The festivities today *updated*

... at the Pink Dome are televised here for those of us who cannot be there in person.

Tom Craddick's BFF Frank Corte gave up his big office in the Capitol so that Otto wouldn't have to be in the extension:

In his final days as House speaker, Tom Craddick escaped what might have been severe Capitol culture shock – plummeting from a plush, newly renovated, historic apartment behind the House chamber to a meager underground office that amounts to a closet.

But, as they've done for most of his tenure, his Republican friends in the House came to his aid at the last second, made sacrifices, created a new rule, and yanked him back from the precipice.

Rep. Frank Corte, a House committee chairman elected 15 years ago, took one for the team and gave Craddick his airy, first-floor digs. He didn't want to see Craddick forced to trade offices with Joe Straus, elected four years go, who is about to replace him in the speaker's chair. ...

The office shuffle comes as Craddick prepares to step down after six years at the helm – and just two years after spending $1 million in private donations to turn the run-down speaker's apartment, the only one of its kind in the country, into a high-class living space for him and his wife, Nadine. ...

Offices are doled out partly based on seniority, and proximity to the House chamber is a rough measurement of power. Once members pick their offices, they have them until they either choose to change or they leave their posts. Every session, there's a little shuffle – members depart and leave vacant gorgeous offices with balconies and picture windows.

Normally, Craddick would have his pick of the offices, since he's been there longer than any other lawmaker. But by the time it became clear he would no longer be speaker, members had long since moved into their offices. ...

Craddick had asked if he could get his pre-speakership office back, but that's now occupied by Rep. Al Edwards –- a longtime Houston Democrat returning to the House after being out for one term.

On Friday morning, Edwards, having fought hard for his first-floor digs, declined to give them up. Corte insisted that Craddick take his.

What a guy.

Two years ago this morning, I and a couple of hundred others were on our way to Austin for the inauguration of Borris Miles as the new representative of HD-146, and the drama swirling around the speaker's race. Yesterday, Miles went on trial:

A former state lawmaker accused of pulling a pistol during a party and at a Houston Rockets game goes on trial Monday in a case that could sent him to jail if he is convicted.

Borris Miles, who was defeated in the Democratic primary last year in his bid for another term, is charged with two counts of deadly conduct. The charge is a Class A misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and a $4,000 fine on each count if he is convicted.

A six-member jury was chosen Monday in County Court 13 and is scheduled to begin hearing testimony this afternoon before Court at Law Judge Mark Atkinson.

Miles was indicted in connection with two incidents that took place in December 2007. He has pleaded not guilty.

In the first incident, Miles is accused of showing a pistol and threatening Texas Southern University regent Willard Jackson and his wife during a Rockets game at the Toyota Center.

The second incident occurred at the St. Regis Hotel ballroom, where Miles is accused of displaying a pistol and forcibly kissing another man’s wife while crashing a party.

World keeps turnin'.

Update (1/16): Not guilty. I'm pretty sure Greg knows the difference between 'not guilty' and 'innocent'. Muse has the merlot details.

A pre-legislative session Wrangle

It's the day before the 81st session of the Texas Legislature convenes; time for another edition of the Texas Progressive Alliance's weekly blog round up. Each week's round-up is compiled based on submissions made by member bloggers.

Nine days remaining

... to remind Republicans just what they hath wrought upon the Earth:

Asked by People magazine what moments from the last eight years he revisited most often, W. talked passionately about the pitch he threw out at the World Series in 2001: “I never felt that anxious any other time during my presidency, curiously enough.”

Asked by Fred Barnes and Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard if he had made progress in some areas for which he hasn’t gotten credit, the president put trying to privatize Social Security at the top of his list. It’s frightening to think where a lot of people would be now if that effort had succeeded.

A complete lack of guilt, much less empathy. That's typically how sociopaths are clinically described. Some think Bush is simply too brain-damaged or retarded or autistic or something-else-impaired to get it. I'm not one of those, however. He's quite obviously not the only one, nor even the worst, for that matter ...

