And they're off!
TXsharon burned despair's chair. See Bluedaze for an inspirational New Year's message of hope.
Off the Kuff asked a variety of interesting people to write a post named Looking Forward to 2008. Topics ranged from music and television to local, state, and national politics. The entire series, which wrapped up last week, can be found here.
Barfly at McBlogger says thank you to our neighbor to the north for giving us some of our most cherished celebrities. Like Celine Dion.
John Coby at Bay Area Houston lists who is running for officeand who is not in Clear Lake.
Gary at Easter Lemming Liberal News saw the Iowa results as a progressive sweep and picked out the winners and losers.
winding road in urban area declared that of all the undignified events surrounding the Harris County District Attorney's office, the announcement regarding assistant district attorney Kelly Seigler's run for her boss' job has taken the proverbial cake. It is just charming that Ms. Seigler said on camera, that aspects of being district attorney "sucks." Nothing says "get to know me" the first time a voter may see a candidate like saying the job I want, "sucks!"
nytexan at BlueBloggin points out the newest GOP stunt to block the Senate and screw up another presidential election. With the primary season underway for the presidential race the Federal Election Commission has shut its doors.
CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme notes James 'Rick' Perry ignored ceremony for fallen Texas military hero. That's how Republicans support and honor our troops!
It was a bad start to 2008 (if you happened to be a Republican), no matter if your name was Vicki Truitt, or Chuck Rosenthal, or Jared Woodfill, or Mitt Romney. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs has more on the conservative misery.
To kick off the new year for Texas Kaos, Lightseeker takes a look at some of The Big Texas Issues we'll be talking about in the coming year.
WCNews at Eye on Williamson opines about the death of Ric Williamson and who will be the next leader of TxDOT.
Muse is only now able to get her bulls---t detector to quiet down after Harris County DA, Chuck "Romancethal" Rosenthal, told the Houston Chronicle that he was only sending romantic emails to his secretary because she had personal problems. Right (wink, wink, former FBI agent wife). What else happened? Pity sex?
Phillip at Burnt Orange Report takes a preliminary look at some numbers on filings for the Texas House, including the large number of Republicans that are facing both a primary and general election opponent.
Texas Toad at North Texas Liberal introduces the new slate of Denton County Democratic candidates, as revealed at a press conference promoting the strength of the local party with high hopes for 2008.
The Texas Cloverleaf cautions you to smoke 'em if ya got 'em, but you still might go to jail. DFW area law enforcement is ignoring the new option to give citations to pot smokers.
On The Texas Blue this week, contributor David Gurney explains that he doesn't really buy this business of a "war on Christmas."
Monday, January 07, 2008
Sunday, January 06, 2008
Devastating account of e-voting's flaws
Is anybody in Texas who can do anything about this paying attention?
Gotta love that first sentence: "the fringe" are "disgruntled citizens".
Anyway, there's plenty to be appreciative of in this report...
Ugh. More bad news for democracy. Is there a solution? Sancho in Florida may have one:
The article makes the most cogent point possible, that the greatest concern isn't about the integrity of voting officials or hackers, but the vast potential for unintentional errors -- by the programmers, by the administrators, and by the voters themselves.
Can we take preventative action before next November to avoid the possibility of a catastrophic failure similar to 2000 in Florida, and 2004 in Cuyahoga County, Ohio? The only tool at our disposal is the continued agitation of those responsible for the decision-making. At every level of influence.
The earliest critiques of digital voting booths came from the fringe — disgruntled citizens and scared-senseless computer geeks — but the fears have now risen to the highest levels of government. One by one, states are renouncing the use of touch-screen voting machines. California and Florida decided to get rid of their electronic voting machines last spring, and last month, Colorado decertified about half of its touch-screen devices. Also last month, Jennifer Brunner, the Ohio secretary of state, released a report in the wake of the Cuyahoga crashes arguing that touch-screens “may jeopardize the integrity of the voting process.” She was so worried she is now forcing Cuyahoga to scrap its touch-screen machines and go back to paper-based voting — before the Ohio primary, scheduled for March 4. Senator Bill Nelson, a Democrat of Florida, and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, have even sponsored a bill that would ban the use of touch-screen machines across the country by 2012.
Gotta love that first sentence: "the fringe" are "disgruntled citizens".
Anyway, there's plenty to be appreciative of in this report...
If the machines are tested and officials are able to examine the source code, you might wonder why machines with so many flaws and bugs have gotten through. It is, critics insist, because the testing is nowhere near dilligent enough, and the federal regulators are too sympathetic and cozy with the vendors. The 2002 federal guidelines, the latest under which machines currently in use were qualified, were vague about how much security testing the labs ought to do. The labs were also not required to test any machine’s underlying operating system, like Windows, for weaknesses.Vendors paid for the tests themselves, and the results were considered proprietary, so the public couldn’t find out how they were conducted. The nation’s largest tester of voting machines, Ciber Inc., was temporarily suspended after federal officials found that the company could not properly document the tests it claimed to have performed.
“The types of malfunctions we’re seeing would be caught in a first-year computer science course,” says Lillie Coney, an associate director with the Electronic Privacy Information Commission, which is releasing a study later this month critical of the federal tests.
In any case, the federal testing is not, strictly speaking, mandatory. The vast majority of states “certify” their machines as roadworthy. But since testing is extremely expensive, many states, particularly smaller ones, simply accept whatever passes through a federal lab. And while it’s true that state and local elections officials can generally keep a copy of the source code, critics say they rarely employ computer programmers sophisticated enough to understand it. Quite the contrary: When a county buys touch-screen voting machines, its elections director becomes, as Warren Parish, a voting activist in Florida, told me, “the head of the largest I.T. department in their entire government, in charge of hundreds or thousands of new computer systems, without any training at all.” Many elections directors I spoke with have been in the job for years or even decades, working mostly with paper elections or lever machines. Few seemed very computer-literate.
