Gotta watch those nuns

I nominate these ladies as the poster children of the voter ID debate.

About 12 Indiana nuns were turned away Tuesday from a polling place by a fellow bride of Christ because they didn't have state or federal identification bearing a photograph.

Sister Julie McGuire said she was forced to turn away her fellow sisters at Saint Mary's Convent in South Bend, across the street from the University of Notre Dame, because they had been told earlier that they would need such an ID to vote.

The nuns, all in their 80s or 90s, didn't get one but came to the precinct anyway.

"One came down this morning, and she was 98, and she said, 'I don't want to go do that,'" Sister McGuire said. Some showed up with outdated passports. None of them drives.

They weren't given provisional ballots because it would be impossible to get them to a motor vehicle branch and back in the 10-day time frame allotted by the law, Sister McGuire said. "You have to remember that some of these ladies don't walk well. They're in wheelchairs or on walkers or electric carts."

As we know, vote fraud by nuns is rampant in Texas. Thank God we have David Dewhurst and Greg Abbott on the job to root it out. Link via Swampland.

New flash: Trial lawyers weren't the problem

Boy, Monday's Chron sure was full of head-slappers, wasn't it? Suburbs have traffic! Professors are people! Tort "reform" hasn't done squat about the high cost of medical insurance!

In 2003 doctors, insurance companies and state leaders sold the voters on a constitutional amendment putting new restrictions on medical malpractice claims filed by "greedy" trial lawyers. That supposedly has improved the health care climate for doctors.

But their patients, including the physicians' own employees, continue to get whacked with rising health care premiums.

Just last week, a new report by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found that Texas ranked third among the states in health insurance premium increases -- 40 percent -- from 2001 to 2005. Small wonder that Texas continues to lead the nation in the percentage of residents -- about one-fourth -- without health insurance.

There is little state regulation of health insurance in Texas, but the Legislature will get another opportunity to do something about it next year, when the Texas Department of Insurance is up for sunset review.

Expect a big fight, with doctors and insurers, former allies in the so-called "tort reform" coalition, squaring off against each other.

Better start stocking up on the popcorn now. That's going to be fun to watch.

The health insurance squeeze hit close to home for the Texas Academy of Family Physicians when it received a policy renewal notice for its 11-member administrative staff in Austin.

Its insurer, a leader in providing group coverage in Texas, raised the academy's premiums by 23 percent, prompting the medical group to pick a plan (with higher employee deductibles) from a competing company.

Tom Banning, the academy's CEO, said frustration worsened when administrators learned that only 74 percent of premiums they had paid to the former insurer had been spent on medical care.

The remainder went to the insurer's administrative costs and profits.

gasp! You mean the insurance companies are a bunch of greedy bastards? Nobody could have foreseen that! I'd ask for smelling salts, but I can't afford the copayments on them.

Seriously. This would be hilarious if the joke weren't on the rest of us.

News flash: Professors are people, too

There's slow news days, and then there's slow news days.

Texas university professors overwhelmingly favor Democratic candidates in their campaign contributions, a Houston Chronicle study of Federal Election Commission records has found.

Faculty members have contributed $406,384 to Democratic candidates or committees in the 2008 campaign season -- 71 percent of their political donations. Republicans have received $135,216, or 24 percent, of donations through the end of March. University personnel gave $27,915 to nonpartisan political action committees or third party candidates.

The professors' top pick was Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton. She received $129,721 in contributions, ahead of fellow Democrat Barack Obama with $104,911. Republican nominee-presumptive John McCain lagged far behind, in third place with $25,130 in college contributions.

The professors favored Democratic organizations, such as the Democratic National Committee, over Republican groups by more than a 3-to-1 margin.

Gosh, now whyever might this be? Might the fact that the DCCC and the DSCC are crushing their Republican rivals by more than a three-to-one edge have something to do with it? How about the fact that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have combined to raise five times as much as John McCain through the first quarter of 2008? Is there anything remotely newsworthy about the fact that this demographically tiny group of people is acting very much like the greater population as a whole? I guess "Professors reflect society's preferences" doesn't sell papers. Doesn't even fill a news hole. So we get this instead. I feel so much better informed now.

Supreme Court upholds Indiana voter ID law

This is a disappointment, but not a surprise.

The Supreme Court ruled today that states can require voters to produce photo identification without violating their constitutional rights, validating Republican-inspired voter ID laws.

In a splintered 6-3 ruling, the court upheld Indiana's strict photo ID requirement, which Democrats and civil rights groups said would deter poor, older and minority voters from casting ballots. Its backers said it was needed to prevent fraud.

[...]

The law "is amply justified by the valid interest in protecting 'the integrity and reliability of the electoral process,'" Justice John Paul Stevens said in an opinion that was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy. Stevens was a dissenter in Bush v. Gore in 2000.

Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas also agreed with the outcome, but wrote separately.

Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter dissented, just as they did in 2000.

[...]

The case concerned a state law, passed in 2005, that was backed by Republicans as a way to deter voter fraud. Democrats and civil rights groups opposed the law as unconstitutional and called it a thinly veiled effort to discourage elderly, poor and minority voters -- those most likely to lack proper ID and who tend to vote for Democrats.

There is little history in Indiana of either in-person voter fraud -- of the sort the law was designed to thwart -- or voters being inconvenienced by the law's requirements. For the overwhelming majority of voters, an Indiana driver license serves as the identification.

"We cannot conclude that the statute imposes 'excessively burdensome requirements' on any class of voters," Stevens said.

So you say. I respectfully disagree.

Indiana provides IDs free of charge to the poor and allows voters who lack photo ID to cast a provisional ballot and then show up within 10 days at their county courthouse to produce identification or otherwise attest to their identity.

Stevens said these provisions also help reduce the burden on people who lack driver's licenses.

While I agree that this mitigates the bad effects to some degree, I don't think it's sufficient. Moreover, what's the minimum requirement for a state that wants to pass a voter ID law to clear the not-too-burdensome hurdle? Does it have to try to distribute free IDs to people who don't have driver's licenses, or does it just have to make them available to those who can somehow travel to (say) a DPS field office to pick one up? Because I guarantee that when the Texas Lege tries again on this, it will do the very least it has to do to pass muster.

The rise of Hispanic voting power

Pretty good article today on the growth of Latino voting power in Houston and Harris County.

As the babies born then turn old enough to vote in this year's November election, politics in the Houston area has a much deeper Hispanic tinge. Hispanics on the voter rolls have nearly tripled in the passing of a generation; the number of Hispanic lawmakers from here is inching upward. The Democratic Party, if it captures county judgeships and government positions for the first time in 14 years, will owe much to a stimulated Hispanic vote and Hispanic candidates, such as Houston councilman Adrian Garcia, who is running for sheriff.

Harris County, however, continues to hold the largest Hispanic population in the United States that has never sent a Hispanic to Congress. And there is a staggering gap between its burgeoning vote of nearly 300,000 and the total number of Hispanic residents, 1.48 million, which includes all ages and residency statuses. Latinos make up 15 percent of the county's electorate and 38-plus percent of its population, the U.S. Census Bureau and Harris County officials report.

In other words, the so-called sleeping giant, known as the Houston area's fastest-growing voting group, has been making slow progress without yet achieving dominant clout.

"It's not asleep, and it's not a giant," University of Houston political scientist Richard Murray said. "It has come to be a normal-size political animal."

Houston political consultant Marc Campos remarked otherwise: "The giant is waking up, and he's making a pot of coffee."

Couple points here. There's really only one Conngressional district in Harris County that might be won by a Hispanic candidate, and that's the 29th. Since beating Ben Reyes (twice) and Felix Fraga in primaries in the 90s, Rep. Gene Green hasn't been seriously challenged for that seat. When he retires - if I had to guess, I'd pick November of 2014 as the open-seat election for the 29th - it will almost surely be won by someone like State Rep. Ana Hernandez or State Rep.-to-be Carol Alvarado. That person would not be the first Hispanic Congressperson from Houston, however, because we are a lock to get a new seat out of the 2010 reapportionment, and I'd bet on it being an opportunity district for a Hispanic candidate. And so we'll likely go from zero to two in two elections.

As for the size and wakefulness of the Hispanic electorate, I'd call it a mixed bag. Armando Walle's victory over Craddick Dem Kevin Bailey was a big step forward, and the HISD bond referendum of 2007 probably couldn't have passed without strong support in the Latino community. On the other hand, given the chance to elect the first Hispanic At Large City Council member since Orlando Sanchez in 1999, nobody came out to support Joe Trevino in his runoff against Jolanda Jones. I think it's one thing to elect Latinos in districts that were drawn to elect Latinos, and another to win city- or countywide.

Speaking of the newly-elected Rep. Walle:

For the freshest examples of the stirrings, look near the railroad tracks by the Eastex Freeway in northeast Houston. This is where Armando Walle grew up with his single mother, Connie, who was 16 when he was born. Walle, now 30, became the first person in his family to graduate from high school. After earning a degree from the University of Houston, Walle worked as a staffer for elected officials at the city and county levels and is employed by U.S. Rep. Gene Green, the Anglo Democrat who represents a mostly Hispanic Houston district.

On his first venture as a candidate, Walle defeated longtime state Rep. Kevin Bailey in this year's Democratic primary in a northside district. District 140's population was mostly Hispanic for many years, and by 2004 most of its registered voters were Hispanic, too, according to the Willie C. Velasquez Institute, which studies Hispanic voting in the Southwest.

Other Hispanics besides Walle ran against Bailey in previous primaries, when voter turnout was lackluster. This year, Democrats across Harris County swarmed the polls for the presidential primary contest, and the wave carried Walle to victory. He also had campaigned door-to-door, losing about 20 pounds in the walking process, he said, and his mother apparently earned him some votes by calling voters and speaking to them in English or Spanish.

"We knew if we were going to win, that this would be the time to strike," he said, "and the stars aligned."

Indeed they were. And it should be noted that a late mailer by Rep. Green in support of Walle helped put him over the top. Reportedly, quite a few people gave their vote to Walle after hearing that Green had endorsed him. So in case you were wondering why nobody has bothered to challenge Gene Green in a primary over the past decade, that would be the reason: His constituents really like him. Sometimes it's just that simple.

