Tag Archives: Texas Tribune

national news, political news

Cornyn is correct; Cruz is, um, incorrect

John Cornyn knows how the U.S. Senate functions.

He’s been serving there for some time now as a Republican from Texas.

His whipper-snapper colleague, fellow Republican Ted Cruz, doesn’t know how it works quite so well.

Accordingly, Cornyn took Cruz to task for the attack he leveled at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Cruz did so in a speech on the Senate floor in which he called McConnell a liar.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/07/26/cruz-and-cornyn-engage-senate-floor/

McConnell had allowed a vote on the Export-Import Bank, which Cruz and some other Senate conservatives want to eliminate. McConnell, R-Ky., allegedly had promised that a vote wouldn’t occur. Cruz took him to task for it and then decided to say out loud what he could have said in private, which is that McConnell can’t be trusted to keep his word.

Enter the senior senator from Texas, Cornyn.

“I have listened to the comments of my colleague, the junior senator from Texas, both last week and this week, and I would have to say that he is mistaken,” Cornyn said, adding that McConnell did not deceive any senator with his fancy procedural footwork. According to the Texas Tribune: “If the majority leader had somehow misrepresented to 54 senators what the facts are with regards to the Ex-Im Bank, I would suspect that you would find other voices joining that of the junior senator, but I hear no one else making such a similar accusation.”

“There was no misrepresentation made by the majority leader on the Ex-Im Bank,” Cornyn added.

I continue to believe that Cruz — who’s also running for president — hit the floor of the Senate when he took office aiming to make a name for himself. He’s done so quite nicely and along the way incurred the wrath of his GOP colleagues, not to mention the Democrats with whom he must work.

Remember, during former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s confirmation hearing, when Cruz questioned out loud whether Hagel — a former Republican senator from Nebraska and a decorated Vietnam War combatant — was taking money under the table from North Korea? That line of attack drew a sharp rebuke from another noted Vietnam War combatant, Republican Sen. John McCain, who scolded the freshman for impugning Hagel’s patriotism and integrity.

Now the senator who wants to be president has been lectured by his fellow Texan about the rules of the Senate.

You just don’t call another senator — let alone the majority leader — a liar.

International news, political news, State news

Donald Trump: man of danger

donald_trump

Donald Trump came to Texas this week and, according to the man himself, thrust himself into harm’s way by speaking the truth about illegal immigration.

Well, since he’s the presumed frontrunner — for the moment — for the Republican Party presidential nomination next year, his visit requires a brief comment.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/07/23/trumps-presidential-spectacle-sweeps-through-texas/

It meant nothing in the nation’s ongoing battle against illegal immigration.

Trump’s appearance was just for show. That’s understandable, though. Political candidates do these things on occasion. He swept into Laredo, bounded off his big ol’ jet wearing a ball cap emblazoned with “Making America Great Again.” He said he’s the only candidate speaking the truth about illegal immigration.

He offered zero specifics about what he intends to do about illegal immigration, although he has said he would build a wall to seal off our southern border to protect us against the flood of murderers, rapists and drug dealers who are pouring into the United States en masse.

I’m wondering, though: Is Trump going to make a similar campaign splash in, say, Buffalo, Detroit or Bellingham, Wash., cities that sit on our border with Canada? Let’s seal off our northern border as well, while we’re at it.

As the Texas Tribune reported, the brief fling in Laredo was long on sizzle and short on substance.

He said: “I’ll take jobs back from China, I’ll take jobs back from Japan … The Hispanics are going to get those jobs, and they’re going to love Trump.” There’s that third-person reference again.

According to The Trib: “The spectacle reached its apex when he held court with a crush of media at the border following a roughly half-hour closed-door meeting with law enforcement officials. Against the backdrop of a line of trucks waiting to enter the country, Trump regaled reporters with a string of boisterous predictions — that he would not only win the GOP nomination, but would also take the Hispanic vote — and vague prescriptions for the issue that brought him here: illegal immigration.”

This event kind of reminded me of the time then-Texas Attorney General Jim Mattox traipsed through the mud in Matamoros, Mexico, in the late 1980s after a University of Texas student was killed. Mattox, a Democrat, wanted to make a grand show of how he would root out the killers and bring them to justice. That’s all fine, except for this minor detail: The Texas AG has virtually zero criminal jurisdiction; the office deals almost exclusively with civil matters.

But, hey, it made for great photo ops.

So did Trump’s appearance in Laredo. That’s it.

International news, Intgernational news, State news

‘Inside job’ helped free El Chapo?

U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul is on point with an assertion that Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman had inside help when he escaped from that maximum-security prison in Mexico.

