Category Archives: Uncategorized

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Why not let AG defend you, governor?

State Rep. Joe Deshotel wants to know: Why is Gov. Rick Perry hiring a private lawyer at $450 per hour to defend him in a possible court case when the state attorney general, a pal of his, is available?

And why should Texas taxpayers pay for the private lawyer?

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/04/25/lawmaker-wants-ag-ruling-perry-legal-bill/

Why, indeed, to both questions, governor?

Deshotel is a Port Arthur Democrat — and a lawyer himself. He’s posed the question as a grand jury investigates whether Perry acted improperly in vetoing $7.5 million for the Travis County district attorney’s office and then promised to restore the money if the DA, Rosemary Lehmberg, resigned. Lehmberg had been ticketed for drunken driving this past April. She also runs the office that is charged with investigating state officials’ conduct.

Oh, and she’s also a Democrat. Perry, of course, is a Republican. Coincidence? Probably not.

Deshotel has sent Attorney General Greg Abbott a four-page letter inquiring about this matter. “What authority, if any, can the attorney general authorize hiring private counsel for the governor?” Deshotel asks. “If authority to hire private counsel exists, how would the attorney general authorize payment for such private counsel?”

One of the AG’s duties as set forth in the Texas Constitution is to defend state officials who get themselves into potential legal trouble. Perry might find himself in that position if a Travis County jury indicts him. But he’s gone outside the state legal system to hire David Botsford to represent him. He’s also paying him with state money.

There’s the rub, according to Deshotel.

Let’s get the answer.

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NBA team owner in serious trouble

Someone will have to explain this one to me … slowly.

Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling allegedly is overheard telling his girlfriend that she shouldn’t hang around with African-Americans and that she shouldn’t bring them to watch a sport dominated by, um, African-Americans. Sterling’s girlfriend also is of mixed-race heritage: half Latina, half (yep!) African-American.

Did I mention he owns a National Basketball Association team and employs African-American athletes? Oh, and it’s coached by an African-American gentleman who used to play a pretty good game of basketball himself.

http://msn.foxsports.com/nba/story/nba-investigating-disturbing-and-offensive-remarks-allegedly-made-by-clippers-sterling-042614

I used the term “allegedly” because it hasn’t yet been determined that the man’s voice actually is that of Sterling. I’ll bet that it is. I’ll also bet that the owner actually said what’s reported he said and that a pending NBA investigation is going to result in some serious sanctions against this guy.

What a weird and astonishing story.

The Clippers are involved the NBA’s playoff season now. Their coach, Doc Rivers, said today he had a team meeting over what’s been reported and added that the Clippers remained focused on their attempt to win the NBA championship. Everyone on the team is upset at what they heard, Rivers said, but he added that the athletes are solidly committed to their mission as a team. Good for them.

As for Sterling, his rant is as hideous as it gets. The link attached to this blog reports on what he said … allegedly. I’ll let his words speak for themselves.

Sterling no doubt will say — once the NBA determines it’s his voice — that his remarks were taken “out of context,” or that he’s been “misunderstood,” or that he’s “not a racist.”

I heard the context. I understand completely what he said. And racists usually are those who deny it in the first place.

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Grimm faces grim future

Normally, the indictment of a formerly obscure member of Congress from New York wouldn’t cause much of a ripple out here in Flyover Country. Honest.

Michael Grimm, a Republican, isn’t just any obscure lawmaker. He’s one who was overheard and watched via YouTube threatening to throw a reporter “off the (bleeping) balcony” of the U.S. Capitol Building Rotunda for asking him a question about the allegation that has resulted in the indictment.

To his credit, Grimm did apologize to the reporter and the two of them reportedly shared a meal later.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/04/25/rep-michael-grimm-faces-an-indictment-democrats-were-already-eyeing-his-seat/

A grand jury has indicted Grimm — apparently in secret — over campaign law violations. He has denied any wrongdoing, naturally. His spokesman said he’ll be vindicated when all the facts come out.

This is a pretty big deal, politically.

