Category Archives: State news

political news, State news

Greg Abbott: plaintiff's lawyer in chief

It’s 31 lawsuits — and counting — for Greg Abbott, the Texas attorney general who’s about to become the state’s next governor.

Abbott has sued President Obama over the president’s recent executive order that protects about 5 million illegal immigrants from immediate deportation. He made good on his campaign promise to sue Obama over this issue.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/12/03/greg-abbott-sues-over-executive-action-immigration/

I must pose some inquiries about this action.

First, how much are these lawsuits costing the state? It strikes me that Abbott — a self-proclaimed fiscally conservative Republican — is running up an incalculable legal tab as he challenges the president over immigration, health care reform and whatever else.

Second, as a Republican who has support tort reform efforts to rein in the cost of court settlements, he’s becoming one of those dreaded plaintiff’s lawyers Republican officeholders have loved to hate. We’ve all heard the mantra that Democrats are plaintiff-friendly, while Republicans look out for the interests of defendants in civil court proceedings. Texans seem to have sided with the GOP on that one, electing an all-Republican state Supreme Court, which rules fairly routinely in favor of business interests who’ve been sued by plaintiffs.

And third, does Abbott really have a case against the president or is he being pressured by the TEA party wing of the GOP to do something — dammit! — to stick it in Barack Obama’s ear? The Texas Tribune reports: “‘It’s ill advised. I don’t think he has standing. He gets the basic terminology wrong, and he protests too much when he says he’s not politicizing it, because all of it is simply about the politics of it,’ said Michael Olivas, an immigration lawyer and professor at the University of Houston. ‘He characterizes what the president did as an executive order — it is not an executive order. It’s executive action.'”

I didn’t used to consider Abbott to be a fiery conservative. I’ve long thought of him as a more thoughtful politician. He could be feeling the heat from the right wing of his party to carry through with his campaign pledge to sue the president one more time.

Well, he’s got 31 lawsuits in the can already. For my money, enough is enough.

 

 

State news

Panetti's date with death delayed

I was certain Scott Louis Panetti was a dead man.

Then the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stepped in to give the lunatic a stay of execution in the Texas prison death chamber.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/12/03/schizophrenic-inmate-be-executed-wednesday-night/

What’s next? Well, for starters Panetti deserves something he’s lacked for the past seven years: a mental competency evaluation.

Panetti’s guilt in the 1992 double murder of his mother- and father-in-law is beyond dispute.

What’s at issue here is his competence. He suffers from schizophrenia. He served as his own attorney in his 1995 trial. He sought to call as witnesses President John Kennedy and Jesus Christ. He wore clown suits in court.

The fact that the Texas criminal justice system allowed this man to go to trial under these circumstances speaks to the travesty the state occasionally allows to occur in its courtrooms.

Gov. Rick Perry has been bombarded with requests to delay the execution — which was set for tonight. He pleas came not from bleeding-heart liberals, but also from committed Christian conservatives. One doesn’t expect Perry to heed the pleas of the lefties, but the righties might have some sway with the Republican governor and possible 2016 presidential candidate.

The 5th Circuit’s stay order was brief. It does allow for judges “to fully consider the late arriving and complex legal questions at issue in this matter.”

A competency examination — a thorough and comprehensive exam — needs to be the first and last orders of business here. Such an exam can determine whether Panetti is truly nuts or is faking it, as some have suggested in arguing for his execution.

Panetti committed the crime. Should he die for it, given his demonstrated craziness? No.

 

State news

This guy is a goner

Scott Panetti is as good as dead, sad to say.

He’s a Texas death row inmate who’s set to be executed Wednesday for the horrific deaths in 1992 of his mother- and father-in-law. His guilt is not in question. His mental state, though, is at the heart of a dispute over whether he deserves to die for his crime.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/12/01/Paroles-Board-Denies-Panetti-Execution-Halt/

The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles has ruled against granting him a delay in his date with death. That means it’s now up to outgoing Gov. Rick Perry and the Court of Criminal Appeals to determine Panetti’s fate.

Panetti is diagnosed with acute schizophrenia. He didn’t even get a fair trial, as he represented himself and sought to call as witnesses Charles Manson and Jesus Christ.

Texas law, though, allows loony defendants to engage in such nonsense, even when it appears to impinge on their rights to fair and impartial justice.

Panetti never should walk free. He doesn’t deserve to be put to death for this crime.

Do not expect Gov. Perry or the state’s highest criminal court to spare him. The Texas criminal justice system just isn’t built for compassion.

 

national news, political news, State news

GOP field taking shape for 2016

 

You can now — it appears — count lame-duck Texas Gov. Rick Perry as an unofficially official candidate for president in 2016.

Oh, boy! This is going to be fun.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/rick-perry-2016-campaign-113210.html?ml=po

Perry is courting wealthy Texas political donors, holding out his hand, polishing his message, showing off his new self and getting ready to make yet another run for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination.

