legal muster, given that no public hearings had been scheduled before the original bill made it out of the House committee. You could probably have a field day playing with alternate scenarios here.
Links and sources:
Fort Worth Star Telegram
Dallas Morning News
Austin American-Statesman
Houston Chronicle
Sen. Harris's maps
The rate at which the four major mayoral candidates are spending money, the city's econom should snap out of the doldrums any day now.
The four major candidates for Houston mayor already have raised more than $5.4 million, an indication they will obliterate spending records before the 2003 campaign ends.The money more than doubles the record-setting $2.2 million Mayor Lee Brown and his two major opponents collected during the first six months of the 2001 race.
That year, a record $8 million was spent by the time Brown beat former Councilman Orlando Sanchez in a runoff.
This year, no incumbent is in the race because Brown is term-limited.
Bill White, a lawyer and CEO of the Wedge Group, raised $2.9 million -- more than the combined total of his three major opponents -- for his campaign to introduce himself to voters and convince them that he has the business acumen to manage city finances.
White personally contributed $631,000 to his campaign.
Sanchez raised $1.2 million, State Rep. Sylvester Turner $800,000, and Councilman Michael Berry $564,000.
Tuesday was the deadline for the candidates to file campaign finance reports with the city secretary for the period ending June 30.
Houston political consultant Craig Varoga predicted that spending could reach $20 million if, as expected, no one wins a majority Nov. 4 and the race heads for a runoff.
"These campaign finance reports make Spindletop look like a dry well," said Varoga, who managed campaigns for Houston's last two mayors but is not involved this year.
The race should be particularly spirited because the prolific fund-raising indicates that all four candidates will have enough money to transmit their messages to voters, Varoga said.
"It goes to prove that this is the No. 1 mayor's race in the country this year," Varoga said. "And being mayor is still worth something despite the headaches of trying to fix a budget and downtown streets."
That's a lot of money. Not surprisingly, a number of big donors are spreading the wealth, just in case their first choice doesn't get elected. I guarantee, by the end of September you won't be able to watch TV around here without getting pelted with ads.
White, who ran ads early on to boost his name recognition, has already spent a million bucks, followed by Berry ($370,000), Sanchez ($255,000) and Turner ($182,000). I must say, given that about 95% of the signs and bumper stickers I've seen have been for White and Berry, I wonder what Sanchez and Turner have used their money on so far.
Byron has all of your redistricting news today. This thing currently has more pathos and bad acting than a telenovela, without the skimpily dressed women to compensate. They're doing this just to torture me, I'm sure of it.
Byron also found this site, which is at least as partisan and obsessive about redistricting coverage as we are. Check it out.
As you can see, I'm back up, following a snafu with my webhost. Took longer than I would have liked to get resolved, but that's not matter now. I'm back and feeling much better now. Thanks to the following for helping let people know that I hadn't abruptly quit:
Kevin Drum
Rob Humenik
Ginger Stampley
Kevin Whited
Byron LaMasters
Now to catch up. Thanks for coming back.
Now that he has everything in Texas under his control, Tom DeLay is trying to settle Iowa's hash with a "Dear Christian Friend" letter sent in conjunction with the Rev. Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition. Charles Eicher has the lowlights and a scanned copy of the letter for your perusal.
UPDATE: The Rev. Sheldon is with the Traditional Values Coalition, not the Family Values Coalition. Gotta keep those coalitions straight. Sorry about that.
AUSTIN Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said Tuesday that he expects Gov. Rick Perry will call another special legislative session to address congressional redistricting if a plan is not approved this session.Perry, speaking to reporters earlier, would not confirm that he would call lawmakers back to the Capitol to redraw congressional districts if they fail to adopt a plan, but he left the option open.
"Oh, I never rule it out," Perry said.
Dewhurst, who presides over the Senate, said Perry told him he would call another session but Dewhurst also said he believes lawmakers should solve the issue now.
This has gone beyond bad comedy. You know those nice things I said about David Dewhurst during the regular session? I take them all back. Un-freaking-believable.
UPDATE: Hints of another walkout, this time in the Senate. Quorum Report says "Sine die and come back sans blocker bill":
As the brainstorming continues about how to achieve congressional redistricting in the face of what appears to be growing resistance in the Senate, a new line of thought is emerging.As we hear it, the plan goes this way:
Finish whatever business is on the call that can be finished and sine die on Friday. The members who so choose will then be free to attend the week long National Conference of State Legislators in San Francisco.
Governor Perry will call a second special session to convene the week after NCSL. Members will return refreshed and energized.
I'll say it again: Un-freaking-believable. And check out Charles M's comment about his call to Sen. Kyle Janek's office.
Here is the letter that the Inspector General for the Department of Transportation sent to Sen. Joe Lieberman in response to his request for an investigation into the FAA's involvement in the Killer D search. I'd been unable to find a link for it when I wrote this post, but alert reader Josiah sent me the link yesterday (thanks!). I'm working my way through it and will post on it if I find anything of interest.
UPDATE: Thomas Nephew did read the report and he has some nice insights on it. Check it out.
I thought that when the trial of former HPD Captain Mark Aguirre ended in an acquittal that I wouldn't have anything more to say about the K-Mart Kiddie Roundup. Thankfully, that's not so:
Minutes after having the infamous Kmart raid wiped from his record, former Houston police Capt. Mark Aguirre said Monday that he is considering running for City Council."Essentially, I've been dealt a lot of lemons and I'm going to make some lemonade," Aguirre said on the criminal courthouse steps. "And it's going to be sweet."
But he stopped shy of making an official announcement, saying he will decide by Aug. 1.
[...]
Aguirre denied Monday that he was seeking revenge by running for office, saying, "I need a job."
He discussed his possible run for office after state District Judge Carol G. Davies granted an order to expunge his record in the Kmart case.
sniff...It's like a gift that keeps on giving. I must be the luckiest blogger in the world.
Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh will soon be calling some signals for ESPN's weekly football preview "Sunday NFL Countdown."Starting in September, Limbaugh, 52, will join the show's line-up as the "voice of the fan," delivering an opinion piece near the top of the two-hour telecast each week, the Walt Disney Co.-owned sports network said on Monday.
He also will weigh in periodically during each show with a "Rush challenge," offering a counterpoint to commentary from the program's three regular analysts -- former NFL players Steve Young, Michael Irvin and Tom Jackson.
Well, I guess that Dennis Miller on Monday Night Football thing was such a big success, they wanted to replicate it. King Kaufman has the right take on it: if appealing to nonfans is such a good idea, why not have Adam Carolla do commentary on figure skating? Better find a nonfan to replace me, guys - I won't be tuning in.
UPDATE: Eric McErlain thinks this may have been a shrewd move by ESPN. He may be right, but I'd bet that the curiosity factor gives a ratings spike in the first week or two, followed by a return to roughly normal, perhaps a bit more and perhaps a bit less. Won't matter to me, though - I won't be watching.
The reaction to Sen. Bill Ratliff's announcement that he will join 10 Democratic Senators in opposing any redistricting bill has been pretty much what you'd expect: joy from Democrats and insistence from Republicans that they ain't dead yet.
Democrats hailed Mr. Ratliff. "Once again, Senator Ratliff has demonstrated tremendous courage and character as a public servant," said Sen. Leticia Van de Putte of San Antonio, chairwoman of the Senate Democratic Caucus.The state Republican Party was quick to point out that the [two-thirds] rule has been abandoned on occasion such as when the Senate took up a state senatorial redistricting plan in 1992.
Mr. Perry and House Speaker Tom Craddick, R-Midland, meanwhile, kept pressuring Mr. Dewhurst for Senate approval of a new congressional map.
"I believe we must give the lieutenant governor the time to sort out his options on the issue for which the session was called," Mr. Perry said.
Bob Richter, a spokesman for Mr. Craddick, said the speaker "still feels like it [redistricting] can be done. He doesn't feel like it's finished."
Mr. Dewhurst said Mr. Ratliff previously told him he'd wait until the Senate Jurisprudence Committee produced a map before deciding whether to support a floor debate on redistricting.
"I think even Senator Ratliff had said several times to you all in the press that he would withhold judgment until a plan came out," Mr. Dewhurst said. "Well, no plan has come out yet. ... He's always assured me that he would wait and withhold judgment until he saw a map and that he would be flexible."
Mr. Ratliff said he had not reneged on a pledge to wait.
"I said I would consider. I did consider," Mr. Ratliff said.
Getting around the two-thirds rule can be accomplished by asking the sponsor of the blocker bill, usually the chair of the Senate Administration Committee, to withdraw that bill from the calendar. In doing so, subsequent bills can be debated without having to move ahead of the blocker bill. It's the requirement to suspend the rules and let other bills bypass the blocker bill for consideration that calls for a two-thirds vote.
As it happens, the Senate Administration Committee chair is Sen. Chris Harris, and he's on the committee that handles redistricting, the Jurisprudence Committee. He's been working on a map since Friday. However, as the Chron points out, it's now more complicated than just getting Harris to withdraw
his blocker bill:
[I]n other action Monday, a government reorganization bill sponsored by Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, received approval from the Government Organization Committee and joined the other bills on the regular order of business. Ellis is among those Democrats who signed the letter.If Ellis refused to withdraw his bill, it would become a blocker and force the two-thirds rule.
There's no way Rodney Ellis will withdraw his bill, since he's one of the signees of the "unalterably opposed" document. The Chron suggests that Dewhurst's other option is to request another special session, at which a blocker bill will not get passed. I live to regret it every time I say these words, but I just can't believe that would happen.
There's a further complication for Dewhurst. Ratliff has suggested that his stance is providing cover for other Republicans who have received strong opposition to redistricting from their constituents, and some of those Senators are balking at changing the rules to keep this horse alive:
Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, chairman of the Senate Jurisprudence Committee, which is hearing the redistricting legislation, said he is concerned about losing the two-thirds rule."That's been a strong tradition in the Senate, and it certainly would be significant if we did something that did not follow that," Duncan said.
Ratliff said he believes any redistricting plan that increases Republican representation in Congress will harm rural voters.
Ratliff also said there are other Republican senators who are being pressured to vote for a redistricting bill that their constituents oppose.
"There are many members of the Senate who feel they are going to have to fall on a sword to do this, and they are going to suffer for it from their own constituents."
Duncan as well as Sens. Troy Fraser, R-Horseshoe Bay, Kip Averitt, R-Waco, and Todd Staples, R-Palestine, have received constituent opposition to a redistricting plan passed by the Texas House last week. All have indicated they would like to vote for a Republican redistricting plan if their local problems can be solved.
The House redistricting map dilutes the power of the congressional districts that coincide with their state senate districts. In each case, the congressional district is held by a Democrat.
Fraser said it will be difficult to pass a Republican statewide redistricting plan that would be well received in his district. He said that is likely in the other districts as well. "There are numerous members that have concerns that would have to be resolved before a plan can get passed out of the Senate," Fraser said.
However, signals are still mixed on this point, so it's still unclear which direction things will go:
Meanwhile, Republican activists were digging up 11-year-old copies of the Senate Journal showing that the chamber dispensed with the 21-vote rule during a special session on redistricting under Democratic Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock. Democrats then outnumbered Republicans 23-8, but the 1992 redistricting map passed with only 18 votes.And some Republican senators were saying that the tradition is far from sacrosanct.
"I think it's an important tradition," said Sen. Jon Lindsay, R-Houston. "But this is an important issue, too. ... This is a very emotional issue. It's a different ballgame, a different ballgame altogether."
Senators have protected the 21-vote rule over the years, not so much because it helps them pass bills, but because it makes it easier to scuttle unwelcome legislation because any senator needs to find only 10 allies to derail a measure.
And the rule forces members to reach across partisan and philosophical lines to move their agendas through the chamber.
"That rule is the reason that the Texas Legislature has been known for decades as being a place where the two parties can work together," Ratliff said.
The issue remained somewhat moot late Monday because the Senate Jurisprudence Committee, which has been conducting hearings on the issue on and off for two weeks, had yet to consider any map.
"I am committed to hearing testimony and voting on a fair plan," said state Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, chairman of the panel. "We're going to listen."
Sen. Chris Harris, the Arlington Republican charged with drafting any plan that will be taken up by the panel, said his still-unfinished map is being scrutinized by lawyers and legislative experts to make sure it complies with federal law.
"In all candor, we don't know where we are at this point," Harris said.
And finally, in the Better Late Than Never department, Sen. Frank Madla has announced that he now opposes redistricting:
Madla, who for months has said he was undecided on the issue and was praying daily for guidance, said late Monday that he now opposes redistricting."Anybody with input from the district that is running 99 percent opposed, there is only one way you can vote," Madla noted.
Way to stick your neck out, big guy.
UPDATE: It's somehow fitting that the first signature on the "unalterably opposed" letter belongs to Fast Eddie Lucio:
McALLEN While South Texans slept in Monday morning, the threat of Tropical Storm Claudette now just a memory, an important document that affects life as they know it made its way through their small towns, on the passenger seat of State Sen. Juan Chuy Hinojosas Chevrolet truck.The document was a letter, drafted by Hinojosa, D-McAllen, in his law office Saturday, that informs Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst the 11 votes needed in the State Senate to block Republican-backed congressional redistricting efforts had been obtained.
The letter had already visited Brownsville on Saturday afternoon, where Sen. Eddie Lucio, D-Brownsville, and Hinojosa shared a glass of wine and a conversation about congressional redistricting.
Hinojosa gave Lucio the honor of being the first to sign, indicating to the lieutenant governor that he is voting against congressional redistricting.
Then Hinojosa picked up Lucios pen and added his signature.
Hinojosa thinks there are enough up-or-down votes to defeat redistricting right now:
Hinojosa said at least five other Republican senators are against redistricting, with a total of about 16 senators that may end up voting against the matter.We are solid hunkered down, Hinojosa said. Lucio is just as solid as can be. Theres no public support for it, over 95 percent of the public testified against it and we need to show them the Senate does listen to the people.
Stay tuned.
So now we enter that three-day long, dark tea-time of the baseball fan's soul known as the All-Star break. For approximately the 28th consecutive summer (not counting 1981, when the ASG was played immediately following the end of the strike), I will pay little if any attention to this midsummer exhibition game. It's not that I have any objections to it per se - really, the baseball All Star Game is the closest thing to a real game among the major sports - it's just that I can't bring myself to care about a game that doesn't count.
What's that you say? FOX Sports says that this time it does count? Something to do with home field advantage in the World Series? I tell you what - go ahead and watch the game, and if you see any clearly identifiable incidents of players playing harder than in previous years, I'll concede the point. I still won't care, though.
I know that baseball is doing everything that the fragile little minds of Selig and the moneychangers at FOX can think of to make this thing more "real" and "meaningful" in an attempt to boost ratings, but I can't help the feeling that All-Star games, in any sport, have outlived their need. Back in the day of no cable, Internet, or interleague play, there was a good chance you might never get to see a star player from the other league. The All-Star Game fixed that. It's long since outlived that purpose, and I think attempts to turn it into an event with Home Run Derbies and Futures Games and whatnot is just gussying up something that's obsolete. It would be OK by me if the All Star Game were played after the season, as the Pro Bowl is.
I don't think the All Star Game has needed to change. I think it was fine when it was just an exhibition of the best players of each league. There's so much makeup troweled onto it now that we've lost the natural beauty it once was. Pity, that.
UPDATE: David Pinto agrees with my assessment of the All Star Game's popularity.
Going through the Chron's archives in the wake of the sudden announcement that 11 Senators - enough to block a vote to suspend the rules - are "unalterably opposed" to redistricting, one can't help but be struck by the fact that it didn't have to be this way. Go to the 78th Lege index page and look through the stories post from each month. No redistricting headlines in January, a couple in February when Tom DeLay first brought it up, then nothing at all until mid-April when DeLay's first map surfaced. Even after that, and after Attorney General Greg Abbott ruled that the Lege was not required to take up the matter, it really wasn't until the week before the Democratic walkout that this issue came to dominate the headlines. A search of the stories that have moved off the main site and into the archives reveals more of the same.
No one outside of DeLay's office was particularly geared up for this fight at first, either. David Dewhurst said it was as welcome as a "contagious flu". Speaker Tom Craddick agreed to create a redistricting committee at DeLay's urging, and though its chair, Rep. Joe Crabb (R, Houston) said it was "very likely" they'd write a bill, Craddick said he was "unaware" of that, saying instead the committee would deal with "minor changes in state House lines and a request by Texas Chief Justice Tom Phillips to redraw judicial districts". I've reproduced the now-archived article from Feb. 10 which contains these quotes below the More link.
It's my belief that had there been more flexibility on the budget, and had the issue been discussed openly from the beginning, some kind of map would have passed. It might not have satisfied everyone, especially DeLay, but it would probably have led to at least an 18-seat GOP majority in the delegation. I believe the combination of GOP discipline in rejecting Democratic budget amendments, plus the late and rushed nature of the DeLay bill, put the steel in the Democrats' resolve.
If this is in fact the death knell for a new Congressional map, I think it's clear that Governor Perry made a huge tactical mistake in calling the special session. He'll get excoriated in the press for its ultimate wastefulness and for the poisoned atmosphere in both chambers. I believe that he and the state GOP would have been better served if at the end of the regular session they had simply heaped blame for the failure on the Democrats, then gone to work to knock off the likes of Chet Edwards, Charlie Stenholm (both of whom were elected with less than 52% in 2002) and maybe Chris Bell (who got just over 55%). It's not like we were going to schedule an election immediately following the passage of a redistricting bill, so why not wait and get your revenge the old-fashioned way? With a Presidential election in 2004 to drive GOP turnout and a sure-fire campaign issue, I don't understand the gotta-have-it-now thinking.
Instead, events have galvanized Democrats and antagonized Hispanic groups. I believe that the odds of any sitting Democratic Congressman being ousted are considerably lower now than they were before the special session was called, and lower than they would have been if this whole fiasco had never occurred. The only mitigating factor for Perry is that he himself is not up for reelection (or election to another office) until 2006. As such, other than Rep. Henry Bonilla and maybe a couple of state reps (I haven't studied the 2002 returns closely enough to give specifics yet), there's precious few targets for any Democratic retaliation. For now, anyway.
