{"id":6151,"date":"2014-07-12T15:29:18","date_gmt":"2014-07-12T15:29:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/2014\/07\/12\/abuse-of-power-allegation-may-spell-trouble\/"},"modified":"2014-07-12T15:29:18","modified_gmt":"2014-07-12T15:29:18","slug":"abuse-of-power-allegation-may-spell-trouble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=6151","title":{"rendered":"Abuse of power allegation may spell trouble"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>Texas Gov. Rick Perry is looking and sounding more and more like a candidate for president in 2016.<\/p>\n<p>That is, unless he gets indicted by a Travis County grand jury for abusing the power of his office.<\/p>\n<p>If he faces criminal charges, all bets are off for the lame-duck governor.<\/p>\n<p>http:\/\/www.newschannel10.com\/story\/25998425\/grand-jury-decides-if-perry-abused-power<\/p>\n<p>The panel is expected to decide soon whether Perry abused his power when he vetoed money for the Travis County district attorney&#8217;s office after DA Rosemary Lehmberg pleaded guilty to drunken driving. Perry demanded her resignation, which was justified, given that the DA lost her moral authority to prosecute drunken drivers.<\/p>\n<p>Then he allegedly went a step too far by threatening to veto $7.5 million that was earmarked for the Travis County DA&#8217;s public integrity unit, which is charged with investigating charges of ethical lapses by state officials.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, did I mention that Lehmberg is a Democrat and Perry is a Republican? That distinction seems to matter.<\/p>\n<p>Lehmberg refused to quit and Perry pulled the money.<\/p>\n<p>Now he&#8217;s being investigated for abusing his power.<\/p>\n<p>So, what does this mean for his budding presidential campaign? Plenty. He cannot possibly campaign as a Mr. Clean Governor if he&#8217;s about to stand trial for a felony offense related to the performance of the office he&#8217;s occupied since The Flood.<\/p>\n<p>Then again, if the grand jury no-bills the governor &#8212; which of course is a possibility &#8212; then he&#8217;s back in the presidential sweepstakes once again.<\/p>\n<p>But if the indictment arrives, well, if you&#8217;ll pardon the expression: Oops.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Texas Gov. Rick Perry is looking and sounding more and more like a candidate for president in 2016. That is, unless he gets indicted by a Travis County grand jury for abusing the power of his office. If he faces criminal charges, all bets are off for the lame-duck governor. http:\/\/www.newschannel10.com\/story\/25998425\/grand-jury-decides-if-perry-abused-power The panel is expected &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=6151\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Abuse of power allegation may spell trouble<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/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":[1],"tags":[73,1984,3951,4026,4629,4893],"class_list":["post-6151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2016-campaign","tag-grand-jury","tag-rick-perry","tag-rosemary-lehmberg","tag-texas-governors-office","tag-travis-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6151","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=6151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6151\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}