The P Slate: local judicials

Harris County has a justice system that rivals those of some small countries.  There are 26 state district civil courts, 22 criminal ones and 11 family law courts, and that doesn't count the 18 justices on two state courts of appeal, the 16 justices of the peace, and the judges who serve on the probate and juvenile courts and the county courts at law.  (Recommendations for the highest courts in the state -- the Texas Supreme Court and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals -- will appear in a later post.)

If you live in the nation's third most populous county, about half of those various judgeships show up on your ballot every two years.  And in a deep purple, virtually 50-50 county like Harris, that means straight Democratic ticket voters in presidential years tend to wash out the Republicans on the bench, and in off-presidential years they get swept back in by the same straight-ticket voting phenomenon... coupled with the fact that so many Democratic voters sit out the midterms.  This doesn't even take into consideration all the voters who stop voting after the top handful of races, especially when you consider that Harris County has one of the longest ballots in the nation.

So many of the county's judicial races are decided by their party's straight ticket voters.  I personally agree with many others that straight-ticket voting is a pox on the democratic process, and not just because it gives so many participants a somewhat arrogant sense of satisfaction that they have completed their biannual citizenship requirement in thirty seconds or less.  But it's the reality of how we elect judges in Harris County, and in Texas and other states as well.  If you want more evidence besides the numbers, just note that some Republicans think 2014 is going to be a blue year, and some Democrats don't.  It's all about who turns out their voters.

(I don't do endorsements per se; I just take my secret ballot and roll it out online for your perusal.  It's your prerogative, of course, to agree or disagree with my picks.  I offer them to voters who wish to carefully discern which judges might be most inclined to interpret the law with fairness and in a progressive perspective, as opposed to a conservative one.  In the evolution of assessing judges and judicial candidates for suitability, I've gotten to the point where I can no longer vote for Republicans.  I simply don't think that anyone who aligns themselves with the appalling extremism of the Republican Party of Texas has the appropriate temperament and corresponding jurisprudence to merit my consideration.  YMMV.)

Before I run down a few of my favorites on the ballot this year, I wish to acknowledge Judge Al Bennett of the 61st Civil District Court, who has recently been nominated to the federal bench by President Obama.  Judge Bennett is one the most exemplary men I've had the fortune of meeting in politics, and that has only a little to do with his outstanding qualifications to serve.  I first came to know him several years ago, when he ran for House District 146, a contest that also featured current-Rep. Borris Miles and former Rep. Al Edwards.  Bennett made a point of seeking my support, and as I had already committed to Miles, I asked him to run in another race so that I could do so.  Well, he did and I did, and the rest is history.

Now on to my recommendations.

-- Judge Kyle Carter, of the 125th Civil District Court, seeks election to Chief Justice of the Fourteenth Court of Appeals.  A no-brainer, as there are NO Democrats serving on the Fourteenth, and five of the nine Republican justices currently serving were first appointed by Rick Perry.  Carter is challenging the incumbent Chief Justice, Kem Frost, who was appointed to the court by then-Gov. George W. Bush.

 This court needs some balance.  Similarly...

-- Justice Jim Sharp of the First Court of Appeals seeks re-election.  He's the only Democrat on that court.  He's also as progressive as they come for a judge.  Yes, he's gotten himself in a little hot water over his conduct in recent years.  And conservatives have gone after him hammer and tong.  Frankly, his eccentricities have endeared him to me.  Sharp gets my vote and my support.

Texpatriate endorses both Carter and Sharp today as well.

-- Barbara Gardner, running for the 234th District Court. In her words, paraphrasing...

I am running for the 234th because I am considerably more qualified than the person Rick Perry appointed to serve one year ago. In observing Governor Perry's judicial appointments, I have noticed that he most often appoints a person who -- in the words of Texas Supreme Court Justice Don Willet -- is aligned with the governor's judicial philosophy, which is pro-defendant, anti-consumer, and "unabashedly conservative". This is contrary to our state constitution, which provides for election of judges by citizens, and it is contrary to our concepts of fairness and justice."

