Category Archives: State news

national news, State news

Why did Judge Kavanaugh snub this child’s father?

A video segment from today’s opening of the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court has gotten a whole lot of attention.

For good reason.

As Kavanaugh was leaving the hearing room, Fred Guttenberg — whose daughter was among those slain by the gunman at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. — extended his hand, apparently to shake Judge Kavanaugh’s hand.

The judge turned away. He didn’t take Guttenberg’s hand.

I do not know what Guttenberg might have said to Kavanaugh to prompt such a chilly non-response to what looked like a gesture of common courtesy. Maybe the grieving father said Kavanaugh’s wife wore combat boots, or some such childish statement.

I doubt it.

Surely the dad didn’t accuse Kavanaugh of complicity in the mass shooting. Surely he didn’t tell him he is responsible for the tragedy that erupted on Valentine’s Day.

So, why did the judge turn his back? Doesn’t a father in mourning deserve a handshake and an expression of good wishes?

These kinds of images have a way of imprinting themselves into observers’ collective memory. Just as Midland, Texas, oil mogul Claytie Williams who snubbed a handshake from Gov. Ann Richards during the candidates’ campaign for Texas governor in 1990. Williams paid for that rudeness by losing the election.

State news

Cruz gets blowback from criticizing O’Rourke’s potty mouth

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s re-election campaign is trying to paint challenger Beto O’Rourke as a potty-mouthed punk who drops f-bombs at random.

Social media response has been, well, a bit different from what the Cruz campaign expected. The revelation seems to be making the Democratic challenger seem more cool.

This mini-tempest makes me laugh and it reminds me of something that happened back in my hometown of Portland, Ore., during a race for the mayor’s office.

Incumbent Mayor Frank Ivancie’s 1984 re-election campaign dug up a 1978 picture of a challenger, Bud Clark — owner of the legendary downtown Park Blocks watering hole the Goose Hollow Inn — “exposing himself” before a statue. The picture showed Clark with his back to the camera pulling open a trench coat with the caption “Expose Yourself to Art.”

Ivancie, a man with no discernible sense of humor, thought the picture would doom Clark’s insurgent candidacy. It did precisely the opposite. It called attention to the challenger and — no pun intended — exposed Ivancie to be a stuffed-shirt prude.

Clark won the election, defeating Ivancie.

So, with that I want to hail the attempt by Sen. Cruz’s team to make Beto O’Rourke out to be a young man with a foul mouth. It well might produce the same result that occurred in Portland so many years ago.

local news, State news

Where is Rep. Price in this speaker race?

I just read where state Rep. Drew Darby has become the fifth member of the Texas House to declare his candidacy for speaker of the House of Representatives.

What do I know about him? He’s a Republican (naturally!) from San Angelo. OK. That’s it. Now he’s running for Speaker Joe Straus’s job, which Straus is giving up at the end of the year after choosing not to seek re-election to another term.

The roll of speaker candidates is missing a key player who has been reported to be somewhat interested, although he’s being typically coy about it.

I refer to my friend state Rep. Four Price of Amarillo.

I want Price to run for the speakership. I also want his House colleagues to elect him.

I’ll admit to bias here. I’ve known the young man almost from the moment my wife and I moved to Amarillo in 1995. He is a lawyer and our paths crossed as I developed a list of friends — and sources — while working as editorial page editor of the Amarillo Globe-News.

Then he decided to run for the Texas House in 2011, succeeding former state Rep. David Swinford in the District 87 seat. He won the GOP primary, which meant election in the heavily Republican House district.

Price has acquitted himself handsomely, becoming a champion for the cause of mental health rehabilitation in the Legislature.

He also developed a constructive alliance with Speaker Straus, a man for whom I developed great respect over his objection to that hideous Bathroom Bill that died in the special legislative session in 2017. You remember that one, yes? It would have required people to use public restrooms in accordance with the gender assigned on their birth certificate; it was clearly discriminatory against transgender individuals. Straus would have none of the bill that sailed through the Texas Senate.

Four Price is an ally of the speaker and I’ll presume he backed Straus’s decision to torpedo the Bathroom Bill.

What’s more, Price fended off a challenge this past year from someone who was backed by the far-right political action committee, Empower Texans.