It's too early to write any obituaries yet - Dewhurst may still try to ram this through by subverting the 2/3 vote tradition - but at this point I think it's safe to say that the Republicans have done themselves no favors. How much damage they'll take is the question to ponder.
AUSTIN - U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's behind-the-scenes pressure on Texas legislators to redraw the state's congressional districts to favor more Republicans is not gaining support in the Capitol.
Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst called congressional redistricting as welcome as a "contagious flu" and did not even bother to appoint a Senate redistricting committee.
House Speaker Tom Craddick last year said he did not want to take up congressional redistricting if the issue was dead in the Senate. But when he appointed committees Jan. 30, he named a redistricting committee at the urging of DeLay, Capitol sources told the Houston Chronicle.
Rep. Joe Crabb, R-Houston, appointed to chair the committee, said then that it was "very likely" the Legislature would write a new redistricting bill. He said he hadn't spoken with DeLay.
Crabb said last week, however, that he is unaware of any contemplated legislation on congressional redistricting . He said he believes the committee will be dealing with minor changes in state House lines and a request by Texas Chief Justice Tom Phillips to redraw judicial districts.
The key argument that Democrats and some Republicans make against DeLay's push is that lawmakers do not need a partisan fight over redistricting while they also have to solve a $10 billion state budget shortfall.
"Redistricting is the most partisan matter the Legislature ever takes up," said Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio, the Senate redistricting chairman in 2001.
"We've got the toughest session this year in the last 50 years. We don't need the added and unnecessary element of redistricting thrown into the mix," he said.
But some in DeLay's camp argue that the issue is one of basic fairness and that the current districts were drawn by a federal court to protect incumbents by robbing Republicans of seats they deserve in Congress.
DeLay was not available to comment, and his office referred calls to Jim Ellis, director of DeLay's Americans for a Republican Majority, who rebutted the claim that the Legislature should focus on the budget and related issues.
"I'm not sure that is a valid argument," Ellis said. "Those incumbents who are propped up by a court map sure don't want to see those lines changed."
A three-judge federal court drew the current boundaries in 2001 when state lawmakers failed to do so. The map protected both parties' congressional incumbents while drawing two new districts to favor the election of Republicans.
Democrats now hold a 17-15 edge in the state's congressional delegation.
A congressional redistricting bill likely would have fairly easy sailing in the Texas House, where the majority shifted dramatically from the Democrats to the Republicans in last year's elections.
But such legislation would have difficulty passing in the Senate, where an affirmative vote by two-thirds of the members is required to bring a bill up for debate. That means that if all 31 senators are present, 21 must vote favorably on a bill for it to be debated.
There are 12 Democrats in the Senate, and so far, only one has indicated he might give Republicans the procedural vote they need to debate redistricting . But there also are several Republicans who might oppose any renewed redistricting debate.
That means DeLay's forces probably are two to three votes short of debating a redistricting bill in the Senate.
While no Republican target list is available, political insiders say that the GOP wants to change district lines to cause the defeat of Democratic incumbents Ralph Hall of Rockwall, Charles Stenholm of Abilene, Chet Edwards of Waco and Chris Bell of Houston.
They also want to change boundary lines for U.S. Rep. Martin Frost, D-Dallas, the state's Democratic congressional leader, hoping to make him more vulnerable to a Republican or even to a primary challenge from a Hispanic Democrat.
Ellis said the map drawn by the federal court was intended for use only in the 2002 elections.
"I went back and added up the votes, and 56.04 percent of Texans voted for a Republican for Congress, and Republicans have 47 percent of the seats. So they're out of line," Ellis said.
Democrats say Ellis' argument takes advantage of dramatic differences in turnout between Democratic areas and Republican areas. Each congressional district has the same population, about 650,000, but not all voters cast ballots.
For instance, U.S. Rep. Gene Green, D-Houston, who faced slight opposition last year, received 55,760 votes for re-election. Neighboring congressman Kevin Brady, R-The Woodlands, also was re-elected without a serious challenge, but Brady received 140,575 votes.
Democrats also note that some districts re-elected Democratic congressmen while voting Republican for Texas statewide offices. They argue that voters are knowingly splitting ballots for specific candidates.
Wentworth said the existing districts are fair.
"The people who are trying to change these lines are trying to void a selection the voters made last year," Wentworth said.
Wentworth said Republicans likely will win the districts of Democratic Reps. Hall, Stenholm and Edwards whenever those incumbents retire.
Conversely, a Democrat likely will win the South Texas seat now held by U.S. Rep. Henry Bonilla, R-San Antonio, if he retires.
. . .
CROSS-VOTING
Texas districts that elected U.S. House members from one party while favoring the other party in statewide races.
2002 vote in House race
2002 average vote in statewide races*
D-Democratic votes ..... R-Republican votes
District 17
Charles Stenholm D- Abilene
D-51 % R...67%
. . .
District 23
Henry Bonilla, R-San Antonio
R...52% D...53%
. . .
District 11
Chet Edwards, D-Waco
D...52% R...63%
. . .
District 4
Ralph Hall, D-Rockwall
D...58% R...68%
. . .
District 2
Jim Turner, D-Crockett
D...61% R...56%
District 1
Max Sandlin, D-Marshall
D...56% R...58%
. . .
District 9
Nick Lampson, D-Beaumont
D...58% R...52%
*Weighted average of general election results for all statewide contested races in the district.
. . .
Pros and cons
Texas' congressional districts were redrawn in 2001, adding two new districts to reflect population changes recorded in the 2000 U.S. census. The 32-member delegation now includes 17 Democrats and 15 Republicans. U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is pushing the Legislature to draw new districts that would favor more Republicans.
Arguments for:
The state votes Republican so the congressional delegation should have a GOP majority. Republicans won all statewide offices in the 2002 election, and 56 percent of voters favored Republican congressional candidates.
Arguments against:
Voters chose candidates they liked, including veteran Democratic incumbents. Furthermore, the Legislature faces budget challenges that should take precedence over a partisan redistricting fight.
Holy crap, David Dewhurst is holding a press conference right now amid rumors that there are enough votes in the Senate to kill redistricting.
Rumors swept the Senate floor Monday afternoon that 10 Democrats and Sen. Bill Ratliff, R-Mount Pleasant, are opposed to debating congressional redistricting. Several senators, who asked not to be identified, were the source of the speculation that the primary issue for the special session may be dying or dead.Leading up to the news conference, there were conflicting reports whether Ratliff had signed the letter or simply delivered it to Dewhurst.
"I am going to leave any comment to the lieutenant governor," Ratliff said.
Ten of the Senate's 12 Democrats signed the letter after a Democratic caucus meeting Monday morning. The only two Democrats who did not sign were Sens. Ken Armbrister, D-Victoria, and Frank Madla, D-San Antonio.
By Senate rules, it takes two thirds of the 31 senators to bring any bill up for debate. Eleven can block the bill.
Ratliff is one of several Republican senators who have voiced opposition to a House map that would produce at least 21 Republican members of congress but would split some local communities to accomplish that goal. Democrats now hold a 17 to 15 edge in the state's congressional delegation.
Sen. Gonzalo Barrientos, D-Austin, said, "I feel secure at this point that there will be 11 at least."
If 11 or more senators agree to block debate, Dewhurst will face a dilemma. He could have the Senate consider rewriting its rules to allow a simple majority 16 senators to bring up the bill for debate. However, that would break a Senate tradition that dates to the 1950s and is considered sacred by many members in both parties.
We should know soon enough. Stay tuned. Byron is on top of this as well.
UPDATE: Ratliff is officially opposed. Dewhurst is considering all options. A post is up at Polstate.
Rob Humenik and his wife Jen attended a fundraiser for Howard Dean yesterday at which Rob valiantly but unsuccessfully tried to take Governor Dean's coat. Go read for all the details and a few photos.
Raul Yzaguirre, the president of the National Council of La Raza strongly criticized President Bush for his "two years of neglect, disinterest and disrespect" towards Hispanics at their annual convention in Austin.
Yzaguirre criticized the administration's policies from health care and immigration reform to education and tax cuts characterizing the latest tax bill as "dramatically tilted toward the wealthy, excluding millions of hard-working Latino families."[...]
The leader of the nation's largest Hispanic rights organization, Yzaguirre urged Latino voters to exercise their growing political clout and hold the Bush administration accountable.
[...]
"As we gather here, the Bush administration is analyzing the Hispanic vote, studying political maps and plotting their Latino strategy," Yzaguirre said.
But, too often the plan to win the Latino vote comes down to photo opportunities, he said.
"Now, these are beautiful pictures. ... We see smiling Hispanics, big crowds, lively musicians and beaming politicians. Everything looks so, so wonderful.
"But in reality these pictures are what I call pi๑ata politics," Yzaguirre said. "You know what happens at a pi๑ata party. They blindfold you and hope you are satisfied with a few trinkets that fall to the ground."
Democrats shouldn't feel too cocky about this, though:
Yzaguirre emphasized, however, that the council is nonpartisan and said Democrats "must and will be held to the same standard I hold President Bush to today."In a speech peppered with Spanish phrases, Yzaguirre challenged Hispanics to take control of their own destiny.
"When we are thrown a bone, let's throw it back and demand a steak," he said.
"When we are overlooked, let's stand up and demand to be seen and heard. And when we are told to be patient, say 'Ya basta!' We have already waited much too long," Yzaguirre said, garnering a standing ovation.
Indeed, a leading Democratic activist had some cautionary words for her party:
"Next year, Latinos will have more political influence than ever before, certainly in the selection of the Democratic presidential nominee," said Maria Cardona, who leads the centrist New Democratic Network's "Democratas Unidos" Hispanic Project.[...]
For weeks, Cardona has been delivering an urgent message to the Democratic Party leadership and the campaigns of all nine Democrats seeking the party's 2004 presidential nomination: "The party can no longer consider Latinos a base vote."
"If we do," she said in an interview, "we'll continue to lose percentages to Republicans, and we can say goodbye to winning back the White House in 2004. We have to treat Latinos like a swing vote, because they are like any other swing vote: They are the ones who will make the difference."
Cardona's briefings have produced a flurry of Latino-related initiatives from Democratic presidential hopefuls.
And last month, at the annual conference of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, six of the nine candidates appeared at a forum, some delivering their opening statements in Spanish and others mentioning the moderator, Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, the nation's only Latino governor, as a possible vice presidential nominee.
Cardona's message to her party and its presidential candidates is rooted in a recent poll of the Hispanic electorate by Florida-based Sergio Bendixen for the New Democrat Network. Bendixen found that 34 percent of Latinos support Bush's re-election, roughly the same Latino support he got in the 2000 presidential election.
Bendixen concluded, as have other analysts, that to win re-election Bush must win at least 40 percent of the Latino vote in 2004.
Democrats, to win next year, probably must best the 72 percent of the Latino vote that Bill Clinton got in 1996. But the generic Democrat in Bendixen's polling got only 48 percent of Hispanics in a hypothetical match-up with Bush.
I suppose that means that if Bush gets between 28 and 40% of the Hispanic vote, the election could go either way. I've posted about this before, and I'm quite sure it'll come up again many times in the next 16 months.
John Kerry, who has received the endorsement of Henry Cisneros, addressed the convention yesterday and took his shots at the President.
"Last election, he promised so much to win your votes," Kerry said. "But President Bush won't be running on his rhetoric this time, he'll be running on his record."[...]
"This president is accountable for making a mockery of the words 'leave no child behind,' " Kerry said, noting that one in four Hispanic children in the United States. are without health insurance. Kerry said that, if elected, he would fight to ensure health coverage for every child.
Howard Dean is scheduled to address the convention today. That should be fun.
By the way, for those who have complained that our local daily has had historically insufficient coverage of the Hispanic community, I note that the only stories I've seen on the La Raza convention have been AP wire stories. Make of that what you will.
Hey, here's a great idea: Let's crack down on illegal street racing in Houston, and this time let's do it (this is the best part) by arresting people who are actually caught while racing illegally.
Lt. Shannon Broze, who oversees HPD's traffic enforcement, was told by Police Chief C.O. Bradford to implement the plan to deal with the street-racing problem. She wouldn't give specifics, but she said patrol officers from every patrol division in Houston were placed on Westheimer on Saturday and will be there indefinitely."Drag racing on Westheimer has been an ongoing problem that's been addressed by units here at Westside, but they're needing more help, and that's why the chief's sending more units to help them out," Broze said.
She said police are basically running high-visibility traffic enforcement. The strategy is to scare street racers and would-be racers with the threat of tickets and arrests.
"First and foremost, we're focusing on racers; second, aggressive driving; and third, any moving violations that we see," she said.
Why, that's so crazy it just might work. What will they think of next?
This week will mark the one year anniversary of this domain. Which date you want to pick to mark the occasion depends - the domain was created on July 17, the first blog post was made on July 19, and the official announcement of the cutover from Blogspot was July 20 - so I'm just going to start celebrating today and finish up at the end of the week (I'll be out of town this weekend).
Blogging has been a remarkably social activity for me, all things considered. I've gotten comments and emails from high school and college classmates who've found me online (FHC, Patrick, William, and Andrew, to name four), and I've met a reader or two at some of the political events I've attended lately. (This is one reason why I'd like to see the various political and grassroots organizations around here start blogs - I think it could help establish a connection with their supporters and colleagues. I'll have more on this idea in a later posting.) A number of my non-blogging friends are regular readers, and I know at least some members of my family come by. A lot of the satisfaction that I get out of this stems from that.
A lot of friends and (so far) one member of my family have started their own blogs. People I knew in real life before they got into blogging include:
Larry Simon
Binkley
Greg Morrow
Karin Kross
Michael Croft
Ginger Stampley
Amy Hemphill
Pete Von Der Haar
Chuck Ivy
Mike Tremoulet
Emilie Metzger
Erica Bess Duncan
Danil Suits
David Raitt
Tom Spencer
Bobby Nagle
Rick Jones
Craig Biggerstaff
I've also had the pleasure of meeting a number of local bloggers and a handful of nonlocal bloggers. I actually have a fairly long history of getting to know folks online before meeting them in real life, though in the past it's primarily been via mailing lists that I'm on. My parents still get a laugh out of my 30th birthday party, which was held at my house, where they spoke to an attendee who had come via an invitation sent to the list and was meeting me for the first time. Some of the cool people I've met as a direct result of blogging are:
Alex Whitlock
Rob Humenik
Kevin Whited
Callie
Ted Barlow
Jack Cluth
Andrew Northrup
Claudia
Brian Linse
Christine Selleck
Kevin Drum
Elaine Mesker-Garcia
Ann Salisbury
Katie Stahl
EJ
David Bigwood
Hanna
Sydney
Matt Mullenweg
Kymberlie McGuire
Kathy Ratliff
Raegen Ward
I've probably forgotten someone, and if so I apologize for the omission. That's a lot of people - more than I'd thought when I started to catalog them. How many people have other bloggers met as a result of blogging?
Next up on my Domain Anniversary Celebration List: The effect blogging has had on me.
Here's a scenario I hadn't considered from the state Senate: Pass a redistricting bill that they like, and then adjourn, leaving the House to take it or lump it:
One way out was outlined on Harvey Kronberg's Quorum Report newsletter. Kronberg reported that senators are considering sending a revised map back to the House and then promptly adjourning, in what is known at the Capitol as "sign-ee dye." (Actually, it's sine die, Latin for "without a day.") Adjourning for good would then put House members in a quandary. With senators gone, there would be no one to negotiate with, so it's either adopt it, or go home without having changed a thing.Senators supposedly have been mulling a strategy for weeks now, but the talk became louder when they adjourned for the weekend on Thursday. The ploy would be a mainline fix for political junkies, but more important, it would make a loud statement of principle. It would be a strong message that the Texas Senate won't cave in to pressure from U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who hijacked both chambers and the Governor's Mansion during the regular session to try and ram a redistricting plan down our collective throats.
The reason for adjourning is to prevent the issue from being sent to a joint House-Senate committee, where any map approved could be adopted by a simple majority vote in both chambers. As noted on the Quorum Report:
In yesterday's Senate Jurisprudence Committee hearing, attorney J. Gerald Hebert told the panel, "... a vote for suspension is a vote for the final map." That statement encapsulated the problem facing both Democrats and rural Republicans.If the Senators vote to suspend the rules and bring up a congressional redistricting map, rural Republicans and Democrats could quickly be marginalized by the floor vote and more importantly, the conference committee. After the 2/3s necessary for suspending the rules, every other juncture requires only a simple majority.
The main problem I have with this scenario is that there are a number of other items on the agenda for the special session, and at least some of them, like the various government-reorganization bills, have fairly broad support. I can't see the Senate announcing that they've approved a map, then voting to shut down without considering any other piece of legislation. It seems to me that would be a much stronger rebuke to Rick Perry than the hypothetical Senate map would be to Tom DeLay. Of course, since it was Perry who called this session, thus dumping this dead raccoon on their collective front porch, that may have some appeal. I just don't think it'd be enough.
Now, if the Senate clears the other items on the agenda first, then votes on redistricting, I could see this happening. Surely the Kip Averitts and Robert Duncans of the group have recognized that while their interests in passing a more Republican-friendly map while not carving up their own territory currently coincide, thus yielding enough votes to kill the House map in a straight up-or-down vote, a joint committee could produce a map that screws them but not others. It's a multiplayer Prisoner's Dilemma game, and I'd guess they'd be worried about losing.
We'll know soon enough, I guess. Via Civic Dialogues.
With the Senate adjourning for the weekend so various members can draw their own Congressional maps, the time is ripe for Sunday newspaper edition articles on the heartaches of being an undecided member of that chamber. Here's the Chron story, which spends about half of its ink on Sen. Frank Madla.
"I'm on the fence," Madla said last week. And, he added, he intends to stay there, at least publicly, until shortly before the Senate votes, and that may not be for another week.Calling his position "very difficult," Madla is one of at least three senators considered swing voters on a procedural, two-thirds vote requirement that will determine whether redistricting can proceed in the Senate. The others are Democrat Ken Armbrister of Victoria and Republican Bill Ratliff of Mount Pleasant.
[...]
Madla's office has received thousands of phone calls, e-mails and other communications on the redistricting issue. It received 1,200 one night last week alone. All but a handful oppose redistricting.
The 30-year legislative veteran and lifelong Democrat is unhappy that the governor has called the Legislature into special session to tackle the controversial issue.