About 115,000 Spanish surname voters cast ballots in the county in the last presidential election and, Murray said, the pattern indicates at least 150,000 Hispanic votes this time. But with Houston Hispanic and outgoing state Rep. Rick Noriega leading the statewide Democratic ticket as a candidate for U.S. senator, the statistic could reach 175,000. "Now," Murray said of that scenario for the Hispanic vote, "you are finally getting into the league where you become a city or countywide force."

Numbers-wise, the Latino vote was about 10.8% of the total in Harris County in 2004. Based on equivalent turnout, Dr. Murray's estimates would represent 14.0% or 16.4% of the total. However, everyone expects turnout to be higher this year; based on an expected total of 1.2 million (there was 1.068 million in 2004), Latinos would be 12.5% or 14.6% of the whole. That's a nice improvement, but there's still a lot of room for growth.

You may say it's not about tort reform, but it is

This front page story about the longstanding battle between a group of homeowners who bought defective houses and the builders who built them largely boils down to this:

The homeowners took photos of tell-tale brown stains under leaky balconies. They collected inspection records showing how the builder had sometimes skipped getting required permits.

They documented how the company changed names and then denied warranty claims.

And they provided their own mounting repair bills.

The District Attorney's Office refused to take the case. In a letter, consumer fraud division attorney Valerie Turner said she thought it would be too difficult under Texas law to prove Tremont "intentionally and knowingly promised performance to the consumer, which they knew would not be performed."

"Your complaint, while very serious, is not criminal," the letter concluded. "We are sorry that civil remedies afforded to you and other homeowners under Texas law ... seem inadequate."

Sarah Reid Ford, one of the homeowners, was confounded by the response.

"We could get dozens of witnesses to say: 'These people cheated me, they defrauded me,' ... and at the end of the day, the DA's office does nothing," she said.

Several years earlier, the Better Business Bureau of Greater Houston also unsuccessfully urged prosecutors to investigate after Stature/Tremont failed to respond to consumer complaints and then changed names, said spokeswoman Carol Ritter.

The BBB ejected both companies from its membership rolls.

Though construction complaints are common, Ritter said, allegations about a pattern of substandard construction and deception by Stature were disturbing.

"They know that if they can string this out for as long as possible, they will just bankrupt everybody," she said.

Though it's possible in Texas to make a criminal case against a builder or remodeler who repeatedly takes homeowners' money and never performs any work, state laws are not strong enough to protect homeowners in many other situations, said Russel Turbeville, chief of the Harris County district attorney's consumer fraud division, who has seen construction-related complaints surge.

"Texas is a bad place to be if you've got a construction problem with your home," he said.

Tort reform and lack of legal protections have left homeowners who believe they have been victimized by builders with fewer ways to fight back, advocates from Home Owners for Better Building and Texas Watch say.

"To the extent there are builders who are gaming the system and preying on consumers we need to have significant reform," said Alex Winslow, of Texas Watch.

But Lee Parsley, an Austin attorney for Texans for Lawsuit Reform, said, "Lawsuit reform is not related to the problems people may be having collecting judgments or arbitration awards, and it has nothing to do with whether the district attorney can attempt to punish a person or company that refuses to pay."

In a narrowly defined sense, what the TLR shill says is true. The 2005 constitutional amendment that capped non-economic damages in medical malpractice lawsuits doesn't, strictly speaking, have any direct bearing on these cases. But the whole point of the so-called "tort reform" movement is to make it more and more difficult for consumers to seek redress through the courts for wrongs done to them by sellers of goods and services, all to the benefit of those sellers and their bottom lines. They've used a variety of tactics, from capping damages awards to requiring complaints to be resolved by a rigged arbitration process or to go through a stacked commission before earning the right to sue, and on and on. And if a pro-consumer bill threatens to make it through the Lege, pour in the money and lobby like hell to make sure it dies and stays dead. We all know that's what TLR would do in the event a measure to make collecting judgments or arbitration awards or to give DAs more leeway to bring criminal charges against companies that refuse to pay ever gained momentum, right?

So yeah, it is all about lawsuit reform. And don't you forget it, because for sure TLR never will.

Prairie View voting problems, the continuing story

Quelle surprise.

Nearly a year and half has passed since Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott launched an investigation into allegations of voting rights violations of Prairie View A&M students in Waller County.

The lengthy investigation has left some students at the historically black university wondering why so much time has passed without a resolution. Others expressed a more patient stance, saying it is prudent for the state to do a thorough job.

"Something should have been done by now," said student Ashley Slayton. "I don't know think there is a logical explanation for why there hasn't been anything done."

The Attorney General's Office says the investigation is continuing but there is no word on how it is going or when it might end.

"I can't have any further comment at all," said attorney general spokesman Tom Kelley.

[...]

The investigation began in December 2006 when allegations were made that about 300 students had to cast provisional ballots when their names were not on voting lists. Local black leaders also contended that more than 1,000 voter-registration forms may not have been processed by Waller County officials.

The controversy surrounding the election and the subsequent investigation is not the first time voting and race have been an issue in Waller County.

In November 2003 former Waller County District Attorney Oliver Kitzman wrote a letter to the county elections administrator saying students from Prairie View did not necessarily qualify to vote locally.

But Abbott later ruled Prairie View students do have the legal right to vote locally. He said the students have to show only that they consider Waller County their legal residence.

In the latest incident, the Waller County Leadership Council filed a complaint with Abbott's office in December 2006, saying the voting rights of Prairie View students were violated during the November election of that year.

I've got some background on the stuff from 2003 and a lawsuit that was filed in 2004 here, here, and here.

Waller County Justice of the Peace DeWayne Charleston, who has been an advocate for black voting rights, said he is not upset the probe has taken so long and has confidence in the investigators.

"In all fairness, I think that Attorney General Abbott has satisfied me and that he has done what he can do to protect the integrity of the voting process in Waller County," Charleston said.

But he added: "I would probably be somewhat disappointed if they came back after taking a year or so with something to the effect that they found nothing."

It depends. Are there Democrats he can arrest? If not, don't hold your breath, that's all I'm saying.

"Vote by mail, go to jail"

This Texas Observer story about Attorney General Greg Abbott's crusade to prosecute mostly minority Democrats on flimsy charges of vote fraud is a pretty good overview of the saga, and builds to some extent on the work that the Lone Star Project has been doing. I have two criticisms to offer, because it felt to me like the piece came up a bit short; as someone who has been following this, I don't think I really learned much new. Anyway, on the matter of Abbott's Democrats-only approach to pursuing prosecutions:

Despite Abbott's declarations that nobody is above Texas law, he has prosecuted no Republicans. "What is especially troubling is that while Greg Abbott's office has prosecuted minority seniors for simply mailing ballots, he has not prosecuted anyone on the other side of the aisle for what appear to be open-and-shut cases of real voter fraud," Hebert told Texas House Elections Committee in January, as the panel held a hearing on a bill making the state's voter ID laws tougher.

[Gerry Hebert, a former chief of the U.S. Department of Justice's Voting Section] cited a 2005 election in Highland Park, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the country with hundreds of million-dollar homes and where both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney once lived. In 2005, two election judges, both Republicans, and a 10-year-old boy handed out over 100 ballots, Hebert testified, without checking any voter registration or ID cards. The ballots were filled out and turned in, he said, quoting from several Dallas district attorney memos. The memos suggested a strong basis for prosecuting the judges for not following procedures and counting "over 100 more ballots" than there were "signatures on the roster."

In other words, here was a serious case of apparent ballot-box stuffing--voter fraud--by Republicans, albeit in a state where the GOP holds all the constitutional offices, most judgeships, and controls most county election boards. "Here we are nearly three years later, and Attorney General Abbott's office has done virtually nothing," Hebert told Texas legislators. "Rather than exercise his discretion to act directly on the [district attorney's] request and immediately investigate the voting irregularities and potential voter fraud in Highland Park, Mr. Abbott's office has instead used his office's resources to prosecute elderly political activists whose only 'crime' was assisting elderly and disabled voters cast a vote by mail."

I would have liked to know a lot more about this. If this was a violation of the law - and it sure sounds like it was - why isn't local law enforcement pursuing it? Surely this isn't the sole jurisdiction of the AG, is it? Are there any public statements about this case beyond Hebert's testimony? Can someone file a complaint and force there to be an investigation of some kind? I don't know the answer to any of these questions, and I wish the story had at least asked them.

The other omission is the continued effort by Republicans to require a photo ID to vote in person, which many party leaders including AG Abbott himself insists is needed to combat an allegedly massive epidemic of fraud-by-impersonation in the state. Yet every single case Abbott has pursued has involved absentee voting, which would not be affected by any of the voter ID bills that have been filed in recent legislative sessions. It might have been interesting to ask a Leo Berman or a Debbie Riddle - or if you want to go back a session, a Mary Denny - why it is that AG Abbott has never brought charges against any voter-impersonator. You'd think he could at least find one, given his dedication to the effort and the enormous PR victory that such a prosecution would bring to the pro-ID forces. Sadly, the subject was not explored. So do read the story, but keep these things in mind as you do.

Kelly Fero: the man, the myth

Here's a nice little read about longtime Austin Democratic consultant Kelly Fero, who got himself into a spot of hot water in recent weeks. It's so inside-baseball that even I don't get all the references, but illuminating nonetheless. On the matter of Fero's surprisingly low profile for a guy who gets quoted in every other story about the state of the Democratic Party in Texas, I'll say that I've had regular email correspondence with him, I've spoken on the phone with him once or twice, and like everyone else mentioned in the story, I had no idea what he looked like before I saw the included photo. And like Greg, I'm generally a fan of his work. Read it and see what you think.

Another lawsuit against Farmers Branch

This time it's over their at-large City Council system, which the plaintiffs claim dilutes Hispanic voting strength.

Their attorneys, Rolando Rios of San Antonio and Domingo Garcia of Dallas, drew up a set of single-members districts that they contend would include one Hispanic-majority district.

"We believe the current at-large system of electing Farmers Branch City Council members makes it almost impossible for minority candidates to get elected," Mr. Garcia said.

The lawsuit contends that had single-member districts been in place last May, Jose Galvez, the first Hispanic to run for the council, would have been elected.

[...]

"The basic problem the plaintiffs have is, under the law, in order to maintain their suit, they have to be able to show that you can draw a single-member district with a Hispanic or Latino citizen voting-age population majority," [Bob Heath, representing the city,] said.

