Category Archives: State news

legal news, political news, State news

Politics keeps coming around

perry

Rick Perry quite famously — at least was in Texas — declared that a Travis County grand jury indicted him only for political reasons.

The former governor faced charges of abuse of power and coercion of a public official after a Travis County jury charged him with those two felonies.

Perry would have none of it. He blamed it on Travis County Democrats who comprise the bulk of the voting population in the county where the state’s capital city of Austin is located.

Hey, he had demanded that the district attorney, also a Democrat, resign after she got caught driving drunk. Rosemary Lehmberg didn’t quit. So Perry vetoed money appropriated for her office to run the Public Integrity Unit.

Politics, politics, politics.

So, Perry played the politics game while condemning the indictments that came down.

What happened next might deserve a bit of scrutiny.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals today dismissed the remaining indictment against Perry, the one accusing him of abuse of power. He acted within the law when he vetoed the money for the DA’s office, the court said.

Did politics determine that decision? Well, I don’t know.

The state’s highest criminal appellate court comprises all Republicans. The same party to which Perry belongs.

Was the CCA decision to dismiss the indictment as politically motivated as the grand jury’s decision to indict the governor?

Perry said so when the grand jury returned the indictment. He’s not going to say the same thing about his political brethren on the state’s top criminal court.

Still, isn’t it a question worth pondering?

 

 

legal news, political news, State news

Respect this opinion … while disagreeing with it

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Rick Perry is free at last!

Free of the indictment that he said was politically motivated. Free of the cloud that threatened to rain buckets of trouble all over him. Free of the snickering from his foes.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest criminal appellate court, has dismissed the indictment that charged the former governor with abuse of power. A lower court had tossed out another indictment that charged Perry with coercion of a public official.

This is one of the decisions that one can respect while disagreeing with the findings.

Texas Tribune story.

The system did its job.

A Travis County grand jury indicted Perry on charges of abuse of power over his veto of money for the Public Integrity Unit run out of the Travis County district attorney’s office. The DA, Rosemary Lehmberg, had pleaded guilty to drunken driving and served some time in jail. Perry said she should resign and if she didn’t he would veto money for the Public Integrity Unit, which is charged with investigating wrongdoing among public officials.

Lehmberg should have quit. But she didn’t. So Perry followed through on his threat and vetoed the money. I must add here that Lehmberg is a Democrat, while Perry is a Republican.

So, the grand jury indicted him — while Perry was finishing up his stint as governor and preparing to run for president of the United States. Perry accused the grand jury of playing politics. Travis County is a Democratic bastion; Perry, of course, is a Republican. I’ll point out, too, that the special prosecutor who presented the case to the grand jury also is a Republican.

I actually thought the lesser of the charges — the coercion part — had more staying power. Silly me. I didn’t expect a lower court to toss that one first.

I never liked the idea of a governor telling an elected county official to quit. That wasn’t his call to make, given that the district attorney is answerable only to the people who elected her. Gov. Perry tried to bully Lehmberg into doing his bidding and that — to my way of thinking — is fundamentally wrong.

As for the veto itself, the governor could have — should have — simply vetoed the money appropriated for the integrity unit without the fanfare he attached to it. That’s not the Perry modus operandi, however. He sought to make a show of it, which also is wrong — but not illegal, according to the Court of Criminal Appeals.

As for the politics of this case … if the governor alleged that the grand jury indictment was motivated by politics because Travis County comprises mostly Democrats, is it fair to wonder whether the top appellate court dismissal occurred because all its members are Republicans?

Hey, I’m just thinking out loud.

So, the case is over.

Now we can all turn our attention to the Greatest Show on Earth, which would be the Republican Party presidential primary campaign. Let’s bring out the clowns!

media news, national news, political news, State news

Get ready for possible anti-Trump ‘last stand’

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Nevada has weighed in.

Donald J. Trump scored big. Yuuuuge! He won the state’s Republican caucus last night. He’s now being touted by some in the media as the “presumptive” GOP presidential nominee.

Not so fast.

We’ve got a big election date coming up. I won’t predict how it all shakes out, but this could turn out to be the “last stand” of the party’s brass that seeks to derail the Trump Express.

Twelve states are going to the polls. Republicans are taking part in all the primaries. They’re going to award a huge trove of delegates to this summer’s GOP convention in Cleveland.

Oh yeah. Texas is one of them.

The states are mostly scattered through the south and east. Alaska’s voting, too.