"I'm not pleased that we're here doing redistricting. I just don't see redistricting as an issue that the people that I represent want to be discussed. It's not even on (most people's) back burner," he declared.
Madla said he also opposes -- as do many senators of both parties -- the redistricting plan passed by the House. But he said, nevertheless, that he could vote to clear the way for Senate debate. It's all about pragmatic politics, he explained.
"When you look at the makeup of the leadership in Austin right now, they're all Republicans. And I keep asking myself how can I best represent and provide for the constituency that elected me. Part of that answer is being close to the leadership," he said.
"I have no way of knowing how the leadership is going to react should I vote with the Democrats. And as such, I'm concerned that I could be jeopardizing my standing, perhaps jeopardizing my ability to be able to better represent my constituents," he added.
Madla is reluctant to discuss specifics, but there are several potential factors that may affect his decision.
For one thing, a fledgling branch of Texas A&M University in San Antonio, one of Madla's priorities, will need future, significant state funding.
The senator also remembers that Democratic leaders haven't always sided with him in previous legislative battles.
And thanks to Republican Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, Madla chairs the Senate Intergovernmental Relations Committee, an assignment important to a senator whose far-flung district includes numerous cities and counties between San Antonio and El Paso County.
Madla said he hasn't discussed redistricting with DeLay, Perry or anyone on the governor's staff and has discussed it only once with Dewhurst, the Senate's presiding officer.
Madla said Dewhurst hasn't pressured him. And he didn't want to speculate on what kind of retribution, if any, Republican leaders would seek to impose if he helped to block a redistricting bill.
"Do I worry about what the reaction will be if I decide to vote with the Democrats? It has to be a consideration. Yes, I worry," Madla said.
He said he would be "very, very surprised if the lieutenant governor would do anything in the future to try to hurt my political influence."
But asked about the possibility of retribution from Perry, he replied, "I'm not sure."
Madla said he hasn't had a Democratic or Republican opponent since first winning election to the Senate 10 years ago, after serving 20 years in the House.
He indicated he plans to seek re-election when his term ends in 2006 and suspects he will have a Democratic primary opponent if he sides with the Republicans now.
"That doesn't worry me," he said.
You know, I'm finding it really hard to have any sympathy for Madla. For one thing, his will-I-or-won't-I act has been the best thing to ever happen to him in terms of publicity. I can understand him trying to shake down the Governor for his pet issues, but please don't make it like it's something purer than that. My gag reflex is a lot more sensitive these days, you know?
If all those cards and letters from his constituents aren't enough to influence Madla's decision, maybe this will:
Friday in Fort Stockton, the Tejano Democrats of Texas called on Madla to oppose any form of redistricting, saying it will segregate Hispanics and confine Latino political power to urban barrios and the border."DeLay's map is racist because it proposes to resegregate Texas politics," said Juan Maldonado, the group's chair. "Sen. Madla is a good guy, but he's just repeatedly said that he's not made up his mind. This is so important that if he hasn't made up his mind, we want to help him."
Probably not. I'm sure Madla figures that 2006 is a long way off, and it'll be hard to maintain enough outrage to fuel a successful primary challenge by then.
If you still haven't made up your mind for some reason and you live in Austin, you can tune in to KLRU, your PBS station, today and this coming Friday for "Texas Legislature - Reform or Revolution, Part II", which "focuses on redistricting, which is the main item on the special legislature's agenda". If anyone does watch this, please drop me a note and let me know what you thought of it.
Legendary sportswriter and broadcaster Dan Cook, who celebrated his 50th anniversary at the San Antonio Express News last August, has announced his retirement after 57 years in the business. They don't make 'em like Cook any more. Enjoy the retirement, Dan. You will be missed.
The National Council of La Raza is holding its annual convention in Austin this weekend, and up to 20,000 attendees are expected. They've got some pretty high-profile speakers lined up to address them:
Latino leaders and activists will attend workshops and seminars and hear speakers, including the president of Spain, Don Jos้ Marํa Aznar; Democratic presidential candidates Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean; New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson; U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas; and U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, among others.
Must be a good time for conventions, though why they're picking such hot weather sites as Austin and Miami, where the NAACP is holding its 94th annual convention starting on Sunday, is a bit of a mystery to me. FYI, Kerry and Dean will be among the participants at a candidates' forum there on Monday.
Enron's bankruptcy reorganization plan has been completed and filed. This is pretty much all you need to know:
Two years ago, Enron claimed $67 billion in assets. Today, it has at least $67 billion in debt.[...]
Creditors of parent company Enron Corp. will see a return of 14.4 cents on the dollar on their claims. Creditors of Enron North America, which owned the commodity trading business, will receive 18.3 cents on the dollar.
[...]
Shareholders get nothing in the plan. The fate of former employees is less clear.
There was a time when it seemed like everyone I knew worked for Enron or spoke wistfully about wanting to work for Enron. What a gigantic, monumental, tragic waste.
Missed this yesterday:
AUSTIN -- Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick overstepped his authority by dispatching state troopers to search for Democratic state representatives who bolted in May to kill a redistricting bill, a state district judge ruled Thursday.State District Judge Charles Campbell ruled that a state government code defining the role and limits of Texas Department of Public Safety officers superseded a House rule employed by Craddick to hunt down the legislators.
[...]
"Based on this judge's ruling, what (Craddick) did was illegal," said state Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth, who sought a court ruling on whether it was legal for state troopers to be used in the search for the "Killer D's."
"Basically what the judge is saying is exactly what the Killer D's had been saying all along -- the (DPS) needs to be chasing criminals and not doing the political work of the speaker," said Burnam, one of the Democrats who went to Ardmore.
[...]
In his ruling, Campbell, a former Democratic Texas Court of Criminal Appeals justice, said Craddick relied on a House rule that allows for the return of absent lawmakers, including arrests, by "the sergeant-at-arms or an officer appointed by the sergeant-at-arms for that purpose."
But Campbell said that reliance on that rule to involve DPS troopers was "unfounded" because it was superseded by a section of the state Government Code that "defines, and therefore limits, the role of DPS" to law enforcement and crime prevention.
Although the ruling appears to limit legislative leaders' ability to hunt for lawmakers who break quorum, it was not immediately clear Thursday night whether Campbell's ruling would have any practical effect on the ongoing redistricting fight.
I'm not actually sure that I like this ruling. The problems I had with the hunt for the Killer D's was not the use of DPS per se, but the way DPS went about conducting its search. In particular, I take issue with their attempts to call in federal agencies like Homeland Security, regardless of whether they represented their reasons to DHS accurately or not, and with the zealousness that they displayed in questioning some of the lawmakers' families. I believe some limits need to be clearly set, and that those limits need to be stricter than the limits of a criminal investigation, but I don't have any quarrel with the idea of using DPS to try and locate wayward lawmakers or to escort them to the Capital once they've been find.
Speaking of the feds, Congressional Republicans have turned down a request by Democrats for information regarding which federal agencies were involved in the hunt for the Killer D's.
Democrats want to know whether federal agencies helped chase down more than 50 Texas Democratic legislators who left the state for four days in May to kill a Republican-sponsored congressional redistricting bill.Republicans didn't outright reject the information request sponsored by Rep. Gene Green, D-Houston. Instead, the House Judiciary Committee voted 19-15 on party lines to approve the measure "adversely," meaning its passage came with the Republicans' clear disapproval and has little chance of being debated by the full House.
This is really getting silly. With DHS claiming that it acted in good faith, and with a Travis County grand jury clearing DPS of wrongdoing in destroying its records of the search, the odds at this point of a smoking gun turning up are pretty damn slim. Why continue being obstructive? It just feeds the perception that there must be something worth covering up.
UPDATE: Did I speak too soon? The FAA has just announced the results of its internal investigation, and guess what: Twelve of its employees knew they were aiding a partisan inquiry.
Federal Aviation Administration employees knew they were involved in a partisan matter when they helped House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and other officials search for runaway Democratic Texas legislators in May, the Transportation Department concluded in a report released Friday.The report said 13 FAA personnel, including air traffic controllers in Fort Worth, participated May 12 in an effort to track a plane belonging to former state House Speaker Pete Laney, D-Hale Center. The report stated that those controllers knew they were looking for a politician involved in a partisan battle.
[...]
Democrats have complained that DPS was heavy-handed in its search for the runaways and that Craddick, Gov. Rick Perry and DeLay, R-Sugar Land, improperly sought federal agency assistance in getting the legislators back to the Capitol. By the night of May 12, most had turned up in Ardmore, Okla., outside DPS jurisdiction.
The report on the FAA, written by the Transportation Department's Office of Inspector General, was sent to Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., one of the Washington Democrats who has been pushing for federal investigations into the matter.Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta called for an internal inquiry shortly after learning that DeLay's staff got information on Laney's plane from the FAA and passed the information on to Texas officials.
Mineta said through a spokesman Friday that he would quickly pursue policy changes to avoid such incidents in the future. "The secretary and the FAA administrator concur with the findings of the inspector general's report," said Transportation spokesman Lenny Alcivar. "At the secretary's direction, the department has already taken a series of steps that address the issues identified in the report as areas for improvement."
The measures include clearer internal guidelines for processing flight information requests from government officials and law enforcement agencies, he said.
According to the report, the FAA's chief congressional liaison officer, David Balloff, worked with DeLay's staff to track down Laney's plane but did not ask the purpose of the inquiry.
Balloff said he was unaware he was getting involved in a politically charged manhunt until he read newspaper reports the next day. He told the inspector general's office that he felt he had been "used" by DeLay's office.
But the report said that Balloff initially was evasive when superiors asked him about his work with DeLay, and didn't detail it until more than a week later.
Okay, then. Maybe we do need to know everything about everyone who was involved in this. Maybe there is something there for the Republicans to cover up.
As for the FAA report itself, what's the bottom line?
Rep. Martin Frost -- a Dallas Democrat who might be forced from office under some of the redistricting plans being pushed by DeLay and other Republicans -- called the report "a damning indictment of Tom DeLay for treating the FAA as an arm of the Republican Party."DeLay spokesman Jonathan Grella said the Transportation Department's report proves that the majority leader did nothing wrong.
"The report confirms what we've said for weeks," Grella said. "Our office inquired as to the location of some wanted legislators, which was public information. Accusations of improper activity are as false today as when the Democrats first made them."
The Transportation Department's report points out that at least some of the information sought on Laney's plane could have been obtained through commercial Internet sites.
Some, apparently, but not all. It'd be nice to know what non-public data was given to DeLay. I don't see a link to the report itself on the DOT's news page, so whether the non-public data that DeLay received from the FAA was relevant and useful to his request remains a mystery to me.
UPDATE: The state will appeal this ruling.
State Attorney General Greg Abbott on Friday said Campbell's ruling is inconsistent with state law and that Campbell did not get input from the state before issuing the ruling.[...]
Abbott said the state constitution gives the House powers to enact rules to govern its work and gives the DPS power to enforce state law.
I think Abbott has a good argument here, and won't be surprised if his appeal is granted.
UPDATE: Here is the official DOT Inspector General report for your perusal. Thanks to Josiah for sending me the link.
The House passed a boatload of bills that would give the Governor's office more power over agency heads as part of an effort to reorganize state government, and rejected a bill that would have allowed budget drafts to be kept secret.
House Bill 54 stemmed from Perry's decision to abandon his first attempt at writing a budget last session and instead submit one to the Legislature full of zeroes, telling lawmakers to start from scratch. The tactic was prompted by state Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn's announcement that revenue estimates would be much lower than anticipated.Though Perry argued that the preliminary budgetary efforts were "working papers," Texas Attorney General Gregg Abbott ruled they must be made available to the public.
State Rep. David Swinford, R-Amarillo, the bill's author, had HB 54 tabled after mounting pressure from opponents.
"The news media really gets real persnickety about anything being closed, so they just start beating the living heck out of everybody," Swinford said. "There were a lot of our members that said, `You're right but we really don't want to take the beating,' so the intimidation factor of the news media worked, so they all ought to go celebrate."
Swinford said he will not bring the bill up for reconsideration unless legislators request a vote on it.
The House, however, did give final approval on other measures that either broadened the governor's powers or reorganized state government.
Among them was House Bill 53, also authored by Swinford, which allows the governor to designate the presiding officer of boards that govern state agencies.
Currently, about 55 percent of all presiding officers are appointed by the governor. Swinford said the bill brings uniformity to the appointment process.
The authority, however, does not extend to agencies or entities that advise or report to a state agency headed by a statewide-elected official. The bill also does not apply to university systems, river authorities or junior college districts.
I'm OK with HB 53, and I'm thrilled that HB 54 died the grisly death it deserved. Here's a reminder of what we now know about Perry's budgetmaking decisions, thanks to the requirement that his notes be made public:
Earlier this year, Mr. Perry chose not to submit a recommended state budget but instead delivered a zero-based budget proposal. He said lawmakers should start from scratch.Critics said the governor was abdicating his responsibility to outline his budget priorities and sought release of the papers on a specific budget plan that his office had been working on.
For example, release of the papers at the attorney general's direction showed that the governor's staff had been considering boosting education spending but making cuts in health programs such as an HIV-prevention program.
So at least one good thing has come out of this stoopid special session.
One other thing the House did:
The House also approved a bill that places the Office of State-Federal Relations under the governor's office to improve the state's chances of getting more federal dollars.State Rep. Carter Casteel, R-New Braunfels, said the state ranks 37th in gaining federal funding.
"If the governor can, through this office, maximize the amount of federal dollars, we're all winners," Casteel said.
The OSFR is the office that the state Senate threatened to close down in May for being a bunch of do-nothings. According to the Statesman, what this bill actually does is abolish the OSFR and move its responibilities to the Governor's office. I'm not sure if this solves the problems of the OSFR, which included being "forced" to hire a Tom DeLay crony at $15,000 a month, but I'll wait and see what the Senate has to say before I draw any conclusions.
Jerry Springer will file papers today to run for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by George Voinovich. He'll announce in the next 30 days or so if he actually is running.
I hope he does run. I was quite impressed with what he said in his interview on Polstate. I think he'll bring a lot of energy to the campaign, he'll be unafraid to attack President Bush, and he might even make Ohio competitive for the Democratic Presidential nominee thanks to all of the "slack-jawed yokels, hicks, weirdos, pervs, and whatnot" who will hopefully turn out for him. (The CNN article identifies the speaker of that charming line as Jonah Goldberg, by the way. Takes one to know one, Jonah.)
Here's the announcement on Jerry's campaign weblog. Run, Jerry, run!
That's the picture I was looking for on Monday. The caption reads
Democratic supporters in the state House gallery donned white socks as hand puppets to mock Rep. Phil King, R-Weatherford, as he debated his redistricting plan Monday. Every time King spoke, the little white mouths flapped.
Priceless.
UPDATE: Damn. One link from Calpundit has been worth about a thousand referrals today. Even without the addition of Google traffic in Sitemeter, this has been my best day by far. With this, plus the Google referrals, plus the spike I'd already been getting this week before all that, it's gonna look like I'm gaming the traffic rankings (I'm up from #99 to #84 today, and will surely climb higher through the weekend). If nothing else, this is a clear example of why Sitemeter's seven day average is not the best measuring stick, just the best one we happen to have.
The Senate Jurisprudence Committee, which is handling bills on redistricting, has adjourned until Monday and will not vote until Tuesday at the earliest amid concerns about lawyer Andy Taylor, rural representation, and the role of the House in crafting any maps. This is a long post, so I'm going to put it under the More link. Click on if you're interested.
From the Dallas Morning News, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst has reassured Senators that there will be no bait-and-switch:
Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst tried to reassure senators who fear that if they move forward with redistricting, they'll yield control of the outcome to GOP partisans in the House as eight rural state representatives who are Democrats warned will happen."I believe that the House ... will be appreciative of our work and that we'll end up with a final bill that the Senate can be proud of," Mr. Dewhurst said.
The Republican lieutenant governor said he spoke to Speaker Tom Craddick, R-Midland, about redistricting for 90 minutes Wednesday. "The speaker indicated he would do what he could to work with us," Mr. Dewhurst said.
A spokesman for Mr. Craddick confirmed the speaker pledged to cooperate.
Not everyone feels reassured, and for the first time there are indications that redistricting might die even before there's a vote to suspend the rules and let a bill come to the floor.
But Democratic and some Republican lawmakers expressed anxiety that a map resembling one the House approved early Tuesday may resurface in the closing days of the special session, in a House-Senate conference committee.Sen. Chris Harris of Arlington, the chief mapmaker for Senate Republicans, said if that happens, he will help stall any redistricting bill so that it doesn't pass during the session.
"If it gets to the point where I am not comfortable with that map, I have no problem being in 'lock down' until two years from now," Mr. Harris said. "I don't want something jammed down my throat."
Pressure from rural areas has caused some Republican Senators to equivocate about a new Congressional map.
In West Texas, the Lubbock Chamber of Commerce, the Plains Cotton Growers and Lubbock Mayor Marc McDougal, a former Lubbock County GOP chairman, have denounced the House plan because it would pair veteran U.S. Rep. Charlie Stenholm, D-Abilene, and freshman Rep. Randy Neugebauer, R-Lubbock, in the 19th District.Mr. Stenholm is the ranking Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee. Mr. Neugebauer also sits on the panel. Regional farm interests fear losing clout if they lose one of their representatives in Congress.
In addition, some Republicans worry that the well-known Mr. Stenholm might beat Mr. Neugebauer. That might reverse the results of last month's special election to replace U.S. Rep. Larry Combest, R-Lubbock, because Mike Conaway, a Midland Republican whom Mr. Neugebauer beat, could win in the redrawn, Midland-anchored 11th District.
"I see it as a change ... that we need to look at closely," said Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, the chairman of the Senate Jurisprudence Committee, which is handling bills on redistricting. "I have concerns."
Some more detail on Sen. Duncan and another wavering Republican, Sen. Kip Averitt, from the Houston Chronicle:
Thursday, rural Democratic senators asked rural Republicans to join them in blocking redistricting in the Jurisprudence Committee. The panel consists of three Democrats and four Republicans."All it takes is one Republican vote on the Senate Jurisprudence Committee and the bill is dead for the special session," said Rep. John Mabry, D-Waco.