That's it in a nutshell.  Kuff has a Q&A with Gardner today.

-- Steven Kirkland, running for Judge, 113th Civil District Court.  Kirkland was ousted from the 215th in 2012 in one of the uglier homophobic demonstrations in Harris County that managed to incorporate a little racism as well.  He's been a fine municipal and state court judge and a friend of the family.

-- Similarly, these three judicials: Tracy Good for the 313th Juvenile Court, Harold Landreneau for County Criminal Court at Law #2, and Tanner Garth for the 281st Civil are acquaintances of mine and come strongly recommended.

-- In addition, Ursula Hall, running for the 189th Civil; Farrah Martinez, running for the 190th Civil, and Scott Dollinger, running for the County Civil Court at Law, #2 get my vote.

And all of the judicial candidates listed here are worthy of yours.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance reminds you that today is the last day to register to vote in Texas.  Here's the roundup of lefty blog posts from last week.

Off the Kuff began his series of interviews with statewide candidates by talking to Sam Houston, the Democratic candidate for Attorney General.

Libby Shaw, writing for Texas Kaos and at Daily Kos, is very pleased that  Wendy Davis hammered Greg Abbott on Austin's pervasive culture of corruption.

From WCNews at Eye on Williamson: The question remains, is something like the Texas Enterprise Fund scandal enough to get voters to change their mind about Greg Abbott and the GOP? If not then what would it take?

William Rivers Pitt wrote "an open letter to his Democratic spammer". PDiddie at Brains and Eggs commiserates.

BlueDaze outs the not-from-Denton Master Debator representing the frackers.

Texpatriate updated the lieutenant governor's race, Texas Leftist reviewed the debate, and Egberto Willies passed along the HouChron's endorsement of Leticia Van de Putte.

Bay Area Houston wonders why Greg Abbott sat in traffic for ten years before deciding he wanted to help.

Neil at All People Have Value wrote an art review of the fish cleaning station at the Texas City Dike. APHV is one of many pages worthy of review at NeilAquino.com.

================

And here are some posts from other Texas blogs.

jobsanger ruefully observes that Wendy Davis is trailing in the governor's race because Texans don't feel that women should be equal to men.  But Socratic Gadfly believes there is no "self-hating woman" meme at work here.

TFN gives us the news that RNC head Reince Priebus believes it's 'compassionate' for Texas Republicans to close women's clinics in Texas.

Trail Blazers has the story of the lesbian couple that that asked the Fifth Circuit to schedule arguments next month in their gay marriage suit ... because they're expecting in March.

Scott Braddock shows the evidence of who's behind some recent wingnut-on-wingnut violence. Be sure your popcorn popper is in good order, this one looks like a gift that will keep on giving.

Lone Star Q is happy to report that Dallas City Council has voted week to ban discrimination against transgender city employees.

The Lunch Tray took a stand for citizen journalism.

Hair Balls explains what pot has to do with the Harris County DA race this year.

Char Miller eulogizes his colleague John Donahue, a "gracious force for good" in San Antonio.

Nancy Sims posits her grand unification theory of Houston Mayoral elections.

The Texas Election Law Blog assesses the GAO report on how long it took to vote in 2012.

Texas Watch wants you to understand the impact of the Texas law that shields the medical industry from accountability.

BOR points to HD94 as a below-the-radar race to watch.

Nonsequiteuse connects the dots from racing for the cure to racing for Governor.

The weekend's political events

About fifty people gathered in the lovely home of Lee and Hardy Loe on Saturday afternoon to hear the Texas Green statewide candidates talk about their campaigns and policies.

From left to right: Deb Shafto, candidate for Comptroller of Public Accounts, Emily "Spicybrown" Sanchez, candidate for US Senate, Martina Salinas, candidate for Railroad Commissioner, Kenneth Kendrick, candidate for Agriculture Commissioner, and Jim Chisholm, candidate for Texas Supreme Court Justice, Place 8.