The Texas Republican’s contention also adds a serious twist to the difficulty in protecting our territory against foreign enemies. They’re right across our borders.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/07/14/mccaul-absurd-think-guzman-fled-without-inside-hel/

McCaul chairs the House Homeland Security Committee and he has said that in order for the notorious and highly dangerous drug kingpin to escape from prison he needed help from prison officials. That means Mexican government officials. And that also means we need to broaden our attention to those who would do us harm to those who live on our very continent.

OK, so it’s not exactly a scoop to suggest that danger lurks far closer than the Middle East, South Asia, or East Africa.

McCaul’s comments come after a leading Democrat on the House panel, Filemon Vela, also of Texas, leveled a similar blast at Mexican authorities. So the concern and the fear cross party lines.

“The idea that there wasn’t a complicity and corruption going on when you got a mile-long tunnel underneath the facility is absolutely absurd,” McCaul said on CNN.

Here’s an idea: When the authorities capture Guzman, let’s redouble our efforts to extradite him to the United States, where he and his drug cartel inflict most of their damage. McCaul and others in Congress tried, and failed, after Guzman’s first escape from maximum-security.

Let’s also hope the authorities can capture this monster quickly.

national news

Most county clerks are going to follow the law

Well, it turns out Texas’s county courthouses aren’t occupied by defiant rebels intent on ignoring state and federal law.

According to the Texas Tribune, most county clerks — and I presume that to mean more than 127 of them — are going to comply with a Supreme Court ruling that legalizes gay marriage across the nation.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/07/10/lawsuits-needed-holdout-counties-gay-marriage/?goal=0_141c96f7df-5c77452cb0-99785833&mc_cid=5c77452cb0&mc_eid=c01508274f

Those who don’t will face lawsuits from couples seeking marriage licenses.

I was intrigued by the story that included statements from way up yonder, in tiny Roberts County, that officials there will issue licenses to same-sex couples when they apply for them.

Randall and Potter clerks said from the outset of the ruling that they would issue the licenses, even though Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton decreed it was all right with him if counties declined to do so.

The Tribune reports: “Hartley County Clerk Melissa Mead said her office won’t issue same-sex marriage licenses until the clock runs out on the 25 days that parties in the Supreme Court case have to ask for a rehearing of the case.”

A handful of the state’s 254 counties are bucking the highest court in the land — not to mention ignoring the oath that county clerks take that require them to uphold federal law.

A handful of clerks in other states have declined to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples — and have resigned their public offices in protest. I’m OK with those who quit rather than flout their oath. Those who resign are far more principled, in my view, than those who simply refuse to do their duty based on religious principles. Their oaths don’t allow for that, as I read the oath they all must take.

A friend posted this portion of a New York Times editorial on the subject:

“Some same-sex marriage opponents argue that under state religious-freedom laws, a government employee’s beliefs should be accommodated so long as another official is available to carry out the task. But government employees do not have a constitutionally protected right to pick and choose which members of the public they will serve, no matter their religious beliefs. Not so long ago, of course, government officials invoked religious beliefs to justify all manner of racial segregation and discrimination, including laws banning interracial marriage. The Supreme Court struck down that marriage ban in 1967 in Loving v. Virginia. It is impossible to imagine any county clerk or judge now claiming a right not to marry an interracial couple based on religious beliefs. And yet, that would be analogous to what these public employees are doing in refusing to serve same-sex couples. The Constitution’s protection of religious freedom simply does not include the right to discriminate against others in the public sphere.”

As I see it, there you have it.

State news

Ethics reform gets a little kick from Abbott

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott vowed that the 2015 Legislature would reform the state’s ethics policy.

Lawmakers tried to torpedo Abbott’s call. But the governor struck back with his veto pen on one element that he didn’t like coming out of the Legislature.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/06/20/abbott-vetoes-spousal-loophole-davis-says/

Abbott vetoed a bill that would have allowed married elected officials to hide their spouses’ financial holdings. The governor said the bill did the opposite of what he wanted and he vowed to take up the matter of ethics reform when the 2017 Legislature convenes.

He said, according to the Texas Tribune: “At the beginning of this legislative session, I called for meaningful ethics reform. This legislation does not accomplish that goal. Provisions in this bill would reduce Texans’ trust in their elected officials, and I will not be a part of weakening our ethics laws,” he wrote. “Serious ethics reform must be addressed next session — the right way. Texans deserve better.”

Good for you, Gov. Abbott.

For as long as I can remember — and I’ve lived in Texas for 31 years, nearly half my life — “ethics” and “government” been mutually exclusive terms.