The upshot is a regulatory environment in which, effectively, no one assumes final responsibility for whether the machines function reliably. The vendors point to the federal and state governments, the federal agency points to the states, the states rely on the federal testing lab and the local officials are frequently hapless.
This has created an environment, critics maintain, in which the people who make and sell machines are now central to running elections. Elections officials simply do not know enough about how the machines work to maintain or fix them. When a machine crashes or behaves erratically on Election Day, many county elections officials must rely on the vendors — accepting their assurances that the problem is fixed and, crucially, that no votes were altered.
In essence, elections now face a similar outsourcing issue to that seen in the Iraq war, where the government has ceded so many core military responsibilities to firms like Halliburton and Blackwater that Washington can no longer fire the contractor. Vendors do not merely sell machines to elections departments. In many cases, they are also paid to train poll workers, design ballots and repair broken machines, for years on end.
“This is a crazy world,” complained Ion Sancho, the elections supervisor of Leon County in Florida. “The process is so under control by the vendor. The primary source of information comes only from the vendor, and the vendor has a conflict of interest in telling you the truth. The vendor isn’t going to tell me that his buggy software is why I can’t get the right time on my audit logs.”
Ugh. More bad news for democracy. Is there a solution? Sancho in Florida may have one:
Optical scanning is used in what many elections experts regard as the “perfect elections” of Leon County in Florida, where Ion Sancho is the supervisor of elections. In the late ’80s, when the county was replacing its lever machines, Sancho investigated touch-screens. But he didn’t think they were user-friendly, didn’t believe they would provide a reliable recount and didn’t want to be beholden to a private-sector vendor. So he bought the optical-scanning devices from Unisys and trained his staff to be able to repair problems when the machines broke or malfunctioned. His error rate — how often his system miscounts a ballot — is three-quarters of a percent at its highest, and has dipped as low as three-thousandths of a percent.More important, his paper trail prevents endless fighting over the results of tight elections. In one recent contest, a candidate claimed that his name had not appeared on the ballot in one precinct. So Sancho went into the Leon County storage, broke the security seals on the records, and pulled out the ballots. The name was there; the candidate was wrong. “He apologized to me,” Sancho recalls. “And that’s what you can’t do with touch-screen technology. You never could have proven to that person’s satisfaction that the screen didn’t show his name. I like that certainty. The paper ends the discussion.” Sancho has never had a legal fight over a disputed election result. “The losers have admitted they lost, which is what you want,” he adds. “You have to be able to convince the loser they lost.”
That, in a nutshell, is what people crave in the highly partisan arena of modern American politics: an election that can be extremely close and yet regarded by all as fair. Not only must the losing candidate believe in the loss; the public has to believe in it, too.
The article makes the most cogent point possible, that the greatest concern isn't about the integrity of voting officials or hackers, but the vast potential for unintentional errors -- by the programmers, by the administrators, and by the voters themselves.
Can we take preventative action before next November to avoid the possibility of a catastrophic failure similar to 2000 in Florida, and 2004 in Cuyahoga County, Ohio? The only tool at our disposal is the continued agitation of those responsible for the decision-making. At every level of influence.
Obama and the Mil-Gen vote
Noted but worth emphasizing:
Plenty more in a variety of tangents at the link, but the youth vote phenomenon belonging to Barack is what I'll pause on with some anecdotal evidence.
I have a nephew who is a freshman at Texas A&M. (I probably don't need to mention that A&M is the most politically conservative public university in the state, if not the nation, do I?) He comes from an Aggie legacy on his mother's side; his father, my younger brother, is a staunch Republican who works for a defense contractor and lives in a suburb of Fort Worth. My nephew spent the past summer interning with my older brother the lawyer (and Republican) here in Houston. When I asked him over the holidays who he planned to cast his first presidential vote for, he said "Obama". The only 'why' we got into was that he had attended an Obama function while he was here and was impressed. Suffice it to say I was surprised (not as much as the rest of the people at the table, though).
And I spent some time over lunch this past week with a prominent Af-Am Democratic activist, also an attorney with a long history of civil rights advocacy. In short he doesn't think the country is ready for a black president, and doesn't think Obama is the right man for the job in any event (not progressive enough -- he, like me, supports Edwards).
Maybe we just both discount Obama's obvious personal appeal; the feature that also obviously resonates with younger voters. The US electorate tends to favor charismatic presidential candidates over those with experience -- exhibits A, B, and C: JFK over Nixon, Reagan over GHW Bush, and even Huckabee over the rest of the GOP field.
But the real open question is: will this youth surge sustain itself, carrying Obama to the nomination and the White House? History is strongly against it, but perhaps a variance to the historical trend is happening even as we blog.
Not only did Clinton lose to Barack Obama by an almost six to one margin among Millennial Generation (those under 25) caucus attendees, but also her weakness in this age group was the key to her overall loss among women. While Hillary carried the over 45 female vote 36%-24%, Obama won women under 45 by a 50%-21% margin and the surprisingly strong turnout among young caucus goers turned that margin into an overall defeat among the female constituency Hillary was counting on the most. Had she and her team only read their history, they wouldn't have been surprised by this outcome.
Plenty more in a variety of tangents at the link, but the youth vote phenomenon belonging to Barack is what I'll pause on with some anecdotal evidence.
I have a nephew who is a freshman at Texas A&M. (I probably don't need to mention that A&M is the most politically conservative public university in the state, if not the nation, do I?) He comes from an Aggie legacy on his mother's side; his father, my younger brother, is a staunch Republican who works for a defense contractor and lives in a suburb of Fort Worth. My nephew spent the past summer interning with my older brother the lawyer (and Republican) here in Houston. When I asked him over the holidays who he planned to cast his first presidential vote for, he said "Obama". The only 'why' we got into was that he had attended an Obama function while he was here and was impressed. Suffice it to say I was surprised (not as much as the rest of the people at the table, though).