"We don't think you can do that."

He said that although there may be clusters of Latinos in the city, residents of voting age are widely dispersed.

A similar lawsuit thirty-some years ago is how Houston wound up with single-member districts. I doubt that having a single Hispanic on their City Council would have prevented Farmers Branch from pursuing its xenophobic anti-immigrant policies, but it at least would have given those being demonized a voice in the process. The lawsuit is set to come to trial on May 8. Link via South Texas Chisme.

Meet the new Solicitor General

The Supreme Court of Texas Blog points out a little news item that likely won't get much notice but really ought to: the hiring of a new Solicitor General, a man named James Ho. Why should anyone care about this? Because of this tidbit of biographical information that SCOTX mentions in a footnote:

In addition to the many details in the press release, Ho has the distinction of having co-written a paper in 2003 with John Yoo about "unlawful combatants" and the Geneva Convention. Harvey Kronberg at Quorum Report seems concerned today, but I think that's premature. It's only if Texas secedes and begins to wage its own foreign policy that we should start to worry about how Texas would treat "unlawful combatants." [Update: Harvey made a new post today (Thursday) moderating his earlier criticism after more carefully reading the linked article. Along the way he notes that Ho has gone out of his way to distance himself from some of Yoo's more controversial statements on the subject.]

Here's a bit of what Kronberg has to say on the subject:

[T]here is no indication in this article that Texas' next Solicitor General, James Ho agrees with Yoo's perspective. The State of Terrorists simply argues that unlawful combatants are owed neither the rights of a criminal defendant nor the rights of a Prisoner of War. His supporters correctly argue that this view is mainstream and agreed with by sources as diverse as the New York Times editorial page and Democratic Senate Judiciary Chair Patrick Leahey. To agree with the Yoo and Ho in their jointly authored piece does not inherently lead to the condoning of torture or false imprisonment without remedy.

In fact, Ho told a University of Houston audience, "...The Senate came to an explicit consensus on the Geneva Convention issue when Senators on both sides of the aisle agreed that al Qaeda fighters are not legally entitled to all POW privileges. The Senate also came to an implicit consensus on the Torture Convention, when no Senator bothered to defend the Justice Department's earlier memo. Perhaps that is unsurprising, given that the Department withdrew its earlier memo before the confirmation proceedings took place.

Ho continued, "As a former career staff attorney at the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel - one who served at the Department at the time the memo was written, but who did not work on it and did not even read it until after leaving the Department - I must say that the earlier memo was a tragic episode for the Department. It's not every day that the Office of Legal Counsel reverses itself. It's rarer still for the Office to reverse a position it took earlier, under precisely the same Administration, and under precisely the same Attorney General. But as a matter of respecting international law, it is good that it did so."

The legal arguments in The State of Terrorists simply open a door. They advocate no behavior or attitude toward "illegal combatants". What lay on the other side of that door could be either measured or malignant depending on the policy-makers in charge.

One could very reasonably argue that an administration that had already shown a willingness to embrace torture would clearly not take the measured path, and thus any assistance given to them on the issue, no matter how defensible on its own merits, is at best questionable. It's too bad there isn't some kind of Senate confirmation process for this hire, because I think the proper way to get to the heart of what Ho was thinking then, and what he thinks now, would be a public hearing of that nature. As that's not available, perhaps we can get some questions asked by the press between now and his start date. I think we deserve to know more about James Ho. PDiddie weighs in as well.

The Census and the Congress

News item: Texas cities on top in population growth.

The Houston metropolitan area ranked fourth in the nation for overall population growth between 2006 and 2007, according to new census data -- an increase demographers attributed largely to the region's economy.

The Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown area attracted slightly more than 120,500 new residents from July 2006 through July 2007, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates released today for geographic regions known as metropolitan statistical areas.

The Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington area ranked No. 1 in the nation in terms of raw population growth, and Austin-Round Rock and San Antonio also made the top 10. Karl Eschbach, director of the Texas State Data Center in San Antonio, said the job market and economy are driving the state's population growth.

"It's the combination of international and domestic migration that's pushing Texas cities to the top," Eschbach said.

Back in January, I blogged about the projections by Election Data Services that said Texas was in line for four new Congressional seats in the 2010 reapportionment. I projected that Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, Central Texas, and South Texas would be the likely locations for those new seats. Clearly, nothing in this story contradicts that. Feel free to start speculating about who'll be in the best position to become our 33rd through 36th Congresspeople.

By the way, let me add my endorsement to the concept of a bigger Congress, which is a subject I've discussed before as well. Three hundred thousand residents per representative sounds dandy to me.

(Cross-posted from Kuff's World.)

Noriega to deliver Democratic radio address

Cool.

Rick Noriega, the Texas Democrats' nominee to take on Sen. John Cornyn this fall, gets to deliver the party's weekly radio address on Saturday -- the rebuttal, as it were, to President Bush's weekly address. Noriega is a state representative from Houston, and more to the point at the 5-year mark of the Iraq war, a lieutenant colonel who spent 14 months on active duty in Afghanistan.

His focus: a critique of the war, and what this year's election will mean for its course.

"In choosing the next President, we have a duty to ask, what course will they take in Iraq? Will they commit our soldiers for generation after generation to remain there? Will they spend trillions of dollars more to police a civil war?... Or will they say enough?"

And it's a very direct attack on the GOP's presumptive nominee.

"John McCain is wrong on Iraq.... Five years ago, McCain helped President Bush mislead the American people in the run up to the war and echoed the Bush Administration ever since. Even the President admitted, McCain would not change a thing."

The full text is at the link. I'm not sure what time this is done, or where you can hear it, so reading the text may be your best bet. And if you haven't done so already, remember to vote for Rick Noriega to receive the Progressive Patriots PAC donation. He's currently leading the field, so let's keep it that way.

More on the Supreme Slacker Court

Back in January, there was an article about how the State Supreme Court was extremely backlogged, and how that has gotten worse in recent years. How bad is it? Take a look at this report from Texas Watch (PDF) and see:

As has been reported previously by the media, the Court has amassed a record backlog of cases. Our research shows that the backlog of cases left pending each year has increased by more than 300% over the course of this decade. We will discuss the growth of the backlog later in this report, but we believe it is important to determine its root cause. Our research shows that members of the Texas Supreme Court are failing to keep up with the demands of their docket.

Over the last three terms, the average number of cases produced by each justice has decreased by 25% while the average length of time to write opinions has increased 31%. In fact, it is not uncommon for justices to write fewer than four signed opinions in a given year, and it is also not uncommon for justices to average more than 18 months to write an opinion. So, the Court as a whole is doing less while taking more time to do it.

In this report, we discovered several startling trends that demonstrate that justice truly is delayed at the Texas Supreme Court:

• The Court took an average of 852 days (2.3 years) to dispose of a case in the 2006-2007 term, an increase of 24% from the 2004-2005 term.


• Justices took an average 416 days to write an opinion after the Court has heard oral arguments. This represents a 31% increase from 04-05 to 06-07.


• Justices Wainwright and Johnson have fallen behind their colleagues' output by routinely taking longer to write fewer opinions.


• The Court's backlog has steadily increased from 14 in fiscal year 2000 to 60 in FY2007, an increase of 328%.


• The Court has left 72 cases pending for more than a year. An additional 31 cases have been pending for more than 2 years.

By the Court's own admission, they are failing to meet the guidelines laid out for them by the Legislature. State budget writers include performance measures by which they gauge the efficient use of taxpayer resources. Lawmakers laid out a 100-day goal for disposing of all matters pending before the Texas Supreme Court. This includes cases, motions, and all other matters. In a report to the Legislature, the Court has admitted it took the Court 209 days to handle pending matters in fiscal year 2007, more than double these budgetary performance measures.

The whole thing is detailed, and pretty devastating. Interestingly enough, two of the bigger slackers in terms of number of opinions written and average length of time to produce them are up for election this year - Justices Dale Wainwright and Phil Johnson. And finally, as noted by Wayne Slater, there's a common thread here:

Remember Bob and Jane Cull and their 10-year battle with Houston homebuilder Bob Perry over their problem-plagued home? Of course you don't. Apparently, the Texas Supreme Court doesn't either.

The retirement-age couple from Mansfield took their case to the Supreme Court a year ago, arguing that Perry Homes has refused to pay for defects -- even though the Culls followed the rules and won an $800,000 arbiter's judgment. Perry wants the high court to reverse a string of rulings and force the Culls to start all over.

The case has focused attention on how construction disputes can last for years without resolution and raised questions about possible influence of big-dollar campaign contributions. Bob Perry is the biggest campaign contributor in Texas. He has given money to every member of the Texas Supreme Court, which now sits in judgment on the Cull case.

Funny how that works, isn't it? Read the report for all the details.

Abbott-instigated voter fraud cases dismissed

As you know, Attorney General Greg Abbott has spent a lot of time and energy pursuing voter fraud cases, which as part of the push for voter ID legislation he claims are rampant around the state. Unfortunately for Abbott, while he's been successful at getting indictments, taking the cases to trial is another matter.

Criminal charges against two politiqueras accused of tampering with ballots in the 2005 McAllen mayoral election were dropped Tuesday, the same day their case was scheduled to go to trial.

Hidalgo County Court-at-law Judge Jaime Palacios dismissed the case against Maria Helena Belasquez and Alicia Liscano Molina at the request of prosecutors who did not feel they had enough evidence to convince a jury of wrongdoing.

The decision comes five days after a similar case was dismissed against another politiquera, Gloria Barajas.

"They were not our investigations, and I didn't feel they would stand up before a jury," Hidalgo County District Attorney Rene Guerra said.

[...]

Voter fraud cases can be notoriously difficult to prosecute, Guerra said, because the evidence is often circumstantial.

In this case, the investigation was conducted by the Texas attorney general's office but did not produce specific evidence linking the women to any crime, Guerra said.

"There's a very high standard of proof required by jurors (in voter fraud cases)," he said. "You can't just show evidence of irregularities. You have to show that the defendant was responsible."

So far, five of the nine indictments related to the McAllen elections have been dismissed, one of the defendants has pleaded guilty and the remaining three cases have bounced from court to court suffering numerous setbacks and delays.

In 2006, Attorney General Greg Abbott held up the Hidalgo County voter fraud case as an example of a successful voter fraud investigation that produced results.