Abbott didn’t whiff completely on his effort to get some ethics reform enacted. One victory came as a result of a Democratic lawmaker’s effort to end the pension double-dipping that existed in Texas. As the Tribune reported: “State Rep. Chris Turner, D-Grand Prairie, won passage of a bill that will close a loophole that allowed longtime elected officials to double-dip their salary and pension. Former Gov. Rick Perry had famously taken advantage of the provision toward the end of his 14-year reign.”

The state has much more ground to cover if it is going to restore a belief among many Texans that their elected officials’ behavior shouldn’t be questioned with such regularity.

But as Gov. Abbott has displayed, he retains veto power. In this instance, he used it wisely.

 

 

legal news, local news, State news

Grand jury reform arrives in Texas

Way back when I arrived in Texas, in 1984, the newspaper where I started working had just begun an editorial campaign to change the way the state impaneled grand juries.

The Jefferson County criminal justice system had come under fire over suspicions that a grand jury might have been seated to get back at political foes of a district judge. Our newspaper, the Beaumont Enterprise, disliked the jury commissioner system and we called for a change to select grand juries the way the state seats trial juries — using the voter registration rolls.

We finally persuaded the county’s two criminal district judges to adopt a random selection method.

Well, this week, Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill into law that makes it a requirement to seat grand juries in a random method.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/06/19/abbott-signs-grand-jury-reform-legislation/

It’s a good day for the state’s criminal justice system.

As the Texas Tribune reports: “Under House Bill 2150, the state will no longer use the outdated system that lets judge-appointed commissioners pick jurors, a nationally uncommon practice that critics say is rife with potential for conflicts of interest.”

The old system allowed judges to pick jury commissioners, usually friends, to find grand jurors. It’s been called a “pick a pal” system. Friends pick friends, who then might be friends with the judge whose court has jurisdiction.

The “potential for conflicts of interest” surely did exist.

I once served on a grand jury, in Randall County, that was picked by the old method. We had an uneventful term, meeting every other week for several months. I learned a lot about my community.

My participation as a grand juror, though, all but eliminated me from consideration for a trial jury, District Attorney James Farren told us, as we then would be seen as “pro-prosecution” by defense counsel.

That’s fine.

But I’m still quite glad to see the Texas Legislature enact this long-needed reform, which follows the model used in the vast majority of other states.

If a randomly selected trial jury is qualified to sentence someone to death, then a randomly selected grand jury ought to be qualified to determine whether the crime should be prosecuted in the first place.

State news

UT to examine student-athletes’ record

It is entirely possible that a planned examination of alleged cheating by University of Texas student-athletes could mushroom into something much broader.

UT is looking into whether three basketball players cheated in the classroom. But officials say they intend to broaden the investigation, to look more deeply into the conduct of students — and their instructors.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/06/16/ut-launches-broad-inquiry-athletes-academics/

This ought to be a welcome development if we’re going to continue to refer to these young men and women as student-athletes, putting the word “student” first.

UT-Austin President Greg Fenves said “no improprieties” have been found … so far.

Let’s hope it stays that way.

If, however, the university determines that “improprieties” do exist in the classroom, there must be serious consequences delivered to all offending parties.

Some of us — me included — like the term “student-athlete” and all that it implies.

Chief among the implications is that the young men and women should be enrolled in our public universities to obtain an education, that they aren’t in school just to play whatever sport in which they excelled in high school, earning them a fully paid publicly funded post-secondary education.

I don’t want the UT brass to find widespread cheating. If they do, however, then I’m prepared to support some serious punishment.

 

 

national news, political news, State news

Perry faces big hurdles

Ross Ramsey is about as smart a Texas political analyst as there is, and he’s laid out three things Rick Perry must do to wage an effective campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

Ramsey, writing for the Texas Tribune, listed them in this order: (1) stay the course while the field thins out; (2) get rid of the prosecutor who’s trying to convict him of abuse of power; (3) do well in the debates.

If Ramsey was listing them in order of importance, I’d flip the first and second points.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/06/04/analysis-three-steps-perrys-comeback-trail/

Those “pesky prosecutors” represent every possible stumbling block for the former Texas governor.

Perry, who today went to Addison to announce his candidacy, appears to the be the first major candidate ever to run for president while facing felony indictment. A Travis County grand jury indicted him for abuse of power and coercion of a public official in 2014.

The history is out there. Ramsey goes through it in the link attached here.

If Perry cannot shake those prosecutors, then it’s game over.

And by “shaking” them, he must get the indictments tossed out.

As Ramsey notes: “Perry and his legal team have argued that the case is a political one brought by liberal prosecutors in a liberal county to a liberal grand jury, that his veto was legal, and that the whole thing was designed to spoil his political future.”