During committee public hearings in Waco and Lubbock, senators said they heard substantial public opposition to redistricting from Democrats and Republicans alike.
Duncan said he is feeling pressure in his district to vote against redistricting, but said, "It's premature to predict what will or will not come out of committee."
Sen. Kip Averitt, R-Waco, said he is opposed to the House plan because it divides his home territory into two congressional districts, but he said he still would like to see a redistricting plan pass.
"I'm all for sending Republican reinforcements to President Bush, but not at the expense of Central Texas," Averitt said.
The committee approved a motion by Sen. Mario Gallegos, D-Houston, to defer any vote on a redistricting map until at least noon Tuesday.
Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst told reporters he would consider the redistricting battle finished if the Jurisprudence Committee fails to report a map to the full Senate. As presiding officer of the Senate, Dewhurst would have the power to revive consideration of a bill that died in committee if he chose to.
At this point, I'd say that the pressure is on to get a map by Monday that the likes of Duncan, Averitt, and Harris can support. If someone can draw such a map, then it will be approved by the committee and will face the 2/3 majority hurdle for floor debate. If not, I think it might actually get killed in committee. I suspect the probability of that happening is low, but not miniscule. In the end, it'll be a question of whether they're more reluctant to piss off their party or their constituents. It's going to be a long weekend for these guys, and not in the good way.
Meanwhile, there's more grumbling about lawyer Andy Taylor:
"I would like to make sure the Democrats have the ability to have someone present as the counsel for the state to offset any potential taint," Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas told the Senate Jurisprudence Committee.Sen. Chris Harris, R-Arlington, who is drafting a congressional redistricting map for consideration by the Senate, said he will not rely on any advice from the lawyer in question, Andy Taylor of Houston. Harris said he will take advice only from lawyers hired by the committee.
[...]
West said he has deep concerns about Taylor's dual roles.
"I don't know if they are legal conflicts or ethical conflicts, but they sure are political conflicts," West said. "The question is whether Mr. Taylor's conflict is of such great magnitude that he should be removed."
Jurisprudence Committee Chairman Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, told West he did not want to consider making such a recommendation to Abbott until the committee had gathered more information.
Duncan said Taylor had offered him unsolicited advice on how to conduct public redistricting hearings. But Duncan said he relied on committee-hired lawyers for making his decisions.
"They're loyalty is to the committee," Duncan said.
The San Antonio Express-News lays out the grounds for legal challenges if a map eventually passes:
The [Senate] redistricting committee, fresh off public hearings around the state, heard from legal experts who outlined the challenges the Legislature may face if a successful redistricting bill is challenged in court.Gerry Hebert, an attorney who represents Texas congressional Democrats, said he found that at least 36 procedural irregularities occurred during House redistricting hearings last month.
The allegations of irregularities include holding a hearing without a quorum, failure to have the entire committee present at the hearings and failure to appoint ethnic minority representatives to chair the subcommittees.
"The court will look at the legislative process as a whole," Hebert said.
The Austin American-Statesman has more on the complaints of rural representatives, who think they're in danger of being shafted by the suburbs:
[R]ural lawmakers feel like they are being run over unnecessarily. State Rep. Robby Cook, D-Eagle Lake, said the House-approved map leaves rural folks like his constituents "at the mercy of big cities and suburbs."Rural lawmakers fear things like thirsty suburbs using political clout to get at rural water supplies.
Rep. John Mabry Jr., D-Waco, whose district includes rural parts of McLennan County, despises what the House map does to rural Texas. He has some hope senators will draw a more rural-friendly version.
"What you're seeing here is a classic game of good cop, bad cop," Mabry said. "And rural Texas is the innocent suspect who is in the back room getting beaten up."
King said it's tough to draw East Texas districts that don't include suburbanites, a fact reflected in several proposed East Texas districts included in the House-approved map. King notes that some current districts mix suburban and rural Texans.
The proposed District 1, for example, would include all or parts of 13 East Texas counties that most people probably would consider nonmetropolitan. The plan would force Democratic U.S. Reps. Max Sandlin of Marshall and Jim Turner of Crockett to run against each other unless one of them shifted to another district.
The district would be dominated by residents of Gregg (containing Longview and Kilgore), Harrison (containing Marshall) and Smith counties, which would have 53.4 percent of the population and are officially classified as metropolitan counties.
Smith County (county seat, Tyler) would have 27 percent of the population.
"I don't consider any of them rural," Telford said of the East Texas districts in the proposed map.
It's kind of jarring to see talk of Republicans diluting rural representation, since nationally the rural vote tends to be Republican. Texas still has a lot of throwback Democrats in these areas, though, and its suburbs are heavily Republican right now. Questions about the mapmakers' motives aside, though, the demographic trends are clear: the rural areas are declining in population while the suburbs are growing. Sooner or later, the districts really ought to reflect that.
Finally, from the Waco Tribune, economic issues were cited in the arguments against redistricting at the final Senate hearing:
Jerry Iverson, who manages the L-3 Communications plant in Waco, said during a Texas Senate hearing at Baylor University Wednesday that L-3 "is not here to tell the Texas Legislature what to do" about redistricting.But he also said the 11th Congressional District that includes Waco and is represented by U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards "benefits the local community and benefits us."
[...]
Most of those speaking Wednesday opposed redistricting in general and blasted the proposed House map that splits McLennan County in half, putting West Waco, Woodway, Hewitt and McGregor into District 17, which would be based in Bell and Coryell counties.
South, Central and East Waco would become part of the new District 31 under the plan.
Iverson told the committee he does not favor the House plan which, besides splitting McLennan County into two congressional districts, would place the home of Edwards into a district based in North Austin.
The Waco area would suffer if it did not have a "focused congressional district that helps us focus on economic development," Iverson said.
L-3 modifies military and commercial airplanes and employs nearly 1,600 at its plant on the Texas State Technical College airport. This week the plant learned it would get an additional $30.3 million for aircraft modifications next year under the defense appropriation bill the U.S. House passed Tuesday.
Edwards pushed for the funding amendment.
McLennan County Commissioner Joe Mashek said the county would lose its identity and clout under the controversial Texas House proposal.
"Our largest employer, L-3, has received $800 million in government contracts the last eight years, and I think that's because we have a congressman (Edwards) who lives in McLennan County," Mashek said. "He sees to it that McLennan and surrounding counties get what they need."
That's it for this week. Tune in next time for more exciting develoments on As the Map Turns.
Am I the only person who doesn't hate the Houston Rockets' new logo? Kevin, Jack, and Larry all heap scorn on it.
I'm not saying it's a thing of beauty, just that it's an improvement over the cartoon character rocket-ship-with-teeth that they've been using, which admittedly isn't saying much. Still, I'm willing to cut them some slack until I see the actual uniform. In the meantime, here's a tip for Les Alexander: No one in Houston will complain if you go back to the pre-1995 uniforms and logos. We'll just pretend everything that came after it never happened. We promise.
UPDATE: For comparison purposes, here are the Rockets' uniforms throughout their history. I'll take the ones Hakeem and Clyde are wearing, thanks very much. And let's face it: the logo could be worse:
That was their logo from 1971-1972. Can't imagine why they didn't keep it longer than that.
Nothing much new to report today - the Senate is still busy preparing at least three maps, and according to Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, they probably won't have anything until next week. It's beginning to become possible that the clock could be a factor here. Not only is there the matter of the "Death Star" government reorganization bill and House Bill 54 (which lets the Governor keep budget drafts secret) to consider - Hope has praise for the former and jeers for the latter; her permalinks are screwy, so scroll down to "HB 54 Stinks" and "More Power To Ya" - there's also a national conference of state legislators July 21-25 in San Francisco which quite a few of our best and brightest have signed up for. I'm not saying they're under pressure yet, but I daresay this has taken longer than Governor Goodhair first thought it would.
The news today is about a lawyer named Andy Taylor, who is currently representing Texans for a Republican Majority (TRM) and the Texas Association of Business (TAB) in both civil and criminal suits stemming from last year's election and who has been tapped by the Attorney General to represent the state when the inevitable anti-redistricting lawsuits are filed. Dave McNeeley outlines Taylor's history, while the Chron profiles him, as two amendments to the House redistricting bill that would have limited his involvement failed on party-line votes.
I'm not going to spend too much time on this, because I can't quite work up a froth over it. Yeah, it's awfully incestuous, and borderline sleazy, but I can't see a conflict of interest with what's been presented so far. Taylor's in the right place at the right time to get on this particular gravy train, and that's just the way it goes sometimes. If there's any justice, the Senate will fail to pass a map so there'll be no lawsuit for him to defend against at four hundred clams an hour.
UPDATE: A fellow named Quancuvo left an interesting comment about the cost of redistricting and the special session. His estimate if a bill goes through: $10 million. Something to think about, no?
Remember how mayoral candidate Michael "Boy Wonder" Berry and his henchman Allen Blakemore announced that they had a silver bullet to aim against Orlando "Steel Blue Eyes" Sanchez in the form of a Sanchez supporter who was delinquent on his taxes? Remember how the very next day one of Berry's key backers was revealed to have had the same problem? Well, the cosmos isn't finished giving Berry his payback, and this time it's personal:
In May, Berry's political handlers blasted rival candidate Orlando Sanchez as "irresponsible" for holding a fund-raiser at the home of someone who owed back taxes.As it turns out, Berry and his wife, Nandita, owed the Houston Independent School District $2,996.83 for taxes due Jan. 31 on their residence on lower Westheimer.
"That account is delinquent for 2002," said HISD spokeswoman Adriana Villarreal.
Berry, a first-term councilman, said he and his wife thought they had paid their HISD bill earlier this year.
Upon learning they had not, Berry said, "we sent somebody over to pay it." He said his wife usually handles the tax bills.
HISD records show the original tax bill of $2,116.41 had accrued $880.42 in late penalties.
Oopsie. Well, at least Berry stood up like a man about it...sort of:
"Obviously, taxes need to be paid and I take full responsibility," Berry said. "I'm a public official and I know that people investigate every inch of my life."Nandy made an oversight and Nandy paid it."
Whatever. This has been fun and all, but can we get back to talking about stuff that matters? I'm bored now. Thanks.
Sylvester Turner made the official announcement of his candidacy yesterday, so barring any late surprises or other obscure candidates the field is now set. I hope this means that someone will publish a poll soon - I'm dying to know how things are shaking out right now.
So yesterday, when I pointed to the new Blog Traffic Ranking at TTLB, I noted that I hardly got any Sitemeter referrals from search engines, even though I got tons of them on my old Blogspot blog. This led Prof. Cooper to point out to me that I didn't have the Sitemeter code on any of my archive pages. I went ahead and added it, and boom! Tons of search engine referrals, which combined to add 150-200 hits to stats yesterday. (And yes, to answer my own question, that appears to be new Sitemeter-counted traffic, not merely the conversion of "unknown" referrals to something identifiable.) Combine that with a recent spike that saw my numbers climb above 400 before any Google traffic was counted, plus the seven-day-average nature of Sitemeter, and the end result is that I'm #99 on Bear's list. Woo hoo!
I had no idea that putting the Sitemeter code on my archive pages would have that big an effect. My old Blogspot blog gets maybe 20 search engine hits a day, but of course this blog has nearly a year's more stuff, and it's updated daily. In a way, I miss my fairly clean-looking Sitemeter reports. I know that the boost I just gave myself is artificial - let's face it, maybe one Google searcher out of 100 stays long enough to look at anything beyond what they've found - but if everyone else is doing it, I ought to be allowed the same basis for comparison. Besides, now that I've rebuilt all of my archives I'm not going to go back and remove the code, but I am glad to know approximately what percentage of my traffic is real people.
This also explains why the counter that you see, which is based on CGI code provided by my web host, is about 8000 hits higher than what Sitemeter says. A little bit of that is due to the brief lag time between when I set this page up and when I officially announced it on my Blogspot site, but most of it, I now assume, is search engine referrals. Nice to finally realize that.
Time for a little tour of the editorial pages. The Chron says "Enough already" and slams most of the main participants, especially Governor Goodhair:
Gov. Rick Perry bears ultimate responsibility for pointlessly prolonging the agony of the redistricting battle in a special session.Perry might not care that editorials in most of the state's major papers oppose redistricting. He might not care that most of the voters who attended public hearings on redistricting spoke vehemently against it. But he should have some regard for his own honor and credentials as a leader who puts the good of the state above the whim of a Washington powerbroker.
Perry, like other state leaders of both parties, acknowledged before the start of the regular session that Texas had more crucial needs than redistricting. Many of those needs, such as school finance reform, have not been met. Perry should not have wasted the Legislature's time and the taxpayers' money on a divisive issue that offers benefits to few and harm to many.
The Star-Telegram doesn't go quite as far as the Chron (and how often do you hear that?), but they're on the same page:
This plan moves on to the Senate, where it can only be hoped that the grown-ups will see it for what it is -- pure politics -- and stop wasting their time and the people's money on this unnecessary effort.
The Waco Trib fears a bait and switch:
The Senate map could be very much like the one that the House Democrats went to Oklahoma in May to block by preventing a quorum.That map would have made McLennan County a minor appendage of a district in which the major voting clout would be in Greater Fort Worth. Other options now would be to marginalize an intact McLennan County in a district that contains the Dallas or Austin suburbs, or even Greater San Antonio.
The Corpus Christi Caller-Times says gerrymandering is so last decade:
Some will say, correctly, that if the situation were reversed (as it was for decades, when Texas was solidly Democratic), Democrats would be working just as hard to ensure their pre-eminence.Fair enough. But in this presumably enlightened age, the heart of the once-a-decade redistricting process is, or should be, the notion of one man, one vote: District boundaries should reflect the composition of the populace as a whole.
The Dallas Morning News stumps for a nonpartisan panel to draw lines every ten years, noting that Sen. Jeff Wentworth (R, San Antonio) has proposed this before and is proposing it again:
The San Antonio Republican wants his colleagues to create an independent redistricting panel. Republicans would name four members to the body, and Democrats would name four. Those eight Texans would then select the all-important ninth member. Together, the group would draw the lines for Texas' political boundaries in 2011 and every 10 years thereafter.This idea stands out for several reasons, but particularly because it would generate more competitive elections. An independent panel would have the gumption to draw lines that reflect real communities of interest and encourage real political contests not just partisan slam dunks.
Texans would then see candidates working hard for every vote, not just for the Republicans or Democrats in their district. That's healthy for democracy.
The Austin American-Statesman is on board with this:
A sensible way to redistrict is to turn the matter over to a bipartisan committee, as state Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio, has proposed. That would ensure a degree of fairness to both parties, a focus on communities of interest and lively elections.
Earlier in that same editorial, the author notes that "One expert has predicted that the GOP plan could result in only minority Democrats in the Texas delegation". What they didn't go on to say is that this is more or less the basic idea, at least in the world according to Grover Norquist:
The GOP can live with urban liberals such as [Rep. Maxine] Waters, Norquist said; it's moderates such as [Rep. Charlie] Stenholm who are its prime targets. If the Texas redistricting plan is adopted, Norquist said, "it is exactly the Stenholms of the world who will disappear, ... the moderate Democrats. They will go so that no Texan need grow up thinking that being a Democrat is acceptable behavior."
Elsewhere in the Statesman, a former reporter who attended one of the public hearings noted that those who held the hearings were not very responsive to those who testified.
At 3:30 a.m. Wednesday, nearly eight hours into a congressional redistricting hearing, Lenox Waciuma Wanjohi elicited a newsworthy answer from State Rep. Phil King, R-Weatherford, the architect of the map designed to get more Republicans elected to Congress.Wanjohi appreciated King's "refreshing candor" in saying that electing Republicans was the goal, then said, "Normal campaigns have market checks -- to get elected one has to get votes and donations. But this campaign to get Republicans elected is being paid for by public money." The cost to Texans of the special session has been pegged at $1.7 million, and many observers foresee millions more in court costs incurred by challenges.
"Is there a point when you, Mr. King, would say that this campaign costs too much, and it can wait until 2011?"
"No!" King replied vehemently.
Wanjohi was called to the podium earlier, but deferred until King returned to the hearing room. When King was present, he worked at his laptop computer rather than paying undivided attention to the hundreds of people who arrived for the hearing at 2 p.m. Tuesday only to find it postponed for five hours. At 7 p.m. so many people came that another hour and a half elapsed to move to a larger room.
I confess that at the hearing I attended, I only stayed to hear the public officials, so I cannot say whether the panel was as unresponsive to the great unwashed as that one was.
Thanks to Hope and Byron for some of the above links.
Unprecedented mid-decade redistrictings in Colorado and Texas orchestrated by the White House.
An unprecedented effort by a Congressman to recall a governor who was re-elected less than a year ago.
A county commissioner found guilty of violating state campaign finance rules in working to oust three Florida Supreme Court justices after the 2000 Presidential election fiasco.
[S]tate administrative law judge Harry L. Hooper, who presided over [Palm Beach County Commissioner Mary] McCartys hearing in February on the campaign finance charges, concluded on May 1 that the former Palm Beach County Republican Party chairwoman was little more than a front for a Washington, D.C.-based campaign against the justices, which was organized during the 2000 presidential election recount battle.That campaign, Judge Hooper found, was orchestrated by Roger J. Stone Jr., a Republican lobbyist and political operative who has said he worked for President Richard Nixons Watergate-era re-election committee and served as a campaign strategist for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Stone, who owns a $2.2 million bayfront mansion in Surfside, received $1.8 million from the Miami-Dade County Commission last year for political work he did for the county.
During McCartys two-day hearing, the FECs lawyer argued that Stone and McCarty established the Committee to Take Back Our Judiciary to pressure the state Supreme Court to rule in favor of then Texas Gov. George W. Bush in his ballot recount battle with Al Gore. McCarty testified that the committee began to take shape six to nine days after the Nov. 7 election. The Florida Supreme Court was first asked by Gore to order hand recounts in the decisive Florida race on Nov. 15.
This was an attempt to let the justices know, who were going to eventually decide the presidential election, that they were going to be watched, commission assistant counsel Eric M. Lipman said in his opening arguments. And it was an attempt to influence what they were going to do.
Any one of these things would be cause for concern about the state of our democracy. All of them together...well, all I can say is that I'm pretty sure I've got my tinfoil hat around here somewhere.