Asked last week by Mark Knoller of CBS Radio in one of his exit interviews to name the “biggest mis-impression” people had about him, Cheney replied with a laugh, “That I’m actually a warm, lovable sort.” He went on to seriously assert that his image as “a private, Darth Vader-type personality” has been “pretty dramatically overdone.”

“I think we made good decisions,” he told Knoller, adding with even grander delusion, “I think we knew what we were doing.”

He protested “the notion that somehow I was pulling strings or making presidential-level decisions. I was not. There was never any question about who was in charge. It was George Bush. And that’s the way we operated. This whole notion that somehow I exceeded my authority here, was usurping his authority, is simply not true. It’s an urban legend, never happened.”

This is the most obvious reason why Cheney should simply be turned over to extra-national authorities for prosecution; so that someone can finally impress upon him the seriousness of his crimes. It's not like a Democratic Congress led by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid -- or a president hungry for bipartisanship -- is going to concern itself with administering some justice in this area.

On the other hand, Donald Rumsfeld should just be taken out and summarily executed by firing squad:

“My conscience is clear,” Rummy volunteered to Bob Woodward, talking about how he’s interviewing people for his memoir.

Woodward was stunned. “I was as speechless as I was in July 2006 when I interviewed him and he said he was not a military commander, that he could make the case that he was ‘by indirection, two or three steps removed,’ ” Woodward told me afterward.

What about Herr General Rove? He's still working a few "problems":

What was considered a smooth path to confirmation has recently been complicated as signs of hostility toward (Attorney-General-designate Eric) Holder have increased over the past month. Political operative Karl Rove and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), for example, singled out the longtime Washington lawyer as the candidate who would face bruising questions.

And Beto Gonzales? Stupid, malicious, or maliciously stupid? You decide:

"What is it that I did that is so fundamentally wrong, that deserves this kind of response to my service?" he said during an interview Tuesday, offering his most extensive comments since leaving government.

During a lunch meeting two blocks from the White House, where he served under his longtime friend, President George W. Bush, Mr. Gonzales said that "for some reason, I am portrayed as the one who is evil in formulating policies that people disagree with. I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror."

Republican Poutrage over Senator Franken

Six years of suck-it for conservatives:

With only a longshot court appeal standing in the way of Democrat Al Franken’s election to the Senate, Republicans are gritting their teeth and bracing for the arrival of a new senator whose every utterance will sound like nails on a chalkboard to them.

While Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) has filed suit to contest the results of a disputed recount process that turned his narrow lead into a 225-vote deficit, his likely defeat stands to turn Franken, the polarizing former “Saturday Night Live” writer, into the senator who launched a thousand direct mail fundraising appeals.

“I don’t know if we’ve ever had an opponent who is so disliked by Republicans as Al Franken,” said Minnesota Republican Party Chair Ron Carey, who cautioned that Coleman’s election challenge could still turn the results back his way. “It’s one thing to lose to an honorable opponent, but Al Franken is not considered an honorable opponent by Minnesota Republicans.”

And here I was thinking I was just going to feel gratified that a true Minnesota liberal was going to Washington to reclaim Paul Welllstone's desk. To know that the Republicks are this bitter about Senator Stuart Smalley is ... well, pretty freaking schadenfreude.

Domingo Cómico

What do you call a newspaper without a printing press?

Or one that doesn't print a paper at all? Serious question.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which first rolled off the presses in 1863 and has been the state's longest-publishing newspaper, is up for sale.

The newspaper's staff was called into a closed meeting today by Publisher Roger Oglesby. Present at the meeting was Hearst Newspaper President Steve Swartz, who told the newsroom that Hearst Corp. is starting a 60-day process to find a buyer. If a buyer is not found, possible options include creating an all-digital operation with a greatly reduced staff, or closing its operations entirely.

In no case will Hearst continue to publish the P-I in printed form, Swartz said.