I believe Rep. Price would make a fine speaker of the Texas House. Yes, my wife and I have moved away from the Panhandle, but my interest in Texas politics and government is as strong as ever.

Thus, I hope Rep. Price decides to compete for the title of Man of the Texas House.

Run, Four, run!

local news, political news, State news

Memo to Beto: Money doesn’t win elections

All these news stories I read about the Beto O’Rourke-Ted Cruz fight for Cruz’s U.S. Senate seat keep harping on the same theme: O’Rourke is raising more money than Cruz.

To borrow a phrase: Big … fu***** … deal.

O’Rourke is the Democrat challenging the Republican incumbent, Cruz. Texas hasn’t elected a Democrat to statewide office since 1994. Texas Democrats are feeling it this year, man. Maybe it’s for real. Then again, we are talking about Texas, where Republicans generally have both legs up merely by being Republican.

Make no mistake: I want O’Rourke to shoot down the Cruz Missile. The Washington Post story accompanying this post tells of O’Rourke’s meet-the-people strategy and how well he is performing in places one might not expect a progressive Democrat to do so well.

Such as the Texas Panhandle, where we used to live.

See the Post story here.

But money alone won’t win this election. Andrew Gillum got outspent by a factor of about 20 in Florida, but he still managed to win that state’s Democratic primary for governor this past week. The same can be said of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who won a New York congressional Democratic primary a few weeks ago against a powerful incumbent despite being outspent by 40 or 50 times.

It is with that I offer Beto O’Rourke and his avid followers a word of caution.

I want him to win. I will use this blog to advance his candidacy for the U.S. Senate. His opponent, Cruz, isn’t concerned with the state nearly as much as he with his own image, reputation and political ambition.

Do not try to tell me that O’Rourke is some flaming “socialist” or extremist who is going to vote to disarm our armed forces, open our borders to criminals and confiscate everyone’s firearms.

He is a reasonable young man who deserves a chance to represent Texas in the U.S. Senate.

Sure, he’s raising a lot of money. However, the pile of campaign cash doesn’t always equate to more votes than the other guy.

Keep working and hustling, Beto.

Many of us in Texas will have your back.

State news

How will POTUS fill the ‘biggest stadium we can find’?

Donald John Trump is blowing it out of his backside when he proclaims his effort to stage a campaign rally in “the biggest stadium we can find.”

He intends to come to Texas to campaign for Sen. Ted Cruz’s re-election. The president said in a Twitter post that he is going to look for the largest venue in the state to stage the rally.

One quick query: How does the president expect to fill such a venue?

He has staged rallies for a couple of years since announcing his presidential campaign in June 2015. He hasn’t drawn crowds that would even begin to fill such a monumental venue.

AT&T Stadium in Arlington? Kyle Field in College Station? Memorial Stadium in Austin? Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth?

They’re all big venues. As in really big, man.

Does the president really believe his presence at a rally will attract 100,000 or more spectators?

C’mon!

Cruz is running against Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke, an El Paso member of the House. O’Rourke has closed Cruz’s lead to virtually zero. The men are tied. It’s a dead heat. Yes, we have several more weeks to go before midterm Election Day.

I plan to support O’Rourke, who by my lights puts Texas’s interests ahead of his own ambition — unlike the Cruz Missile.

Cruz and Trump have exchanged some mighty angry rhetoric in the past. That’s all behind them — or so they hope.

The rally that Trump will stage? He ought to set his sights a whole lot lower than the “biggest stadium” notion. Of course, we all know that won’t happen.

If Trump has this rally in the huge venue and attracts enough supporters to fill half the seats, or fewer, he’ll still proclaim it to be the “biggest rally crowd” in the history of the world.

The Trumpkins will believe their hero, which is all that matters to the president.

State news

How does Cruz embrace Trump … and vice versa?

I cannot get past the news that Donald John Trump plans to stage a h-u-u-u-u-ge campaign rally on behalf of a guy he used to call Lyin’ Ted.

Trump says he is coming to Texas to campaign for Ted Cruz, the Republican U.S. senator who once challenged Trump for the GOP presidential nomination.

The campaign got really nasty, man.