If by "results" you mean "opportunities for publicity hounds", then I suppose that would be accurate. Perhaps if AG Abbott spent more time pursuing real crimes and less time chasing bogeymen, he'd get more substantive results than that. Thanks to Vince for the tip.

An interview with Rep. Hubert Vo

Here's a brief interview with State Rep. Hubert Vo over on the Asian American Action Fund blog that I thought was pretty good. A sample:

I think that your first election certainly reaffirms the motto "Every vote counts," with something like only 16 votes at the end separating you from your opponent. We've certainly seen a lot of new voter turnout, new voter excitement this cycle. What, if any difference, do you see between 04 and 08?

What I can tell you now is turnout in 04 in the APA community, my name was on the ballot, then you saw an increase in 2006. The Asian community came out more in 2006, and now people have knowledge when going out to vote, and they have much more confidence than in 2004. So I can see that in the Asian community, and people start paying more attention to the election cycle, candidates, and the issues they stand for. So through the Asian community, the media has played a very important factor in all that since my election. And 'til now you know the media has been mobilizing people to go out and vote every election cycle, also they remind them to register to vote. And they have educated the community in terms of the issues and what the candidates represent. People are very enthusiastic about the process every election cycle now in Houston. And again, in 2008, finally just like how any other community turns out, the primary seems to be a little bit less compared to the general election.

What I can see this year is probably that turnout in the primary of 2008, the percent of voters from the Asian community is going to increase because now they've been through the process of going to vote in many elections already. And they are very excited about these national candidates. There's going to be much more increase and in the general election, I can see a very big surge of the Asians going out to vote in 2008.

[...]

I also have a question about the Vietnamese American community and their relationship to politics. It certainly seems like the older generation was heavily Republican, but now, the younger generation seems to be going more Democratic. What is your perspective?

Your question is true. When the Vietnamese Americans first came to the United States, a majority leaned toward the Republicans because they feel like they are socially conservative people, people who came through the war and understand that we have to fight in order to protect this country. So we felt like we belong to Republican party more but after 30 years here in the US they have a different approach. They can differentiate between the Republican and Democratic parties now. And the new generation coming up, the children, they are more adapted to the system here, and they understand the difference and benefits. . . They have really shared that knowledge with their parents. I can see that slowly now the older generation seems to be more independent; they go for the candidate who will do the best job for the community now. I can say that 9 years ago, if you ask Vietnamese Americans "What party?", the majority would say Republican.

Nowadays, they say independent, or 50-50 Republican-Democrat. I can see that this presidential election especially on the Democratic side excites a lot of Vietnamese Americans to go out and vote with the Democratic party because they understand it's about the economy, and jobs for their kids and the general welfare.

I kind of wish the question had been asked specifically about John McCain and whether the Vietnamese community views him any differently, but it wasn't. Still, some pretty good stuff there, so go check it out.

Define "prompt"

As you may recall, some of Governor Perry's emails have been released for public inspection, thanks to the ongoing work of open government activist John Washburn. But not all of them. The Observer blog reports.

Washburn said he received an estimated 1,900 documents out of a total of 5-6,000 -- meaning that Perry's office has asked that roughly 4,000 documents/emails be ruled exempt from open records requirements. The AG's office now has 45 business days to rule.

Problem is, the governor's office seemingly contacted the AG's office too late. According to Texas' open records law, state agencies have 10 business days after they receive a request for documents to ask the AG for a ruling.

[...]

However, Perry 's office is taking advantage of another, little-used section of open records law that monkeys with the definition of "received."

Under a rarely used provision, Perry's office asserts that it can consider the request "received" upon receipt of payment.

Nice little loophole, eh? If you make sure the upfront fees are sufficiently high, you'll never have to worry about fulfilling those requests in the first place. You have to admire the ingenuity, if nothing else.

Term limits in San Antonio

As you know, I think Houston's term limits law, which restricts municipal officeholders to three two-year terms, is a bad idea. But it's still better than what they've got in San Antonio, which is two two-year terms. San Antonio's popular Mayor, Phil Hardberger, called for a change to that law in his State of the City speech.

I'm proud of what we've accomplished as a team in two and a half years, but I am aware that the biggest impediment I face as Mayor is time. My hope is that in my four years as Mayor, we will move this city forward 25 years. That will be a credit to people like you who have joined us to work for the betterment of all. In the life of a city, four years is not a lot of time. Not enough time to start many things, much less finish them.

Leadership matters. Our elected leadership, Mayor and Council, are handcuffed by strict term limits - among the strictest in the nation. We've recently had another reminder of the downside of term limits as two out of our four returning Council members left to pursue other offices because of these term limits.

When this community voted overwhelmingly to pass the largest bond in our history, it was a vote of confidence in ourselves. Term limits also speak to our confidence, and whether we believe in ourselves, and indeed, in democracy itself. I believe people are intelligent enough to vote people out of office who are not doing a satisfactory job.

I do not advocate doing away with term limits altogether, but we should at least allow our elected representatives enough time to get something done. I will lead the fight to extend our present term limits from two 2-year terms to four 2-year terms and place it on the November ballot. This is a reasonable compromise and will allow us to have a more effective city government. I have appointed Christian Archer, the campaign manager for the bond election, to be the campaign manager for this critical task. I ask your help in this reasonable reform.

The Express News liked what he had to say.

Citizens have always had the ultimate term limit device, however -- the ballot box. It's sad that strict term limits proponents have so much distrust not of politicians, but instead of voters to make the right decisions. What they're saying is that voters simply lack the ability to determine whether a City Council member deserves to serve more than two terms.

That's not a very ringing endorsement of the democratic process. Moreover, by perpetuating a constant shuffle of council members and short-circuiting the development of expertise among elected officials, San Antonio's strict term limits confer greater power on unelected city staff. Eight of the current ten City Council district representatives have been in office for seven months or less.

Hardberger's proposal is a reasonable one. It still requires council members to go back to the voters every two years to seek reelection. But it wisely gives voters the option of keeping a good representative on council for a third and possible fourth term.

Predictably, as noted by the E-N, the pro-term limit forces have had a conniption over this.

"The Homeowner Taxpayer Association will fight back," says Homeowner Taxpayer Association President Bob Martin.

The HTA led the drive to win approval of the term limits law, the strictest in the nation, under the leadership of founder C.A. Stubbs, and Stubbs says Hardberger may be catering to the elites in the Chamber of Commerce and in City Hall, but changes in the term limits law are not supported by the people.

"I frankly cannot figure out what part of 'no' the mayor and the other people down there don't understand," Stubbs said.

Ah, CA Stubbs and the HTA. What memories that brings back from my college days, when that bunch of reactionaries opposed fluoridizing San Antonio's water on the grounds that it was a socialist ploy. They finally lost that battle in 2000, after 35 years of fighting it. I hope it won't take that long to beat them back on this one. WOAI link via The Walker Report.

Medina's messy finances

The Chron has a long and thorough story on the financial woes of Supreme Court Justice David Medina, who may or may not face arson-related charges from the Harris County DA's office some day. It bolsters the existing yet entirely circumstantial case that Medina and/or his wife may have caused the fire that destroyed their house, but it leaves a big question that so far has not been explored, and raises another question that perhaps should be explored in more depth.

On the first item:

Long before his home burned, Medina had used it as a source of ready cash. Assisted by a mortgage company whose name became synonymous with the excesses of the subprime lending frenzy, he took advantage of a rising market to draw every dollar of available equity from his house, even though the result was increasing monthly payments that may have played a role in a 2006 attempt to foreclose on the property.

Over a five-year period, Medina and his wife, Francisca, took out three high-interest, adjustable rate home equity loans amounting to most, if not all, of the entire official appraised value of the property. The loans were made through Ameriquest Mortgage Company, a controversial lender, now defunct, that was the target of lawsuits and attorney general probes alleging unscrupulous or predatory lending practices.

[...]

Medina's final loan translated into a monthly payment of $2,525, which was scheduled to begin adjusting upward in December 2005. He began to fall behind on payments in early 2006. The company that serviced the loan, WM Specialty Mortgage, did not receive a payment after February, according to the foreclosure lawsuit it filed in July of that year.

Medina, who earns $150,000 as a Supreme Court Justice, later blamed the missed payments on a "miscommunication" with his bank. He brought the home out of foreclosure in December 2006.

Twenty-five hundred bucks a month is a pretty hefty house payment, especially for something that was not that extravagantly priced when it was purchased back in 1993. I don't know if Francesca Medina is employed or not, but that mortgage payment by itself represents 20% of Medina's gross salary. I can tell you that that's considerably bigger a share of gross salary than my house payment is of mine, and we're a two-earner household. So the question this raises for me is what in the world did they need all those home equity loans for? Nobody borrows themselves into that kind of hole without some need for the extra cash. What were they doing with all that borrowed money? I have a feeling there's another shoe to drop here.

Item two:

After refinancing for the last time -- and struggling to meet the higher note -- Medina began to look for other sources of money. He sold 110 acres of land in Gonzales County in 2004 and 2006. He reported selling both at a loss.

He also began to draw reimbursement from campaign funds for mileage driven between his Houston home and Austin. From 2005 through 2007, he collected almost $57,000. The Texas Ethics Commission has previously ruled that mileage reimbursement from campaign funds for commuting amounts to using that money for personal benefit, a violation of state law.

Yates has said that Medina received bad advice from an accountant indicating he could charge his campaign for commuting costs. He said the judge will repay the money he withdrew.

As Burka has pointed out, Medina's excuse is pure hogwash; John Coby provides further evidence of that. But here's the thing: How often do you have to drive between Austin and Spring over three years to rack up $57K in mileage? Compare Medina's $57K to the considerably smaller amounts spent by Justices Hecht and Green over a period of time at least as long. Does Justice Medina have the receipts to back up his claims that all that money was spent on travel? Again, I think there's more going on here than meets the eye. I just hope ADA Vic Wisner's claim that the Medina case is still under active investigation is true, because I think there are a lot of questions to be answered.

At long last, the Governor's emails

I know the saga of the Governor's purged emails feels like it's been going on forever (see here and here for the last updates), but your wait has paid off. Via Elise Hu, we now have our first official peek at some emails that were saved from deletion by the actions of activist/pain in the Governor's posterior John Washburn. And there's some good stuff in there, too.