So, what happens if Trump runs the table on March 1?

Game over. That’s what the “experts” say.

An interesting debate occurred this morning on one of the cable news shows. It involved discussion over why U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida — one of the three leading contenders for the nomination — won’t unload on Trump. He instead aims his political fire at U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. The question being kicked around was whether Rubio is either afraid of how Trump would respond or if he’s angling for a vice-presidential spot in the event that Trump actually wins the presidential nomination.

I cannot pretend to get into the mind of the young man from Florida.

It’s do or die for two other candidates: Ohio Gov. John Kasich and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson. That’s a given and hardly qualifies as a huge scoop here.

As an interested observer of these things, though, I am going to await the GOP result with decidedly mixed feelings.

I told a friend of mine this morning in an e-mail message that I shudder to think that Republican primary voters have devalued the “essence of the presidency” so much that they actually would nominate a crass, callow, foul-mouthed blowhard to represent their party in an election to elect our head of state.

I won’t predict what they’ll do next Tuesday. Whatever it is, we’d better prepare ourselves for a major political eruption.

 

local news, State news

They call them ‘country clubs’

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It took me about 10, maybe 15, seconds when I first set foot in this place to realize that it isn’t what some folks call it.

The William P. Clements Jr. Prison Unit in Amarillo is no “country club.”

It’s a place where more than 3,500 men serve their time as wards of the state. It can be a violent place. It can be a place of death.

A Texas Department of Criminal Justice corrections supervisor, Major Rowdy Boggs, has been recommended for dismissal after an inmate, Alton Rogers, was found unconscious in his cell after he allegedly was beaten by his cellmate. Rogers died Jan. 18 of the injuries he suffered.

Boggs and 17 other corrections officers face punishment; some of them have been suspended without pay, according to the Texas Tribune.

They’re all innocent, or so they claim, according to an assistant Clements Unit warden who took me on an extended tour of the place shortly after I arrived in Amarillo in early 1995 to start a new job as editorial page editor of the Amarillo Globe-News.

Rick Hudson, then the assistant warden, walked me through the unit one day to show me the TDCJ lockup that was still quite new and in fairly pristine condition. He told me of the fights that erupt within the unit almost daily; in the summer, with the temperatures rising and tensions flaring, the inmate-on-inmate violence gets really serious, Hudson said.

I will add that TDCJ does not equip its prison units with air conditioning.

It’s a tough place to spend many years — let alone spending the rest of one’s life — paying for the crimes they commit.

Yet we hear the canard on occasion from the tough-on-crime-and-criminals crowd that prison life is “too good” for these individuals.

What’s their alternative? Take away the few privileges they get. No TV, no rec rooms, no library. Pack ’em in like sardines.

OK, then. You want more violence? Let ‘er rip! While we’re at it, let’s put the corrections officers — who many folks believe are woefully underpaid — into greater danger trying to break up the fights that are certain to erupt.

Texas got sued once in federal court by an inmate who alleged inhumane treatment. The federal court system took over the state prison system and in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the state embarked on a prison-building program that produced new lockups, such as the maximum-security Clements Unit and the medium-security Nathaniel Neal Unit nearby.

Life for these criminals got nominally more comfortable.

I am quite certain of one thing, though: They aren’t living in country clubs while they pay their debt to society.

 

 

International news, national news, political news, State news

Give Cubans the dickens, Mr. President

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Critics of President Obama’s upcoming visit to Cuba ought to chill out for a moment or two.

They’re raking Obama over the coals because, they say, he’s lending “legitimacy” to the dictators who are running the island nation. They’re a bunch of commie Marxists who don’t deserve a visit from the head of state of the world’s most powerful nation, they say.

Hey, let’s take a breath.

The president is going there to continue the normalization of relations between the nations. The Cold War is over. We won. Cuba no longer presents any kind of threat to this nation. Its benefactor, the Soviet Union, receded into the dustbin more than 20 years ago.

What shouldn’t be lost is the opportunity that the president will have to tell Cuban President Raul Castro of the concerns the United States still has over the communists’ treatment of their citizens. Obama says he’ll bring it up directly. Face to face. Man to man.

Let us also be mindful that the two men will be able to speak outside of earshot of prying media representatives. Does anyone ever really with utter certainty what two leaders ever say to each other when no one is listening?

The president insists that the visit will keep the normalization process moving forward. Part of that movement must depend on assurances that the Cubans are going to do better at recognizing the rights of all human beings — and that should include their own citizens.