And I spent some time over lunch this past week with a prominent Af-Am Democratic activist, also an attorney with a long history of civil rights advocacy. In short he doesn't think the country is ready for a black president, and doesn't think Obama is the right man for the job in any event (not progressive enough -- he, like me, supports Edwards).
Maybe we just both discount Obama's obvious personal appeal; the feature that also obviously resonates with younger voters. The US electorate tends to favor charismatic presidential candidates over those with experience -- exhibits A, B, and C: JFK over Nixon, Reagan over GHW Bush, and even Huckabee over the rest of the GOP field.
But the real open question is: will this youth surge sustain itself, carrying Obama to the nomination and the White House? History is strongly against it, but perhaps a variance to the historical trend is happening even as we blog.
Friday, January 04, 2008
Post-Iowa postpourri
--Lots of commentary to be found, but I'll just link two of my local peers Greg and Gary. Gary's is best for both accuracy and agreeableness; Greg is as usual barely comprehensible through his ponderous writing and conservative -- and Hillary -- bias. He keeps up a theme of antagonistically denigrating Edwards and progressives with excessive harshness, which compels me to dismiss most of his take (most of the time), but at least we all agree that Edwards must find a win somewhere to remain viable after February 5. I don't think it will be in South Carolina, and thus I don't see where it will be.
The agent of change (make that progress) this go-round is Barack Obama. And about progress, I'll quote some of an e-mail Open Source Dem, the irregular poster here, sent me late last night:
-- Christ, Chuck Rosenthal is both drama queen and publicity whore. Just go TF away already, you jerk.
Saturday Tuesday. On Saturday the 5th there will be back-to-back GOP and Democratic debates moderated by Charlie Gibson of ABC. And Facebook users can participate in debate groups, discussing the candidates and commenting on the play-by-play. But we'll be down in Galveston meeting the Texas 2008 Democratic slate with Jim Hightower.
The agent of change (make that progress) this go-round is Barack Obama. And about progress, I'll quote some of an e-mail Open Source Dem, the irregular poster here, sent me late last night:
Please note that in Iowa the people sent out an overwhelmingly insurgent and populist message.Please also notice that the people running the GOP have wrecked it. They are more interested in maintaining control of their party than actually winning. Does that sound familiar?
Here is Andrew Sullivan, an actual Tory:Tonight was in many ways devastating news for the GOP. Twice as many people turned out for the Democrats than the Republicans. Clearly independents prefer the Dems.
Now look at how the caucus-goers defined themselves in the entrance polls. Among the Dems: Very Liberal: 18 percent; Somewhat Liberal: 36 percent; Moderate: 40 percent; Conservative: 6 percent. Now check out the Republicans: Very Conservative: 45 percent; Somewhat Conservative: 43 percent; Moderate: 11 percent; Liberal: 1 percent.
One is a national party; the other is on its way to being an ideological church. The damage Bush and Rove have done - revealed in 2006 - is now inescapable.
Let me say the damage our state and local party establishment have done by pandering to non-existent “moderate” Republicans is also very bad. The competition today is between progressive and reactionary populists. The only in-between strategy is exit strategy.
Does that sound familiar?
The young voters Howard Dean needed four years ago finally showed up last night -- tripling their numbers and making the difference for Obama. The overall turnout Democrats to Republicans was 238,000 to 118, 000, or the two-to-one margin Sullivan refers to. (That compares to 122,000 Democrats caucusing in Iowa in 2004.) In an open primary the percentages would look like this:
Percentage of total vote
24.5% Obama
20.5% Edwards
19.8% Clinton
11.4% Huckabee (R)
-- Christ, Chuck Rosenthal is both drama queen and publicity whore. Just go TF away already, you jerk.
-- New Hampshire votes this
Thursday, January 03, 2008
Watching the caucuses live
on C-Span. I first caught this four years ago and was fascinated.
FWIW, I'm hoping it's Edwards, Obama, Clinton and then Dodd, but I'm thinking it will be Obama, Edwards, Clinton and then Richardson.
Will update here later with results and some post mortem.
7:45 p.m. A good site for the latest:
www.iowacaucusresults.com
And it currently shows:
Senator John Edwards : 33.18%
Senator Hillary Clinton : 32.47%
Senator Barack Obama : 31.52%
Governor Bill Richardson : 1.90%
Senator Joe Biden : 0.81%
Senator Chris Dodd : 0.07%
Uncommitted : 0.05%
Precincts Reporting: 346 of 1781
8:05 p.m.:
Senator Barack Obama : 33.48%
Senator John Edwards : 31.97%
Senator Hillary Clinton : 31.76%
Governor Bill Richardson : 1.73%
Senator Joe Biden : 0.96%
Senator Chris Dodd : 0.06%
Uncommitted : 0.04%
Precincts Reporting: 750 of 1781
8:30 p.m.:
Senator Barack Obama : 35.78%
Senator John Edwards : 30.69%
Senator Hillary Clinton : 30.52%
Governor Bill Richardson : 1.89%
Senator Joe Biden : 0.98%
Uncommitted : 0.10%
Senator Chris Dodd : 0.03%
Precincts Reporting: 1347 of 1781
9:00 p.m.:
Senator Barack Obama : 37.14%
Senator John Edwards : 30.00%
Senator Hillary Clinton : 29.60%
Governor Bill Richardson : 2.16%
Senator Joe Biden : 0.95%
Uncommitted : 0.13%
Senator Chris Dodd : 0.03%
Precincts Reporting: 1642 of 1781
(Percentages are State Delegate Equivalents.)
Sometimes I hate being right.
A seven-point win is pretty significant. Don't tell Greg, though; he thinks Hillary has already won.
FWIW, I'm hoping it's Edwards, Obama, Clinton and then Dodd, but I'm thinking it will be Obama, Edwards, Clinton and then Richardson.