Trump hung the Lyin’ Ted nickname on Cruz. Then he insulted Heidi Cruz, the senator’s wife. Oh, and then the future president thought to link the senator’s father to possible complicity in President Kennedy’s murder.

The insult to Mrs. Cruz and the idiotic “fake news” lie about the elder Cruz was too much for the senator. He called Trump “amoral,” a “narcissist,” a “pathological liar” with no sense of decency.

Now he welcomes the president to Texas to campaign for him as he seeks to fend off a challenge from Democratic contender Beto O’Rourke?

Give me a break.

Trump already has tweeted disparaging comments about Cruz’s service to Texas in the Senate. Cruz’s statements about Trump stand on their own.

So these two men now intend to persuade us that all is well with them both? That they didn’t really mean all those nasty things they said about each other? That they have buried the hatchet … and not in each other’s back?

I still intend to be in the crowd at the Trump rally if it occurs anywhere near us in the Metroplex.

No, I won’t cheer the Liar in Chief.

State news

POTUS plans big rally for the Cruz Missile

I’m all giddy.

Donald J. Trump has posted a Twitter message that reads the following:

Isn’t that cool? The president is coming to Texas to campaign for Ted Cruz, the Republican incumbent who’s seeking to fend off an apparently burgeoning challenge from Democratic U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke.

Trump says he is “picking the biggest stadium in Texas we can find.” Let me think. I believe that would be the Cowboys’ crib in Arlington, which is only about 30 miles or so from where I live in Collin County.

This means I’ll get to attend a Donald Trump rally. It means — if it works out — that I’ll get to sit in a crowd of screaming maniacs.

Take my word for this: I won’t join them in whoopin’, hollerin’ and howlin’ when Trump spouts untruths. Oh, no. That’s not for me.

I’ll plan to be there because from what I understand these rallies are worlds unto themselves. They reportedly thrive in what can be called a parallel universe that functions right next to the real world.

Hey, I’ve made no secret of my desire to see Beto O’Rourke knock the Cruz Missile out of the sky.

To be sure, Trump hasn’t yet disclosed where this rally will occur. The state has plenty of large venues. The University of Texas football stadium in Austin also is possible, but Austin ain’t exactly Trump Country or, for that matter, Cruz Country.

The Cowboys stadium in Tarrant County, though, makes more sense.

It also gives me a chance to attend a Donald Trump, shake my head in disgust — and then declare that Beto O’Rourke would do a better job representing rank-and-file Texans than the man Trump has offered his “complete and total Endorsement.”

Oh, and such a rally would give the O’Rourke plenty of grist to remind Texans that Cruz once called Trump a “pathological liar,” someone who is “amoral” and a true-blue “narcissist.”

Is the senator a man of conviction — or is he a man of convenience?

national news, political news, State news

This Senate race is getting white hot and nasty

BUTTE, Mont. — We’re stopped at our third Montana RV park and are enjoying some local TV … including some pretty nasty political ads being fired back and forth between Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester and his Republican opponent, state auditor Matt Rosendale.

My wife and I have been out of Texas for about two weeks. We’ve parked our RV in West Yellowstone and Missoula, Mont. I’m wondering if we’re going to see such vitriol flying soon from the Senate campaigns of Beto O’Rourke and Ted Cruz.

The Republican is accusing Tester — a guy I’ve always considered to be a Second Amendment-loving moderate Democrat — of being a closet clone of House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Bernie “Democratic Socialist” Sanders.

Rosendale has tied himself to Donald John Trump. He calls himself a “Trump conservative,” which if I lived in Montana would be enough all by itself for me to support Tester.

Most of the negativity is coming from Rosendale. Tester is saying he approves the TV ads “even if Washington doesn’t like it.”

I guess I like Tester partially because of his haircut, which is a sort of buzz-cut flat-top ‘do.

Policy-wise, he is a moderate. He supports retaining the Affordable Care Act, which hardly is a poisonous policy position by my standard.

Sure, Montana is a Trump state. The president has campaigned for Rosendale. Given the troubles that are mounting for the president, my sense is that his support for a candidate — even one here in this bastion of the Wild West — is a mixed blessing at best.

Well, it’s my hope anyway.