To no one's great surprise, the Texas Senate declared the House redistricting map dead on arrival, though I confess I'm a bit surprised at how many Republican Senators have taken potshots at not only the map, but also at how the House arrived at it:
"It's a silly map. I can't support that," said Sen. Kip Averitt, R-Waco, whose home county of McLennan is divided into two congressional districts in the House plan. "I can't support splitting my county."[...]
Sen. Troy Fraser, R-Horseshoe Bay, said he opposed the House map, and Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Lewisville, said it needed "tinkering." Sens. Mike Jackson, R-LaPorte, and Kyle Janek, R-Houston, said they had not studied the House map but expected the Senate to produce something different.
"It didn't seem all too radical to me, but we're not going to rubber-stamp the House map. We're going to come up with our own map," Jackson said.
Among the fence-sitting senators who are key to whether the Senate debates redistricting at all, the message was even clearer.
"I cannot vote for the House map, because it obliterates Northeast Texas, the part of the state I represent," said Sen. Bill Ratliff, R-Mount Pleasant. "Texarkana would be represented by somebody from east Dallas County."
Sen. Ken Armbrister, D-Victoria, said the map is dead and he would not vote for it.
From the Statesman, Lt. Governor Dewhurst lightly rebukes Speaker Tom Craddick:
Also now entangled in the process is House-Senate tension that grew throughout the regular session.Though both chambers are controlled by Republicans, they are often poles apart, as are Dewhurst and House Speaker Tom Craddick, R-Midland.
"We're sending a signal to the House that we had asked to be involved in the process of the House drawing the map. We weren't included in that process," Dewhurst said, adding later that he was not complaining but just noting that Craddick must have been too busy to respond. Craddick's office offered no response to that.
There's more of the same in the Dallas Morning News, the Fort Worth Star Telegram, and the San Antonio Express-News.
There are several other themes in all of these stories. Dewhurst has suggested that as there are 31 state Senators and 32 Congresscritters, the current map of state Senate districts could be used as a starting point for a new Congressional map. Sen. John Whitmire (D, Houston) concedes that a map based on that would probably pass, though he'll still oppose it and suggests that his fellow Democrats would as well:
"This is a defining vote. You can't be a Republican and a Democrat on this. You've got to choose," said Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston. "If you're a Democrat office holder and you vote for a Republican redistricting plan, I would think that Democrats in a primary would look very unfavorably toward you."
That sounds like a direct challenge to Ken Armbrister and Frank Madla. We'll see if it has any effect. Both Whitmire and Sen. Gonzalo Barrientos have toned down their assertions that the Dems can block a Senate map.
There's been concern from Democrats as well as from Sen. Bill Ratliff that a map may come out of a joint House-Senate committee. A map drawn in a conference committee would only need a majority vote, which is why House Democrats had been claiming all along that the various House maps were decoys. Ratliff has the same fears (from the Statesman):
Ratliff also said he fears a bait and switch.It takes only 16 Senate votes to approve a map drawn in a conference committee, which leaves Ratliff uncomfortable about putting that process in motion in the first place by voting to suspend the rules requiring 21 votes.
Ratliff said he wants "some way of knowing that it's not going to come back from conference looking like the House map."
Dewhurst said he would not support any effort to increase the number of votes required to approve a conference committee map to 21. And he said that the Senate, which is almost sure to draw a map with major differences from the House version, won't leave much wiggle room for negotiating on the map and that he feels "very, very strongly" about preserving whatever the Senate does.
(from the Star-Telegram):
Ratliff said that he, too, might offer the same plan for congressional redistricting that he developed two years ago that would contain as many as 19 safe GOP seats. Ratliff said the current map favors Republicans and several incumbent Democrats continue to be re-elected by GOP-leaning voters.But before he agrees to vote to bring redistricting to the Senate floor, Ratliff said he wants assurances that a map to his liking will not be replaced with a plan similar to the House's version when the two chambers reconcile their differences.
"I would need some very strong assurances from the right people," he said.
In the comments to my last entry, Rob Booth pointed to the federal court case and the three-judge panel decision, which does say that the judges drew the lines in 2001. Angry Bear's conclusion was that the panel drew their lines based on the 2001 Senate map. The opinion doesn't explicitly say that, but it does say that their map would reflect Texas' voting trends and yet still probably favor various Democratic incumbents, which is exactly what happened. Read it for yourself and see what you think.
Various newspaper links from Byron, who was up way too late last night. For purposes of comparison, note the time of his permalink, then reflect on the fact that I get up for work at a little after 5 AM.
UPDATE: Angry Bear has some corrections to his original post describing how the current boundaries were drawn.
Via Atrios, I see that TTLB has a new feature, which is a ranking of blog traffic based on Sitemeter statistics. There are numerous caveats that come with this - not everyone uses Sitemeter, not everyone makes their stats public (both of which Bear mentions), and Sitemeter's "average per day" number refers only to the last seven days - but given that there is no single accepted standard for monitoring traffic, I'd say Bear's done a nice job.
I've always had a password on my Sitemeter stats, for reasons that I no longer recall. Given that, and given that I'd have just missed Bear's top 100 with my current numbers, I've reset the security level on my stats back to Normal, meaning that they're visible if you care to look.
Here's a hypothesis: People who do much better in the traffic rankings than they do in the Ecosystem have a lot of non-blogger readers who bookmark their site, while those who do much better in the Ecosystem than in the traffic rankings have expended a lot of energy getting other bloggers to link to them. Getting other people to blogroll you is certainly a way to build traffic to your site, but some links are worth more than others. It's not necessarily the highest-traffic sites that send the most traffic your way, either - I find that on the average, I get the most regular traffic from blogs I read every day. Of course, the initial listing is affected by the sites that don't have public Sitemeter stats or otherwise got missed this time. As was the case with the resurrected Ecosystem, we shouldn't draw any broad conclusions until we're sure all of the data is in hand.
So, am I overly obsessed with this sort of thing, or is this normal blogger behavior?
UPDATE: Whoa! In the comments, I noted that I see almost no search engine referrals in my Sitemeter stats, though I see plenty of them in the report that my web host provides. Jeff Cooper solved the mystery for me - Sitemeter only shows referrals for pages that have their code on it, and my archive page didn't have it. I went and added it in, and boom! Many Google and other search engine referrals. Now for the next question: I presume that these used to be "unknown", rather than being totally new referrals. Is that true?
Not much new to report that Byron hasn't already covered. The House map passed as expected, and now the battle is joined in the Senate. A commenter on Byron's latest Polstate posting notes that in addition to Bill Ratliff and Kip Averitt, now Sen. Robert Duncan (R, Lubbock) is unhappy with the House map. I can't find direct confirmation of that, but this story fills in some detail:
Based on what he heard in a June 26 meeting in Lubbock on redistricting, Rep. Carl Isett, R-Lubbock, offered an amendment to the new map that would have largely kept the three current West Texas districts' borders intact.The amendment failed.
"When we were in Lubbock, we heard a lot of testimony" from representatives from Abilene, Lamesa, Big Spring and from Lubbock's Chamber of Commerce. "They wanted to keep the district the way it is," he said.
Isett said eh expected the House to send the bill on to the Senate late Monday night.
The amendment to undo the proposed changes to the West Texas districts can be revived on the Senate side. It's up to Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, to introduce the measure there, Isett said.
"I think the senator will know what we tried to accomplish over here," he said.
Mapmakers' options are limited when trying to redraw district lines in West Texas, Isett said. The districts can't move too far east without bumping into the Interstate 35 corridor or too far south without running into Henry Bonilla's protected minority district in San Antonio.
Under the new map, District 17 will be shifted east from Abilene, throwing that city into District 19, which will continue to be anchored by Lubbock.
Midland, Odessa and San Angelo will anchor District 11, which will shift west from Waco.
The new District 11 will represent energy interests to a large degree, but Isett disagreed with the notion that West Texas will lose a voice for agriculture in Congress.
"What it does do is move an anchor from one West Texas city to another," he said. "But (the new District 11) will include San Angelo, which has a lot of ranchland."
He said Charles Stenholm, D-Abilene, the ranking Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee can run competitively in the new District 19.
"We will still have three true West Texas districts," Isett said, "just not the districts we're used to."
Wait, I just found something, at the Quorum Report. It's subscriber only, so all I've got is a blurb, but here's the blurb:
Sen. Robert Duncan, chairman of the Senate panel looking at congressional redistricting, has made his first public comment about the plan passed out of the House at midnight last night.Speaking in Corpus Christi before flying to Dallas for the next Senate Jurisprudence Committee hearing, Duncan said he saw a couple of obvious problems with a map that would create five or six new Republican seats.
As well as noting the concerns of Sen. Kip Averitt (R-Waco) over the split in McLennan County, Duncan said he could not fathom what the plans authors were doing with West Texas. He predicted changes in a plan that "pairs" freshman Randy Neugebauer (R-Lubbock) with veteran Charlie Stenholm (D-Abilene).
In 2001, redistricting was ultimately settled in the courts because the House and Senate could not agree on the maps they independently passed. It would be funny in the way that watching someone kick over a fireant mound and fall facefirst into a paint can would be if the two chambers can't agree on a map this time around.
Democratic House members have done what they could, and now they're putting the burden on their Senate colleagues:
House Democratic Caucus Chairman Jim Dunnam of Waco said he is worried that a moderate redistricting map bill will be presented to the Senate to win Democratic votes for debate.But he said any Democratic vote for debate on redistricting "would just let the genie out of the bottle," allowing Republicans to create a more partisan map in floor debate or through a conference committee.
"Anyone who votes to suspend is culpable for the final bill," Dunnam said.
If you think there's been a lot of race rhetoric in this debate, you're right. Here's something I didn't realize:
It's a touchy subject in an increasingly racially polarized Legislature. Of the 107 Republicans in the Legislature, none are black, and only two (a Hispanic and an Asian American) are minorities.Only 22 of the Legislature's 74 Democrats are white.
Ginger points to this NYT op-ed written by two Congresscritters that stumps for lines to be drawn in a nonpartisan fashion. I'll say again, that's fine by me, I just can't ever see it happening.
Finally, if nothing else, we did get a little comedy out of all this.
One of the lighter moments Monday came from the House gallery when members of the audience used white socks like hand puppets to mock the debate."The Republicans are puppets for (U.S. Majority Leader) Tom DeLay," explained David Lundstedt of Austin.
I stumbled across a photo of audience members with the sock puppets earlier this morning, but forgot to capture the URL, and of course now I can't find it anymore. Alas.
Having written about the potential of a newfangled form of mass communication, I feel compelled to cite this article about an old-fashioned form, the ham radio. I love this quote:
"The Internet is cool and all, but the last two people on Earth will be communicating like this," said John Westerman, 40, who [is] a member of the Loudoun (County, Va.) Amateur Radio Group.
Yeah, I suppose that's true. Here's something else I didn't know:
John Unger, 60, of Hamilton, Va., has collected 36,000 contacts since 1996 -- including one of the most famous names in ham radio, the former king of Jordan. King Hussein, father of Jordan's current leader, King Abdullah II, was an avid amateur radio operator. He died in 1999."He was very gracious. You didn't have to call him 'Your Highness' or anything," Unger said. "Could you imagine the president of the United States just getting on in the evenings and chatting with people?"
Nope.
O-Dub points to this column by Ron Brownstein which suggests that blogs are (or are about to be) to liberals as talk radio is to conservatives.
It's difficult to compare the audience of talk radio and the Internet. The largest talk-radio shows, like Rush Limbaugh's, almost certainly still reach more people every day than any Internet site dedicated to political persuasion. And the Internet still isn't available as widely as radio, which is present in nearly every American home.But the Internet has also become a genuine mass medium. A recent study by Arbitron, the commercial rating service, found that three-fourths of Americans have access to it, nearly two-thirds in their homes.
Surprisingly, it appears about the same number of Americans regularly obtain information from the Internet and talk radio. The best data on this come from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, an independent polling organization. Its latest surveys show that 17% of Americans listen regularly to talk radio, while 15% go online every day for news.
[...]
Whatever the cause, there's no question the talk audience leans sharply right; Pew found that almost half of regular talk-radio listeners consider themselves conservatives, compared to just 18% who call themselves liberals.
But those who regularly seek news on the Internet divide more evenly between moderates (39%), conservatives (35%) and liberals (23%). That balance reflects a broader realignment in political attitudes: Voters with more education have been trending Democratic (largely around social issues) for years, and a much higher percentage of regular Internet users than talk-radio fans have college degrees.
Brownstein cites Howard Dean and MoveOn as his prime evidence. Though I think it's a little early to pop open the champagne - the numbers he cites show that conservatives outnumber liberals online, after all - the trend is there, and it's getting noticed. Never underestimate the snowball effect.
It's been my opinion all along that if liberals are to have any real success in using the Internet as a megaphone, then we need to network like crazy. By that I mean we need to be linking to each other and driving traffic to each other's sites. Look at what a success story TAPPED is, with over 300 blog links to them. How many of you had even heard of The American Prospect a year or two ago? I submit that blogging has been the best thing that's ever happened to them. That's why I've made fun of the Heritage Foundation, which chose to spam bloggers with announcements of their latest works instead of starting their own blog, for which they have a total of one article and three links to it to show for their efforts.
If the moneyed folks who are out there now forming think tanks and contemplating liberal talk radio and Al Gore TV are smart, they'll leverage this for their benefit. Every one of these ventures needs to seriously think about starting their own blog, especially the think tanks. Doing so will give them instant publicity via dozens if not hundreds of blog links, and the promise of regular new content gives their audience a reason to visit their web page several times a week. Once you've got folks on your web page via your blog, you can then tout your main content - again, look at TAPPED, which links to Prospect articles nearly every day. It's zero cost publicity, and if it's done right it propagates itself.
There's another benefit to plugging into this kind of network. Bloggers are not just a potential audience for your words of wisdom, they're also many pairs of eyes and ears that will sniff out and pursue ideas that you might have missed, which serves as a finger on the pulse for talk shows and a jumping off point for writers. That's why it's important for these newcomers to link back to their favorite bloggers and to keep up on what's being blogged about. (Spreading the link wealth also generates considerable no-cost goodwill, which never hurts.) Further, bloggers (many of whom are already in media and politics in some form) can serve as a farm system for developing new talent for the talk show circuit. I know that I'm far from the only liberal who's tired of seeing the same old faces (*cough*Phil Donahue*cough*) and gutless wonders (*cough*Alan Colmes*cough*) as the only representatives we have on the airwaves.
I started writing all this up a few weeks ago as a response to Kos' conversation with Terry McAuliffe, in which Kos is asked how Democrats can harness what blogs have to offer. I got off on some tangents and never got it into something coherent, so here it is now. I'll say this - Terry McAuliffe and the DNC could make a lot of what I'm suggesting happen if they wanted to, and of course they could get the same sort of benefit for themselves and for their candidates this way. Honestly, given that the first thing every candidate in the world does (not to mention quite a few undeclared candidates) is register a domain name and set up a web page, there's no good reason not to go the next step and set up a blog. (Yes, this means I officially take back all of the things I was worried about back in April.)
One last thing, just to be clear: I do not now, nor do I expect to in the future, see blogging as a replacement for other forms of mass media. Something may usurp TV, radio, and newspapers someday, but until everyone's got a computer and high-speed Net access, it ain't gonna be blogging. It's clear to me, though, as I hope I've expressed here, that blogging is a cost-effective supplement to mass media, and that it's as good a way for an obscure person to become known as any I can think of. That's still an awful lot, and if we're smart, we'll take advantage of that.
Here's a bizarre twist in the firing of Savage Mikey Weiner - the call that precipitated his finally-too-much-for-MSNBC outburst was a prank call by a troll for a competing radio talk show. Here's what the caller was saying when he was cut off and the Savage Weiner went off:
The incident that resulted in his firing began innocently enough. Savage was taking viewer phone calls about airline horror stories, and a male caller began talking about smoking in the bathroom."Half an hour into the flight, I need to suggest that Don and Mike take your ..." the caller said, before he was cut off and his words became unintelligible.
I'd never heard of Don and Mike, so the appearance of those names in the story meant nothing to me. Apparently, this sort of thing is pretty common; follow the links in the Media Review post for more about Captain Janks and his ability to plug Howard Stern on the air.
Anyway, what this means is that Savage Mikey knew he was being pranked, and used it as a springboard to spew venom at gays anyway - in short, he wasn't just a racist, homophobic cretin, he was also apparently an unprofessional host who lost his cool at the slightest provocation. Tell me again why MSNBC thought it was a good idea to hire this clown?
On a side note, I wonder what will become of Weiner's lawsuit against Take Back the Media, Michael Savage Sucks, and Savage Stupidity. None of them have noted his demise as yet, surprisingly enough. I expected major schadenfreude over there, but there's been nothing so far.
Michael "Savage" Weiner, host of that moronic MSNBC talk show, has been fired for - get this - making anti-gay remarks on the air.
The popular radio talk show host who did a weekend TV show for the cable channel referred to an unidentified caller to his show Saturday as a "sodomite" and said he should "get AIDS and die.""His comments were extremely inappropriate and the decision was an easy one," MSNBC spokesman Jeremy Gaines said.
[...]
The televised version of "The Savage Nation" began March 8 despite the protests of such advocacy groups as the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.
Aired at 5 p.m. EDT Saturday, Savage didn't translate into a television hit. He increased the ratings for the time slot marginally, according to MSNBC.
The incident that resulted in his firing began innocently enough. Savage was taking viewer phone calls about airline horror stories, and a male caller began talking about smoking in the bathroom.
"Half an hour into the flight, I need to suggest that Don and Mike take your ..." the caller said, before he was cut off and his words became unintelligible.
"So you're one of those sodomists. Are you a sodomite?" Savage asked.
The caller replied: "Yes, I am."
"Oh, you're one of the sodomites," Savage said. "You should only get AIDS and die, you pig. How's that? Why don't you see if you can sue me, you pig. You got nothing better than to put me down, you piece of garbage. You have got nothing to do today, go eat a sausage and choke on it."
Yes, his show really was that bad. Yes, it took MSNBC that long to figure it out.
