political news, State news

U.S. Sen. O’Rourke? Let’s wait and see about that one

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Beto O’Rourke wants to succeed Ted Cruz in the U.S. Senate.

To be honest, few things political would make me happier than to see the Cruz Missile brought back to Earth by a loss to a up-and-comer such as O’Rourke.

Will it happen?

I refer you to “Gov.” Wendy Davis, the former Democratic state senator who once was thought to have an actual chance at defeating Greg Abbott in the race for Texas governor in 2014. She lost by more than 20 percentage points.

O’Rourke represents an El Paso congressional district. He’s seen as one of the next generation of Texas Democratic stars, along with, oh, Julian and Joaquin Castro, the twins from San Antonio; Julian served as San Antonio mayor and then went to work in Barack Obama’s Cabinet as housing secretary. Joaquin serves in the House along with O’Rourke.

Cruz became a serious pain in the patoot almost immediately after being elected to the Senate in 2012. He took no time at all before inheriting the role once occupied by another Texas U.S. senator, fellow Republican Phil Gramm, of whom it used to be said that “The most dangerous place in American was between Gramm and a TV camera.” Cruz loves the limelight and he hogged it relentlessly almost from the moment he took office.

Sen. Cruz repulses me, as if that’s not already clear. Cruz once actually questioned the commitment of two Vietnam War combat veterans — Democratic Sen. John Kerry and Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel — to the nation’s military strength; Cruz never wore a military uniform.

But is he vulnerable to a challenge from Beto O’Rourke? There’s no need to count the ways why I don’t think O’Rourke is going to beat him. There’s really only a single factor to consider: O’Rourke is a Democrat and Cruz is a Republican and as near as I can tell, a semi-trained monkey can get elected to damn near any office in Texas — as long as he runs as a Republican.

I say this understanding that a year from now a lot of factors can change. Will any of them turn O’Rourke from prohibitive underdog to overwhelming favorite?

Texas remains a deeply red state and is likely to remain so for, oh, the foreseeable future — if not beyond.

My most realistic hope is that Rep. O’Rourke —  if he wins his party’s U.S. Senate primary next year — makes this enough of a contest to force Sen. Cruz to think of Texans’ needs before he thinks of his own political interests.

national news, political news

It’s the messenger, man, not the message

The White House issued the following statement to commemorate Sexual Abuse Awareness Month:

“At the heart of our country is the emphatic belief that every person has unique and infinite value. We dedicate each April to raising awareness about sexual abuse and recommitting ourselves to fighting it. Women, children, and men have inherent dignity that should never be violated.

“According to the Department of Justice, on average there are more than 300,000 instances of rape or other sexual assault that afflict our neighbors and loved ones every year. Behind these painful statistics are real people whose lives are profoundly affected, at times shattered, and who are invariably in need of our help, commitment, and protection.

“As we recognize National Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month, we are reminded that we all share the responsibility to reduce and ultimately end sexual violence. As a Nation, we must develop meaningful strategies to eliminate these crimes, including increasing awareness of the problem in our communities, creating systems that protect vulnerable groups, and sharing successful prevention strategies.”

That is a perfectly fine statement about a horrific problem in this country, indeed the world.

The problem with the message, though, is the messenger. Donald J. Trump is now president of the United States. He lives in the White House and runs the government that has just issued this appropriate and moving statement.

His record, though, calls just about every aspect of this statement into question. Does the president really and truly believe it? He didn’t write it, but it was issued under his name.

Do you remember during the 2016 presidential campaign that “Access Hollywood” video that went viral, the one where candidate Trump boasted about grabbing women by their private parts? Do you recall how he told Billy Bush how it’s OK to just start kissing women?

This man admitted to committing sexual abuse. Voters elected him anyway.

Rest assured. None of this individual’s personal history is going to go unnoticed, particularly when the White House issues statements that — in effect — condemn the boss’s conduct before he moved into the people’s house.

legal news, national news, political news

Senate readies for ‘nuclear’ attack on rules

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All this hubbub over whether to deploy the “nuclear option” to get a Supreme Court justice confirmed has my head spinning.

My emotions are terribly mixed.

Here is where we stand:

* The U.S. Senate Committee has recommended that Neil Gorsuch be confirmed to the Supreme Court; the panel voted along partisan lines. Republicans voted “yes,” Democrats voted “no.”