Grimm already is facing a stout challenge in his congressional district, which includes Staten Island and part of Brooklyn. An indictment gives fodder to his foes to use against him and it could cost him — and the Republicans — a seat that analysts considered to be “leaning Republican.”

The GOP hopes to expand its numbers in the House and it hopes to gain control of the Senate. Indictments of incumbents don’t sit well with voters. That this incumbent is a Republican could turn a red seat blue in a heart beat.

I’d bet real money now that Rep. Grimm is wishing he could return to obscurity.

However, this is the price he must pay for having a big mouth and a hot temper.

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Boehner showing other side

I’m beginning to think more kindly of U.S. House Speaker John Boehner.

The Ohio Republican has taken to criticizing members of his own party, particularly the more stubborn among them who refuse to move legislation forward for a number of reasons that might have little to do with the merits of whatever they’re considering.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/04/raul-labrador-john-boehner-immigration-106033.html?ml=po_r

Boehner recently mocked House Republicans for refusing to vote on immigration reform. He did so in a kind of a playful way, which reportedly did sit well with many GOP lawmakers.

Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, was one of them not amused by the speaker’s tone. “I was disappointed with Speaker Boehner’s comments, and I think they will make it harder – not easier – to pass immigration reform,” Labrador said. “The vast majority of House Republicans are pro-immigration reform, and we have been working hard to achieve it.”

Boehner’s remarks were couched in a kind of silly tone in which he said of GOP members of Congress, “Ohhhh, this is too hard.”

Boehner, as near as I can tell, is one of those dreaded “establishment Republicans” who thinks government actually can do some good for Americans. He wants to move immigration reform forward but he’s been fighting tooth and nail with the tea party wing of his House caucus who just won’t budge. Some chatter in Washington is suggesting that Boehner may be growing so weary of the constant intra-party battle that he might surrender the speakership at the end of the year. Others say he’s committed to leading the House if members will allow it.

Whatever happens, the speaker is showing another — and I believe more likable — side of himself in this ongoing fight with the tea party wing of Congress.

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GOP abandons wacky rancher

Cliven Bundy once was considered a darling among Republicans for his stance against the federal government.

Then the Nevada rancher made a truly reprehensible statement, which is that African-Americans would be better off as slaves than many of them are today as unemployed citizens.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/republicans-distance-selves-from-nevada-rancher-cliven-bundy-over-racial-remarks/2014/04/24/76a72780-cbe3-11e3-95f7-7ecdde72d2ea_story.html

Oops. There went the support from his one-time allies.

You see, the Republican Party is trying to remake its brand among ethnic and racial minorities. Many congressional Republicans have been vocally opposed to immigration reform. They’ve sought to make it more difficult for people to vote by requiring voters to provide proof of U.S. citizenship at polling places. Some in Congress have said some mightily offensive things about the nation’s first African-American president.

The result has been that minorities — chiefly African-Americans and Hispanics — have been voting overwhelmingly for Democrats. Republicans are seeking to make inroads.

Then they lined up with Cliven Bundy, who’s been fighting with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management over whether he should pay grazing fees for his cattle that are feeding on public land. The BLM wants him to pay; Bundy will have none of it, even if it means he’s breaking federal law.

Then this clown makes racist remarks about the so-called virtues of slavery.

Is it any wonder many in the GOP are abandoning this guy? U.S. Sens. Dean Heller, R-Nev., and Rand Paul, R-Ky., were among the first high-profile lawmakers to toss the guy over. Others have followed suit.

Republicans are learning a tough lesson here, which is to take great care in aligning themselves with gadflies while undergoing a political makeover.

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Malaysians have lost world's trust

Is it me or has the Malaysian government lost the trust of a curious world that wants to know about the fate of that missing jetliner?

I’m beginning to disbelieve almost anything that government is saying about the what it thinks happened to Malaysian Airlines Flight MH 370 after it took off March 8. It disappeared. It had been headed due north from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Searchers have been looking due south, in the Indian Ocean, off the Australia coast.