GLAAD spokeswoman Cathy Renna said of Savage's firing: "It's about time."This latest attack made the clearest case for why Savage has no place on any reputable news network. MSNBC witnessed firsthand exactly the kind of verbal assaults GLAAD's been warning them about for the past five months, and to their credit, they backed up their promises to hold Savage accountable."
Amen. Here's GLAAD's full statement. It's a good day today.
Here are a couple of decent profiles of two of the Senators who are not committed one way or the other on redistricting: Frank Madla (D, San Antonio) and Bill Ratliff (R, Mount Pleasant). I did a Google search on Ken Armbrister but couldn't find anything similar.
Via Rob Booth.
Why didn't I think of this? A Little League coach let his players manage themselves for a playoff game, and they won.
[Coach Paul] Davis patiently watched from the top row of the bleachers as son Nick and the rest of his team played one of their most important games of the season. He was making a point by allowing his players to simply coach themselves."I thought about doing this a few years ago, but that team was too young," Davis said. "I felt this team would show it could manage all by itself."
Actually, I know why I never did this:
Assistant Coach Bob Kirby found it difficult to simply sit and watch."It's a lot easier being on the field," he said. "This is going to drive me crazy."
Yeah, that would've been me, too. I'm glad someone else tried it, but I'll remain a slave to tradition, thanks.
Question: Has any Democrat who's taken this poll wound up with a preference other than Kucinich or an unnamed Green candidate? Here are my results:
1. Kucinich, Cong. Dennis, OH - Democrat (100%) Click here for info
2. Kerry, Senator John, MA - Democrat (82%) Click here for info
3. Gephardt, Cong. Dick, MO - Democrat (79%) Click here for info
4. Edwards, Senator John, NC - Democrat (78%) Click here for info
5. Dean, Gov. Howard, VT - Democrat (78%) Click here for info
6. Sharpton, Reverend Al - Democrat (74%) Click here for info
7. Lieberman Senator Joe CT - Democrat (72%) Click here for info
8. Graham, Senator Bob, FL - Democrat (63%) Click here for info
9. Moseley-Braun, Former Senator Carol IL - Democrat (55%) Click here for info
10. Bush, George W. - US President (15%) Click here for info
Honestly, I couldn't answer some of their questions because they were a bit too skewed for me. It's a cute exercise and all, but it means about as much as one of those "Which Star Trek Character Are You?" quizzes.
(In-joke that approximately eight of my readers will get: This quiz says that my ideal Presidential candidate is Tyrone Power!)
UPDATE: Here's one: Greg Wythe, Texas' biggest supporter of Joe Lieberman, got his man in the #1 slot. At least now we know it's capable of ranking a Democrat higher than Kucinich.
Angry Bear has a nice summary of the redistricting battle of 2001 and how it wound up in the federal court. His conclusion:
The net result of this was that the panel adopted the original plan proposed by the Texas Senate, which was identical to the Texas House version, but without the Spanish surname gerrymandering. [...] So at the end of the day, the adopted districts were drawn by Republicans.
Via Wampum.
UPDATE: Angry Bear has some corrections to his original post describing how the current boundaries were drawn.
OK, as the joke goes, "Break's over, back on your head".
The House Calendars Committee has voted to send the latest redistricting map (which you can see here, though you'll need IE to do it - it didn't render in Mozilla on my PC) to the floor for debate and a vote. The new map was presented on Saturday by Rep. Kent Grusendorf (R, Arlington) and approved by the redistricting committee on the same day, though not without more controversy:
Republican Committee Chairman Joe Crabb, R-Atascocita, and [Rep. Richard] Raymond [D, Laredo] argued in a dispute over whether to continue discussion of the map or to take a vote.Crabb recognized another committee member, Grusendorf, who asked for a vote. Raymond asked Crabb to continue discussion, but the committee clerk proceeded to take the vote.
"The rules do not allow you to overlook me just because I'm Hispanic," Raymond said to Crabb.
After the committee adjourned, Crabb departed without commenting to reporters.
Raymond said he believes that Crabb not recognizing him for continued discussion could be a possible point of order a parliamentary move that could stall passage of the plan on the House floor.
"This is probably going to be subject to a point of order as a result of that. The videotape (of the committee meeting) will show that I asked to be recognized before the vote was taken," Raymond said.
Raymond's point of order, if successful, would just be a speed bump. Any real delays may cause problems for the rest of the session's agenda, but this item will live or die based on what happens in the Senate.
At present not enough senators support redistricting to get the two-thirds majority necessary to bring a bill up for debate. If all 12 Democrats in the 31-member chamber oppose debate, they can stop it.But three Democratic senators have said they might vote to debate, and one Republican, Bill Ratliff, R-Mount Pleasant, has said he might vote against it.
The map approved Saturday is unlikely to win Ratliff over because it puts his rural part of northeast Texas into a congressional district that would be dominated by Dallas.
The map also might cost the support of Sen. Kip Averitt, R-Waco, because it splits his home territory of McLennan County into two districts, diminishing its influence.
The Senate already has announced that it plans to draw its own map after holding hearings around the state.
While I can see Ratliff or Averitt voting against this map, I have a harder time believing either would vote against bringing it to the floor. Pretty much any map that makes it to the Senate floor will pass, and as we all know, the fight is over getting it there. I could see Ratliff, who declined the opportunity to run for a full term as Lt. Governor and who has already been personally lobbied by Karl Rove, bucking his party on a vote to bring this to the floor, since he doesn't seem to want anything they could give or deny him. I don't know enough about Averitt to say the same, but it seems to me he could satisfy both his party and his constituents by voting to bring the bill to the floor, then voting against its passage.
All this may be meanigless anyway, since the Senate plans to debate its own maps. Ken Armbrister (D, Victoria) has promised one, and I'll bet that Jeff Wentworth (R, San Antonio), who sponsored the failed Senate map in 2001, will have one as well.
As for what this map does, it seems that Martin Frost, Lloyd Doggett, Gene Green, and Chris Bell (who gets Tom DeLay's unwanted black Precinct 2 voters this time, instead of Sheila Jackson Lee) would survive. Max Sandlin and Jim Turner would be moved into the same district, which one of them might win. Ralph Hall and Chet Edwards would probably be toast, while Charlie Stenholm and Nick Lampson would have a tough race. (On the plus side for Stenholm, his constituents oppose redistricting by a 2-1 margin.) Best case for the GOP is 21 seats, worst case (assuming one of Sandlin and Turner wins, assuming Stenholm and Lampson win - and I wouldn't count either of them out - and assuming Henry Bonilla loses his 23rd CD seat) is 17 seats, with 19 or 20 being the likely result. Byron suggests 20 or 21 seats for the GOP.
Just for fun, though, here's an interesting scenario for you. Galveston County shifts from the 9th CD to the 22nd under this plan. Though the county voted mostly Republican in 2002, Nick Lampson carried it by a 54.2 - 44.5% margin. It would be rather interesting if Lampson moved into the new 22nd district and challenged its current incumbent, no? Like I said, just an idle thought.
Finally, the DMN has a decent article that covers why all this matters on the federal level. It also has a glaring mistake, in speaking about the Democrats the GOP wants to dislodge:
East Texans Jim Turner, Nick Lampson and Max Sandlin, whose pro-gun, anti-abortion views and small-town ties have made it hard for GOP challengers to gain traction without the boost only redistricting can provide.
Lampson scored 80% and Sandlin 70% on Planned Parenthood's Action Fund Congressional Scorecard, which I'd hardly call anti-abortion. Turner got a 33%, so his description is more accurate.
The Chron has a profile of Sylvester Turner, who on Wednesday will formally (and finally) announce his candidacy for Mayor in this year's election. It's a nice enough piece, which touches on his original run in 1991 and highlights the issues he plans to emphasize:
Of the four major candidates, Turner has shown the strongest support for the $3.3 billion rail-and-bus plan the Metropolitan Transit Authority is considering for the November ballot along with the city of Houston elections.Turner said Metro should add more rail lines, especially to George Bush Intercontinental Airport and to Gulfgate Mall.
But he said Metro should consider softening the effect the plan would have on the general mobility money the agency sends other cities and Harris County to help repair streets. The biggest criticism Metro has attracted from its plan is a recommendation to halt the $100 million annual general mobility payments starting in 2009.
Turner suggested the county and cities can be weaned more slowly from their reliance on the money. Perhaps Metro could impose a sliding scale, reducing the annual general mobility payments starting after 2009, he said.
While that eventually would mean less money for roads, Turner said, a bill he co-authored in the last session will provide more money for roads by adding a charge on traffic tickets.
Turner said Metro should have a referendum this fall, despite pressure in some quarters for a delay in the vote, because Houston voters tell him they want more rail to help solve costly traffic congestion and air pollution problems.
"It's incumbent upon us to get moving," Turner said. "Look, Dallas has rail. Houston is probably the only major city without it, and we're paying a price for that."
Other issues Turner intends to push include:
ท Business development by "shouldering up existing businesses" and attracting companies to Houston that provide jobs.
ท Revitalizing neighborhoods by providing more parks, affordable housing and other infrastructure that add to the city's quality of life.
ท Refocusing the city's attention on infrastructure such as streets and flood control.
I'm not opposed to Sylvester Turner. He's my second choice, and if he winds up in the inevitable runoff with either Sanchez or Berry, I'll support him. He had a rocky few weeks awhile ago, between the Rockets arena controversy and of course the whole Killer D's thing, but he seems to be back on track. Garnet Coleman has said he'll support Turner's candidacy, so there appears to be no hard feelings stemming from Turner's closeness to Tom Craddick. He's got a base, and he's got money, and he'll be a force to be reckoned with.
That said, I continue to believe that the two putative frontrunners - Sanchez and Turner, who are also the two who've run before - have cost themselves momentum by getting into the race so late. Bill White and Michael Berry have been very active, and they have signs up everywhere. Their supporters have been in place doing ground work for months now. This is going to be a close race between four reasonably qualified candidates (yes, even Boy Wonder qualifies) and frankly I'd be worried about ceding any advantage. I'll get a better feel for this when I see a poll, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if these four are all within ten percentage points of each other.
The following question and answer appears in "Walter Scott's Personality Parade" in today's Parade magazine:
Q. In your opinion, will ex-Vermont Gov. Howard Dean's liberal positions help or hurt his odds of winning the 2004 Democratic Presidential nomination?A. Dean, 54, is probably too liberal even for the party activists who dominate the primaries. But what is likely to do him more harm than his political positions is his short temper. An extremely bright individual, Dean does not suffer fools gladly - and politics is filled with fools.
That first sentence packs more ignorance per word than just about anything I've seen lately. Where to begin?
I'm not sure which "party activists" the pro-death penalty, anti-gun control Dean is "too liberal" for, since Scott doesn't specify. So far, the main anti-Dean faction seems to be the Democratic Leadership Council, which is decidedly non-liberal. Saying "Dean's anti-war stance is out of step with party power brokers like the centrist DLC" would have been fair and accurate, but stated as is, it sounds like Scott is saying that even the likes of Barbra Streisand thinks Dean is a wacko.
Further, if you define "party activists" as "people active within the party", then there's clearcut evidence that Dean is quite popular, thanks very much. Perhaps if Walter Scott had done some "research", he might have stumbled across the results of the MoveOn primary, which, along with his fundraising prowess shows the depth of support for Dean. All Walter Scott had to do to pick up on this was to look in a few obscure news sources like CNN, the NYT, and the Washington Post.
Finally, for those who've been paying attention, Dean is not the "liberal" candidate - Dennis Kucinich is. (Al Sharpton also qualifies.) The farther left end of the Democratic spectrum thinks Dean isn't liberal enough, at least when compared to Kucinich, though fortunately they mostly seem willing to support him anyway if he carries the flag. Dean himself denies the "liberal" tag. None of that bothers Walter Scott, who happily parrots conventional wisdom, which is always easier than thinking and Googling.
On a side note, the remark about "short temper" is a warning sign of press coverage to come. Mainstream media likes its story lines, and they'll go to great lengths to cite supporting evidence while ignoring contradictory evidence. See the "Gore has problems with truthfulness, Bush is dumb" story line from 2000 for nauseatingly excessive evidence of this. Scott is telling us that the story line on Dean is going to be his temper, which leads nicely into concerned articles about whether his "anger" and his "hair trigger" make him "fit" to be The Most Powerful Man In The World. I don't know how far this will be carried, but I do know it's never too early to be aware of such things, and to work to counter them where possible. (Joe Trippi and Matthew Gross, that means you.)
(Full disclosure: I voted for Dean in the MoveOn primary. I also indicated that I'd support whoever actually wins the nomination.)
Best news I've heard today - the MYSTERY! series on PBS will be premiering a series of episodes based on the books of Elizabeth George. Turns out they'd already done her first book, A Great Deliverance, last year, but I missed it - guess I'll have to order the VHS tapes (no, they don't have DVDs). The series starts August 31, so most of it should run before the fall season starts.
I'm a little concerned about how they're going to pack all of George's various subplots and character bits into 90-minute episodes, but George herself seemed satisfied with how everything went in the first go-round, so I'll wait and see. This time around, they have a different actress playing Helen Clyde (compare last year's cast to this year's), not to mention that Simon and Deborah St. James have vanished from the scripts, which is a shame. Regardless, now that I know this is coming I can't wait to see it.
Finished reading all 766 pages (in the British edition) of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix yesterday. It was good, though a bit slow to get started. If you haven't read it yet, give serious thought to rereading the first four books before you do - there are constant referrals to things that took place before, including something from Book One that wasn't in the movie. I'll be rereading them all to fill in a few blanks for myself.
As for the differences between the British and American editions, I mostly don't notice them. I've read enough British murder mysteries that the style and vocabulary are familiar to me. The Brits' use of single quotes where Americans use double quotes and vice versa is a bit jarring at times, but that's about it. I suspect if I were to pick up the American edition now and read it, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
Well, OK, there's one place where I suspect I'd notice. The following is from the chapter called "Professor Umbridge", on page 205 of my book:
"Anyway, it's a nightmare of a year, the fifth," said George. "If you care about exam results, anyway. Fred and I managed to keep our peckers up somehow."
I don't know how that one will translate into American English, I just know it'll be different.
UPDATE: Via Calpundit and Charles M in my comments, I see that "peckers" became "spirits" in the American edtion, which is more or less how I took it in my edition (though I was thinking more anatomically, as in "chins" or "noses"). There's some good discussion about Book 5 in Kevin's comments here, but be warned: there's spoilers aplenty.
There are now six candidates running in this year's Houston mayoral election:
Raymond Hans Rodriguez jokes about being "the other Cuban-American" in the mayor's race.Former City Councilman Orlando Sanchez is the Cuban-American most voters know. Rodriguez is not.
But Rodriguez said his decision to enter the mayor's race is no laughing matter.
The artist and restaurant waiter intends to point out that Sanchez won't look after the interests of Hispanics despite angling for their votes.
Rodriguez also said he will push for a minimum wage in Houston higher than the one required by federal law, and fight for other issues that help Hispanic immigrants assimilate.
"I have issues with Mr. Sanchez for not reacting to the Hispanic community," Rodriguez said Thursday.
[...]
Other issues he wants to tackle include:
ท Non-prosecution of those found with small quantities of marijuana, because he says such cases clog the courts unnecessarily.
ท Measures to clean Houston's environment.
ท Better access to health care.
"Six?" I hear you cry. "I only know of four other candidates. Who's the fifth one?"
LaVerne Crump-Smith is unhappy with the current slate of mayoral candidates. Rather than choosing among them, she's diving into the race."There's no one there that would compel me to vote," Crump-Smith said. "I'm putting myself in a position to do it myself."
Crump-Smith, 47, a mother of four and former public housing representative, will formally kick off her campaign at noon today [June 27] at a Midtown restaurant, The Breakfast Klub.
[...]
Crump-Smith is a proponent of extending the light rail system the Metropolitan Transity Authority has under construction between downtown and Reliant Park. She says rail lines should be built along heavily used bus routes.
"We're going to definitely look at improving the rail system and making it reach the population," she said.
Metro hopes to include a rail referendum on the November ballot, along with the city of Houston mayoral and City Council races.
Crump-Smith, like other mayoral candidates, emphasized traffic congestion and other problems caused by street construction. She recommends fixing streets in small sections rather than tearing up huge stretches of major roads.
I doubt either will garner as much as 1% of the vote in November, but I wish them both good luck.
Last year at this time, Central Texas was hit hard by a flood that knocked out many of its tourist attractions along the Guadeloupe River. The city of New Braunfels, which is highly dependent on the recreation industry, was really hit by this. I'm pleased to say that one year later, all is well in Comal County.
The dramatic change in appearances goes with the territory, residents say. Though the Guadalupe is peaceful for the moment, its waterfront homes, businesses and campgrounds were no match for a rampaging river swollen by a storm that dumped up to 50 inches of rain on parts of the Hill Country.At least nine people were killed as about 40 South and Central Texas counties became disaster zones after being pelted by a five-day downpour, rivaling the devastation of a benchmark 1998 flood.
In a close-knit community like New Braunfels, it was no surprise that, as they did in 1998, neighbors would help neighbors rebound from calamity. Though some residents sold their low-lying home sites in favor of higher ground, most stayed to rebuild. And all the waterside businesses that were inundated have resurrected in time for an especially busy tourist season.
"I'm pretty sure we'll have the best weekend we've ever had in 23 years," said Zero Rivers, owner of the Rockin' R River Rides outfitters.
"It's been the best June we've ever had. There's no reason for it not to be the best July," he said.
I'm glad to hear it. (Memo to self: it's time to start recruiting for the end-of-summer Schlitterbahn trip.) I'm even more glad to hear that much like Houston after the oil bust of the 80s, the folks in New Braunfels are talking about diversifying their economy.
The community's push to rebuild could have far-reaching effects, [Greater New Braunfels Chamber of Commerce President Michael] Meek added. The flood revived debate over diversifying the local economy and gave new life to proposals to expand the city's convention facilities by 2005 in order to attract more year-round visitation.The flood also added impetus to those seeking to bring new industries to the region. For instance, the area is hoping to woo some of the suppliers that will serve the Toyota truck manufacturing plant planned in neighboring Bexar County.
"We have some tremendous options ahead of us," said New Braunfels Mayor Adam Cork. "We are moving beyond being a tubing location."
Even so, river recreation remains a cash cow for the area. That's why one of the convention center proposals calls for a new facility overlooking the Comal River.