A top Perry aide acknowledged that the e-mails were "very candid and open" but wouldn't discuss the specifics of them other than to say they would have been deleted if Washburn hadn't filed an official request for them.

Washburn is still fighting for more documents under the state's loophole-ridden open-records law. He says many of the accompanying documents he asked for from Perry's office weren't provided, and several records he did get refer to e-mail messages that once existed but now seem to be missing. In addition, Perry's office is declining to release an undetermined number of records until Attorney General Greg Abbott decides whether the law requires their disclosure, records indicate.

Still, what Washburn got -- in just four days' worth of e-mail from early November -- offers some behind-the-scenes glimpses of how top Perry aides and supporters deal with daily crises and events.

One e-mail from former Secretary of State Jack Rains, for example, sparked a heated discussion about the possibility of former state Rep. Ron Wilson, D-Houston, being appointed by Perry to a high-level state post, such as the Texas Department of Public Safety oversight commission or the University of Texas Board of Regents.

"I cannot imagine a worse Republican appointment," Rains wrote Perry's office Nov. 2 in response to a Star-Telegram report about a Wilson appointment. "I would hope every Republican will urge the governor to never consider this racist for any office."

After receiving a copy of the e-mail, Perry's appointments secretary, Ken Anderson, shot back that Rains, a veteran power broker in Texas Republican circles, had been drinking when he wrote the message.

"Ron might be called many things, but racist is NOT one of them," Anderson wrote of Wilson. "Jack must have written that late in the afternoon after coming back from one of his long liquid lunches."

Wilson, a close ally of Republican House Speaker Tom Craddick despite their party differences, could not be reached for comment.

Rains stood by his description of the former legislator, saying Wilson "plays the race card." He declined to elaborate. But Rains reacted angrily to the e-mail questioning his sobriety, and he said he would seek an apology from the top Perry official.

"I don't know Mr. Anderson. I don't drink at lunch, and he doesn't know me very well or he wouldn't say something stupid like that. You may quote me on that," Rains said. "And I will expect an apology from him for popping off about things he doesn't know anything about." Rains, a lawyer, characterized Anderson's statement as libelous.

Wilson and Rains weren't the only big names dropped by the top Perry staffers. In one series of e-mail exchanges, aides passed around a news article about state Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo. In the Texas Weekly article, one of Zaffirini's opponents, former Webb County Judge Louis Bruni, calls the longtime senator an "evil, vindictive, mean woman."

"Can you believe this quote?" Kathy Walt, Perry's deputy chief of staff, wrote in an e-mail to fellow top aides.

"Truth can be mean," responded Perry spokesman Robert Black.

Zaffirini called Black's comments "outrageous" and suggested that he was angry that she had helped lead a successful drive to restore millions of dollars in community college funding that Perry had vetoed last year. She said the unvarnished discussions among staffers "at the very best reflects some poor judgment."

Black declined to discuss the specifics of any of the exchanges or to say whether apologies would be forthcoming.

"I think what you have is a snapshot of very open and candid conversations among staff. ... E-mail has replaced personal conversations or phone conversations," he said. "You're going to have open, candid conversations among staff on a variety of issues."

Black said the discussions about Wilson, Rains and Zaffirini would have been relegated to the electronic ash heap if not for Washburn's request. He called the records "transitory," comparing them to paper notes or a phone conversation that don't have to be retained as government records.

Having seen this, I actually have a smidgen of sympathy for the argument that this stuff should be kept out of the public eye. It is important to allow for open and honest communication, which is less likely to happen if you fear everything you say might eventually get reprinted in the newspapers. On the other hand, anyone who expects that kind of secrecy from their email should be prepared for disappointment anyway. And remember, even if this stuff hadn't been auto-shredded at Perry's command, it would likely never have been seen by anyone other than its intended recipients anyway. Who would have requested this stuff? Given all that, I remain convinced that the Governor's policy is wrong, and that there should be pressure for him to change it. We need to know that we can find out what these guys are up to if we want to. And besides, the Rains v Anderson smackdown is promising to be loads of fun.

Via email from Washburn, all the emails he received are available for viewing here. Happy hunting, and we'll see what the next batch turns up.

Finally, it's not directly related to email, but Elise has another example of geeky activism in the person of Mike Conwell.

He volunteers his time as an election judge in a small precinct, and discovered a few years ago a lot of complaints about active registered voters in Travis County being randomly deleted from the rolls for one reason or the other.

As a result, he took on a four-year-long project of identifying voters in Travis County who were randomly purged from the rolls due to clerical error. He says the problems are as simple as careless data entry, mishandling registration or proof of residency forms, or not checking and double checking records before deleting what looks like a duplicate record, but is not.

Conwell told us today that he found 1,800 voters deleted from the rolls since 2004, who are still in Travis County and should still be registered. Travis County Tax Assessor-Collector, Nelda Wells-Spears, says he can't be right.

"Mr. Conwell doesn't know what he's talking about," Spears said. (See the video story here.)

But Conwell has all these people in one of his trusty databases. In fact, he sent a spreadsheet to Spears' office in December, which contained 231 voters who he believes were accidentally deleted. He was asking that they check and see what was going on there.

Click here to see the spreadsheet and make sure you're not on it. If you are, RE-REGISTER ASAP.

Why go through all this trouble? Conwell says it really irks him when the fundamental right to vote is stripped from someone because of sloppiness within a bureaucracy. He wants to make sure everyone who wants to vote can vote, especially in light of so many close elections he's seen in recent years.

So, Washburn and Conwell have a lot in common. It's about government accountability, for both of them.

And I thank them both for their tenacity. For a more political take on this, read Glen Maxey's BOR diary. Maxey is Nelda Spears' opponent in the Democratic primary for Tax Assessor of Travis County.

Ethics complaints filed against Medina and Hecht

Texas Watch goes for a threefer.

A watchdog group filed ethics complaints today against two Texas Supreme Court justices alleging they illegally used political contributions to pay for personal travel.

Justices Nathan Hecht and David Medina face complaints with the Texas Ethics Commission filed by Texas Watch, which monitors the Texas Supreme Court and civil justice issues. Earlier this week, the group also filed a complaint alleging improper travel by Paul Green, another justice on the nine-member panel.

Hecht and Green have denied wrongdoing, and Medina's attorney has said use of the campaign funds was based on bad advice from an accountant.

Using political contributions for personal use is against state law, and the ethics commission has interpreted the law to ban appellate judges from using campaign donations for the costs of commuting between their home cities and the city where the court is located.

"With numerous criminal investigations, ethical lapses, and questions about the court's integrity and ability to be impartial, the entire Texas Supreme Court is under a cloud of scandal," said Alex Winslow, executive director of Texas Watch.

From a strictly political perspective, it's a shame that none of the three justices in question are up for election this year - Medina and Hecht were re-elected in 2006 and don't come up again till 2012, and Green won a six-year term in 2004. I suspect that the "entire Texas Supreme Court is under a cloud of scandal" concept will get some heavy rotation against those justices who are up for re-election. We'll see how good a job they do of differentiating themselves from their less pristine colleagues.

Did you save the receipt?

I see that Justice Paul Green is trying to get a handle on the ethics complaint that has been filed against him.

Texas Supreme Court Justice Paul Green said Tuesday that he would try to locate records showing that 272 trips he made between the court and San Antonio over the past three years were for purposes allowed under state ethics laws.

"I want all this to be open and transparent," said Green.

Green responded to a complaint filed Tuesday with the Texas Ethics Commission alleging that he used political contributions illegally to travel to and from his home in San Antonio. A 1993 advisory commission from the commission said appellate judges cannot use their political funds to commute between their hometowns and the city where the court sits.

Campaign finance reports filed with the ethics commission show that Green paid himself $16,761 for mileage reimbursements. Green said the trips were for meetings and speaking engagements.

Green, who owns a home in San Antonio with his ex-wife, said he has had an apartment in Austin since March 2005 and does not commute from San Antonio.

The head of the group that filed the complaint said he would like to see Green's records. "If it turns out he can document these trips as being for legitimate political purposes, we are more than happy to pull our complaint down," said Alex Winslow, executive director of Texas Watch.

I can picture what's happening with Justice Green: "Now let's see, I'm pretty sure I've got those receipts around here somewhere...gimme a minute here...dammit...let me check the other pants...I know I saw them just the other day..." I sympathize, man, I've been there myself.

UPDATE: Missed this story about Justice Green's colleague in campaign finance troubles:

Texas Supreme Court Justice Nathan Hecht said Wednesday he charged his campaign account for frequent flights to Dallas but that he was working and meeting with supporters during those visits.

Hecht denied that he was commuting to Austin from Carrollton, a Dallas suburb where he owns a home. He said he lives in Austin, where he considers a home he has owned for 20 years his primary residence.

"I'm allowed to fly up there for officeholder and campaign purposes," said Hecht. "Those were some of my purposes as well as to see friends, build support."

Hecht spent nearly $10,000 from his campaign funds on in-state flights last year, according to reports filed with the Texas Ethics Commission. That was more than any other justice on the nine-member court.

Texas Watch, a watchdog group, plans to file a complaint today at the Ethics Commission concerning Hecht's travel.

Hecht is the third member of the high court to come under scrutiny in the past week for alleged improper use of political donations.

[...]

Complaints filed by Texas Watch last year against Hecht led to investigations by the Ethics Commission and Travis County prosecutors. Those probes, which are pending, concern a discount Hecht received for personal legal services from the Jackson Walker law firm.

Hecht is accused of failing to report the lowered fees as an in-kind political contribution and that the discount exceeded the $30,000 limit on judicial donations from a law firm. The legal fees stem from Jackson Walker's successful defense of Hecht in a dispute with the Commission on Judicial Conduct over Hecht's promotion of his longtime friend Harriet Miers' short-lived nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005.

Fun, fun. The Chron gives them all a good reprimand from its editorial page, with a dig thrown in at Sharon Keller, for good measure.

One last thing:

Justice Dale Wainwright, who faces Democrat Baltasar Cruz in November, spent more than $7,000 on in-state flights last year. But Winslow said there is no issue of a commute concerning Wainwright because the jurist doesn't own a home outside Austin.

Actually, Justice Wainwright will face the winner of the primary between Baltasar Cruz and Sam Houston. I realize the Chron doesn't usually bother covering this type of race, but is it too much to ask that they at least know who's running? Sheesh.