Will update here later with results and some post mortem.
7:45 p.m. A good site for the latest:
www.iowacaucusresults.com
And it currently shows:
Senator John Edwards : 33.18%
Senator Hillary Clinton : 32.47%
Senator Barack Obama : 31.52%
Governor Bill Richardson : 1.90%
Senator Joe Biden : 0.81%
Senator Chris Dodd : 0.07%
Uncommitted : 0.05%
Precincts Reporting: 346 of 1781
8:05 p.m.:
Senator Barack Obama : 33.48%
Senator John Edwards : 31.97%
Senator Hillary Clinton : 31.76%
Governor Bill Richardson : 1.73%
Senator Joe Biden : 0.96%
Senator Chris Dodd : 0.06%
Uncommitted : 0.04%
Precincts Reporting: 750 of 1781
8:30 p.m.:
Senator Barack Obama : 35.78%
Senator John Edwards : 30.69%
Senator Hillary Clinton : 30.52%
Governor Bill Richardson : 1.89%
Senator Joe Biden : 0.98%
Uncommitted : 0.10%
Senator Chris Dodd : 0.03%
Precincts Reporting: 1347 of 1781
9:00 p.m.:
Senator Barack Obama : 37.14%
Senator John Edwards : 30.00%
Senator Hillary Clinton : 29.60%
Governor Bill Richardson : 2.16%
Senator Joe Biden : 0.95%
Uncommitted : 0.13%
Senator Chris Dodd : 0.03%
Precincts Reporting: 1642 of 1781
(Percentages are State Delegate Equivalents.)
Sometimes I hate being right.
A seven-point win is pretty significant. Don't tell Greg, though; he thinks Hillary has already won.
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Rosenthal bails
This 180 makes even Jim Rockford jealous:
Let's skip to the part that concerns him:
A Republican arguing against the death penalty. No wonder he came in third. Perhaps the climate has softened a little for his candidacy in the GOP this go-round.
That alone would qualify as progress.
Update (1/3, 5:30 a.m.): This morning's story quotes Leitner as saying he'll stand down for a more qualified challenger and names some assistant DAs as potentials ...
Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal has withdrawn his name from the Republican ballot for re-election today amid pressure from his own party following last week's release of intimate emails he wrote to his personal assistant.Rosenthal publicly had rejected the local GOP's call for him to drop his re-election plans or face the prospect of the party endorsing another Republican for the March primary.
His decision to drop out of the election was confirmed about 5:35 p.m. by Michael Wolse, the Harris County Republican Party's primary director.
The story goes on to identify Jim Leitner as filing to run as a Republican. He was mentioned in the story filed this morning:
Two of the potential candidates, according to sources, are defense lawyer and former prosecutor Jim Leitner and former felony court judge Patricia Lykos, who now works for Harris County Judge Ed Emmett. They both ran against Rosenthal in the 2000 Republican primary.
Let's skip to the part that concerns him:
Leitner, who placed third in the 2000 primary, said his experience on both sides of the courtroom would help the perspective of the district attorney's office.In 2001, Leitner said he thought Harris County prosecutors were overzealous in their pursuit of death sentences against capital murder defendants.
"As long as that is the prevailing view, there are going to be a lot of capital murder prosecutions. People in other counties don't see it that way."
He added, "I think we kill a lot of people who don't fit the statute."
A Republican arguing against the death penalty. No wonder he came in third. Perhaps the climate has softened a little for his candidacy in the GOP this go-round.
That alone would qualify as progress.
Update (1/3, 5:30 a.m.): This morning's story quotes Leitner as saying he'll stand down for a more qualified challenger and names some assistant DAs as potentials ...
Top Rosenthal assistants Marc Brown, Stephen St. Martin and Denise Bradley, formerly Denise Nassar, also went through the interview process with party leaders, along with former state District Judge Patricia Lykos. Brown and Bradley said they will talk with their colleagues about becoming candidates, perhaps with only one emerging from Rosenthal's staff as a consensus choice.
2008 starts badly (IYAR)
*If You're A Republican.
-- Former state representative Nancy Moffat, a three-term incumbent Republican in Tarrant County who was defeated in a primary by the odious Vicki Truitt, will run again for HD-98 ... as a Democrat:
Recall that Dan Barrett in neighboring HD-97 was just elected in a similarly believed-to-be-red district. Recall also why Vicki Truitt is odious:
Hat tip to jobsanger here also.
-- It takes a woman's POV to remind us men that Chuck Rosenthal was either stalking his secretary/former girlfriend, or graciously offering her pity sex. He is one hell of a cocksman, if nothing else. Don't miss the takes from the starboard tack.
-- The Chron plays catchup; Democrats are poised to retake Harris County -- particularly the bench -- back...
-- Mike Huckabee is still having difficulty not stepping in his own shit in Iowa. Yet it appears from the polling this morning that he and Barack Obama may emerge victorious from the cornfields tomorrow evening. Kooch told his caucus-goers to report to Obama, an interesting development in light of a similar move by him four years ago to send them to John Edwards. Whether that is bad news or not for John remains to develop, but it's all bad for Hillary no matter what.
On shortly to New Hampshire for everyone, where John McCain has risen from the dead and Ron Paul has been excluded from a GOP debate there. The cacophony from the Paulistas is of similar pitch to this incessant whine.
-- Former state representative Nancy Moffat, a three-term incumbent Republican in Tarrant County who was defeated in a primary by the odious Vicki Truitt, will run again for HD-98 ... as a Democrat:
"It wasn't so much that I left the Republican Party as much as it was that the party left me," Moffat said. "They're all about the wealthy, and I want to be for the little guy and the middle guy."
Recall that Dan Barrett in neighboring HD-97 was just elected in a similarly believed-to-be-red district. Recall also why Vicki Truitt is odious:
Truitt is, of course, no favorite of any bloggers thanks to her sad attempts to pass a blogger libel bill last session.