Politico reports he has some company among those looking for that Texas largesse. It consists of a fellow Texan, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and a former Texan whose family is well-known around here, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

Frankly, the Perry-Cruz competition for the GOP nomination — if it materializes — could prove to be the most fascinating political drama I’ve ever seen. I’m not crazy about either of them. I’ll give credit where it’s due, though: Cruz muscled his way onto the national stage instantly after winning the Senate seat in 2012 while Perry has demonstrated — despite his sometimes prickly public persona — to be a powerful vote-getter in Texas.

The dance they’ll engage in will involve both of them trying to outflank each other on the right, where they’ve both staked out some sizable territory of their own already. One of them — or maybe both — might fall of the stage.

Despite what you might have read about Cruz’s relationship with the so-called “mainstream liberal media,” they love each other. Cruz loves the attention the media give him and the media love him because he is so damn quotable. Perry’s relationship with the Texas media has been rocky at times, particularly since his notable absence from any editorial board interviews during his 2010 campaign for re-election as governor. But he’s burnishing that part of his dossier now as well.

Then there’s Jeb. His last name counts for something in Texas, even if it isn’t worth squat anywhere else. He’s the son and brother of two former presidents, one of whom is held in increasingly high regard (that would be Poppy), the other is, well, still trying to reconstruct his legacy. Jeb Bush, though, is smooth, moderate (by comparison to Perry and Cruz), articulate and marketable among Latino Republicans, given that his wife is Latina and one of his sons, George P. Bush, is about to become Texas land commissioner.

Perry’s 2012 effort fell flat. He’s hoping for a different result this time around. As Politico reports: “’If Gov. Perry is going to run, he’s going to be better prepared, and he’s going to have the resources necessary to compete,’ said Henry Barbour, a Republican national committeeman who is helping plan for a Perry 2016 campaign and organizing next week’s donor sessions.”

So, here we go. Hold on. It’ll be fun … I hope.

 

 

legal news, State news

Now the judge opposes death penalty

So, we’re supposed to sing high praise because a Texas Court of Criminal Appeals judge has declared his opposition to the death penalty.

Is that what we’re supposed to do?

I would, except that Judge Tom Price is about to leave the state’s highest criminal appellate court in January, which makes his declaration a mere symbolic act.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/11/26/criminal-appeals-judge-price-i-oppose-death-penalt/

Price, who’s being replaced by Bert Richardson — the judge presiding over Gov. Rick Perry’s abuse of power court proceedings — wrote this, according to the Texas Tribune: “Given a substantial amount of consideration to the propriety of the death penalty as a form of punishment for those who commit capital murder, and I now believe that it should be abolished.”

Price’s statement came as he was one of three dissenting votes rejecting an appeal for clemency for death row inmate Scott Panetti, who’s scheduled to die by lethal injection in just a few days. Panetti’s been diagnosed with acute schizophrenia and death penalty foes have sought to have his death sentence commuted.

Price now is on board with them.

But he’s leaving the court.

So what good is his declaration … now?

Perhaps he can carry his opposition into the private sector and try to talk some reason into his former CCA colleagues who continue to reject other appeals on similar grounds.

“My conclusion is not reached hastily,” Price wrote in his dissent. “Rather, it is the result of my deliberative thought process from having presided over three death-penalty trials as a trial court judge and having decided countless issues related to capital murder and the death penalty as a judge on this court.”

Price didn’t seek re-election this year. He’s served on the all-Republican CCA since being elected in 1996. I applaud his coming out against capital punishment. I now hope he carries the campaign forward.

 

State news

Secede … one law at a time?

Dan Flynn appears to be one of a growing number of Texans with rocks in his noggin.

The Republican state representative wants to form a committee that decides which federal laws can be followed in Texas and which can be ignored.

It’s sort of a piecemeal secession plan.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/11/26/3596488/a-texas-lawmakers-bizarre-plan-to-secede-from-the-union-one-law-at-a-time/

Rep. Flynn? We tried that once. It didn’t work out.

The speaker of the Texas House and the lieutenant governor would appoint a committee, which then could decide which laws to obey and which ones to flout. Interesting, eh? The new lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, just might be on board with this nutty notion; I’m not so sure about Speaker Joe Straus, who’s one of those reasonable Republicans who I’m quite sure knows better. I’m not so sure about Patrick.

Let’s review something here.

Texas entered the Union in 1845 and declared at the time that it would become part of the larger entity, the United States of America. It declared also that it would honor federal laws. All of them, I’m quite sure.

Are we now going to break that vow and decide which laws to follow and which ones to ignore?

It’s nutty in the extreme.

C’mon, Rep. Flynn. Eat some turkey and think about what you’re proposing.

 

State news

Panetti deserves to be executed? No way!

Some time back, I declared my opposition to capital punishment.