"We're really taking advantage of our reputation for having great water recreation and tying that to our meetings business," Cork said.
"Last year was tough financially and emotionally because of the flood, but we have great prospects in front of us," he said.
Keep up the good work, guys.
The following is presented as a public service for Scott and anyone else whose eyes have been glazing over lately:
"A bunch of politicians got together to talk about redistricting. Maps were drawn, accusations were hurled, and in the end some people will be happy and others won't."
Feel free to substitute the above for any prior and subsequent redistricting update, and you won't be far off. As penance, I hereby declare this to be a redistricting-free weekend. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some important reading to do.
We got our copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix yesterday from Amazon UK (Tiffany wanted the British edition), so blogging will be light as I take advantage of the holiday weekend to give my typing and mousing muscles a rest and my page-turning muscles a workout. Just another 750 pages to go...
Is it just me, or is anyone else gobsmacked by the following paragraph in this Press article on how Bill White and Michael "Boy Wonder" Berry are doubleteaming Orlando Sanchez:
Sanchez apparently will get a lot of that, because Berry strategist Allen Blakemore predicts the double-barreled attack will continue until November. According to the consultant, White and Berry have similar game plans. Each has a strong base, Berry with westside conservatives and White with left-of-center Democrats. Positioned in the middle is Sanchez, with moderate Republicans, independents and Hispanics. By Blakemore's reckoning, both White and Berry seek to expand their bases into the center at Sanchez's expense, so the joint strategy is to chop on him from both sides in a race to see who can make a runoff against Turner.
How in the world did Sanchez get to be "in the middle"? This is the guy who ran ads in the 2001 election that featured an endorsement from every breathing Republican politician he could get. Either Allan Blakemore is on crack (a possibility I cannot dismiss), or Berry has positioned himself even farther right than I'd thought.
"The positions that Sanchez is already taking, or in some cases not taking, make it clear he's not fighting for the votes on the right," analyzes Blakemore. "He's ceding those to Michael. Just like he's abandoned the votes on the left" to White. "Well, I think it's a flawed strategy to start without a base."
You're gonna have to give me some examples there, bub. If Sanchez is wooing moderates, I've not seen any evidence of it. And how exactly did Berry get to be the candidate with the base?
One of the juicier ironies of the White-Berry d้tente is that each side thinks it's using the other. White's folks are counting on Berry to split the Republican vote and provide a formula for him to make a runoff. Berry's strategists figure White will drive Republicans into his camp as it becomes apparent that Sanchez cannot win."I know Bill White's going through this fantasy about getting Republicans to vote for him," Blakemore chuckles. He notes that 25th District Congressman Chris Bell tried the same strategy in his mayoral race two years ago.
"He was getting traction until September," recalls Blakemore, "until Orlando put out the word, 'Oh, by the way, did I forget to tell you that nice young man with the lovely wife is a Democrat?' And they all went, 'Oh, my goodness,' and abandoned Bell."
This much is true, at least to me. I want to see Berry take votes from Sanchez, and I'm very worried about the Bell/Greanias problem. It would be fine with me if Sylvester Turner stayed in Austin all summer - I'm quite sure White would be the second choice of most of his voters. It's going to be a long summer to find out who gets to go through the agony of a runoff.
In a move that surprised his colleagues, Rep. Phil King (R, Weatherford) withdrew his latest redistricting map, citing Voting Rights Act concerns.
"I'm not saying this puppy is dead. It's just sick," said Rep. Phil King, R-Houston. He said he hoped to present a revised plan as early as today.[...]
The House Redistricting Committee had planned to vote on King's bill Wednesday to set the stage for a full House debate on the measure this Monday.
But King surprised the panel by withdrawing his plan less than 24 hours after he submitted it.
King said he had discovered potential Voting Rights Act violations in his maps for the 18th and 25th districts in Houston and the 24th in Dallas.
The federal Voting Rights Act protects minority citizens from being disenfranchised. Any changes in congressional district boundaries must be cleared by the U.S. Department of Justice.
"Even though I think they are very small problems in the eyes of the DOJ, I understand that is a very unforgiving statute," King said.
The problem is complicated by the fact that congressional districts in the state must have roughly equal population. "I don't know a quick fix," King said.
King's announcement caught Redistricting Committee Chairman Joe Crabb, R-Atascocita, by surprise.
"I need to talk to Mr. King to find out what's going on," Crabb said, calling a brief recess.
King told the committee Tuesday that the reconfigured 25th District in Harris County likely would elect a black representative, but "it appears now its numbers will not reach that level."
King's proposal would have increased the district's black voting age population from 22 percent to 36 percent and would have kept the Hispanic population at 31 percent.
The residence of incumbent U.S. Rep. Chris Bell, D-Houston, would have been in the heavily Republican 7th District held by Culberson. That would not stop Bell, who is white, from seeking re-election in the 25th, but the increased minority population might create a competitive Democratic primary.
The Republicans are running into several problems in putting together a map that enough of them like. VRA concerns are paramount, since any map they come up with will surely be challenged in court, but there are other issues they have to work through as well. For one thing, there are concerns about communities of interest, which as the Statesman mentions means they may have to pick and choose their targets:
In May, King's map had cut Travis County into four congressional districts, threatening Doggett's re-election chances.On Wednesday, King said he would like to see Doggett defeated, but it was easier to keep Doggett's district intact to make the rest of the map work.
King said he took into account trying to win over senators, including Democrats necessary to bring up any plan for debate in that chamber.
He said keeping Sen. Ken Armbrister's Victoria area intact, for example, made it simpler to leave alone Doggett's Austin district.
Redistricting can be like squeezing a balloon: Squeeze too hard in one spot, and the balloon expands elsewhere or bursts.
In this case, King's map endangers U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco, by splitting McLennan County into two congressional districts.
Splitting that community for the first time puts pressure on Sen. Kip Averitt, a Waco Republican expected to support redistricting.
Averitt declined to comment on King's map but added: "I will say, as I've said before, that I am fiercely committed to keeping McLennan County whole and protecting Central Texas."
Averitt has already criticized any plans to split up McLennan County, and he's clearly under pressure from his constituents to keep them in the same district:
Sen. Kip Averitt, R-McGregor, said he opposes any redistricting plan that splits McLennan County. Averitt sits on the Senate committee that is likely to produce a congressional redistricting map that looks different from the plan King laid out."I just can't imagine that we're going to adopt a House plan that we've not had any input on," Averitt said.
The Waco City Council voted Tuesday to hold a special meeting at 4 p.m. Friday to vote on a resolution regarding congressional redistricting. The meeting will be on the fourth floor of City Hall and will include time for public comment.
Mayor Linda Ethridge said she and Councilwoman Robin McDurham are drafting a resolution calling on lawmakers to keep McLennan, Bell and Coryell counties in a single district. Splitting McLennan County would be "extremely bad news for the city and the county," Ethridge said.
[...]
Averitt has said he supports the overall goal of sending more Republicans to Washington. Still, he said he is concerned that a House-Senate conference committee might have to work out a redistricting map using a House-backed plan that splits McLennan County and a Senate plan that keeps it together. He said he has a good chance of winning a seat on that committee, but he does not yet know whether Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst will appoint him.
[Rep. Diane] Delisi [R, Temple] said it would have been ideal to have all of Williamson, Bell and McLennan counties in one seat, but the combined populations of those areas are too large to allow that. [Rep. Susanna Gratia] Hupp [R, Killeen] said she did not think it was possible to draw a redistricting plan that would have kept all of McLennan and Bell counties together without disrupting the plans that other House members had for their areas.
M.A. Taylor, chairman of the McLennan County Republican Party, said he does not like the idea of splitting the county into two districts. But he said Waco officials and lawmakers should have focused on keeping the county in one district instead of trying to keep all of it in the same district as Bell.
Democratic lawmakers and Ethridge criticized earlier plans that put all of McLennan County in a congressional district with areas near Fort Worth. Taylor said such a plan would not hurt McLennan County because it would have more voters in the seat than any other county.
"I can't help but believe that even if we had a Fort Worth suburb in there, we'd rather be intact and be the biggest block of voters in the district," he said.
It's unlikely that McLennan County will get to stay together and continue to be paired with all of Bell County, Taylor said.
That's another hurdle the Republicans have, which is that right now a whole lot of them have their own not-mutually-compatible ideas for how this thing should be done. With the delay caused by the withdrawal of the King map and the holiday weekend, they may soon run into deadline pressures now that Governor Perry has added a bunch of other items to the agenda. Would Perry call another special session right after this one, when there's still a session on school finance reform to be had later on? Hard to imagine, but every time I say that, unimaginable things start happening.
Would anyone in Austin consider nonpartisan boundaries drawn by a computer program? Hope has some info on that, plus a pointer to the March 2001 Texas Legislative Council report State and Federal Law Governing Redistricting in Texas.
The Dallas Morning News has some good coverage today:
Democrats amplified their concerns Wednesday that redrawing the map in the middle of a decade could ignite a long-running partisan war in Austin and elsewhere in the country. They said Mr. King's proposed map also would hurt the interests of rural and minority Texans."If this moves forward, it will hold in it the seeds of vindictiveness and retribution and vengeance that will carry forward for generations," said Rep. Barry Telford, D-DeKalb.
The rhetoric is a bit Star Trek-esque, but what the heck. Anything more colorful than the usual platitudes is generally welcome.
They also have some quotes from Ron Wilson, who is still living in fantasyland:
But Rep. Ron Wilson, D-Houston, said he liked the GOP plan because it allowed for a "minority opportunity" district in the Houston area. "I don't know how it can be a racist exercise when it creates a minority district," he said.Mr. Wilson, one of Mr. Craddick's top lieutenants, would live in the proposed minority opportunity district, but he said Wednesday that he was not interested in running for Congress.
He scoffed at suggestions that the loss of several white senior Democrats would hurt minority causes in Congress.
"That's speculation," he said. "There are a number of Republicans up North that vote better than the Democrats they are trying to save up here. I'd much rather have one Barbara Jordan or one Mickey Leland than four of anybody else's."
Question for you, Ron: How much would Barbara Jordan or Mickey Leland accomplish in today's Congress? Good grief. At least he's saying he's not running for Congress; clearly I've intimidated him.
One Democrat targeted for extinction is none too worried about what the future may bring:
U.S. Rep. Charlie Stenholm, D-Abilene, said he remains optimistic that the plan will die in the state Senate. But even if it doesn't, he'll try for a 14th term, he said. The map filed Tuesday night pitted him against a freshman Republican, Randy Neugebauer of Lubbock, in a district where the GOP statewide slate drew nearly seven in 10 votes, though Mr. Stenholm has long managed to cling to political life in Republican territory."That's what you have elections for," he said. "I've made it as clear as I could make it that whatever the district, we intend to run and we intend to give it the best effort to win. That district would be a rural agricultural district, and we think we would have a 50-50 chance."
There's a tiny part of me that hopes one of the Republican maps goes through and all of the incumbent Democrats find a way to win in 2004 anyway. I know, it's not very realistic, and I'd probably die from schadenfreude overdose if it did happen, but a boy can dream, can't he?
Finally, the Statesman's Dave McNeely echoes a point I made earlier about shifting perspectives on who should draw the lines, and he goes back a little farther for more:
The last time a three-judge court redrew Texas congressional districts was in 1996. The three judges then all appointed by Republican presidents found three of Texas' 30 congressional districts at the time paid too much attention to race.They gave then-Gov. George W. Bush a chance to call a special session to draw the districts. He refused. So the judges drew new lines for those three districts.
They did so over the objections of then-Speaker Laney and then-Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock, the Democrat who presided over the Texas Senate.
The ripple from the three districts affected 10 others. The judges decreed that in those 13 districts, filing would reopen for special elections to be held with the Nov. 5 general election.
Bush later said he thought the court had done as good a job as was possible. But Laney thought they should have waited and let the Legislature do it.
"I still maintain redistricting is a legislative duty," said Laney almost seven years before he joined 50 other Democrats on the lam, in what may turn out to have been a futile effort to keep the Legislature from redrawing the court's map.
Yeah, the Democrats have changed their tune, too. Just shows what a farce this whole thing really is.
Just when you're about to lose faith in the world, along comes a story about the world's biggest Chee-to.
It's believed to be the largest Chee-to in the world. The cheesy glob of fried cornmeal that Navy Petty Officer Mike Evans found last week in a bag of the snacks is about the size of a small lemon and weighs in at about half an ounce.Evans, 41, a fervent user of online auctions, posted his find on eBay. He never expected the flurry of attention that followed.
[...]
So how did this one Chee-to get to be a behemoth? Chee-tos Development Manager Kevin Cogan's job is to ponder such mysteries. He believes that some of the cheddar seasoning in the company's machines built up and plopped out in a big blob that sneaked past inspectors.
"We call it Seasoning Accumulation," Cogan said. "If you love cheese, this is the Chee-to for you. It's beyond dangerously cheesy."
ObDaveBarryReference: "Dangerously Cheesy" would make an excellent name for a rock band.
Thanks to Matt for sending this my way.
I had about 7600 visitors in June, making it my second-best month ever. In the end, the pace was just slightly behind that of May, when I broke 8000 hits; going out of town for a few days dropped the rate just enough to lag behind. I made my 2000th post late in the month, after receiving my 2000th comment early on. Visitors 80,000 and 85,000 arrived in June, keeping me on track to hit 100,000 in late August. There are a number of new blogs in the list of top referrers for the month - as always, the complete list is under the More link.
As of July 1, I've been in the blogging business for a year and a half. On July 20, I'll celebrate one full year on this domain. My monthly traffic has roughly doubled since I abandoned Blogspot, as you can see here (the July 2002 total is skewed by my arrival late in the month; it was about what I got in August if you add visits from my old site). I'm still going strong after 18 months, thanks in large part to my great readers. I can't tell you how fantastic it is to hear or read the words "I enjoy your blog". Thank you, all of you, very much.
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113: Coffee Corner
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78: The Burnt Orange Report
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King Kaufman looks into the future following the ACC's raid of Miami and Virginia Tech from the Big East and sees big changes ahead:
At some point, the most athletically powerful schools are going to realize that the NCAA, with its picayune rules and transparent nonsense about "student-athletes" and all, is getting in the way of the real business of making money through big-time sports. Eventually, I think, there will be talk among the powerhouses of forming their own association, paying the players, having a playoff series and declaring a champion.Imagine if Oklahoma and Miami and Florida State and Michigan and other titans only played each other. Every week a big game. No more fattening the schedule against Pivnick Tech at the beginning of the season. No more having to dutifully go beat the snot out of Baylor or Rutgers just because they happen to be in your conference. Imagine every game on Duke's basketball schedule being against the likes of Kansas, Kentucky and North Carolina.
Imagine it? Hell, I dream about that sort of thing every damn day. But not for the same reason that fans of those schools and the TV executives do.
See, if there were a sixty-or-so school SuperNCAA, which only featured the ESUs of the world butting heads against each other and no one else, it would mean that every year roughly half of those schools would end up with a losing record. I mean, not to be Mister States The Obvious here, but winning and losing is a zero sum game, and those losses have to go somewhere. Speaking as a fan of a lowly-regarded athletic program that's been twice abandoned by schools seeking salvation from their unworthy brethren, few things in this world give me more joy than the prospect of Florida State and Nebraska fans having to come to grips with a 4-7 campaign. If this comes to pass, I plan on writing a book on How To Cope With A Losing Football Team and making a fortune selling it to these chumps. Bring it on, fellas!
Travis County DA Ronnie Earle's investigation into possible illegal use of corporate campaign cash by the Texas Association of Business is on hold until the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rules on TAB's claim that they have First Amendment protection.
"It is extremely unlikely that we will receive a ruling on the constitutional merits of our claims this week, and in fact, it will probably hold over until next September when the court reconvenes," said Andy Taylor, attorney for the Texas Association of Business.
The TCCA is the outfit that is taking its own sweet time on the Tulia case, so much so that the Lege wound up passing a special bill to free the remaining inmates on personal recognizance bond. In short, bring a book while you wait.
Meanwhile, on the Westar front, Public Citizen has sent a letter to Westar's board of directors asking them to release more documents relating to its controversial donations to several Republican lawmakers. Westar had released two memos, which talked about its need to give money in order to "get a seat at the table", which has spurred the call for investigation since then. You can read PC's letter here.
Westar is also conducting its own internal investigation into the company's various political donations.
A previous investigation detailed donations to Republican lawmakers as part of a plan to win changes in federal law that would have exempted the company from Kansas regulators' oversight."We've hired an attorney to look specifically at any of those issues," Mark Schreiber, senior manager of government affairs for Topeka-based Westar, said Wednesday. "We don't have a timeline on that, but we're positive he's going to do a thorough and complete review on that."
The investigation by a lawyer versed in election law was recommended by the authors of a 360-page internal report released May 15. The board of directors approved, and the company hired Tim Jenkins of Washington, Schreiber said.
Maybe Wester will find on its own what John Aschroft has refused to look for. Wouldn't that be fun?
As always, thanks to my own Westar watchdog, Alfredo Garcia, for the tips.
Here is the new map (via Burnt Orange - for whatever reason, the Chron story, which I'll get to in a minute, doesn't have a link to this). It leaves the 18th CD more or less as it was (and more importantly, if this winds up being the new map, it leaves me in the 18th instead of dropping me into Culberson's infernal 7th CD), and it puts the 25th CD back (mostly) in Harris County. It still moves all of those pesky black voters out of Tom DeLay's 22nd CD, but I suppose any Republican-drawn map will do that.
Here's the Chron's take on the new proposal:
The 25th remains in Harris County in the new map, but it loses the eastern portion of the county while picking up some of Fort Bend County. King said Bell should be able to win re-election in the new district.However, Bell's home is moved into the 7th District of Republican John Culberson. Bell would have to move back into the 25th District to seek re-election.
The King map also substantially increases the minority population of the 25th District from a current black and Hispanic population of 57 percent to a proposed 70 percent minority population.
The proposed 25th would include most of the state House district of Democratic Rep. Ron Wilson, a redistricting committee member. Wilson has been working with Republicans to secure a new district that would elect a black politician.