Hat tip to jobsanger here also.
-- It takes a woman's POV to remind us men that Chuck Rosenthal was either stalking his secretary/former girlfriend, or graciously offering her pity sex. He is one hell of a cocksman, if nothing else. Don't miss the takes from the starboard tack.
-- The Chron plays catchup; Democrats are poised to retake Harris County -- particularly the bench -- back...
With contests for president, U.S. Senate, U.S. House and district attorney attracting most of the voters' attention to the top of the 2008 ballot, the races for 25 or more criminal and civil court judgeships likely will be decided based on the candidates' party label rather than public awareness of their performance or qualifications, experts said.Republicans essentially have reached their voter turnout zenith in Harris County in recent years, University of Houston political scientist Richard Murray said, thanks partly to the drawing power of the Texan president and the party's mobilization of Christian conservatives. Now some Anglo voters, the core of GOP strength, are trickling away to neighboring counties, he added.
Meanwhile, the number of Spanish-surname participating voters, as calculated by the Harris County clerk's office, is booming — on pace to approach 150,000 in 2008. Hispanics already favored the Democratic Party and surveys show that Republican inroads have been blocked by the GOP's image on the immigration issue as punitive.
In the overall Republican vista, "there are no more Anglos to work with," said Murray, who has been informally advising candidates from both parties as they seek data on the 2008 election. "In some ways you run out of bodies. There's no one else out there."
The trends may explain a narrowing of the gap by which Republican judicial candidates won their races in Harris County. On average, these GOP winners hit a high of 56.47 percent in 2002, with the top of the ballot featuring Republican Rick Perry's gubernatorial election stomping of Democratic challenger Tony Sanchez. In 2006, as Perry won with about 38 percent of the statewide vote against three other major candidates, the average posting for local judges seeking re-election in two-way races was 52.17 percent, a 14-year low.
Similar population shifts helped Dallas County Democrats sweep judgeships and other countywide offices in 2006 after the county had been in Republican hands for many years. That surprise reversal serves as an inspiration for Democrats here, and as a warning for Republicans.
-- Mike Huckabee is still having difficulty not stepping in his own shit in Iowa. Yet it appears from the polling this morning that he and Barack Obama may emerge victorious from the cornfields tomorrow evening. Kooch told his caucus-goers to report to Obama, an interesting development in light of a similar move by him four years ago to send them to John Edwards. Whether that is bad news or not for John remains to develop, but it's all bad for Hillary no matter what.
On shortly to New Hampshire for everyone, where John McCain has risen from the dead and Ron Paul has been excluded from a GOP debate there. The cacophony from the Paulistas is of similar pitch to this incessant whine.
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
Feliz 2008
We ate dinner early with some close friends and then went to a small party at our cross-the-hall neighbors, retiring before midnight as has been our custom in recent years, leaving the Amateur Night antics to others. A cool crisp walk with the dog already completed, some black-eyed peas with brunch later, a little football, a little nap...
...what are you doing on the first day of the New Year?
Best-of-2007 Wrangle
Last year was a seminal one for the blogosphere, nationally as well as locally.
In recognition of the excellent work done by the Texas Progressive Alliance and its many member blogs and bloggers, here's a special New Year's edition of the TPA round-up.
Eye on Williamson has been one of the state's leading blogs when it comes to covering toll road issues and state representative Mike Krusee's career. EOW's top posts of 2007 included The "New Way Forward" On Tolls, the coming demise of Krusee in Krusee's Influence And Credibility Are Gone, Time For HD-52 To Start Over and a post on the ongoing battle between the citizens and the county government over a new landfill contract, The Landill, TCEQ Hearing & More Gattis Shenanigans .
The most popular posts from The Texas Blue included coverage of the 2008 Senate race. We kicked everything off with one of our inaugural pieces analyzing Cornyn's potential vulnerability in '08, in a piece picked up by the Washington Post. We then broke the code on Kos' "mystery candidate," revealing that it was Rep. Rick Noriega that Kos had in mind with his draft movement, and interviewed the representative shortly before he declared his official candidacy. And we published some of the first information examining Mikal Watts' candidacy in what became the most read story on the Blue this year; in what was also one of our most-read pieces, we analyzed the role of money in statewide Texas campaigns, looking at the efforts taken by the statewide campaign of David Van Os to illustrate the need for money in politics, the proper role of a nascent state party organization, and the limits on the effectiveness of a political message that come from the inability to spread that message due to the lack of funds. That article led to a dialog with David Van Os, and to an interview with him shortly afterward where he voices his side of the issue. And finally our "Who's Blue" audio interview series also included a number of other fascinating figures in Democratic politics, both statewide and across the nation. Some of the more notable interviews have been with four-star general and 2004 presidential candidate Wesley Clark, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, and current presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich.
John Coby of Bay Area Houston documented what a team of anonymous citizens have researched to expose the Texas Ethics Commission as incompetent in the series Spending Campaign Cash. Their work uncovered $3 million in undisclosed expenditures by Texas legislators. KHOU-TV featured their work in late December with their report Activist: State's campaign finance oversight out-of-focus.
Easter Lemming Liberal News's topics covered this past year include Pasadena politics, the Joe Horn shooting and our national So-Called-Liberal-Media.
News items covered by TXsharon on Bluedaze: An attempt to shame a Texas Granny who received the Peacemaker of the year award. The depletion of and pollution of our water due to the irresponsible and shocking use by the oil and gas industry including an explanation of Groundwater Conservation Districts and how they can help that was published in two Texas newspapers, and the attempt by oil and gas to sabotage the Upper Trinity Groundwater Conservation District. The failure of the Texas Railroad Commission to protect Texans. The protection money breakdown paid to Texas Railroad Commissioners by the oil and gas industry.