The Governor's inbox

What with all the Rosenthal stuff going on, let's not forget about John Washburn's efforts to keep Governor Perry's office from routinely wiping out emails after seven days. (You have to admit, that policy is looking pretty shrewd for him about now.) The Observer blog has more on the current status of Washburn and his quest. Check it out.

Still purging

Didn't get to this last week, but Elise Hu is still on the email purge story (see here for the previous update).

Thanks to the generous donations of people from around Texas and the country, John Washburn, who requested several weeks worth of emails from Governor Rick Perry's office, was able to pay for seven days worth of email.

The cost? $611.

Washburn requested these electronically, so there won't be any charge for paper. The governor's office estimated dozens of hours of staff time to extract the emails, which explains the cost.

Washburn, a software developer, actually took the time to create source coding to export emails, sort them by date, and automatically redact any non-governmental email addresses found in little to no time at all, but apparently it's not being used.

Have I mentioned lately how much I admire this guy's tick-on-a-dog tenacity and stubborn refusal to go away? There are plenty of David and Goliath stories out there, but few as entertaining to me as this one has been.

Washburn sent out a press release with an update on his quest. Click on to read it.

Payment for seven days worth of emails was received by the Office of Governor Rick Perry today. Beginning on November 6, 2007, open records activist, John Washburn, of Milwaukee Wisconsin, began sending periodic requests for electronic copies of emails sent or received by the Governor's office. The requests were sent every Tuesday and Thursday and asked for copies of emails for the previous three or four days.

"Because the seven day retention period for these public records is so short, I was forced to make a series of requests under Texas Public Information Act where each request had to be less than seven days", said Mr. Washburn, "If I had asked for two week's worth of emails, then half of the requested emails would have already gone into the electronic shedder. I settled on half a week in order to give the Governor's office enough time to turn off the shredders and respond to the record request."

Washburn made a total of nine (9) requests for copies emails, email headers or both. The last automated request was sent on December 4, 2007. Combined the nine PIA requests ask for copies of the emails sent or received by the Governor's office for one month; from November 2, 2007 through December 3, 2007; inclusive.

The Governor's office has responded to these requests by insisting Washburn pay a $568.00 for each of the nine (9) requests before the Governor's office will begin looking for the emails requested by Washburn.

"Thanks to the people who generously donated to my website, WashburnResearch.org, I was able to send a check to the Governor's office which covers the costs for two of the nine PIA requests", said Washburn. "Unfortunately, at this time I can only afford to pay the excessive charges these two requests." The checks sent to the Governor's office pay for the emails sent or received for the four day period from November 2, 2007 through November 5, 2007 and for the three days from November 20, 2007 through November 22, 2007.

The Governor's office is demanding Washburn pay $3976.00 before searching for or producing any records for the remaining seven PIA requests. Washburn claims these charges are excessive and has appealed the matter to the Attorney General. The Office of Attorney General of Texas, Greg Simpson, has agreed with the Office of the Governor and ruled that it is reasonable to charge Mr. Washburn $568.00 as the price to receive the 4 days of emails requested on November 6, 2007.

"At this point then next step is to pay this excessive charge and go to court", said Washburn. If the courts decide the costs are excessive, Washburn could recover the fee and be awarded treble damages.

At the heart of the dispute about the reasonableness of the charges is how the records are to be produced. Washburn alleges the method chosen by the Governor's office to search for and copy the requested emails is unreasonable and inefficient. Because the method is unreasonable he says, the cost of using this approach are unreasonable as well.

"The Office of the Governor has chosen the most inefficient method possible to search for and produce these emails. The Governor has asked each member of his staff to interrupt their day, search through their mail boxes, and print out emails the staff believes are responsive to my requests", explained Washburn. "I deliberately designed these requests so the emails could be exported directly from the email server without bothering the staff at all." To help with this export process, Mr. Washburn even provided the complete source code to a utility which will export emails, sort them by date, and automatically redact any non-governmental email addresses found. "The Governor's office could have done the same and legitimately charged me for the time to design, develop and test such an application. Even with the higher rates allowed by law for programming time, this server-side approach would have cost less than the $5112 being charge using the inefficient, client-side approach of the Governor's Office."

At this time Mr. Washburn is waiting for the emails he has paid for, weighing his legal options, and hoping to raise the funds needed to pay for the remaining seven requests.

Background checks for school board members?

Is this really necessary?

The recent indictment of an Alief school trustee -- and the revelation of his criminal record -- has prompted the question: Should the state or local districts require the same background checks for board members as they do for employees and volunteers?

"I think everybody should be scrutinized; anybody who represents or works for the school district," said Cheryl LaBelle, who retired last year as a secretary for the Alief Independent School District, in southwest Houston. "It's not even a matter of fairness. The first priority of the school district is to teach our children and protect them."

The idea of checking school board members has generated support from some current board members. Manuel Rodríguez Jr., president of the Houston board, and Don Ryan, president of the Cypress-Fairbanks board, said they would favor such checks.

"You are in a position where you have a leadership role in the district. I think the community would want to know if you had anything on a background check," Ryan said. "Our main focus is on the protection of the students and staff. So anything we can do in that regard to increase that protection, I think the board ought to take action to do that."

[...]

[Edgar Dansby III, the Alief trustee indicted in December,] is accused of falsely claiming he had a degree from Southern Methodist University and using taxpayer money to rent the gowns he wore as a board representative at several high school graduation ceremonies. The gowns were supposed to represent his alma mater.

A spokeswoman for SMU said the university has no record of Dansby, 50, attending or graduating from the school.

Harris County records show that Dansby pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor prostitution charge in 1982 and was sentenced to six months' probation. He also was twice convicted of theft in the late 1980s and received deferred adjudication, a form of probation, on a third theft charge. None of those resulted in a final felony conviction.

State law forbids candidates for public offices to run if they have a final felony conviction and were not pardoned.

Dansby's attorney, Cornel Williams, declined to comment.

State Sen. Juan "Chuy" Hinojosa, who co-authored the bill requiring the checks, said he doesn't see a need for board members to undergo checks.

"A board member is not in close or constant contact with the students," said the Democrat from McAllen. "Also, this is a political official. At least the majority of the time, you have a challenger. They'll dig that (criminal history) up on their own."

As part of the new law, teachers and some other employees must be fingerprinted.

State Rep. Rob Eissler, who chairs the House Public Education Committee, said he wouldn't mind if local districts adopted policies requiring background checks of trustees.

The Republican from The Woodlands said the next Legislature probably will discuss including board members in the law.

I kind of lean towards Sen. Hinojosa's position. This is something that should come out of the political process. I'm with Rep. Eissler in that I won't mind if local districts decide to go beyond what state law requires, but I don't see this as something the Lege needs to take up. Your mileage may vary.

Your Voter ID card is in the mail

We're going to have a lot of voters in Harris County this year, and they will all have one thing in common:

The number of registered voters in Harris County is expected to hit a record high before the November election, but people have been registering at a slower pace than past years, Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector Paul Bettencourt said Monday.

The number of registered voters in the county is expected to top 2 million, exceeding the record of 1.9 million in 2000, said Bettencourt, who also is the county voter registrar.

"We will clearly set a record this year," he said. "It depends on people's interest in the presidential election."

Bettencourt got the registration process under way at the downtown post office Monday, mailing more than 1.5 million voter registration cards. The mailed cards replace two-year-old registrations that expired Monday.

Voters are required to show the cards or another form of identification before casting ballots.

Yes, every single registered voter in Harris County will be receiving an official Voter ID card in the mail shortly. They must produce this Voter ID card when they show up at the ballot box, or a suitable alternative to it, such as a driver's license. Just something to keep in mind the next time you hear a Republican elected official or candidate talk about the need for Voter ID legislation.

Never tell a geek it can't be done more efficiently

Elise Hu has part eight of her series on Governor Perry's email retention policies, which has come down to a contest between Perry and his minions against open-records advocate and all-around pit bull John Washburn - see here for my previous entry. In this episode, AG Greg Abbott has issued an opinion dismissing Washburn's claim (PDF) that Perry's office was attempting to nickel-and-dime him to death. Washburn has now fired back that this is simply an effort to use ignorance and claims of technical incompetence to stifle him. He then adds his own offer to compensate for the latter, complete with full source code. It's a glorious example of righteous geeky indignation. Check it out.

Truthiness in briefs

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in the Crawford v. Marion County Election Board case, which is about Indiana's restrictive voter ID law. That brief, which you can see here (PDF), has more than a few fanciful claims in it. Vince does the dirty work of fact checking Abbott. Check it out.

GOP will use paper ballots in Wharton County

Looks like we've got our first successful rebellion against electronic voting machines in Texas.

On whether computerized electronic voting machines are reliable and secure, the Republican leadership in Wharton County votes "no."

Precinct chairmen in the county southwest of Houston decided this week to return to using paper ballots in the March GOP primary for president, congressional seats and local races. About 3,000 people are expected to vote in the primary.

The move is a rejection of the touch-screen technology that Wharton County rolled out for the statewide election a few weeks ago. In Texas, the Democratic and Republican parties conduct their own primaries in individual counties, and the election process is overseen by the secretary of state.

In the statewide election, businessman Jim Welch tried to vote at a fire station in Boling. Some of his votes on state constitutional amendments changed before his eyes, he said, and when election officials acknowledged the problem and offered to let him start over, he concluded the equipment was unreliable and declined. Welch later complained to county and party officials.

County election administrator Judy Owens confirmed that a voting machine malfunctioned because of a calibration problem with the touch function, but she emphasized that the machine was taken out of service immediately and that Welch was given a chance to vote accurately on another machine.

"Occasionally if someone press, press, presses a particular button, it can cause problems. We had someone go out and fix things," she told the Wharton Journal-Spectator on Election Day.

County commissioners are sticking with the iVotronic electronic voting system, which is used widely in Texas and manufactured by Election Systems & Software of Omaha. The company says extensive testing proves its system is accurate and secure and that the machines need to be calibrated in preparation for every Election Day.

But Welch's complaint alarmed Debra Medina, chairwoman of the Wharton County Republican Party.

After checking with county officials and a nationally recognized electronic voting critic, and reading about ES&S's legal dispute with voting jurisdictions in California about its equipment, she sought a change. The dozen or so precinct chairmen, from among the county's 22 precincts, agreed this week to avoid using the new equipment.