The veto might have been legal, but it also was done with considerable public-relations fanfare, which is why — in my view — the coercion charge might be the one that sticks more stubbornly than the abuse of power allegation.

All the then-governor had to do was veto the money appropriated to the Public Integrity Unit without making such a public case about the district attorney’s arrest for drunken driving and his public threat to veto the money if she didn’t quit her job as Travis County DA.

Was it legal? Sure. Was it a matter of coercion? Yes to that, too … allegedly.

Ramsey is correct on this other point: “The better (Perry) does, the bigger the indictment obstacle becomes. It’s a bother now. It’s a potential deal-breaker if he becomes a real contender.”

 

State news

Abbott challenged by forces beyond control

This is why we pay the governor the big bucks.

He or she must deal with forces they cannot control. Political will? Forget about it. Returning favors? Not a chance. Paying someone back for doing you wrong? Not even close.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is dealing with forces no one can control.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/05/27/deadly-flood-provides-abbott-his-first-no-manual-t/

As the Texas Tribune reports, Abbott’s immediate predecessor in the governor’s office, Rick Perry, quips to audiences to this day, that “Nobody gave me the manual” that explains how he copes with disaster.

Perry had his share during his 14 years as governor: hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, that big fertilizer plant blast in West. He had to buck up and just plain lead.

Abbott is now facing his own challenge barely five months into his first term.

Our weather has turned on us. Yes, it’s good to have the moisture — a term that seems quaint, given the volume of water that has fallen all across the state. The floods it has produced, though, is spreading heartache, grief and misery throughout much of the Hill Country and the Gulf Coast.

Abbott says the flooding is the worst in Texas history. He spoke by phone with President Obama, who pledged the federal government’s full support in helping Texas deal with this tragedy. Indeed, this is precisely the occasion to put all political differences aside — and there exist plenty of them between the governor and the president — while all parties work on behalf of stricken victims.

Has the governor done all he can do? I’m not prepared to make that judgment. The Texas Tribune reports: “To be sure, Abbott’s handling of the crisis has not been without some questions, including whether the state was fully prepared for the unrelenting run of inclement weather that began weeks ago. At news conferences throughout the state this week, he has assured reporters Texas was ready and everything worked that was supposed to.”

Actually, it seems almost impossible for any governor — or any elected official at almost any level — to be fully ready when events spring forth the way the flooding has done throughout the state.

This is Gov. Abbott’s crisis now. No one schooled him precisely on how to deal with it.

Let’s just call it a hyper-serious on-the-job training class.

We’ll see how it all grades out when the water recedes and Texans start reassembling their shattered lives.

 

legal news, political news, State news

Restrict judges' fundraising

Restricting Texas judges’ ability to raise money from campaign contributors is a smashing, capital idea.

Let’s do it.

Oh, I almost forgot. Texas is the place that doesn’t like restricting political activity even among judges who are supposed to remain impartial and fair to all who appear before them in court. The big-donor lawyer isn’t supposed to be treated differently than, say, the lawyer who gives to another candidate who happened to run against the judge before whom he or she is appearing.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/05/15/analysis-distance-between-judges-and-politics/

Ross Ramsey’s analysis in the Texas Tribune speaks to possible changes, though, in state law that might mimic a Florida restriction. Florida elects its judges, too, but judges cannot go around asking for money; that’s left to campaign committees.

It’s not nearly a perfect solution. My preferred reform would be to appoint judges initially and then have them stand for retention; if they’ve done a good job, voters can keep them in office, but if they mess up, voters have the option of kicking them out.

That won’t happen in my lifetime in Texas.

According to the Texas Tribune: “If you are an incumbent judge and you call a lawyer and ask for money, what is that lawyer going to say? No?” asks Wallace Jefferson, a former chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court who now practices law in Austin. “That incumbent judge is going to raise more money. But no one should feel pressured to contribute.”

Jefferson is one of my favorite Texas judges. He always makes sense and I wish he still sat on the state’s highest civil appeals court. But … I digress.

One interesting ploy that many well-heeled lawyers use is to contribute to both candidates running for the same judgeship. Walter Umphrey is a high-octane plaintiff’s mega-lawyer in Beaumont, where I used to live and work. He is known as a Yellow Dog Democrat, but he would give big money to Republicans, just to cover his bets in case the Republican won a seat in Jefferson County, which at one time — but no longer — was one of the state’s last bastions of Democratic Party loyalty.

The whole notion of judges collecting campaign money from lawyers who might represent clients before those very judges is anathema to me.

Ramsey writes that a lot of Texas lawyers and judges feel the same way. They want to change the system.

The problem, as I see it, lies with the many other lawyers and judges who like the system just the way it is.