WhosPlayin's favorite posts of 2007 were all about ideas: Universal Health Care - You're Soaking In It which explains that we're already paying for universal health care. Why Democrats Oppose "Voter ID" Bills was an explanation for our conservative friends. Lastly, Fiscal Conservatism with a Broader View.
Hal at Half Empty hemmed and hawed. How to decide which three of this year's postings merited special recognition? Then it dawned on him to mention the posts about three singular events that he attended and took photos. Priceless! In reverse chronological order: The Fort Bend Democrats Have a Booth at the Fair. Then a summer fundraiser featuring TDP Chairman Boyd Richie. And last February the Fort Bend Democrats held a love fest for Rick and Melissa Noriega.
Off the Kuff submits his top posts of 2007: David Dewhurst and Voter ID. Property Tax Cuts Uber Alles, the mantra of the 80th Lege, and Drafting Rick Noriega for Senate.
BlueBloggin', another new blog to the TPA in 2007, submitted these: nytexan wrote on The Christian March Against America; BossKitty has a poignant OpEd: All Answers Are Selfish And Shallow; and nytexan discusses how Mexico Get Texas Land Through Border Fence.
Doing My Part For The Left took a look back and is still disgusted with Hypocrites, Toe Tapping Senators, and Knee Pad Presidents. And who can forget Ann Coulter proving what a witch (usually spelled with a capital B) she is. Refinish69 also looked at Gay Pride and World AIDS Day again to explain some history about himself and the continuing need for Gay Voters to speak out.
One of Grand Moff Texan's too-rare diaries is always a special delight for us at Texas Kaos. But a standout piece inspired by the ignorance of the beltway punditry really broke down Why We Blog, Or Broderism in my Rear-View Mirror. Read it, and be inspired as we kick off the 2008 election cycle. As the wilder-than-usual Texas Legislative session came to a close, Boadicea highlighted a few items of interest in Personal Courage, Political Vendettas, and an Unexpected Outbreak of Spine. With his usual sharp eye and incisive writing, Krazypuppy noted the REAL importance of the Larry Craig scandal in Why Another GOP Sex Scandal Matters--It's Not the Queers, Either.
It was a wild year at McBlogger. We've heard about 39%'s trip to meet the Bilderburgers. We've also had exclusive one-on-one interviews with the Democratic candidates. We also took time to call out some of our friends to be quiet. Because they're being a pain in the ass. This year McBlogger turned two and like all two-year-olds you can expect tantrums mixed with an even larger dose of mischief. Like all children, you'll want to kill us but won't be able to because killing kids is wrong (so very, very wrong). You'll also find us precocious and irresistibly cute.
We at The North Texas Liberal had some trouble deciding on which posts were our absolute favorites, but we decided on a few that seemed worthy of mention a second time. First, a series on Shaquanda Cotton, a fifteen-year-old African-American girl from Paris, Texas. She was sentenced to up to seven years at the TYC for pushing a hall monitor at her school (the same judge gave a white girl probation for burning down the family home). Our coverage of Shaquanda got the attention of someone at the Lamar County DA's office, who used some recycled talking points to trash Cotton and her mother. Despite that, after the mainstream media broke Cotton's story, she became a candidate for early release. By March it was official that she would be released from the TYC, and in April we showed a video of her reunion with her mother. (Cotton has returned to school and wants to study to become a lawyer so she can fight future injustices.) We continued our global warming coverage with our Planet Purgatory series, parts One and Two. In May, we heard that the global warming tipping point could be in only ten years' time. NASA scientist James Hansen, a tireless environment advocate who testified about global warming before the Congress back in the 1980s, explains the tipping point theory as the point of no return. But he also believes in prevention rather than adaptation. Lastly, we gave Sen. John Cornyn the credit he deserved when he finally stood on the right side of an issue. Despite a year of flops and fabrications, he said he would support seasonal workers through the H2-B visa program. But despite the efforts of Sen. Barbara Mikulski, the fix wasn't finalized before Congress adjourned for the winter holidays, leaving thousands of small business owners out of luck this holiday season. When we spoke face-to-face with a legislative expert at Cornyn's DC office, we were told that the Texas senator would like to see comprehensive immigration reform and wouldn't lobby for the H2-B visas, though he supported seasonal workers, because he didn't want a piecemeal fix for the problem. So even though he stood with his constituents on the right side of the issue, in the end he let us down again.
Edmundo Rocha of Para Justicia y Libertad wrote about two protests against the prison industrial complex used here in Texas to detain undocumented immigrants -- the Houston
Processing Center and the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor. Prior to those postings, he reported on the suicide of David Ritcheson of Spring, the Latino teen who was brutally beaten, tortured, and sodomized with a plastic pole by two white racist teenagers, David Henry Tuck and Keith Robert Turner.
Marc G. of Marc's Miscellany analyzed Tom Craddick's preposterous claim that the speaker of the house can only be removed by impeachment. Marc also discussed Gov. Perry's controversial decision to veto the health insurance appropriation for community college employees.
Israel Behar-Ojalvo, PDiddie's father-in-law, passed away in March and Brains and Eggs had a post with photos in tribute. The Texas Youth Commission remains the worst scandal in Texas history, and that was apparent in April of last year. And in the matter of a few hours just before Labor Day, Alberto Gonzales, Phil Garner, and Tim Purpura all lost their jobs. Good riddance to a big bunch of losers. More like this in 2008, please.
2007 was a heck of a year for Capitol Annex. Vince Leibowitz at Capitol Annex is most proud of his ground-breaking coverage of the saga surrounding the insurgency in the Texas House and Speaker Craddick's power grab, including Terry Keel's Troubling Memo (a smoking gun, for sure), and the saga surrounding the resignation of parliamentarian Denise Davis, which earned him a mention in (among other publications), Texas Lawyer. Coverage of the 80th Legislature was also a major event for Capitol Annex, including a mind-numbing Liveblogging of debate on the General Appropriations Act, and a special video: Jodie Laubenberg Is Screaming.