Through it all, the Malaysian government has made a mess of the information it is supposed to tell people about what might have happened to the Boeing 777 and the 230 people on board.

http://news.msn.com/world/indian-ocean-undersea-hunt-for-mh370-set-to-be-extended

The search area has been shifted, expanded, shrunk and re-expanded. The families of those missing and presumed dead have been pushed through an emotional sausage grinder. The Malaysian government informed the family members via text message that their loved ones likely are dead. Some members of the transportation ministry have actually said they’re holding out hope they’ll find survivors, giving grieving family members reason to hold onto the faintest of hopes in a hopeless situation.

The search has become the costliest and most extensive aviation disaster operation in world history.

It’s understandable that the search is being done in a treacherous, deep and rarely navigated waters. Everyone should grasp the difficulty in finding wreckage 3 miles below the surface of some rough ocean water.

It’s just that the Malaysian government — which is supposed to have taken responsibility for telling the world all it knows about the tragedy — has seemed to incapable of sending out consistent information about what it knows and when it knew it.

Australian underwater search devices have been deployed. They’ve found nothing so far. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott says his government won’t stop looking until teams find the wreckage and recover those flight recorder devices.

That should provide some tiny measure of comfort for family members waiting to know what happened to their loved ones. They don’t seem to be getting it from the Malaysians.

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Senate bipartisanship may be on the ropes

Ross Ramsey has written an excellent analysis of what might lie in store for the Texas Senate if Dan Patrick is elected lieutenant governor.

It’s not pretty.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/04/25/analysis-what-patrick-proposes-didnt-work-bullock/

Patrick is locked in a tense Republican Party runoff with the current lieutenant governor, David Dewhurst. If Patrick is nominated in May and then defeats Democrat Leticia Van de Putte this fall, he might abandon the practice of putting minority party senators in charge of key committees.

According to Ramsey, Patrick should perhaps think long and hard before going through with that possibility. The last Democratic lieutenant governor, Bob Bullock, tried it and it didn’t work out too well for him with the 1991 Legislature, Ramsey writes.

Bullock failed to place any of the nine GOP senators in committee chairmanships. Republicans responded by gumming up the legislative works in the Senate. They knew how to tie the process in knots. They did exactly that, Ramsey writes.

Dewhurst has talked about possibility scrapping the Senate’s two-thirds rule if he’s returned to office; the rule requires at least 21 votes out of 31 to bring any measure to a vote on the Senate floor. With just nine Democrats serving in the Senate, the two-thirds rule builds in bipartisan support for any bill to be considered by the full Senate.

That’s as far as Dewhurst has been willing to go. Patrick might take the fight even farther if he declines to put any Democrats in charge of Senate committees. Senate Democrats aren’t without their own legislative experience, much as Senate Republicans weren’t lacking it in 1991 when they hamstrung Lt. Gov. Bullock.

As Ramsey writes: “The Democrats can be a pain in the neck, and like the Republicans of 1991, they are not helpless. Look at what idle hands can do. (Ike) Harris had been in the Senate since 1967 when Bullock handcuffed him. Experience won the day. The dean of the Senate, John Whitmire, D-Houston, has held his seat since 1983 and served for a decade in the House before that; he witnessed Harris’s rebellion and could find himself in the situation that led to it. Other Democrats in the Senate have the chops to cause problems if they have nothing else to do. Patrick has children; he ought to know that people get antsy when they don’t have anything to do.”

Ramsey also notes that Van de Putte won’t be a pushover in the fall election. She’s a savvy legislator herself and she’ll give whoever wins the GOP nomination all he can handle in the fall campaign. If Patrick is the nominee and he wins the election this fall, Van de Putte will return to the Senate ready to give the new lieutenant governor fits.

This will be fun to watch play out … don’t you think?

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Perry on the hot seat

Gov. Rick Perry’s backside just might catch fire if a Travis County grand jury finds wrongdoing in the governor’s office.