Regardless, he said, if no buyer is found, the P-I as a newspaper will not publish after the two months is up.

The joint operating agreement that the Post-Intelligencer performs in conjunction with the Seattle Times requires a minimum of thirty days for Hearst to find a buyer before they shut it down. Hearst has previously bought out JOA partners and then sold its own newspaper (The Examiner, the paper that W.R. Hearst parlayed into a empire) in San Francisco, and bought out the competition only to shutter its own property (The Light) in San Antonio.

This is NOT a newspaper company big on sentimentality for its brands.

In the wake of Ike last September, the Beaumont Enterprise gave up trying to publish its own paper:

The Beaumont Enterprise is eliminating its pressroom and mailroom operations and outsourcing its daily printing and packaging to the Houston Chronicle, a sister Hearst newspaper, Publisher John E. Newhouse II announced (September 29).

The move, effective immediately, was necessary because of deteriorating business conditions and the high cost of repairing or replacing the newspaper's 34-year-old press, which has been inoperable since Hurricane Ike, Newhouse said.

Twenty employees were affected by the shutdown of the platemaking, press and mailroom departments. Seventeen were laid off and received severance packages. Three were reassigned to new jobs. ...

The move is part of a newspaper industry trend toward consolidation and outsourcing in response to the high cost of replacing antiquated and worn-out equipment. In The Enterprise's case, that could be more than $30 million for a new printing facility, Newhouse said.

The Houston Chronicle, whose presses can accommodate the additional color preferred by advertisers and readers, has been printing some sections of the Sunday Enterprise since last year and all of the newspaper's weekly products since early this year.

The entire Enterprise has been printed in Houston since the day after Hurricane Ike struck Southeast Texas.

So if a newspaper doesn't print a paper, what is it exactly?

Junior Brown last night at the Mucky Duck

The Texas legend (well, Indiana or maybe Arizona) sawed on his guit-steel and drawled through Long Walk Back to San Antone, Highway Patrol, My Wife Thinks You're Dead and a solid handful of other classics. It might have been the best evening of entertainment for the year 2009 (but I hope it gets better from here on).

Real or not?

Is God real, or is he imaginary? It is one of the most important questions you can ask yourself.

If God is real and if God inspired the Bible, then we should worship God as the Bible demands. We should certainly post the Ten Commandments in our courthouses and shopping centers, put "In God We Trust" on the money and pray in our schools. We should focus our society on God and his infallible Word because our everlasting souls hang in the balance.

On the other hand, if God is imaginary, then religion is a complete illusion. Christianity, Judaism and Islam are pointless. Belief in God is nothing but a silly superstition, and this superstition leads a significant portion of the population to be delusional.

But how can we decide, conclusively, whether God is real or imaginary?

Don't click and read on unless you want your thoughts really, really provoked.

As if we needed any more

Additional evidence that Texas attorney general Greg Abbott is simply the very worst of a wretched lot in Austin. Emphasis is mine, first person voice is Rick Casey's:

Five years ago I asked readers to feel sorry for Assistant Attorney General Gena Bunn.

Now I'm asking you to feel sorry for Assistant Attorney General Katherine Hayes.

It was Bunn's job, I wrote, to go "with a straight face" before the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of death row inmate Delma Banks "and argue that the state of Texas should be able to suborn perjury and hide evidence with impunity in its quest to get the death penalty."

She had to admit that prosecutors had stood silent while two key witnesses lied under oath during Banks' two-day trial in 1980 for the murder of a 16-year-old co-worker.

She argued that defense attorneys had waited too long to raise the issue, even though the delay was caused by the prosecutors' cover-up of the evidence.

The justices were not receptive.

"Wasn't it the obligation of the prosecution, having deceived the jury and the court, to come clean?" asked Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

"So the prosecution can lie and conceal, and the defense still has the burden to discover the evidence?" challenged Justice Anthony M. Kennedy.