As for O’Rourke and Cruz … take it away, boys.

education news, local news, State news

Why did you want Duncan to go, regents? Come clean!

I have to hand it to the Texas Tribune’s Ross Ramsey: The man knows how to lay political injustice out there in the great wide open for all to see.

Ramsey thinks Texas Tech University System Chancellor Bob Duncan got hosed by the university’s board of regents. They voted — possibly illegally in an executive session — to issue a no-confidence verdict on Duncan.

What does Ramsey think of Duncan? Get a load of this excerpt from the Texas Tribune: He has been solid gold the whole way: As a legislative staffer, a lawyer working for state Sen. John Montford, D-Lubbock; as a member of the Texas House and then a state senator; and finally, as the chancellor.

No scandals. No meaningful enemies (until now, anyway). His has been a stellar career. It’s what the optimists hope for and what the pessimists bet against. He’s straight out of a Frank Capra movie, or a civics textbook. Imagine a guy walking through a spaghetti factory in a white suit and leaving without a spot on him. Duncan is really something.

Which is why it’s a shame that the rest of the crabs pulled him back into the bucket. The regents at Texas Tech showed their mettle — demonstrating why they’re little fish and not big fish — when a more brazen academic institution bellowed about their plans to launch a veterinary school in the Panhandle. Texas A&M University, headed by former legislator, railroad commissioner and comptroller John Sharp, believes one vet school is enough.

Ramsey thinks that someone connected to the A&M System got to Gov. Greg Abbott, who might have told the Tech regents — who are appointed by the governor — to reel Duncan in.

What is galling to me is that regents haven’t yet given a hint of detail as to why they want Duncan to leave the post he has held for the past four years. By most observers’ reckoning, he was doing a bang-up job as the system’s chief administrator.

Regents have sought to cover their backsides by declaring their continued support for the school of veterinary medicine in Amarillo. That’s great!

Read Ramsey’s excellent analysis here.

First things first. They need to explain to Tech’s constituents why they have pushed a “good guy,” as Ramsey described Duncan, over the proverbial cliff.

State news

Beto over The Cruz Missile? Here’s why

OK, so what if I haven’t come up with a pejorative nickname for the guy I want Texans to send to the U.S. Senate. Maybe he’ll earn it if he gets the chance to represent Texas beginning in 2019.

I do know this: I want Beto O’Rourke to defeat Ted Cruz in the race for the Senate. Some recent polling suggests a tight race. Texas Lyceum has it at 2 percent for Cruz, which makes the contest a statistical dead heat.

Yes, I often refer to the Republican incumbent as The Cruz Missile. I do so because I do not think he places Texas’s interests over his own ambition. He was elected in 2012 and immediately could be seen on TV screens, blathering about this or that. The media glommed onto him, much as they have done with other senatorial newcomers, such as Democrats Kamala Harris and Corey Booker.

A senator who doesn’t earn his or her place on the front row of the political chorus automatically makes me suspicious as to his or her motivation.

Thus, Cruz has become The Missile.

I am going to turn my attention to Beto O’Rourke.

The young man’s issues pronouncements do not seem overly radical, which many on the right are likely to characterize them.

He speaks with compassion about immigration, wanting to preserve the Differed Action on Childhood Arrivals provision, giving so-called “Dreamers” a chance to achieve U.S. citizenship rather than rounding them up and deporting them. He wants to fix the Affordable Care Act, not trash it merely because it was authored by President Obama. O’Rourke wants to be true to our veterans; and this veteran thanks him for that. He believes Earth’s climate is changing and wants to invest more — not less — in alternative energy production to protect the atmosphere against carbon-induced warming.

I am acutely aware of the steep hill that towers in front of O’Rourke. He is campaigning as a Democrat in a state that tends to elect Republicans just because they, well, are Republicans. We live in a conservative state populated by conservatives. O’Rourke will need to tell us what he intends to do for Texans if he gets elected to represent us — and our interests.

As I have watched Sen. Cruz for the past six years, I do not yet know whether he understands yet that he works for us and that he must keep his personal ambition under wraps.

My head tells me a lot of things have to go right for O’Rourke for him to win. My heart wishes they do … and believes they will.

***

Take a look at O’Rourke’s platform. You’ll find it here.