There was even a representative of the Kim Ogg for Harris County District attorney campaign, who got a minute at the end to speak and pass out some literature.  That's how you build coalitions, folks.  Not like this.

-- Speaking of Ogg, she's debating the Republican incumbent in a few minutes on local TV.  Update: Here's some play-by-play; here's the video, courtesy Click2Houston.

Sunday Deja Vu Funnies

Tom DeLay, Lawrence Meyers, and the Christian caliphate in Texas

Lots of things to do today -- blockwalking for the Wendy Davis campaign in my precinct again this morning, a Green statewide candidate fundraiser this evening.  Some things that I meant to blog, or blog more about...

-- Tom DeLay plans on returning to DC as a politician, but first he needs to sue the Travis County DA for corruption.  Such rich irony.

I wrote so much about El Cucaracho Grande in the early years of Brains.  That protest we had in front of the Hilton at the 2005 NRA convention was off the hook.  I even went down to Pasadena and stood in the sleet at 7 a.m. at an elementary school and pushed cards for Richard Morrison, who ran against him in 2004.  This post, one of the top ten most-clicked here -- it was search-engine optimized, as you can perhaps tell -- appears to have been the last thing I blogged on the topic (that wasn't about Dancing with the Stars).

I knew after the first appeals court white-washed his criminal record that he would skate.  The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals -- about which I have written more recently -- is nothing if not consistent.  And that court and its judges are, it should be emphasized, the actual problem in Texas with respect to the infestation of corrupt Republicans that pervades the state's body politic.  Tom DeLay -- and Greg Abbott and Rick Perry and Louie Gohmert and Sid Miller and all of the rest of the worst conservatives money can buy -- are just symptoms of that problem.

My Cuban in-laws used to say of Fidel Castro: "bicho malo nunca muerte".  A bad bug never dies.  Truer words were never spoken of either man.

-- The only Democrat on the Texas CCA, Lawrence Meyers (he was a Republican until recently), is suing Texas over the voter/photo ID law.  This news gives Texans who are not Republicans hope for a better, more just Texas.

-- But progress comes slowly, and often there is regression before progress can be resumed.

Women's clinics in Texas are closing, the burdens being created for Texas women to exercise their rights to choice are harsh and undue, and the worst is yet to come.  The next step will be the Texas Legislature passing a bill in 2015 that outlaws abortions in Texas, even in cases of rape or incest.  Governor Greg Abbott will sign it.  After that, the focus will shift to criminalizing the perpetrators of abortion.  Specifically, capital punishment.  This should not surprise anybody when it occurs.

Update: Think Progress gets it: The ultimate goal of the Texas abortion law (HB2, as it's called) is having the Supremes overturn Roe v. Wade.  As Charles reminds, elections have consequences.

And then they will go after the gays.  I expect the Legislature to try to void equal rights city ordinances like Houston's and San Antonio's with bills written next year.  We should see nothing less than legislation crafted by the people who wish for a Christian caliphate coming out of the Lege next session... that is, if they can elbow the corporate lawyers and lobbyists out of their way in the stampede up the Great Walk.  The rightest of the right will have a super-majority in Austin next year.  They can do whatever they like.  The only real fight will be between the Fundys and the Corporatists.

All of these developments suggest a bright economic future for barristers on both sides of the aisle.

Precisely.

"An Open Letter to My Democratic Spammer", by William Rivers Pitt.

Are you, by chance, feeling a bit ragged around the edges? On the verge of disaster? Perhaps even a bit doomed?

Me, too!

I can't imagine why...

...oh, wait. I know exactly why. I looked at my email this week.

"TRAGIC Conclusion," read one.

"Terrible News (JUST NOW)," read another.

"CANCEL NOTICE," read another.

"we. will. fail." read another.

And another, just like those. And another. And another. And another.