Scott Louis Panetti offers a textbook example of why the punishment as applied in Texas is barbaric.

Panetti committed an awful crime in the early 1990s. He shot his in-laws to death. His guilt is beyond doubt.

But it gets a whole lot trickier from there.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/texas-prepares-to-execute-schizophrenic-inmate-despite-call-for-clemency/ar-BBfAHvI

He represented himself during his 1995 trial and during testimony he sought to call — get ready for this — John F. Kennedy and Jesus Christ as witnesses.

Panetti, you see, is a lunatic. He suffers from acute schizophrenia. He’s nuts. Panetti doesn’t deserve to die for this crime because he quite likely didn’t know what on God’s Earth he was doing when he killed his mother- and father-in-law.

He’s set to die in Dec. 3 in the death chamber in Livingston, Texas.

Some officials, including former Gov. Mark White, have written a letter asking for clemency. “We are deeply troubled that a capital sentence was the result of a trial where a man with schizophrenia represented himself, dressed in a costume,” the letter stated. “We come together from across the partisan and ideological divide and are united in our belief that, irrespective of whether we support or oppose the death penalty, this is not an appropriate case for execution.”

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, however, isn’t known for exhibiting compassion regarding capital punishment cases. My guess is that the court will dismiss the request, perhaps suggesting that Panetti was faking his lunacy.

Panetti’s craziness appears real to me. He shouldn’t die for the crime he committed.

 

 

State news

Let the 'pole tax' stand in Texas

The Texas Legislature has gotten a bit goofy in recent years as the state keeps shifting farther and farther to the right.

However, the 2007 Legislature got it correct when it enacted the so-called $5 per-person “pole tax” levied against patrons of strip clubs. I’m glad that the state Supreme Court sees fit to let the tax stand.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/11/21/supreme-court-declines-peek-pole-tax/

The court declined to review a Third Court of Appeals ruling that declared the tax didn’t violate the Texas Constitution. The entertainment industry lobby had contended the fee is an “occupation tax,” which is prohibited by the Constitution.

Not so, says the Supreme Court.

I happen to think this is a fairly creative way to generate revenue for the state. Opponents of the fee say the state should designate a portion of it to public education. The lower court had ruled that the fee, which is an excise tax, can go to whatever program the Legislature designates.

Whatever, it’s a money-maker for the state. The so-called “gentlemen” who partake of this form of entertainment need to keep an extra five bucks in their wallet.

Hey, it’s better spent that way than when you tuck into someone’s undergarment … correct?

 

 

State news

But … what about your constituents?

The selection of a new general counsel for the Texas Department of Agriculture brings to mind a question I trust the appointee has considered: Is it fair for a state legislator, who has just won re-election, to abandon his constituents who just placed their trust in him to look after their affairs in Austin?

Agriculture Commissioner-elect Sid Miller picked a former state House colleague, Rep. Tim Kleindschmidt, R-Lexington, to be the new general counsel for TDA.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/11/21/rep-kleinschmidt-takes-general-counsel-job-ag-depa/

I don’t know Kleindschmidt. I presume he’s a good lawyer and has represented his constituents diligently during his time in the Legislature. But he just been re-elected to serve along with the 149 other state representatives who faced the voters in the Nov. 4 general election. I’m going to creep out on that limb just a bit to presume Kleindschmidt made some pledges to voters along the way that he’ll serve their interests for the next two years.

Now he’s out. He’s headed for a key job in an important state government executive office.

My question to Miller is: With a state as large as ours, and with as many competent “ag lawyers” available, did you really and truly need to hire a legislator who’s made a promise to serve his constituents?

 

State news

Whether to carry openly or not

Texas Gov.-elect Greg Abbott says he would sign an “open-carry” bill if it arrives on his desk.

You might ask, “Open-carry what?” Umm, that would be guns.

Six-shooters. Semi-auto Glocks. Perhaps even a pea-shooter Derringer.

The folks who brought us concealed handgun carry laws now want us to be able to walk around with ’em strapped to our hips. Wow! This is amazing.

OK, I’ll stipulate right up front that I initially opposed concealed-carry legislation. I feared — wrongly, it has turned out — that fender-benders would turn into shootouts when drivers packing heat under their jackets would pull them out and start blazing away on street corners.

It hasn’t happened and my opposition to concealed-carry has softened. Considerably.

The notion, though, of allowing folks to walk into public places — such as government buildings — with the guns on their hips really does make me nervous. Businesses that prohibit firearms would be allowed to do so under most of the proposed legislation I’ve heard about. That’s fine with me.

It’s most interesting to me, though, that no one has mentioned this item from our past in the debate about whether to allow open-carry in Texas: Back in the day, when the Wild West was being settled, was it really safer when justice was being carried out by men toting guns — in the open?

I’m just asking what I think is a fair question.

Well? I’m all ears.