* Democrats are set to filibuster the Gorsuch nomination as payback to their Republican “friends” for blocking an earlier appointment, again on partisan grounds.

* Senate rules require Supreme Court nominees to garner at least 60 votes. Republicans at this moment don’t have enough votes to reach the 60-vote threshold — and break a Democratic filibuster.

* Republicans, thus, are pondering whether to “go nuclear” and change the rules to allow only a simple majority to approve a high court nominee.

Ohhhh, what to do?

We’ve already stipulated that Democratic senators don’t want Gorsuch seated if only because of the steamroll job GOP senators did on Merrick Garland, whom Barack Obama nominated to the court to succeed the late Antonin Scalia.

Why the emotional conflict?

I happen to believe in presidential prerogative. I believe the president’s selection deserves greater consideration than the Senate’s constitutional right to reject an appointment, particularly if the appointee is “well qualified,” as the American Bar Association has determined about Gorsuch.

But my belief in presidential prerogative is tempered a good bit by the outrage I share with Democratic senators over the way Republican senators stonewalled Garland’s nomination, how they played politics by saying the next appointment belonged to “the next president.”

They were as wrong as they could be in denying President Obama the right to select someone, who I feel compelled to add is every bit as qualified to serve on the high court as Neil Gorsuch.

Should the Republican majority throw its weight around once again by engaging in that so-called “nuclear option” and change the rules to suit their own agenda?

Let me think for a moment about that one.

No. They shouldn’t!

Sports news

Act, Texas lawmakers, to make texting while driving illegal!

A tragedy in Uvalde County, Texas ought to spur the state’s Legislature to do something it needs to do with utmost urgency.

Here comes my rant.

The Legislature needs to enact a bill that’s pending to ban motorists from doing anything behind the wheel of a motor vehicle that doesn’t involve driving the damn thing.

It needs to ban texting while driving and using a handheld telephone while driving. It needs to send the bill to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk and the governor needs to sign it into law immediately.

Jody Kuchler is a hero in my book. He was driving along a highway near Garner State Park when he witnessed a vehicle swerving dramatically in front of him. He dialed 9-1-1 and pleaded with authorities to “get this guy” off the highway. He told dispatchers he was certain the driver would get himself killed or, worse, kill someone else.

He proved to be tragically prescient.

The pickup truck slammed head-on into a bus carrying members of a Baptist church in New Braunfels. Twelve passengers died at the scene. The driver of the pickup — 20-year-old Jack Dillon Young — admitted to police he was texting while driving.

Ban this activity

Would a law have prevented this person from committing this act of sheer idiocy — allegedly? Probably not.

But — dammit to hell! — there needs to be serious penalties attached to someone committing this kind of outrageous behavior.

There have been judges in Texas who have been unafraid to assess creative sentences to people who commit egregious crimes that result in death or serious injury.

My wife today came up with an idea: sentencing the perpetrator to community service — in addition to jail time — that includes speaking to high school students about the dangers of doing what he has done.

This story sickens and saddens me to my core. It also enrages me that the state of Texas hasn’t yet declared texting while driving important enough to make it illegal across our vast state.

I don’t blame the Legislature so much for this failure. The 2011 Legislature placed such a bill on Gov. Rick Perry’s desk. Perry vetoed it for the most stupid reason imaginable: He labeled it a form of government overreach.

I am hoping fervently that Gov. Abbott sees it differently.

media news

45th POTUS keeps trying to rewrite the rules

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Listen up, Donald John “Smart Person” Trump.

You cannot tell major media organizations which news to cover and which to ignore. The U.S. Constitution — the document with which you are patently unfamiliar — simply doesn’t allow presidents of the United States to coerce a “free press.”

It’s in the First Amendment. The founders had crafted the Constitution with those articles, then they started to amend the government framework. So they started with 10 civil liberties they wanted to protect.

That First Amendment? It protects freedom to worship, freedom to assemble peaceably to protest the government and — yep! — the freedom of the press to report the news.

NBC News believes the Russian hacking story is important enough to cover fully and completely.

It doesn’t please you, Mr. President? That’s tough dookey, sir. It doesn’t matter whether you’re unhappy with the way the television network does its job.

