Category Archives: State news

crime news, local news, State news

Lucio deserves new trial

I cannot overstate the significance of the support that a woman condemned to die in Texas prison execution chamber is receiving from both sides of the great political divide in this state.

Melissa Lucio has received a stay of execution from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. She was slated to die on Thursday for the death of her 2-year-old daughter 15 years ago.

I believe she deserves a new trial, given all the doubt about her conviction and the allegation that the state withheld evidence from her defense team.

What continues to amaze me is the support she is getting from tough-on-crime conservatives in the Legislature, led by Plano Republican state Rep. Jeff Leach, who had the honor of telling Lucio this week about the CCA decision to forestall her execution. Lucio’s reaction was to sob uncontrollably.

Leach is a former member of the ultra-conservative Texas Freedom Caucus; he resigned from the caucus a while ago, citing some issues with the hardline positions it was taking. He still is a conservative, but he appears to be a man with an actual heart.

I applaud the leadership he is taking in fighting for Melissa Lucio.

I happen to oppose capital punishment, but you likely know that already. I also oppose the partisan divide that too often splits politicians along party lines even when the issue compels them to seek common ground.

One of those issues is seeking justice for a prison inmate who might have been convicted wrongly.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

business news, State news

Pro-business policy? Hah!

Let’s see. How does a politician who belongs to the political party that calls itself a “pro-business” organization justify a policy that stops shipments of goods and commodities and threatens so many businesses in the state he governs?

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has pulled back his enhanced-inspection order on the state’s border with Mexico. He said he was looking for human traffickers and their “cargo” of individuals who were being smuggled into the United States.

Then he worked out agreements with two Mexican state governors and lifted the inspection protocol at crossings involving the states of Nuevo Leon and Chihuahua. The delay in delivery of food and other goods has crippled businesses across the state.

Now he’s called off the inspection crackdown. The damage has been done to many businesses in Texas … and to what end?

Greg Abbott has pulled off yet another political stunt. It’s not a business-friendly stunt at that!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Siding with Sid Miller? Wow!

Hell has officially frozen over! How do I know that? Because Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has done something I never thought possible: He has enacted a policy that has me agreeing with the state’s goofball commissioner of agriculture, Sid Miller.

The Stetson-wearing ag commissioner has criticized Abbott’s decision to stop trucks coming into Texas across the state border with Mexico, citing the harm the decision to inspect all those vehicles is doing to Texas farmers and ranchers.

Abbott had decided to double- and triple-down on vehicle inspections at the border on the hunt for human traffickers. The intensity of the search delayed truckers’ stay along border crossings for many hours.

The delay drew Miller’s ire, which by itself is saying something, given that the Republican ag commissioner usually stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the GOP governor on policy matters.

Not this time.

Good news, though, has more or less arrived. Abbott met with the governor of Nuevo Leon, a state in Mexico, and said he would ease the inspections at one commercial bridge at Laredo. It gives some relief at one critical crossing point.

Will it assuage the criticism coming from Sid Miller? Probably not.

The Texas Tribune reported: As part of the deal, Texas Department of Public Safety troopers will stop inspecting every commercial truck on the Laredo-Colombia bridge as long as Nuevo LeĂłn has checkpoints on its side of the Mexican state’s 9-mile-long border with Texas. The state inspections will continue for trucks coming from the other three Mexican states that border Texas.

Gov. Greg Abbott eases state inspections at one border bridge | The Texas Tribune

Miller had complained that Abbott’s inspection order could result in grocery store shelves being emptied as products imported from Mexico are held up for unreasonable lengths of time.

This latest Abbott order looks for all the world like another grandstanding measure by a Texas governor with his eyes on the White House prize around, oh, 2024.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Beto has a shot?

You know, there once was a time — not many weeks ago — that I considered Greg Abbott a shoo-in for re-election as Texas governor.

That Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke didn’t have a Democrat’s chance in blazing hell of defeating the Republican incumbent.

Today? I am not so sure about that gloomy forecast.

Am I going to predict a Beto O’Rourke victory this November, breaking the GOP vise-grip on statewide elected office, ending the Republican dynasty at the top of the Texas political food chain?

Not … on … your … life!

(Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

However, I am going to suggest that the Abbott-O’Rourke contest well might become one of those races that the national media will be watching with intense interest.

