Gammage for Governor?

A couple of sites are reporting that Bob Gammage, a Democrat with a long resume' in state party politics -- mostly recently as a Texas Supreme Court Justice -- is considering a run for Governor.

The links above have all the earmarks of a viral marketing campaign , complete with an e-mail posted here (scroll down to the comments) from Gammage soliciting "your honest, unvarnished and critical opinions" about his prospects.

I am fully supporting the candidacy of Chris Bell, but if Gammage intends to make it a contested primary in March, I think that would be a good thing for the Democratic Party.

Judith Miller To Take Job Actually Carrying Libby's Bags

(The header above and the article below from Tom Burka's Opinions You Should Have:)

Will Continue Work She Started As Reporter At NY Times

Reporter Judith Miller announced today that she will resign from the staff of the New York Times to take a job with White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Miller testified recently before a federal grand jury concerning conversations she had with Libby about CIA agent Valerie Plame.

"Working directly under Scooter seemed like a natural move," said Miller. Miller may also assist Libby with some deep cleaning of intransigent stains in his apartment. "Yes," Miller confirmed, "I will continue to do his dirty work."

Miller has come under fire lately for a 'chummy' relationship with Libby that some say clouded her reporting on Iraq's alleged WMD. Miller wrote five crucial articles advancing the Cheney administration's claims that Iraq possessed WMD, although she later admitted that those articles were "kind of wrong."

"Oops," she said, smiling and shrugging her shoulders.

Responding to critics who alleged that it was, at the very least, poor journalism to uncritically report as fact unsupported theories advanced by President Cheney and Scooter Libby, Miller said, "I can only be as ethical as my sources."

Miller recently spent 85 days in jail to protect the identity of a source whose name she cannot recall.

John Crony-n gets choreographed

by Ralph Reed. I knew he was gay ...

Former Christian Coalition director Ralph Reed claimed in a 2001 e-mail to a lobbyist that he choreographed John Cornyn's efforts as Texas attorney general to shut down an East Texas Indian tribe's casino.

The lobbyist was Jack Abramoff, who is under federal investigation along with his partner Michael Scanlon, on allegations of defrauding six Indian tribes of about $80 million between 2001 and 2004. The e-mail, along with about a dozen others, were released last week as part of the investigation. In 2001, Abramoff was working as a lobbyist for the Louisiana Coushatta tribe to prevent rival gaming casinos from siphoning off its Texas customers. He paid Reed as a consultant, and Reed lobbied to get the Alabama-Coushatta and Tigua casinos closed in Texas.

In the Nov. 30, 2001, e-mail, Reed told Abramoff that 50 pastors led by Ed Young, of Second Baptist Church in Houston, would meet with Cornyn to urge him to shut down the Alabama-Coushatta tribe's casino near Livingston, Texas. He said Young would back up the request in writing.

"We have also choreographed Cornyn's response. The AG will state that the law is clear, talk about how much he wants to avoid repetition of El Paso and pledge to take swift action to enforce the law," Reed wrote. "He will also personally hand Ed Young a letter that commits him to take action in Livingston."

Cornyn, now a Republican U.S. senator, had filed a lawsuit in 1999 to shut down a casino operated by the Tigua tribe in El Paso, saying it violated the state's limited gambling laws. In 2002, federal courts shuttered the Tiguas' casino and Cornyn used that ruling to shut down the Alabama-Coushattas' casino.

The entire article, including the transcripts of the e-mail exchanged between Reed and Abramoff about Cornyn, can be found here.

Here's a question for my local paper, the Houston Chronicle: do you plan on investigating this and/or covering it yourselves or are you just going to rely on the wire reports?

(So far, the Austin American Statesman has an identical wire story. Houston Chronicle, nada. Dallas Morning News, zip. Thanks to Sean Paul at The Agonist for the tip.)

Update (11/14): Charles Kuffner has been all over this from the beginning, which was over a year ago.

In honor of her father, on Veterans' Day

My friend Lisa wrote this, and I post it here in its entirety:

I have been thinking about my father a lot lately. It seems like every time we pass another milestone in the Iraq War death count, I think about my dad. No, he didn’t die in a war, but I still believe that war killed him … slowly.

It really saddens me to hear about every new life lost, but for each one of them, how many others’ lives have been irrevocably changed? I was too young to know who my father really was before Viet Nam, but I still realize how it changed him. I was 17 when that realization sunk in.