At issue is whether Perry acted improperly by allegedly offering to restore money to the Travis County District Attorney’s Office if the DA resigned.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/04/22/perry-offered-restore-vetoed-funding-if-da-would-r/

The DA is a Democrat, Rosemary Lehmberg, who was arrested on a drunken driving charge. Lehmberg also runs the public integrity office, which investigates other public officials’ conduct.

In comes the governor to supposedly promise to restore money for the office if Lehmberg resigned her office in the wake of the DUI charge. Perry had vetoed money for her office after her April 2013 arrest, but he’d make it all better if she just out of the way.

I will not predict what the grand jury will do. It is looking into whether Perry threw his weight around improperly by meddling in the affairs of the Travis County prosecutor’s office. Was it right for him to promise to restore money in that manner?

According to some observers, Perry’s tactics smack of the kind of behavior alleged against fellow Republican Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey. Christie is still in hot water over allegations his office closed the George Washington Bridge and created traffic mayhem as payback for refusal by the mayor of Fort Lee, N.J., also a Democrat, to endorse Christie’s re-election effort.

Both men are now considered possible presidential candidates in 2016. Christie’s brand already has been damaged. Perry is in the middle of a makeover attempt to try to recover from his disastrous run for the GOP nomination in 2012.

If the grand jury indicts Perry, he’s going to suffer far more than another “oops” moment.

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Teen denied major prom date

The punishment handed to a Pennsylvania high school student clearly doesn’t fit the “crime,” such as it was.

The misdeed was to ask Miss America, Nina Davuluri, to accompany him to the high school prom. The request came from Patrick Farves, who reportedly had let his intentions be known before Miss America’s appearance at the high school.

http://time.com/69592/miss-america-prom-suspended-teen/

School administrators warned Patrick not to do it. He asked her anyway. For that he got suspended, over the objections of Davuluri, who pleaded with the school to allow the boy to stay in class.

Her pleas fell on deaf ears. Farves was suspended and later apologized for asking Miss America to the prom.

What kind of justice is that?

Don’t educators believe in harmless pranks any longer, which is what Farves no doubt intended with his request?

Personally, I have to admire the kid for showing the brass to ask a beautiful young woman out. Of course, she isn’t going to accept. It would open up the proverbial worm can to other students in other schools on her lengthy itinerary of public appearances.

Still … Patrick Farves didn’t deserve a suspension.

Others have taken him up on his prom-date offer, including Khloe Kardashian and some Nevada hookers. Patrick has said “no” to those acceptances.

Good for him. Apparently, Patrick won’t go out with just anyone.

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Text ban is no intrusion

If the 2015 Texas Legislature goes through with reports that it will consider a statewide ban on texting, we’re bound to hear from the righteous among us about the state’s intrusion into motorists’ personal liberties.

Let’s ponder that one for a moment.

* The state requires everyone in a motor vehicle to wear safety belts. That means passengers in the front seat and the rear seat. You have to buckle up, or else.

* Texas also requires children of a certain age or younger to be strapped into an approved motor vehicle safety restraint carrier. That, of course, is the responsibility of the parent or the adult who’s driving the motor vehicle to ensure that the child is strapped in properly. Again, do it or else.

* The state has banned the carrying open containers of alcoholic beverages in your motor vehicle. No more tossing those empty beer cans into the back of your truck, Bubba. You got that?

Does anyone gripe about intrusion regarding those particular laws? If so, they do it under their breath.

But we’ll hear from those who believe — wrongly, in my view — that these texting bans or prohibitions on the use of handheld communications devices will take away one more right of motorists to communicate with loved ones.

Gov. Rick Perry vetoed a texting ban bill passed by the 2011 Legislature, saying that it was too, um, intrusive. The good news is that he’ll be out of office when the next Legislature convenes. I hope the new governor has better sense than the soon-to-be former one.

Cities have enacted the bans. Amarillo is one of them. Enforcing it has been problematic, to say the least, given what many of us have noticed already — which is that motorists can still be seen texting and driving at the same time.

Still, the legislation is worth considering and enacting.

Do it, legislators!