This won’t surprise any readers of this blog, but my fervent hope is that O’Rourke defeats Abbott. The governor has become show horse, a guy who wants to elevate his personal political profile with an eye toward seeking the White House in 2024. Abbott’s idiotic pledge to send “illegal immigrants” to Washington, D.C., to hand the problem to the feds is an example of a politician looking to make headlines without offering the hint of a solution.

He doesn’t have a solution. Abbott has no interest in working with Democrats or seeking cooperation from President Biden.

I have no clue about how O’Rourke might handle this matter were he elected governor. I feel confident, though, in suggesting that O’Rourke, who hails from El Paso, knows plenty about border issues and he does not favor an “open border” policy.

Nor do I believe that O’Rourke is going to single-handedly disarm Texans by stripping us of our firearms. He knows better than to mess with the Constitution! That won’t stop Abbott and his cabal of demagogues from portraying O’Rourke as a soft-on-crime liberal.

I want this race to remain competitive. I want O’Rourke to make Abbott answer for the way the state handled the 2021 winter freeze. I want O’Rourke to offer a reasonable alternative to the Abbott posturing in the face of crisis after crisis.

What’s more, I want O’Rourke to tell Texans how he plans to govern and how he intends to end the state’s war against its gay residents, how he intends to make voting easier, not harder, for Texas.

And I want Beto O’Rourke to remain firm against the attacks that are sure to come from Greg Abbott.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Cruz proves his idiocy

(AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Ted Cruz deserves a special mention on this blog, given his shameful and disgraceful and despicable performance while questioning Supreme Court Justice-designate Ketanji Brown Jackson during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

I have made no secret of my loathing for the junior U.S. senator from Texas ever since he joined the Senate in 2013. He always has appeared to be grooming himself as a Republican presidential candidate. He took his best shot in 2016, losing the GOP nomination to the guy who eventually would win that year’s election.

I dubbed him the Cruz Missile because he seemed intent on blowing up every enemy he made along the way. The guy reportedly has few friends in the Senate.

He lectured Justice-designate Jackson on whether children are born racist and sought to paint her as soft on child pornographers and threw assorted red herrings at her during the time allotted for questioning. Granted, he wasn’t alone in behaving boorishly among Republican inquisitors. I just am feeling the urge to express my disgust at this clown who represents my interests in the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body.

Cruz is a coward. Why do I say that? Because the guy who once told the truth about Donald Trump — calling him a sniveling coward and an “amoral” politician — became a suck-up acolyte to the POTUS.

He also doesn’t give a damn about the people he represents. I have to point to the jaunt he sought to make with his family to Cancun while most of the state was freezing in February 2021 in that winter freeze that ended up killing hundreds of Texans.

Moreover, how much more “sniveling” can one get than to blame his daughters for the decision to flee to Mexico while Texans were freezing to death? That’s what Cruz did when he was outed for fleeing the state.

Ted Cruz ain’t among the best and brightest Texas can offer to serve in U.S. Senate. As he showed during the SCOTUS confirmation hearing, all this clown intended to do was prance, posture and preen for the GOP base that will nominate the next president of the United States.

God help us if it’s Ted Cruz.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Political stunts don’t solve anything

Political stunts get an occasional laugh or they might allow the individual who pulls it off to crow a little; however, they rarely — if ever — result in actual solutions to pressing problems.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has offered a doozy of a stunt. He intends to round up immigrants who come into Texas, place them on buses and then send them to Capitol Hill to give the federal government a chance to deal more directly with those Abbott said are creating a crisis on our nation’s southern border.

He blasts President Biden’s immigration policy and says if the president won’t protect our border, then states have an obligation to act.

I agree that the president has so far failed to come to terms with the immigration issue in Texas and other southern-border states. His policies aren’t working.

What’s the answer? It is not the trickery, chicanery and political stunt work that Greg Abbott is delivering.

If only the governor and his Republican pals in Texas would find a way to work with the Biden administration instead of trying to show ’em who’s got the bigger cajones.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Abbott plays stupid game

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said what? That he intends to send migrants who venture into this state on charter buses to Washington, D.C., to enable President Biden to “deal” with them?

Hmm. Abbott’s petulance is getting the better of him. He’s also embarrassing many of the Texans he governs. Such as me.