And quit the tweeting, too

You keep blazing away on your Twitter feed with that juvenile nonsense. You act more like a teenager than the leader of the free world. And do you actually believe that NBC News or any media outlet is going to do what you want just because you’re the president and you can say whatever the hell you feel like saying?

That’s not how it works in this country.

Just so you know, I just watched a great PBS special on KLRU-TV, based out of Austin, Texas. It told us plenty about the presidency, the White House and the families who have occupied “the people’s house.”

One of your predecessors, President Lyndon Johnson, was ravaged by protesters during the Vietnam War. What do you suppose the president said at the time. He said he wanted to ensure that presidents always work to preserve the right to dissent, to disagree with decisions made in the Oval Office. “I know all about dissent,” LBJ said.

You are occupying the Oval Office now, Mr. President. The dissent? The disagreement? The occasional anger? Get used to it.

Oh, and quit trying to bully the media.

The Constitution protects them from people like you. Honest. It’s in there. In the First Amendment. You ought to read it.

media news, national news, political news

No one saw this ‘trainwreck’? Not … exactly

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Donald J. Trump’s administration has demonstrated with amazing clarity what many of us believed all along: The president does not know how to govern.

The Los Angeles Times has just published the first of a series of editorials in which the newspaper proclaims that no one saw the trainwreck that would occur.

I beg to differ.

Dishonesty reigns in the White House

Here is part of what the Times wrote: “What is most worrisome about Trump is Trump himself. He is a man so unpredictable, so reckless, so petulant, so full of blind self-regard, so untethered to reality that it is impossible to know where his presidency will lead or how much damage he will do to our nation. His obsession with his own fame, wealth and success, his determination to vanquish enemies real and imagined, his craving for adulation — these traits were, of course, at the very heart of his scorched-earth outsider campaign; indeed, some of them helped get him elected. But in a real presidency in which he wields unimaginable power, they are nothing short of disastrous.”

The myriad problems that are plaguing the president — and the presidency — appear to be so much a result of self-inflicted ignorance and hubris.

At some levels, Trump is governing the way he said he would. He boasted that “I alone” can repair what he said was broken.

That is not how the founders structured this government of ours. Then again, the president doesn’t know about that, because he appears to demonstrate no interest in learning about what those great men envisioned for the government they created.

How will the president view the criticism that the LA Times has leveled at him? Oh, he’ll no doubt tweet something about how the paper is “failing,” or how it relies on “fake news,” apparently with no self-awareness that he became the king of fake news when he continued to promote the lie that Barack Obama was born overseas and wasn’t qualified constitutionally to serve as president.

The LA Times — if you’ll allow me to borrow a phrase — is “telling it like it is.”

national news, political news

Hillary’s back? Please, no!

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I have terribly mixed feelings about seeing Hillary Rodham Clinton climbing back into the arena.

First of all, she should have been elected president of the United States in 2016. She wasn’t. She squandered every single opportunity that stood before her, starting with the quality of the fellow to whom she lost the election.

Donald J. Trump is unfit for the office he occupies. But he’s occupying it. Not Hillary.

She shouldn’t run again … ever!

“She’s always been someone who gets out there and fights for what she thinks is right,” one former Clinton campaign staffer told The Hill.

“She’s striking an appropriate balance. She still has an appreciation that she’s not the face of the Democratic Party and people don’t want her to be … but having worked for her and having seen how hard she fights, I’d be disappointed if she spent the rest of her career in the woods.”

I get that she isn’t exactly positioning herself for another presidential run. That’s fine. She shouldn’t. She need not run for the highest office ever again.

Can she a voice of some sort? Can she speak on behalf of Americans — most of whom who voted in 2016 cast their ballots for her — who want to resist whatever it is that Trump wants to do? I suppose so.

I happen to subscribe to the prevailing political theory that the Democratic Party needs to find the freshest face it can find in 2020. I’m pretty sure the Democrats will find one.

As for Hillary, well, she has had a hell of a run in a lengthy public service career. First lady of Arkansas, then of the United States; a U.S. senator from New York; a consequential stint as secretary of state; then a major-party presidential nomination.

OK, so she didn’t win the big prize. Time should enable her to look back on her life and give her a chance to relish all that she was able to accomplish.