It has been another exciting year at DosCentavos. I wrote about my expectations for the 2007 Lege Session. Beyond La Politica, we also know DosCentavos enjoys writing reviews on the latest releases in the Tejano and Mexican American music genre. This year, he received the honor of being asked by Los Lobos to rate their most recent release, The Town and The City. Finally, during the last Lege session, some Senators attempted to take up the debate on legalizing gambling to pay for education. DC tells us a few realities about higher education funding in the process.
Musings started the year concerned about science education in Texas (see: Warren Chisum, R-Dark Ages) and ended the year with some commentary about her friend, Chris Comer, who was fired as Director of Science at the Texas Education Agency over her stand on evolution. In between it was all about Melissa and Rick Noriega.
CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme notes a church in El Paso falls victim to manipulation by a right wing cadre bent on world domination. CouldBeTrue then wonders what would have happened in a perfect Republican world when the Minnesota bridge collapsed. South Texas Chisme covers the wedge'em and hate'em campaign, also known as the Republican immigration strategy. Hispanics have taken note.
The series The Texas Cloverleaf is most proud of since forming in the summer of 2007 was the continued exposure of the outright lies and misleading statements coming from the pro-toll road crowd in Dallas during the Trinity Vote effort. Even though the referendum failed, we feel we did our part to help Dallas voters make an informed decision. Read the series here, here, here, here and here.
Best wishes for a happy 2008 from all the blogs and bloggers of the Texas Progressive Alliance.
In recognition of the excellent work done by the Texas Progressive Alliance and its many member blogs and bloggers, here's a special New Year's edition of the TPA round-up.
Eye on Williamson has been one of the state's leading blogs when it comes to covering toll road issues and state representative Mike Krusee's career. EOW's top posts of 2007 included The "New Way Forward" On Tolls, the coming demise of Krusee in Krusee's Influence And Credibility Are Gone, Time For HD-52 To Start Over and a post on the ongoing battle between the citizens and the county government over a new landfill contract, The Landill, TCEQ Hearing & More Gattis Shenanigans .
The most popular posts from The Texas Blue included coverage of the 2008 Senate race. We kicked everything off with one of our inaugural pieces analyzing Cornyn's potential vulnerability in '08, in a piece picked up by the Washington Post. We then broke the code on Kos' "mystery candidate," revealing that it was Rep. Rick Noriega that Kos had in mind with his draft movement, and interviewed the representative shortly before he declared his official candidacy. And we published some of the first information examining Mikal Watts' candidacy in what became the most read story on the Blue this year; in what was also one of our most-read pieces, we analyzed the role of money in statewide Texas campaigns, looking at the efforts taken by the statewide campaign of David Van Os to illustrate the need for money in politics, the proper role of a nascent state party organization, and the limits on the effectiveness of a political message that come from the inability to spread that message due to the lack of funds. That article led to a dialog with David Van Os, and to an interview with him shortly afterward where he voices his side of the issue. And finally our "Who's Blue" audio interview series also included a number of other fascinating figures in Democratic politics, both statewide and across the nation. Some of the more notable interviews have been with four-star general and 2004 presidential candidate Wesley Clark, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, and current presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich.
John Coby of Bay Area Houston documented what a team of anonymous citizens have researched to expose the Texas Ethics Commission as incompetent in the series Spending Campaign Cash. Their work uncovered $3 million in undisclosed expenditures by Texas legislators. KHOU-TV featured their work in late December with their report Activist: State's campaign finance oversight out-of-focus.
Easter Lemming Liberal News's topics covered this past year include Pasadena politics, the Joe Horn shooting and our national So-Called-Liberal-Media.
News items covered by TXsharon on Bluedaze: An attempt to shame a Texas Granny who received the Peacemaker of the year award. The depletion of and pollution of our water due to the irresponsible and shocking use by the oil and gas industry including an explanation of Groundwater Conservation Districts and how they can help that was published in two Texas newspapers, and the attempt by oil and gas to sabotage the Upper Trinity Groundwater Conservation District. The failure of the Texas Railroad Commission to protect Texans. The protection money breakdown paid to Texas Railroad Commissioners by the oil and gas industry.
WhosPlayin's favorite posts of 2007 were all about ideas: Universal Health Care - You're Soaking In It which explains that we're already paying for universal health care. Why Democrats Oppose "Voter ID" Bills was an explanation for our conservative friends. Lastly, Fiscal Conservatism with a Broader View.
Hal at Half Empty hemmed and hawed. How to decide which three of this year's postings merited special recognition? Then it dawned on him to mention the posts about three singular events that he attended and took photos. Priceless! In reverse chronological order: The Fort Bend Democrats Have a Booth at the Fair. Then a summer fundraiser featuring TDP Chairman Boyd Richie. And last February the Fort Bend Democrats held a love fest for Rick and Melissa Noriega.
Off the Kuff submits his top posts of 2007: David Dewhurst and Voter ID. Property Tax Cuts Uber Alles, the mantra of the 80th Lege, and Drafting Rick Noriega for Senate.
BlueBloggin', another new blog to the TPA in 2007, submitted these: nytexan wrote on The Christian March Against America; BossKitty has a poignant OpEd: All Answers Are Selfish And Shallow; and nytexan discusses how Mexico Get Texas Land Through Border Fence.
Doing My Part For The Left took a look back and is still disgusted with Hypocrites, Toe Tapping Senators, and Knee Pad Presidents. And who can forget Ann Coulter proving what a witch (usually spelled with a capital B) she is. Refinish69 also looked at Gay Pride and World AIDS Day again to explain some history about himself and the continuing need for Gay Voters to speak out.