The arguments advanced by Bunn had worked at the prosecution-oriented U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, but Bunn found no sympathy at the Supreme Court. It took that body — including archconservatives Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas — just 10 weeks to issue a stinging slap to the state of Texas and to the 5th Circuit.

In the unanimous opinion, Ginsburg wrote that it was "appropriate for Banks to assume that his prosecutors would not stoop to improper litigation conduct to advance prospects for getting a conviction."

The court sent the case back down, ordering a full examination of the facts to determine whether Banks should get a new trial. It also overturned the death sentence. (Scalia joined Thomas in dissenting from this portion, though Thomas called it a "close call.")

After examining the evidence and hearing arguments from both sides, U.S. District Judge David Folsom of Texarkana ruled that Banks must be either retried or freed.

He noted that Charles Cook was a key witness at the trial, being the only witness to testify that Banks had said he killed the victim and the only one to provide a motive.

And, wrote Folsom, "Cook's testimony on these issues was uncorroborated."

It is undisputed that on the stand Cook said three times he had not talked to anyone before giving his testimony. For 16 years, prosecutors hid proof that Cook was lying.

Only in 1996, under a federal court order, did they turn over a 38-page transcript of a coaching session Cook received just days before he testified. Present were a prosecutor, a DA's investigator and the deputy who led the murder investigation.

Quoting the transcript, Folsom writes: "Cook's misrepresentation at trial — claiming that he had not been coached — is particularly significant in light of how extensively Cook was coached."

For example, a number of things Cook said during that session differed from the statements he had given originally, the kinds of inconsistencies defense attorneys thrive on.

What's more, Cook admitted on the stand he had been convicted of felony assault but "forgot" who the victim was.

Yet during the coaching session a few days earlier he had identified her as a schoolteacher. The AG's office argued that Cook thought the defense attorney was asking for a name, but Folsom wrote that the "name is clearly not what the defense was seeking."

And a handwritten note by one of Cook's handlers on the coaching session transcript next to the mention of the schoolteacher said, "do not say."

Prosecutors didn't want the jurors knowing their star witness beat up schoolteachers.

(Yesterday) Assistant Attorney General Hayes (appeared) in New Orleans and, based on a technicality, ask the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn Folsom.

A major argument amounts to raising a technicality. The state argues that Banks' attorneys didn't give proper notice that they were using the coaching transcript in their case.

Having hidden the damning transcript for 16 years, prosecutors are saying defense attorneys aren't playing fair.

Both a federal magistrate and Judge Folsom ruled that proper notice was given when Banks' attorneys, without objection from the state, introduced the transcript at an earlier hearing and asked witnesses numerous questions about it.

Hayes may get a favorable reception in New Orleans. It's the same three-judge panel that didn't see any problems years ago. But then this already outrageously long legal process will go back to the high court.

There's a better course. Shouldn't Attorney General Greg Abbott, whose job presumably bears some relationship to the pursuit of justice, be chastising prosecutors for breaking the law rather than defending them?

I certainly hope all of the Republicans who read and comment at Chron.com remember this when Abbott announces his intention to run for re-election (or lt. governor, or governor) in 2010 and beyond.

So THAT's why Tom DeLay isn't in prison yet

Scott Horton at Harper's:

In theory, our legal system affords equal access to justice. But, as George Orwell offers in Animal Farm, some of us are more equal than others, and Tom DeLay is, in Texas politics, the most equal of all. Texas courts, which are notoriously political, are packed with Republicans who owe their careers to Tom DeLay, directly or indirectly. That makes the justice dealt out in the DeLay case justice without equal.