Maybe there’s more in store for her. I just hope it doesn’t include another run for the presidency.

legal news, local news

JP gets shot … and remains quiet? Huh?

An elected public official who gets shot in the shoulder owes the public a full explanation of what the hell happened to him.

Well, Potter County Justice of the Peace Richard Herman? What happened that night in Amarillo’s San Jacinto neighborhood?

Herman has gone dark since he allegedly got involved in some kind of back-alley dispute involving two men who supposedly were assaulting a third individual.

He began blabbing about the encounter on social media and then reported — again on social media — that he was self-treating a gunshot wound to the shoulder. Amarillo Police Department officials heard about it from an out-of-state caller and looked into the matter.

What the … ?

Doesn’t the public deserve to know the truth?

Herman didn’t bother to file a police report. State law would seem to compel him to do so. He’s in violation of the law? Is that correct?

How about telling the public what’s going on?

One doesn’t normally hear about justices of the peace getting involved with neighborhood tussles.

Talk to us, Judge Herman.

media news

Another old-school journo calls it a career

Of all the colleagues with whom I worked during my 37 years in daily journalism, I am hard-pressed to think of anyone who fit the description of “ink-stained wretch” better than a fellow who has just retired from a newspaper where we both once worked.

His name is Dan Wallach. He is a native of New York state. He graduated from the University of Arizona and ended up in Beaumont, Texas, where he worked at the Beaumont Enterprise for more than three decades.

Dan represents — to me — the individual who is committed fully to covering his community, of telling the myriad stories that give that community its life, its personality.

What’s more, he is unafraid to reveal the community’s scars and to press relentlessly the individuals who are responsible for inflicting those wounds.

He has just entered my world … of retirement. I welcome him gladly and wish him well, but I am absolutely certain that journalism as we both understand the craft is going to be a good bit poorer without more people such as Dan pursuing it.

I now want to tell a short story that personifies the kind of tribute that Dan earned from news sources over his many years in print journalism.

In the spring of 1995, just a few months after I had left Beaumont to become editorial page editor of the Amarillo Globe-News, I got a call from then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush’s office. The governor invited me to Austin to meet with him.

I arrived at the State Capitol Building a few days later. Gov. Bush and I  shook hands and he led me to his office. We exchanged a few pleasantries before we got down to brass tacks.

The governor knew I had worked at the Enterprise and he thanked me for the newspaper’s editorial endorsement in the 1994 governor’s race in which Gov. Bush defeated incumbent Democrat Ann Richards.

“It kind of surprised me,” Bush said. “Why is that?” I asked.

He told me about a “reporter you had there who gave me all kinds of trouble” when Bush talked to the media during his campaign stops in the Golden Triangle.

“I can’t remember his name,” he said. I responded, “Oh, you must be thinking of Dan Wallach.”

“Yeah, that’s who it was,” the governor said.

“He was one tough son of a b****.”

We both laughed out loud.

I told Dan not long after that meeting what the governor had said about him. I took it as a statement of high praise and I believe to this very day that’s how George W. Bush intended for it to be taken.

I have wanted for years to tell that story in some public forum. Dan’s retirement has given me that chance.

Well done, Dan.

local news

Happy Trails, Part Seven

AUSTIN, Texas — One of our nieces asked me at dinner: How does it feel?

Retirement? Yes.

Well, I don’t quite know yet. I’m still quite new at it, unlike my wife, who called it a career three years ago. She’s adapted nicely to being fully retired.

I’m still finding my way emotionally.

Don’t misunderstand me. I do not miss the daily grind. Nor do I miss the pressure of meeting deadlines. I damn sure don’t miss coping with the pressure of a changing media environment; I’ll leave that to the young bucks.

My gut tells me it’ll take no time at all to become totally acclimated to full-time retirement. After all, isn’t that what all of us strive to reach, that era of our life when we are free to pursue what we want, to not have to answer to anyone — other than your much better half?

I’ve crossed that threshold.

I cannot yet find the words to describe how I’m supposed to “feel” about retirement. I’ll recognize the words when I hear them in my head.

When I do, I’ll be sure to let you know. For now, I’m deriving too much joy just from awakening each morning when I feel like it.

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