Look at it this way as well: Did the Texas Republican governor, Greg Abbott, just visit with Cuba on a trade mission aimed at boosting commerce between Texas and our nation’s former enemy?

Where was the criticism of that visit?

 

national news, political news, State news

It’s do or die for ‘Jeb!’

Jeb Bush

Erica Greider, writing for Texas Monthly’s blog, offers an interesting analysis of the stakes for today’s South Carolina Republican presidential primary.

She thinks Sen. Marco Rubio has the most to gain — or lose — from the results.

But she inserted this into her blog:

“The prevailing wisdom is that the alternative with the most at stake tomorrow is Jeb Bush. More specifically, there’s a sense that if he can’t manage a strong third-place finish, at least—despite all his advantages at the outset of the race, a strong performance in the most recent Republican debate, and being joined by his brother, former president George W. Bush, on the trail—that it’s time to pack it in.”

Here’s the rest of what she writes.

I’m going to go with the “prevailing wisdom,” which is that the biggest loser from the South Carolina primary could be John Ellis Bush, aka Jeb!

His brother, W, came out of the shadows to campaign actively for his  younger sibling. The 43rd president — who’d made a vow, like their father had done — to stay out of the political arena once he left office. George W. Bush could remain silent no longer, as Donald J. Trump continued blustering about how W and his bunch had “lied” their way into starting the Iraq War.

Jeb figured that Brother W’s continuing popularity in South Carolina could propel him a strong finish when the votes are counted.

I am not privy to the details or the fine print, but it’s looking as though Jeb Bush might not make the grade.

I’ll just offer this bit of personal privilege. I did not vote for W any of the four times I had the chance: his two elections for Texas governor or his two elections for president of the United States. I do, though, like him personally. I’ve had the privilege of visiting twice with him extensively while he was governor — and once briefly in 1988, before he won his first term as Texas governor.

He’s an engaging and personable fellow.

It was my hope that some of that would rub off on Jeb. It apparently hasn’t. Jeb has been caught in that anti-establishment buzzsaw being wielded by he likes of Trump and — oddly enough — U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.

I will not dare to predict the outcome of the South Carolina vote today. Jeb Bush had better hope he finishes much nearer to the top of the heap than the bottom of it.

At this moment, I am pessimistic.

 

State news

Baylor joins universities to ban guns on campus

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Another private institution of higher learning has made the correct call.

No guns will be allowed on our campus, according to the folks who run Baylor University.

Baylor President Ken Starr has announced that the school he leads won’t allow students or faculty to pack heat on the Waco campus.

It’s interesting to me that so many private schools have opted out of allowing open-carry of firearms. The law — which takes effect Aug. 1 — pertains to public colleges and universities, although the chancellor of the University of Texas System isn’t exactly a fan of open-carry legislation.

Baylor acts wisely

The private schools are lining up clearly against the law.

I understood the prevailing attitude among Texas legislators who voted to allow firearms to be carried openly in this state. I don’t have serious objection to the open carry law. I’m only a little bit queasy about it.

The college campus provision, though, does give me more serious pause.

The law allows Texans who are certified to carry concealed weapons to pack them in the open. Some foes of campus carry, though, have raised fair concerns: What about the student who gets a grade with which he or she disagrees — vehemently? Would that student react so badly as to do serious harm to the professor while carrying a firearm?

Baylor University has joined the list of private schools that have opted out of allowing guns to be carried openly on campus.

Good.

 

political news, State news

State ed board: Now there’s a rancorous bunch

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You want rancor? Anger? Tumult? Turmoil?

Here’s a place where it shouldn’t exist, but it does. It’s contained among the members of the Texas Board of Education.

The Texas Tribune reports that this year’s election cycle could reintroduce some of the bad feelings that erupted on the board in recent years.

The state education board is empowered to set public education policy for Texas’ 6 million students. But here’s the deal: It comprises politicians who run for the 15 seats on the board. The SBOE comprises essentially three wings: social conservatives, mainstream conservatives and, well, others who are neither of the first two stripes.

They have fought many times over curriculum. Social conservatives have sought to approve textbooks that place greater emphasis on issues that are friendlier to their beliefs. Some years ago, the SBOE sought to downplay the historical significance of certain individuals whose agendas didn’t comport with certain board members’ political leanings.