DeLay is now facing trial in Austin on charges of money-laundering. But his case has been bottled up by an appeals court dominated by Republicans. Ronnie Earle, a legendary prosecutor who has taken down far more Democrats than Republicans in his day, had hoped to end his career with this trial–but DeLay’s fellow Republicans insured that this would not happen. They waited patiently for Earle to retire and then handed down a preliminary ruling. The Republican judges find no reason why one of their colleagues who, before coming on the bench, said the DeLay prosecution was “politically motivated” could not then rule on the case. That reflects a novel understanding of the canons of judicial ethics, which–at least in places other than Texas–require that a judge handle his matters impartially. When a judge expresses an opinion on the merits of a case before it comes to him, that is prejudgment. It disqualifies him from participating in the case. Why this extraordinary departure from settled rules of judicial ethics? It appears that with one Republican recused, the court would have a tie vote, and DeLay would be denied the deus ex machina he is waiting for: a court ruling that the prosecution’s case is fatally defective.

As the Houston Chronicle reports today, the Republican majority on the court even blocked the two Democratic justices from filing dissenting opinions.

And what did the Houston Chronicle report yesterday?

The polarized state appeals court has ruled that Republican Justice Alan Waldrop did not have to excuse himself from a case against two associates of former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

The ruling from the 3rd Court of Appeals does not immediately affect the money-laundering charges against DeLay and his associates, John Colyandro and Jim Ellis.

DeLay and his associates, John Colyandro of Austin and Jim Ellis of Washington, have been accused of laundering corporate money into political donations to Republican candidates in 2002. Use of corporate money is generally banned from state campaigns.

Before any trial, Ellis and Colyandro challenged the constitutionality of the law.

Last September, Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle asked the court to remove Waldrop because Earle claimed Waldrop betrayed his bias four years ago, before he became a judge. Earle alleged that bias was betrayed when Waldrop called a similar money-laundering allegation in a related civil lawsuit "politically motivated" and an attempt to "harass political opponents." At the time, Waldrop was representing a client who was a political ally of DeLay.

Waldrop wrote an opinion in August that upheld the constitutionality of the law on money laundering but warned that the prosecutors had a fatal flaw in their case, a view that two trial judges and one other appellate judges have disagreed with.

Waldrop, Chief Justice Ken Law and a third Republican justice, Robert Pemberton, wrote that the charges against DeLay and his associates should be dismissed because they used a check, not cash, in their transaction. Waldrop argued that the law — before it was changed in 2005 — did not cover checks during the 2002 election.

Two Democratic justices on the 3rd Court objected.

Justice Jan Patterson, a Democrat on the Austin-based state appeals court, claimed last year that Law, blocked the filing of her dissent to a ruling in October. The ruling overruled a motion asking Waldrop to step aside in the money-laundering case involving DeLay's associates.

Justice Diane Henson complained that her GOP colleagues were wrong about the money-laundering law and had bottled up the case for years to thwart prosecution of the high-profile case.

On Wednesday, the Republican majority struck back in an opinion written by Justice David Puryear. Law and Pemberton joined in Puryear's opinion. Puryear criticized Patterson's "attempts to insert suspicion and intrigue into what have been routine decisions by this Court," the Austin American-Statesman reported in an online story Friday.

Henson argued that a reasonable person would question whether Waldrop might favor DeLay's associates because of his earlier work with DeLay's political allies.

"One might also question why, if Justice Waldrop's lack of bias or partiality is so obvious, a 38-page opinion, including personal attacks on dissenting justices, was necessary to explain why the motion to recuse was denied," she wrote.

Earle just retired and Law's term ended Wednesday.

The old "it's not money-laundering if it's a check" trick again. Let' see now; where have we written about Alan Waldrop and David Puryear before?

Back to Horton for the obvious conclusion ...

Texas was once famous for Judge Roy Bean, who following various homicides and petty offenses established himself as the “law west of the Pecos.” Bean’s first act in judicial office was to shoot up the saloon of a Jewish competitor. Now Texas is home to Tulia, where in the governorship of George W. Bush forty African-Americans were arrested on bogus drug charges by a racist cop, and it’s the state that sent Alberto Gonzales to Washington as attorney general. Its notions of justice are transparent from cases like the DeLay prosecution, in which we get a glimpse of the most ferociously partisan judges in the country. Did Reconstruction end too soon?