Without an explanation for why a machine lost its correct calibration on Nov. 6, Medina said, there is no guarantee that a more serious disruption won't take place in March.

"I don't want to be on the front page of any newspaper having to say our vote (was) unreliable," she said. "We work very hard to get voters to the polls, and if we can't rely on the vote to be the intent of the people, what are we doing?"

Medina said she is looking into using ballot cards that, like standardized test sheets, are marked with dark circles and then tabulated by equipment called optical scanners. Or the party could revert to using old-fashioned paper voting forms counted by hand.

Count me as a fan of optical scanners, which as I understand it have a very low error rate. I think a better idea than ballot cards is to use an electronic interface like what we have now, and have that spit out a paper ballot for the scanners to count. I'd also be happy with the e-voting machines now if we had paper ballots to act as a backup in the event of a disastrous loss of data or just a controversial situation like the phantom vote problem that the Tarrant County GOP faced in last March's primary, using these same ES&S machines. Going back to hand counts is in my opinion a step way too far. Save that for recounts - let's improve the technology we have now for the regular business.

It's interesting that a county Republican party is the first to make this break. Voting machine concerns have mostly been the province of Democrats. That does not seem to be the case in Wharton, however.

"I kind of like the (iVotronic) machines," said [Wharton County Democratic Party] chairman Roger Benavides. "They had one problem, and they corrected the one problem, that's all it was."

"Even if you change it, you still have to put up with (the iVotronic equipment) in the next election," he said. "You might as well get the people used to using them."

I can already hear the cries of anguish by some of my colleagues today.

Washburn fires back

In my previous entry on Governor Perry's email retention policy, I noted that the strategy for dealing with John Washburn, the activist who's giving the Governor a pain in the tuchus by making TPIA requests for his office's emails, is to nickel and dime him to death. Well, Washburn is not taking that lying down.

Now Washburn is responding. With a formal complaint to the Texas Attorney General's office.

Dear Mr. Simpson:
I would like to file a formal complaint with the Attorney General of Texas regarding the excessive charges to copy electronic records to electronic media. The charges amount to $568.00 for one CD-ROM worth of data.
As I articulated below, I believe Texas statues and administrative rules only allow for the charge of two dollars ($2.00) not $568.00 as asserted by the Office of the Governor. Attached are the relevant correspondences. I am also mailing the attached to the Austin address of the Attorney General.
As an aside I must say the "itemization" leaves something to be desired. What services exactly am I getting for $567.00?

Washburn also wrote back to the governor's deputy counsel, disputing some of the charges as well as the governor's office contention that Washburn has not paid for his total of seven TPIA requests. Washburn says this is untrue, because he only got an itemization of costs for one of his seven requests.

And here's that letter he sent (PDF), along with a check for $2 and two self-addressed stamped envelopes to cover the cost of CDs and shipping. Read the letter, and you will understand that this guy is Not. Going. Away. I can't begin to tell you how much fun this has been already, and how much the prospect of this being drawn out makes me smile. Here's more from Elise Hu, the Observer blog, and the Star Telegram, which adds this useful fact:

Jesse Wilkins, a records retention expert at Houston-based Access Sciences, last month headlined an "e-records" conference in Austin designed to help state bureaucrats manage records in the electronic era.

He said that governments everywhere are grappling with how to balance the requirement for transparency with the need to handle ever-larger inboxes and run an efficient office. There are no hard and fast rules, but Wilkins said there's affordable technology that allows governments to manage clutter, index and archive e-mail messages and ensure that important information is retained.

Wilkins said he didn't know the specifics of Perry's records retention policies, but he said a seven-day delete policy was a bit unusual, even in the private sector.

"In my mind, seven days is not reasonable," Wilkins said. "That strikes me as a very short period of time."

Indeed. Your move, Governor.

What's in a headline?

More than 49,000 ineligible voters on Texas rolls, the headline blares. Sound scary to you? Consider this:

More than 49,000 people on the Texas voter registration rolls in May may not have been eligible to vote, state auditors reported today.

The ineligible voters included 23,114 possible felons, 23,576 people who were deceased and 2,359 voters with duplicate records. The auditors said the ineligible voters represented 0.4 percent of the state's 12.3 million registered voters.

In other words, a headline reading "Fewer than 1 in 200 registered voters are ineligible" would be equally accurate. But not nearly as scary.

Putting it another way, the closest statewide election in the last 10 years was the 1998 contest between Carole Keeton then-Rylander and Paul Hobby for Comptroller. Rylander won by 20,000 votes, so had each of these felons and dead people participated (and assuming they were either felons or dead back then), they could conceivably had tipped the election to Hobby. Of course, if we assume that felons and dead people turn out at the same rate as other registered voters, then the 36% of the 49,000 of them would not quite have been enough to affect the outcome, even if they all voted for Hobby. Point I'm making is that in context, this is a very small number.

Obviously, the Secretary of State and the various county officials have done a pretty good job of keeping the voter rolls up to date. Frankly, the truly scary prospect is that they're so good at cleansing the rolls that they've been (accidentally or otherwise) throwing perfectly legitimate (i.e., non-dead, non-felon, non-duplicate) people out as well. Unfortunately, I don't think anyone is keeping track of how many such disenfranchised voters there may be, so we've no basis for comparison. But we should at least bear it in mind.

UPDATE: Here's the fuller version of the story.

State auditors found more than 49,000 potentially ineligible felons and dead people on Texas voter rolls this year, but did not find that any cast ballots in May's special election.

The audit report released Tuesday said that there may be even more potentially inaccurate voter information but they were unable to check for U.S. citizenship status or federal felony convictions or verify records that lacked a Social Security number and Texas driver's license number.

The audit recommended that the Secretary of State's Office do a better job of matching criminal conviction and death records with the voter list.

Although there were no instances found of potentially ineligible voters casting ballots in the May 12 special election, auditors noted the "relatively low 7 percent voter turnout" for that special constitutional amendment election to extend a school property tax cut to senior citizens and disabled homeowners.

The audit also found inadequate security controls over a new computer system that maintains voter records and weaknesses in data backup that increase the risk of prompt and full recovery of data from a disaster.

Scott Haywood, a spokesman for Secretary of State Phil Wilson, said the office has implemented many of the auditors' recommendations but wants to be careful about wrongly removing anyone from voter rolls.

He noted that the auditors were unable to verify that the 23,114 possible felons and 23,576 possibly deceased voters actually should be removed from voting lists.

"We can't remove someone from the voter roll unless it's a strong match because we don't want to take away an eligible voter's right to vote," Haywood said.

[...]

Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, said the audit didn't find any fraud had occurred in the May election. He said the ID requirement could suppress turnout among many Texans who are eligible to vote.

"Every time someone says, 'Show me the fraud,' there isn't any," said Coleman.

So there you have it.

They charged for a CD?

Elise Hu has a fifth entry in her series called "The Purge", on how Governor Perry's office disposes of email, possibly in conflict with Texas' open records laws. (See here, here, and here for background.) Along the way, Perry has picked up a bit of a thorn in the side, a fellow who has taken advantage of the fact that the Governor's office will retain emails for which a public information request has been made. We pick up the story from there:

Twice a week for the last three weeks, open government crusader John Washburn has sent out a TPIA request for the governor's office emails, excluding constituent mail. He received an itemized response from the Governor's Deputy General Counsel this week, with charges for FOUR DAYS worth of emails:

31.5 hours of staff time at $15/hour = $472.50 (to compile and redact emails)
Overhead at 20% of staff charge = $94.50
CD for compiled material = $1
TOTAL for four days worth of emails = $568

The letter from the Governor's office once again encourages Washburn to narrow his request to save money.

I'm not sure which surprises me more, that staff time is only billed at $15/hour (try to find that in the private sector), or that they added in a dollar to cover the cost of the CD. It's pretty clear that the Governor's office has realized it can't easily extract itself from this situation, so they're taking the approach of hoping to nickel and dime the guy until he cries uncle and goes away. Hu notes that Perry requested and then withdrew (both PDF) an opinion from AG Greg Abbott about its responsibilities, so I'd say they've conceded the point but not defeat. We may have to start a fund to ensure that this tactic doesn't work. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: The Observer blog has more.

Washburn could be looking at an open records request fee total of more than $2,000 per month -- and Perry's office also noted that a failure to receive the funds would result in automatic withdrawals of outstanding requests, along with a note that no disclosure of the records requested would begin until the governor's office receives a "deposit."

What was Washburn's reaction?

"I laughed at it, to be honest with you," he says. "It is exorbitantly high."

Washburn says he knows exactly what he asked for, and he knows that it can be easily obtained.

"How hard can email extraction be from a server?" he asked. (I must admit thinking about that for a minute. Perry's office is claiming 31.5 hours of staff time at $15 per hour, which results in the bulk of the $568 figure. What will those staff members be doing during those hours? We called Perry's office and they said they'd get back to us with more details.)

Washburn asked for the emails in their original, digital format. There is a question as to how such documents can be redacted, and for that matter, what is the logic of the redactors?

Washburn, who has a history of open records activity in Wisconsin, Florida, and now Texas, says he has never before encountered a charge for staff time, although it is standard in the Lone Star state.

He did tell me that he was surprised by what he called Perry's 'gambit.' He said he thought Perry would take the 'drag-it-out' approach to stifling records requests.

"Before, I thought it was just going to be stretched out," Washburn says. "Now, they're hoping that I won't come up with the money."

So far, Washburn has requested the governor's emails from preceding days on Nov. 6, 9, 13, 20, and 23. The objective, Washburn said, was to stop a pro-forma email destruction policy that Perry's office had in place -- and which it said it inherited from Governor George W. Bush.

Washburn does have a plan to thwart Perry's latest move, but it will take another post to assess its merits.

To answer the "how hard can it be?" question, it can be complicated and time-consuming if we're talking about restoring data from backups - the architecture of Microsoft Exchange makes it more involved than simply pulling files off of tapes. Here, we're basically talking about dumping people's Outlook Inbox to a PST file, which is a trivial task. I suppose redacting could take some time and effort, but that does seem to be a high figure budgeted for it. Anyway, I look forward to hearing what Washburn's plan to "thwart" the Governor's gambit will be.