The Texas Tribune reports: “To help local officials whose communities are being overwhelmed by hordes of illegal immigrants who are being dropped off by the Biden administration, Texas is providing charter buses to send these illegal immigrants who have been dropped off by the Biden administration to Washington D.C.,” Abbott said in a press conference in Weslaco. “We are sending them to the United States Capitol where the Biden administration will be able to more immediately address the needs of the people that they are allowing to come across our border.”

No surprise, to be sure, but Abbott was highly critical of Biden’s decision to roll back a pandemic-era emergency health order known as Title 42 that allowed immigration authorities to turn away migrants at the border, even those seeking asylum. The order was enacted during the Trump administration and it allowed immigration officials to manage the migrants seeking to enter the country.

https://www.texastribune.org/2022/04/06/greg-abbott-texas-border-title-42/

The asylum-seekers are being caught in this game of political “gotcha” between Gov. Abbott and President Biden.

What puzzles me is this: What in the world is going to happen to these individuals once they are bused from Texas to the nation’s capital? If the feds can’t “deal” properly with them, where do they go?

It’s not enough to just wash a state’s hands of an issue by handing them off to the feds. After all, placing problems in the feds’ hands places those problems in all of our hands.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news, State news

Don’t spend my money, Mr. AG

The hits just keep mounting for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Not only is Paxton in a Republican Party runoff to keep his job, he is being pounded for spending taxpayer funds to pay for his legal defense against complaints over the way he conducts his office.

What a joke! Except that I ain’t laughing.

Paxton reportedly spent at least $43,000 in public money to pay for legal defense fees. The Texas State Bar filed complaints alleging misconduct over Paxton’s specious lawsuit seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential election result. Critics have noted that the Texas Constitution does not require AGs to be members of the State Bar and they contend it is inappropriate for taxpayers to foot the bill for a public official’s private law license.

There is that, as well as the pending state trial over allegations that Paxton committed securities fraud violations. He has been under felony indictment since 2015, the first year of his time as attorney general.

My own wish is that Paxton just resign. He is an embarrassment to the state.

Now comes the news that he is using public money — my money and your money — for private use.

Keep your grubby mitts off my dough, Mr. AG!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Guns do have their place … really

As much as I have railed and ranted over many years about gun violence and the nutty notion that says that “more guns make us safer,” I want to acknowledge one positive element concerning laws that allow people to carry concealed handguns.

It’s really about the only positive thing I can say about this, so here goes.

I am a more polite driver, more circumspect at others who cut me off, or who nearly back into me in parking lots, or who otherwise drive recklessly, putting me and others at risk of serious physical harm.

Why? It’s simple. I do not want to antagonize a motorist who might be packing a pistol in his glove compartment, or under his seat, or who might be wearing a holster containing a six-shooter.

The problem with that niceness, though, is that I am reluctant to tell the driver in some fashion that he or she is putting me in danger. I am unaware of a way to do so while sitting in a motor vehicle yelling at someone else without pi**ing the other person off enough to do something foolish … such as shoot me!

OK, so I called this a “positive” aspect of gun ownership. On reflection of what I have just written, perhaps I should walk some of that back just a little. It’s not entirely positive, but it does create possibly a slightly more polite driving public.

To be clear, I am still frightened by the prospect of more guns on the streets, with more people being allowed to carry guns openly without having to take a rudimentary class to prove they know how to handle them.

I also accept that concealed-carry laws in Texas haven’t resulted in commonplace shootouts in the streets.

If these firearms make us a bit more reticent and polite, then that’s not a bad thing.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Heartlessness = GOP

Heartless attitudes about people’s emotional distress seems to have become part of the formula for success in today’s Republican Party.

Consider the policies enacted by Texas Republicans regarding the young people struggling with what we call “gender identity.” Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken “Under Felony Indictment” Paxton believe parents who seek treatment for their children’s gender ID issues are committing “child abuse.”

It baffles me that grown men and women, who do not have such issues with which to contend, can make judgments on others who do have them, or who have children they are seeking to help guide along on their life’s journey.

Abbott and Paxton — the latter of whom is awaiting trial on an allegation of securities fraud — believe that parents who seek “gender-affirming care” are guilty of abusing their children. My goodness! How in the name of humane treatment can these people pursue their constituents in this manner?

I am one American who cannot possibly relate intimately with the struggles of others who have these issues. Thus, I cannot in good conscience pretend to understand this complicated emotional behavior. How, then, do politicians who are supposed to represent me justify imposing their will on others?

It is a heartlessness I find terribly unbecoming.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com