{"id":10428,"date":"2015-08-04T01:41:57","date_gmt":"2015-08-04T01:41:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=10428"},"modified":"2015-08-04T01:41:57","modified_gmt":"2015-08-04T01:41:57","slug":"texas-garners-another-dubious-honor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=10428","title":{"rendered":"Texas garners another dubious ‘honor’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n

First, it was a sitting Texas governor who got indicted by a grand jury.<\/p>\n

The governor, Rick Perry, has since left office and is now pursuing the Republican presidential nomination.<\/p>\n

Now we have a sitting attorney general who’s been indicted by another grand jury.<\/p>\n

Welcome to The Club, Ken Paxton.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2015\/08\/03\/paxton-set-surrender-securities-fraud-indictment\/<\/p>\n

Are they similar? Not by a long shot.<\/p>\n

Perry’s indictment occurred in Travis County, where a grand jury has accused him of abuse of power and coercion of a public servant in connection with his veto of funds for the Public Integrity Unit. Perry and his allies have argued that the Travis County indictment was politically motivated; Travis County remains a Democratic bastion, while Perry is a Republican. Get it? Pure politics.<\/p>\n

Not so with Paxton. He was indicted by a grand jury in his home county, which is Collin County. Paxton is a Republican attorney general; prior to that he represented Collin County in the Texas House of Representatives. I’m thinking it’s a real good bet that some — perhaps most — of the grand jurors voted for him when he ran for AG in 2014.<\/p>\n

Paxton is indicted on two felony counts of securities fraud and another count of failing to register as an investment counselor.<\/p>\n

This is serious stuff. Paxton is the state’s top law enforcer. He’s supposed to be clear of this kind of thing. He’s actually admitted to the investment advice matter.<\/p>\n

Good grief! Can’t we do better than this in Texas?<\/p>\n

OK, should he quit? No. He is still innocent until — or if — a court proves his guilt. Paxton plans to plead not guilty and will seek a trial by jury. Fine. That’s his right.<\/p>\n

These indictments, though, of leading Texas politicians is getting worrisome.<\/p>\n\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First, it was a sitting Texas governor who got indicted by a grand jury. The governor, Rick Perry, has since left office and is now pursuing the Republican presidential nomination. Now we have a sitting attorney general who’s been indicted by another grand jury. Welcome to The Club, Ken Paxton. http:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2015\/08\/03\/paxton-set-surrender-securities-fraud-indictment\/ Are they similar? Not … Continue reading Texas garners another dubious ‘honor’<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,18],"tags":[1064,2652,3913,3951,4896],"class_list":["post-10428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal-news","category-state-news","tag-collin-county-grand-jury","tag-ken-paxton","tag-republican-presidential-nomination","tag-rick-perry","tag-travis-county-grand-jury"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10428\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}