Lance Armstrong's political future

I think Lance Armstrong did a good job in getting Prop 15 through the Legislature and then approved by the voters. He did the hard work necessary for such an endeavor, he leveraged his celebrity and his life experience, which were his two biggest assets as spokesman for the measure, and in the end he got the job done. I'm not surprised that in the afterglow that stories like this, about what kind of future he might have if he chose to pursue politics fulltime, are now appearing. But I think a little more thought needs to be given to the matter, because I'm already seeing some potential red flags.

"He's got the political DNA without a doubt," said Cathy Bonner, an aide to former Democratic Gov. Ann Richards.

"He's an extremely fast learner," said Ms. Bonner, a board member at the 1997 launch of Mr. Armstrong's anti-cancer foundation who last year came up with the idea of a $3 billion bond issue for research after Ms. Richards died of cancer of the esophagus.

"When you travel with him, it's a rock star kind of thing - and to use those sorts of skills politically is also a talent," Ms. Bonner said. "The skills are there if he wants a political career."

Mr. Armstrong declined to be interviewed about what, if any, political ambitions he has.

Stumping for Proposition 15 last month, Mr. Armstrong said that as a private citizen who is not linked to either political party, he's more effective urging more spending on cancer research and - in a new addition to his message - more affordable health insurance so more people can receive preventive care and be diagnosed early. However, Mr. Armstrong declined to rule out a future run for office.

[...]

Ms. Bonner, the architect of Proposition 15, and state Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, said they would like to see Mr. Armstrong run for public office.

They use words like "authentic" and "heart" and "incredible potential" to describe Mr. Armstrong, who was born and grew up in North Texas.

But neither claims to know Mr. Armstrong's intentions about running for office - or for that matter, whether he's a Republican, Democrat or independent.

"He transcends those labels," said Mr. Watson, who like Mr. Armstrong survived testicular cancer. "Most people get that trying to find a cure for cancer - trying to make sure that people who are touched by that beast are able to live full lives - that's not about labels."

I'm always leery of claims that someone "transcends party labels". The simple fact of the matter is that if you're going to make a serious run for office in this state, you're going to have to do it as an R or a D, and once you claim such a label, you can't really transcend it. Neither side will let you - one will demand that you wear it with pride, while the other will try to make it be a negative. That's the nature of our system, and it ain't gonna change.

That doesn't mean he can't appeal to people in each party, as well as independents. There are plenty of such politicians in Texas today. It's one thing to do so on an already-popular, genuinely bipartisan effort like Prop 15. But if you want to be Governor or Senator or some such, people are going to want to know how you feel about things like immigration, abortion, and taxes. Sooner or later, you've got to pick a team.

None of this is to suggest that Lance Armstrong couldn't be a successful politician if he wants to pursue that path. He's got plenty of Elvis in him, he's likely to have name ID and favorable numbers that anyone would kill for, he's a proven fundraiser, and he's clearly got some skills. All I'm saying is that an actual partisan race is a very different animal from what Armstrong just experienced, and sometimes the skills don't translate from one type of race to another. History suggests that candidates who try to rise above partisan politics - the Adlai Stevenson types don't do so well at the ballot box.

One last point: It's not clear to me that Armstrong couldn't accomplish more for the issues he cares about as a lobbyist/activist than he could as an officeholder. Right now, he can focus exclusively on what he cares about the most, he can pick his fights, and he can maintain his status as a transcender. If cancer research and funding is his thing, I'd probably advise him to keep doing what he's doing. Just a thought.

Some see bumps ahead, though, should Mr. Armstrong decide he wants to be governor, U.S. senator, maybe even president.

The Proposition 15 campaign "sounds sort of like a low-cost test run" of a candidacy, "where you see both how good you are at it and how people respond to you," said Southern Methodist University political scientist Cal Jillson.

"It's not a particularly good test because you're on a feel-good mission and you don't have [a campaign's] nastiness and the partisan slash and burn," Dr. Jillson said.

He said that just as Mr. Schwarzenegger in his 2003 gubernatorial race fended off sexual harassment allegations and reports about possible past drug use, Mr. Armstrong's divorce and highly publicized dalliances with rock star Sheryl Crow and actress Ashley Olsen could complicate any bid to win political office.

"I think what Lance Armstrong would have to think long and hard about is what people would make of the end of his marriage," Dr. Jillson said. "Mostly it would be the way the marriage ended, as opposed to playing the field afterwards."

Well, yeah, there's that, too. Some people with colorful pasts have a harder time with them than others, but it's a consideration. It's also my understanding that Armstrong wasn't even a registered voter prior to 2006. The oppo research has not yet begun on Armstrong, that's all I'm saying. Only he can say if that's a concern or not. State of Mine has more.

Still more on "The Purge"

Elise Hu continues doing good work on what she calls "The Purge", about the email retention policy of Governor Perry's office and how it relates to Texas' open record laws. Turns out that at least one state office hasn't had any of the issues that Perry has claimed as justification for keeping its mail servers so clean:

[T]he Texas Department of Transportation, TXDOT -- is doing what the Governor's office says cannot be done. The open-records-crusader, John Washburn, pointed me to TXDOT's testimonial on the website of its consultant, Messaging Architects. Not only does TXDOT keep its emails, it can electronically search and sort them from its archives.

As a state agency, TxDOT needs to be compliant to the Texas Public Information Act, which was designed to provide access to public information, including email messages and other electronically delivered documents. To fulfill this requirement in the most cost-effective way, TxDOT needed an enterprise-class solution capable of processing over 11,000 GroupWise mailboxes while also providing quick and easy access to the contents of archived mailboxes. In addition, given the scope of the project, access to expert-level GroupWise technical support in the deployment phase was seen as a priority.

It seems even TXDOT -- an agency roundly criticized for its secrecy -- has found a permanent home for its emails in order to comply with the TPIA.

Groupwise, huh? If that's standard for the government as a whole, then what I wrote before about Exchange deleted email retention isn't operative. I claim no expertise on Groupwise, though I'd still bet that the claim of "wiping clean the server after seven days" is at the least way too broad. My suggestion for the next angle to pursue in this story is to track down whoever the email administrator is for the Governor's office and ask him or her 1) what exactly the Governor's policy means in technical terms, and 2) why exactly their claimed lack of server space is an issue for them but apparently not for other agencies. I'll help translate the geekspeak if you need me to.

Bell files lawsuit against Perry

Well, this could get interesting.

Former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Chris Bell filed a lawsuit against Gov. Rick Perry's 2006 re-election campaign and the Republican Governor's Association today claiming they illegally hid $1 million in donations from Houston homebuilder Bob Perry.

The lawsuit claims the Republican Governor's Association was not legally set up to make donations at the time of the contributions to Perry.

RGA Executive Director Nick Ayers called the lawsuit "political posturing at its best."

Perry spokesman Robert Black issued a statement calling Bell's lawsuit retaliation.

[...]

If the lawsuit is successful, Bell would be able to collect a maximum of $2 million each from the RGA, Perry's campaign fund and Perry campaign treasurer, Austin dentist Richard Box, said Bell's lawyer, Buck Wood.

A copy of the lawsuit is here, and a reprint of a Chron story from January that first aired this information is at the Texas Politics post. I realize that between the Lone Star Project, the Fort Bend GOP, and Ed Emmett, it seems like everyone is suing everyone else these days, but I wouldn't dismiss this out of hand. Back in 2002, I scoffed at some losing Democratic State House candidates when they filed a suit against the Texas Association of Business. Not only did those plaintiffs win their suit, they uncovered evidence of fund-shifting not unlike what's being alleged here that led directly to the criminal indictments of Tom DeLay and three of his cronies. You never know what might happen during discovery. Most people have better things to do than file frivolous suits, so let's see what happens when a motion to dismiss is made.

On a side note, I'd like to see someone answer the commenter there who asked about Grandma Strayhorn and Kinky Friedman filing suits of their own. It'd be interesting to hear what they think about this.

UPDATE: This Statesman story has more (link via V&W).

UPDATE: And here's the Chron story.

Netroots Nation in Austin

Netroots Nation, formerly known as Yearly Kos, will have its 2008 convention in Austin.

There are many reasons that we chose Austin, personally, I was most compelled because the hotel rate was $25 better than the other city. But it also gives me peace of mind to know the venue can handle our technical needs because they host South by Southwest every year. Another great reason is that we have already been approached by people on the ground to help with organizing local volunteers (always a consideration for a convention that relies on getting 100+ volunteers, many of whom tend to be local to the area). Finally, Austin has everything that our audience asked for in our post-convention surveys this year. The rooms are cheap, the city is walkable, there are many food and accommodation options, and the meeting space is compact.

Very cool. Of course, this means I no longer have an excuse for not attending. Thus, I look forward to seeing those of you who've been before and will be back. Here's a statement about this by the Rick Noriega campaign:

On behalf of all Texans, Rick Noriega congratulates the City of Austin as he shares in their excitement as host of the 2008 Netroots Nation convention. The Netroots community has not only proven that it can change the conventional wisdom of politics, but that it can change the conventional practices of politics as well.

We have the opportunity to enact meaningful change in the makeup of the U.S. Senate in 2008 and Rick is proud to be the candidate to put Texas in play. Our grassroots movement in Texas has garnered Democracy for America's first Senate endorsement, the support of John Kerry and Wesley Clark, the backing of the Texas netroots and Blue America communities, as well as contributions from over 2,400 online donors-- the most donors of any Senate challenger on ActBlue.

Welcome to Austin, Netroots! Rick and our entire campaign team look forward to meeting many of you in person next July 17-20.

Keynote speech, anyone? More on NN can be found here.

Voter ID by the numbers

TPM links to this qualitative look by the Brennan Center on the effects of Indiana's restrictive voter ID law, and it's a must-read.

Citing new evidence that Indiana's voter identification law is disenfranchising thousands of Indiana voters, lawyers at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law and a coalition of voting rights organizations filed a friend-of-the-court brief today urging the U.S. Supreme Court to scuttle the Indiana law. The brief is one of more than 20 amicus briefs being filed today by voting rights advocates, current and former Secretaries of State, law professors, historians, political scientists, student organizations, labor unions and civic, religious and civil rights organizations. A full list of amici and a summary of their briefs is available here.

The Brennan Center's brief comes as new research, also released today from the University of Washington Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race and Sexuality, is providing the first direct evidence that Indiana's voter identification law is d