The 9th District in the first King map was turned into a black district that stretched from Beaumont to north Houston. But the district is pulled back in the new map just to include two portions of eastern Harris County. King said it no longer could be considered to be a black district as in his first proposal.
The district instead would become a solid Republican district based on the 2002 vote in the race for lieutenant governor.
Lampson also would have his home moved out of the district and into the Republican territory of Rep. Kevin Brady, R-The Woodlands.
Rep. Shelia Jackson Lee's 18th District appears to more closely compare to her current district than the one that King first proposed. The black population of the district would decline by 2 percent to be 41 percent of the district's population, while the Hispanic population of the district would grow by 3 percent to 36 percent.
Green's home territory would be moved out of his 29th District. The Hispanic population of the 29th District would increase from 62 percent to 66 percent, making it more likely that Green could be beaten by a Hispanic politician in a Democratic primary. The district's political makeup would remain strongly Democratic.
In other parts of Texas, King's map apparently would cause potential political losses for Democratic Reps. Martin Frost of Dallas, Charles Stenholm of Abilene and Chet Edwards of Waco.
Emphasis mine. First and foremost, if this map or any other like it goes through and Ron Wilson does challenge Chris Bell or any other sitting Democratic Congress member in the 2004 primary, I swear on the grave of Inigo Montoya's father that I will do everything in my power to help defeat the sonofabitch. You can take that to the bank.
Second, just an idle thought: Suppose this map goes through, and in 2004 Frost, Stenholm, Edwards, and Lampson win reelection anyway, preserving the bulk of the Democrats' delegation. Will Republicans try again in 2005? They've already set the precedent that they can redistrict to eradicate a result they don't like. What's to stop this from turning into the oldest established permanent floating crap game in the US?
The Statesman has a somewhat curious take on the new map:
The biggest change in Central Texas is in Williamson County, where rookie U.S. Rep. John Carter, R-Round Rock, would be in the same district as U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco. Williamson County, which is currently split into two districts, would be in a very different district than Carter won last year. However, the county would be the geographic and population center of the new district. Edwards' home county, McLennan, would be the one split into two districts.[...]
Statewide, the Republicans appear likely to win a majority of the state's 32 congressional districts at least 19 by pitting 12 members of Congress against one another. The head-to-head contests would be: Joe Barton, R-Ennis, against Martin Frost, D-Arlington; John Culberson, R-Houston, against Chris Bell, D-Houston; Kevin Brady, R-The Woodlands, against Nick Lampson, D-Beaumont; Gene Green, D-Houston, against Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston; and Charles Stenholm, D-Stamford, against Randy Neugebauer, R-Lubbock.
There would be seven districts without incumbents, including a district drawn for Midland-Odessa. Republican House Speaker Tom Craddick is from Midland, a West Texas community traditionally represented by a member of Congress from Lubbock, in the Panhandle.
The other districts without incumbents include three in Houston, two in Dallas and a north Central Texas district centered on Bell and Coryell counties.
No way in hell that 2004 will see elections featuring all of those incumbents going against each other. For sure Bell, Lampson, Frost, and Green would move, and I'll bet Stenholm would as well. Edwards may move or may challenge Carter, I couldn't say. Of course, that assumes that 1) this is the final map, and 2) it survives the Senate and the inevitable court challenge.
The Dallas Morning News has the first mention that I've seen of Max Sandlin and Jim Turner:
Mr. King's map seeks to erase the Republican deficit by: Changing Mr. Frost's district by removing parts of southeast Tarrant County and adding Republican suburban North Dallas, including the Coppell area that houses potential GOP congressional candidate Ken Marchant. Mr. Marchant is a member of the House Redistricting Committee.
The map also places Mr. Frost's home into the district now represented by Mr. Barton of Ennis.
Pairing two incumbents, Democrat Chet Edwards of Waco and Republican John Carter of Georgetown, in a majority Republican district.
Pairing two incumbents, Democrat Nick Lampson of Beaumont in a majority Republican district with Republican Kevin Brady of The Woodlands.
Pairing two incumbents, Democrat Charles Stenholm of Abilene in a mostly GOP district with Republican Randy Neugebauer of Waco.
Flipping the East Texas districts of Democratic incumbent Max Sandlin of Marshall and Jim Turner of Crockett, throwing them both in majority Republican districts that include suburban voters.
Mr. Coleman said the plan puts Mr. Turner, Mr. Lampson, Mr. Edwards, Mr. Sandlin and Mr. Frost at most risk. But congressmen paired together could get around that by running for another district because they are not required to live in the district they represent.
According to the Star-Telegram, Martin Frost isn't worried just yet:
Frost said he's not sure which district he would seek to represent if the map is approved, but he's betting that the proposed districts will be rejected either by the Legislature, or ultimately in federal court."My overall reaction is it does not have a snowball's chance in hell of being approved by the federal courts," Frost said. The GOP-drawn map, he added, "really disenfranchises the black community in Fort Worth because it submerges the black community into a Republican district."
The Denton County-dominated district is represented by freshman U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Highland Village, who succeeded longtime GOP Congressman Dick Armey.
Frost predicted that the proposal will be revised several times before anything is sent to the final drawing board. "This is just another shot in the battle," he said.
The veteran Democrat also said he was surprised that U.S. Rep. Kay Granger, a Republican, was given much of west Tarrant County, while Barton was given much of the eastern part of the county. Burgess' district, under the new plan, would slice through the middle of Tarrant County, cutting into some black and Hispanic neighborhoods that have supported Frost.
[...]
Frost said he believes he could retain his District 24 seat even though the Republican plan would make it far more favorable to a GOP candidate in Dallas County. He noted that his newly redrawn district would have 47 percent Hispanic voters, who traditionally favor Democrats, and 8 percent black voters, who also lean more favorably toward Democrats.
The only interesting thing I could find in the San Antonio Express-News was in this story about the expanded agenda of the special session:
Sen. Frank Madla, a San Antonio Democrat, saw the expanded call as giving reason to the session."I guess we're here. We ought to be doing something else that's really meaningful," Madla said after Perry expanded the session agenda.
"I have never felt that being here specifically for congressional redistricting was that important. I don't see a groundswell" for the issue.
With Sen. Eddie Lucio stating that he won't support any redistricting maps that aren't endorsed by LULAC and MALDEF, Madla is one of two wavering Democratic Senators that the GOP would need to pick up in order to get the 2/3 majority for floor debate. He's been quoted as saying he's "undecided" and "praying" about the issue, but this quote makes him look like he doesn't care. I'm not sure what to make of that.
In other coverage, Byron has what happened in McAllen at the Senate redistricting hearings, and Hope has been listening to the committee meetings (links still wacky, scroll down to "More Redistricting"). If anyone here in Houston attends the Houston Senate hearings (1 PM, Cesar Chavez High School auditorium, 8501 Howard Drive), please take notes and tell me about it.
Houston was one of four cities that won a bid to hold the NCAA Men's Basketball Final Four in an upcoming year:
Houston will host the 2011 NCAA Final Four at Reliant Stadium, the NCAA announced this afternoon.College basketball's signature event will return to the city 40 years after its last visit, the 1971 Final Four at the Astrodome.
Well, okay, so you don't have to rush out now and get tickets (though I wouldn't wait too long). At least by then maybe most of the road construction will be done.
That event launched the trend toward staging the NCAA championships in stadium settings, and the NCAA will bring the trend full circle by returning to Houston for the first time in four decades.Houston was one of six bidders for four men's Final Four slots awarded today. The Alamodome in San Antonio will host the Final Four in 2008, followed by Ford Field in Detroit in 2009, the RCA Dome in Indianapolis in 2010 and Houston's Reliant Stadium in 2011.
Am I the only person who thinks that playing basketball in a football stadium is less than ideal for spectators? Frankly, I wasn't all that impressed with Reliant when I attended the Rice-Louisiana Tech game last year. I had to watch most of the game on the Jumbotrons, which kind of defeats the purpose of attending the event. Call me a grump, I guess.
Anyway, good for Houston. A few million tourist dollars never hurts.
UPDATE: Here's the full Chron story.
I see that Sen. Bill Frist has his panties in a bunch over the SCOTUS ruling in Lawrence v. Texas:
The Senate majority leader said Sunday he supported a proposed constitutional amendment to ban homosexual marriage in the United States.Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said the Supreme Court's decision last week on gay sex threatens to make the American home a place where criminality is condoned.
The court on Thursday threw out a Texas law that prohibited acts of sodomy between homosexuals in a private home, saying that such a prohibition violates the defendants' privacy rights under the Constitution. The ruling invalidated the Texas law and similar statutes in 12 other states.
"I have this fear that this zone of privacy that we all want protected in our own homes is gradually or I'm concerned about the potential for it gradually being encroached upon, where criminal activity within the home would in some way be condoned," Frist told ABC's "This Week."
"And I'm thinking of whether it's prostitution or illegal commercial drug activity in the home ... to have the courts come in, in this zone of privacy, and begin to define it gives me some concern."
Others have addressed Frist's dimwitted "zone of provacy" concerns, so I'm not going to bother kicking him on that. What I do want to talk about is his proposal to ban something that doesn't yet exist via a Constitutional amendment. First of all, I agree with Mark Evanier, who suggests that actually amending the Constitution, something that by design is really hard to do, is more red-meat rhetoric for the true believers than an actual legislative action item. I don't know that I'd lay better than 50-50 odds of getting two-thirds of the House to pass this amendment, let alone 38 state legislatures.
The other thing that catches my eye about this proposal, as well as the on-again, off-again anti-flag-burning amendment, is that unlike almost every other amendment to our Constitution, it explicitly restricts individuals' rights rather than limiting government powers. There are really only two others that have done this:
- The 22nd Amendment, which limits Presidents to two terms. Not exactly a broad-based restriction on freedom, that.
- The 18th Amendment, which outlawed alcohol. That was so successful, it became the only Amendment to ever be repealed by a subsequent Amendment.
I suppose one could argue that he 13th Amendment, which limits the rights of those who wish to own slaves, fits this description as well. Anyone who actually wants to argue that there's a net loss of freedom in the enactment of that Amendment is welcome to do so elsewhere.
It's pretty amazing to me that after 216 years of a Constitution that has only once tried to limit individual freedoms - and failed spectacularly when it did try - that Republican politicians, who claim to cherish its spirit and intent, have made a living pushing freedom-restricting amendments to it. I know which side of that argument I want to be on. How about you?
Bloggers Gain Libel Protection - cool!
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last Tuesday that Web loggers, website operators and e-mail list editors can't be held responsible for libel for information they republish, extending crucial First Amendment protections to do-it-yourself online publishers.Online free speech advocates praised the decision as a victory. The ruling effectively differentiates conventional news media, which can be sued relatively easily for libel, from certain forms of online communication such as moderated e-mail lists. One implication is that DIY publishers like bloggers cannot be sued as easily.
[...]
The court based its decision on a section of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, or the CDA. That section states, "... no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." Three cases since then -- Zeran v. AOL, Gentry v. eBay and Schneider v. Amazon -- have granted immunity to commercial online service providers.
Tuesday's court ruling clarifies the reach of the immunity granted by the CDA to cover noncommercial publishers like list-server operators and others who take a personal role in deleting or approving messages for online publication.
"Here, the court basically said that when it comes to Internet publication, you can edit, pick and choose, and still be protected," said [Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation].
All well and good, though I must confess the case that led to this ruling leaves me a bit uncomfortable:
The case traces back to a North Carolina town in 1999, where handyman Robert Smith was repairing a truck owned by attorney and art collector Ellen Batzel. Smith claimed to have overheard Batzel say she was related to Nazi Gestapo head Heinrich Himmler. He said he concluded that the European paintings he saw in her home must be stolen goods, and shared this in an e-mail he sent to the editor of the Museum Security Network, an organization that publishes information about stolen art.Without telling Smith the e-mail would be published, Ton Cremers -- the sole operator of Amsterdam-based Museum Security Network - made minor edits, then posted Smith's e-mail to a list of about 1,000 museum directors, journalists, auction houses, gallery owners and Interpol and FBI agents.
Three months later, Batzel learned of the post. She contacted Cremers to deny both the stolen art and Nazi ancestry allegations. She also said Smith's claims were motivated by financial disputes over contracting work.
Smith said he had no idea Cremers would publish a private e-mail on the list or on the Web.
Batzel sued Smith, Cremers and the Museum Security Network for defamation and won. Cremers appealed.
The appeals court questioned whether Cremers' minor edits to Smith's e-mail altered it so much that the post became a new piece of expression, and decided it had not. But because Smith claims he didn't know the e-mail would be published, the court also questioned whether the immunity provision of the Act applied, and passed the case back to the district court. The lower court will reconsider whether Cremers had reasonable belief that Smith's e-mail was intended for publication.
"Some weblogs are interesting mixes of original and forwarded content, so this issue may come up again in the courts," EFF's Cohn said. "Where that legal line is drawn may become a point of contention."
Ellen Batzel says the case changed her life.
"This was a small, North Carolina mountain town -- I talked to the (district attorney) and he said 'Get a dog, get a gun, get a security system or better yet get out of town.' I sold my house and moved. I've been hurt in my professional reputation and in my private life.
"I know what free speech is, and I support it, but this is about invasion of privacy and my civil liberty. Every time I meet someone now, I have to say, 'Hi, I'm not Himmler's granddaughter."
I agree that Cremers and the Museum Security Network should be exculpated, assuming that there's no case to be made that Cremers should have known better. I'm not happy with Smith being let off scot-free, though. Haven't we learned by now that there's no such thing as private email? Email is like a secret - once you tell someone else, there's no way to prevent it from getting out to the rest of the world. The case is apparently back in the lower court's hands, and I'd like to know how it eventually turns out. I'm rooting for Batzel to get some redress, because otherwise I think she got screwed.
Here's the full Chron report on the start of the special session. It's got a couple of choice quotes in it:
"[Redistricting is] only divisive to those who don't like to see the state of Texas have its rightful representation," [Tom] DeLay said. "Some people will do anything they can get away with in order to protect their political skins."
Man. Project much, Tom? Your shrink is holding on Line 1.
"Do I want to be here? No, I don't want to be here. Let me be very clear for those who have any hidden agendas. I do not support congressional redistricting. I would rather be back in the city of Houston," said [Sylvester] Turner.
Turner's gotta be feeling the heat from his core supporters for not going to Ardmore. On the other hand, the story notes that Garnet Coleman plans on supporting Turner's mayoral bid. That means he's probably already done some penance.
There's good news and bad news if you're looking at the Senate to hold the line:
Sometimes wavering Sen. Eddie Lucio, D-Brownsville, seemed to firm up his support for the Democrats on Monday, saying he would only back a plan that was approved by the League of United Latin American Citizens and the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Both groups have opposed the Republican redistricting efforts.Lucio said he believes Republicans may be about to pick up support from Democratic Sens. Frank Madla of San Antonio and Ken Armbrister of Victoria.
"They (Republicans) are probably real close to having the votes," Lucio said.
Madla said his district is 52 percent Democratic and 48 percent Republican. He said he realizes that however he votes, he could draw an election opponent.
"I have not made up my mind. I'm praying on this," Madla said.
Armbrister said he will introduce his own version of congressional redistricting. He said the bill will protect rural interests, something he said Republican proposals do not do.
"I've made it clear that if rural Texas is not taken care of, I don't care about R's and D's," Armbrister said.
Sen. Bill Ratliff, R-Mt. Pleasant, also is undecided because Republican proposals divide his portion of Northeast Texas and put it into distant Dallas suburbs.
"I want to see what I'm voting on," Ratliff said.
Talk about who may or may not support this plan or that plan is a lot like the polls of George Bush versus an unnamed Democrat. We can spin them any way we like, but until there's an actual map to be voted on it's all hot air.
Such a map may come today:
Rep. Phil King, a Weatherford Republican who is drawing a map for the House leadership, said he expects to offer a revised map today. It was King's map that prompted the House Democrats to boycott in May. U.S. Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, initiated the map and is expected to play a behind-the-scenes role during the special session.King promised changes. Instead of splitting Travis County into four districts, King said, he expects the county to share two or three districts.
"I really think when everyone looks at it, you'll say, 'Oh, that's not so bad,' " King told the House Redistricting Committee.
He said his goal is to increase Republicans' share of the congressional delegation by four, five or six additional seats.
King said his new map has been delayed because he is trying to determine the impact of last week's U.S. Supreme Court decision on minority voting rights and weighing the results of public hearings. He also said there are many politicians and special interests to satisfy.
"Believe me, I'm getting phone calls from House members, Texas House members, congressional members and about half of the other people in the state," King said.
I have no sympathy for Phil King, but I still wouldn't want to be in his shoes. No matter what happens, there will be people pissed at him. If he's lucky, it'll be mostly Democrats. King will have some company - in addition to Sen. Armbrister, Rep. Diane Delisi (R, Temple) plans to file a redistricting plan.
In related news, the Austin grand jury has nobilled DPS for its document-shredding extravaganza. Lesson learned: Always destroy the evidence!
Josh Marshall notes the national coverage, namely this WaPo editorial which criticizes the special session and condemns Homeland Security's internal investigation of its dealings with DPS as a sham, and this NYT article, which features the usual frothing quotes from the vile Grover Norquist. Here's one to chew on:
The Republican lieutenant governor, David Dewhurst, who presides over the Senate and is considered the most powerful official in the state, has signaled his intention to honor the two-thirds vote requirement, and says he fully expects to obtain the 21 needed votes for redistricting.But Lieutenant Governor Dewhurst, who has cultivated a reputation for consensus-building, has not flatly rejected the idea of bypassing the two-thirds requirement in favor of a simple majority.
From Washington, at least, Republican partisans say they are confident that Lieutenant Governor Dewhurst, if pressured, will do the right thing for his party if it falls short of 21 votes. "The whole world is watching," said Mr. Norquist. "He can't possibly screw up."
Nice to know that redistricting will be purely a state legislative matter, right?
Last but not least, the so-called "Death Star" government reorganization bill is now also on the agenda for this session. Frankly, if I'm a Democratic legislator, I'd be at least as frightened of giving more power to Rick Perry as I am of redrawing Congressional boundaries. Will any of them see it that way? Given than Rodney Ellis filed the bill, I doubt it.
UPDATE: There are now 28 more items on the agenda, all having to do with government reorganization. Via Burnt Orange.