I was in an advanced history class in high school, which encouraged unusual class projects and different perspectives as opposed to memorization of names and dates. When we reached the Viet Nam era, I had the idea to do an interview with my father about his experiences and how they affected him. He agreed. I had two weeks to write the report. Somehow the weeks passed with him managing to put me off several times.

Finally, the day before it was due, he sat down with me. I asked him to tell me about what it was like. He stared across the room and did not speak. His eyes welled up a bit. He shook his head gently and said, “I’m sorry. I can’t.” He stood and left the room.

Initially, as a rather normal selfish teenager, I wondered, “How the heck am I gonna do this report?!” But then I realized the importance of those two short sentences. It had been almost 17 years, and all he could say was “I’m sorry. I can’t.” That spoke volumes about the horror he had been through. I ended up doing a report on PTSD in Viet Nam veterans and made an A.

In addition to the weight of the terrifying memories, my father also suffered from numerous health problems. Some he believed were related to chemical exposure, most were from alcohol abuse and smoking, both habits he picked up during the war. He would eventually die from cancer, with few treatment options due to damage to his heart and liver.

I often feel like I was cheated. We had a tumultuous family life. Beer was the wall between him and us. At times I thought he hated me because it made him so moody. I was cheated out of having a closer relationship with him, and I was cheated in years as he died in only his 50s. I believe it was war that cheated me and him. I believe that the horrors he experienced changed him forever, and he was unable to cope with it in any other way than by staying numb.

The scene from Fahrenheit 911 that moved me the most was of a young, fresh-faced kid with a hollowness in his eyes talking about his experience. He said, “Every time you kill someone, you can't do it without killing a piece of yourself.” I wondered how many pieces of himself had died already.

I was raised to be patriotic. I even won a scholarship for an essay on patriotism. I love my country, warts and all. I respect people like my father who devote their life’s work to serving their country. I respect them regardless of what mission they are sent on. More than respect, I stand in awe of their commitment. But I respect and love them so much that I can’t bear the thought of them risking death, injury, and emotional trauma for a cause that is not just. They are precious, a resource not to be wasted. It is an INSULT to their honor to use them in an immoral war based on lies and manipulation.

MY troops deserve more respect than that!

My father deserves more respect than that!

Every soldier who has ever served his/her country deserves the knowledge that they and all who come after them will be serving NOBLE causes. It is our duty to ensure that for them.

That is why I march. Justice, to me, is to hold this administration accountable for disrespecting our armed services by committing them to a cause that is beneath them.

I want justice in honor of my father, who gave his life for his country. It just took a long time to happen. I want justice for the men and women we have lost in this war. I want justice for the ones who will come back and never fully recover. I think this justice is also a way of paying respect to the veterans who have served us over the ages. It says “The country you protected strives to live up to your honor.”

Thank you, Dad. I know I didn’t say it enough while you were alive. And thank you to all of you who have committed to protecting me.

"Everything was all right so long as the children didn't look over the roof at the bodies floating past."

From behind the paywall at Texas Monthly, the account of two New Orleanians, as told to John Spong in the Astrodome:

TEN ROWS OF COTS and two thousand or so people away, a couple in their fifties, Benjamin and Ermica Wilson, sat next to each other on a cot with a Bible. He was a big man, wearing a black T-shirt and a black New York Mets cap. She was much smaller, in bright purple sweatpants and a white T-shirt covered in little purple flowers.

Benjamin said they’d gone to their Ninth Ward church, St. Mary of the Angels, to weather Katrina. When the water rose too high in St. Mary’s, they’d climbed to the roof with their own family of 18, from Benjamin’s mother on down to his young nieces and nephews, plus about 75 other people. They were up there for two nights.

“We had a grill up there,” said Benjamin, “and I put a life jacket on and swam to my mother’s house to get meat from the freezer. We had pork chops, ribs, smoked sausage. My mother made a pot of gumbo for everybody, and my wife made a pot of chili. It seemed like we were stretching those five loaves and two fishes. Everything was all right so long as the children didn’t look over the roof at the bodies floating past.

“The worst part was at night. It was pitch-black. No street lights or lights in the buildings because there was no electricity. It was dead silent except the sound of people trapped in their attics screaming as the water rose..."

Update (11/12): People Get Ready has some photos of St Bernard's Parish.

"We do not torture."

Then I suppose it depends on what your definition of the word 'torture' is.

Or 'we'.

Or 'not'.