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