There has been plenty of debate over whether to teach the Biblical account of the creation of the universe alongside evolutionary theory.

Well, the election this year could bring a return of some of the acrimony that at times has taken center stage at SBOE meetings.

There once was a time — and it was a fairly brief time — when the SBOE was an appointed body. Texans decided to return to an elected board, which returned policymaking to politicians who run for the office.

I prefer to put public education policy decisions in the hands of academicians. Today, the board comprises a whole array of laypeople with varying political leanings and interests.

The Panhandle’s representative on the SBOE is Marty Rowley, an Amarillo lawyer and a former clergyman. He is among the social conservatives serving on the state board; Rowley doesn’t have any opposition this election year, according to the Texas Tribune.

This is a contentious election cycle, starting with all the insults and vivid name-calling we hear from the candidates for president of the United States.

So, I guess the Texas State Board of Education’s election cycle just might fit in nicely with what’s happening all around us.

Let’s hope the state’s public school students don’t suffer as a result.

 

environmental news, local news, State news

Biking gets a big boost

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Let’s get real. Texans love their cars, trucks and just about any vehicle that burns fossil fuels.

We pull a lot of fossil fuel out of the ground here. The Spindletop oil gusher in 1901 brought us the Texas oil boom and it has continued ever since, with all of its ups and downs.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. Heck, our 21-plus years in West Texas have given us a keen appreciation of how much distance one must travel . . . to get anywhere. It almost always involves a motor vehicle.

So it is with that I noticed this story — yes, it’s a bit dated, having been reported initially in the fall of 2014 — about a proposal to build a 64-mile bicycle trail between Dallas and Fort Worth.

KERA-TV reported more than a year ago that a study of Dallas residents reveals a significant portion of folks would support greater emphasis on bicycle trails in their city.

It’s being called a “superhighway.” It marks a remarkable departure from the love affair Metroplex residents have had with their motor vehicles.

So now comes the question from me, a resident of another community in the midst of some serious urban living change.

Is such an emphasis possible here, in Amarillo?

It’s a creative notion to connect two cities the size of Dallas and Fort Worth with a bicycle trail network.

It prompted this thought: Is such a network possible that would connect Amarillo with Canyon?

Amarillo’s downtown district revival already has begun. They’ve busted up plenty of pavement and begun erecting some structures in the central business district. More construction is on the way.

I am wondering, though, about the city’s effort to connect neighborhoods with bike trails. That project began about a decade ago. Then it stopped. Indeed, we have bike lanes marked off in my neighborhood, which is great. Except that they don’t go anywhere.

I have been told that the city Parks and Recreation Department plans to finish the bike trail network — eventually.

The reality is that the weather here is conducive to that kind of activity. The unseasonably warm winter we’re having is an aberration. Spring can be a bit dicey; summer isn’t oppressively hot; autumn is the most pleasant season of all.

The Metroplex bicycle “superhighway” is still a couple of years away, according to KERA. I do applaud the innovation that’s gone into planning for it.

Might there be a potential for something like that here, way up yonder?

 

national news, political news, State news

Kasich gets the nod from a major media outlet

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Newspaper editorial boards have at times been accused of being “homers,” sometimes favoring the home-town or home-state candidates over more qualified challengers.

The Dallas Morning News has chosen, however, to make its recommendation for the Republican presidential nomination — and it’s not U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.

The DMN’s nod goes to Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

The paper likes Kasich’s record of accomplishment and believes it would suit him — and the nation — well if he were to be elected the next president of the United States.

What’s most compelling — to me, at least — is the paper’s nod to Kasich’s ability and willingness to work with Democrats. He did so while serving in Congress, where he chaired the House Budget Committee and helped craft a balanced federal budget.

One does not do such a thing in a vacuum, and Kasich showed his bipartisan chops in that regard.

I’m glad to see the Dallas Morning News climb aboard the Kasich bandwagon, such as it is in Texas.

* *

But what does a newspaper endorsement mean?

More than likely not a damn thing, at least not in this election season.

The leading Republican candidate for president says outrageous things about his foes, other politicians in general, the media, the voters, women — he uses amazingly grotesque language to describe one of his leading opponents — but, what the heck. That’s OK. He scores points for tossing aside “political correctness.”

Kasich remains one of the grownups in this GOP primary contest. A newspaper editorial board endorsement likely won’t be singularly decisive in determining whether he wins the state’s primary on March 1.

I just hope Texas Republicans heed the rationale behind the recommendation.