One of Grand Moff Texan's too-rare diaries is always a special delight for us at Texas Kaos. But a standout piece inspired by the ignorance of the beltway punditry really broke down Why We Blog, Or Broderism in my Rear-View Mirror. Read it, and be inspired as we kick off the 2008 election cycle. As the wilder-than-usual Texas Legislative session came to a close, Boadicea highlighted a few items of interest in Personal Courage, Political Vendettas, and an Unexpected Outbreak of Spine. With his usual sharp eye and incisive writing, Krazypuppy noted the REAL importance of the Larry Craig scandal in Why Another GOP Sex Scandal Matters--It's Not the Queers, Either.
It was a wild year at McBlogger. We've heard about 39%'s trip to meet the Bilderburgers. We've also had exclusive one-on-one interviews with the Democratic candidates. We also took time to call out some of our friends to be quiet. Because they're being a pain in the ass. This year McBlogger turned two and like all two-year-olds you can expect tantrums mixed with an even larger dose of mischief. Like all children, you'll want to kill us but won't be able to because killing kids is wrong (so very, very wrong). You'll also find us precocious and irresistibly cute.
We at The North Texas Liberal had some trouble deciding on which posts were our absolute favorites, but we decided on a few that seemed worthy of mention a second time. First, a series on Shaquanda Cotton, a fifteen-year-old African-American girl from Paris, Texas. She was sentenced to up to seven years at the TYC for pushing a hall monitor at her school (the same judge gave a white girl probation for burning down the family home). Our coverage of Shaquanda got the attention of someone at the Lamar County DA's office, who used some recycled talking points to trash Cotton and her mother. Despite that, after the mainstream media broke Cotton's story, she became a candidate for early release. By March it was official that she would be released from the TYC, and in April we showed a video of her reunion with her mother. (Cotton has returned to school and wants to study to become a lawyer so she can fight future injustices.) We continued our global warming coverage with our Planet Purgatory series, parts One and Two. In May, we heard that the global warming tipping point could be in only ten years' time. NASA scientist James Hansen, a tireless environment advocate who testified about global warming before the Congress back in the 1980s, explains the tipping point theory as the point of no return. But he also believes in prevention rather than adaptation. Lastly, we gave Sen. John Cornyn the credit he deserved when he finally stood on the right side of an issue. Despite a year of flops and fabrications, he said he would support seasonal workers through the H2-B visa program. But despite the efforts of Sen. Barbara Mikulski, the fix wasn't finalized before Congress adjourned for the winter holidays, leaving thousands of small business owners out of luck this holiday season. When we spoke face-to-face with a legislative expert at Cornyn's DC office, we were told that the Texas senator would like to see comprehensive immigration reform and wouldn't lobby for the H2-B visas, though he supported seasonal workers, because he didn't want a piecemeal fix for the problem. So even though he stood with his constituents on the right side of the issue, in the end he let us down again.
Edmundo Rocha of Para Justicia y Libertad wrote about two protests against the prison industrial complex used here in Texas to detain undocumented immigrants -- the Houston
Processing Center and the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor. Prior to those postings, he reported on the suicide of David Ritcheson of Spring, the Latino teen who was brutally beaten, tortured, and sodomized with a plastic pole by two white racist teenagers, David Henry Tuck and Keith Robert Turner.
Marc G. of Marc's Miscellany analyzed Tom Craddick's preposterous claim that the speaker of the house can only be removed by impeachment. Marc also discussed Gov. Perry's controversial decision to veto the health insurance appropriation for community college employees.
Israel Behar-Ojalvo, PDiddie's father-in-law, passed away in March and Brains and Eggs had a post with photos in tribute. The Texas Youth Commission remains the worst scandal in Texas history, and that was apparent in April of last year. And in the matter of a few hours just before Labor Day, Alberto Gonzales, Phil Garner, and Tim Purpura all lost their jobs. Good riddance to a big bunch of losers. More like this in 2008, please.
2007 was a heck of a year for Capitol Annex. Vince Leibowitz at Capitol Annex is most proud of his ground-breaking coverage of the saga surrounding the insurgency in the Texas House and Speaker Craddick's power grab, including Terry Keel's Troubling Memo (a smoking gun, for sure), and the saga surrounding the resignation of parliamentarian Denise Davis, which earned him a mention in (among other publications), Texas Lawyer. Coverage of the 80th Legislature was also a major event for Capitol Annex, including a mind-numbing Liveblogging of debate on the General Appropriations Act, and a special video: Jodie Laubenberg Is Screaming.
It has been another exciting year at DosCentavos. I wrote about my expectations for the 2007 Lege Session. Beyond La Politica, we also know DosCentavos enjoys writing reviews on the latest releases in the Tejano and Mexican American music genre. This year, he received the honor of being asked by Los Lobos to rate their most recent release, The Town and The City. Finally, during the last Lege session, some Senators attempted to take up the debate on legalizing gambling to pay for education. DC tells us a few realities about higher education funding in the process.
Musings started the year concerned about science education in Texas (see: Warren Chisum, R-Dark Ages) and ended the year with some commentary about her friend, Chris Comer, who was fired as Director of Science at the Texas Education Agency over her stand on evolution. In between it was all about Melissa and Rick Noriega.
CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme notes a church in El Paso falls victim to manipulation by a right wing cadre bent on world domination. CouldBeTrue then wonders what would have happened in a perfect Republican world when the Minnesota bridge collapsed. South Texas Chisme covers the wedge'em and hate'em campaign, also known as the Republican immigration strategy. Hispanics have taken note.
The series The Texas Cloverleaf is most proud of since forming in the summer of 2007 was the continued exposure of the outright lies and misleading statements coming from the pro-toll road crowd in Dallas during the Trinity Vote effort. Even though the referendum failed, we feel we did our part to help Dallas voters make an informed decision. Read the series here, here, here, here and here.
Best wishes for a happy 2008 from all the blogs and bloggers of the Texas Progressive Alliance.
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