It wasn't the end of the world, as it turns out. It was, in fact, the master plan of some fundraiser fuzzwit for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, who decided the thing to do is to scream manically into every email address available using panic-riddled headlines designed to make you click them open, because Jesus, what if?

"Terrible News (JUST NOW)." Oh, no, what happened? "CANCEL NOTICE." What didn't I pay for? "TRAGIC Conclusion." Oh God, who died?

Probably 300 emails like this in my in-box since the weekend, one after the other prophesying calamity...unless I gave $5 to the Democrats.

That's precisely my inbox as well.  I unsubscribe, they keep coming.  They've sold my e-address to so many different campaigns so many times it's ridiculous.

You want my money? Really? After decades of sucking up to Wall Street and the "defense" industry, you're telling me, over and over and over again, that you're hat-in-hand broke?

My ass. You have pornographically wealthy friends, and you bow and scrape to them every chance you get, to my detriment, and to the detriment of everyone I know, all of whom you've pestered for money.

As you send your hundreds of emails seeking cash for a party that is stacked from pillar to post with a Who's Who of Wall Street insiders, the rest of us scratch by as best we can in this catastrophe of an economy you most certainly helped to create, if only through your ongoing and ignominious cowardice. To be battered with begging emails about how oh-so broke you are is, frankly, a bridge too far. You have a job, email fiend, for now. Count your blessings.

Like me, Will Pitt -- whom I've known for almost the entire decade-plus I've blogged -- is mostly a Progressive Democrat, until the Democratic Party pushes him over the edge.  Which happens fairly regularly for me and apparently him, and particularly when they dump a daily avalanche of spam.  It's ten a day at minimum.  I suppose I should be glad that I get in a month what Pitts gets in a weekend -- 300 fundraising solicitation e-mails -- mostly going to the spam filter but then they change the sender's name and it sneaks past.  Begging, threatening, wheedling, cajoling, and yes, hints of suicidal desperation.

You know that 'motivating by fear' thing I've mentioned a few times?  This isn't how to do it.

Say what you will about the Republicans, but you cannot fault their tactics when it comes to winning. They are a minority in the United States, by the numbers, but they are running the show both politically and economically, and for one reason: they fire up their base. Sure, "firing up their base" means gay-bashing, and woman-hating, and Jesus-shouting, and war-mongering...but it works. In the fourteenth year of this brave new century, the party everyone hates and thinks is crazy, according to all the polls, is about to take over the Senate and increase its hold on the House.

It's not a magic trick, and it's not a mystery, why that is about to happen. The Republicans are acting like Republicans, and the people who support them will run through stone walls to vote for them. [...] If Democrats acted like Democrats, they might enjoy the same level of support from their own base...but instead, the people are presented with this eternally timid "Please Don't Hurt Me" coalition, afraid of the word "Liberal," and certainly addicted to the Wall Street/Defense/Petroleum money swelling their coffers. You ain't broke, despite that barrage of emails to the contrary.

Dead solid perfect.  Keep going, dude.

You support fracking while giving lip-service to climate change? You want Keystone XL approved, despite the fact that it will run the world's dirtiest fuel through our breadbasket and over our main aquifer in a pipeline that is dead-bang guaranteed to leak? You endorse the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement? You're satisfied with the barren lack of accounting meted to the Wall Street brigands who stole our future? You're down with a third war in Iraq?

Wait, you don't support all that? But you won't stand against it, because you're afraid of losing votes or campaign money?

My heroes.

There's a lot more, but Imma let him finish.

Come November, if the Democrats wind up flopping and flailing for an explanation as to why they got routed at the polls, let me offer a succinct reply: You stand for nothing. You are the Washington Generals to the Harlem Globetrotters. Everyone expects you to go down to defeat, because you always lay down, because you are paid to do so.

It doesn't have to be that way, but that's the way it is. When the midterms eat you alive, remember what I said. When you stand for nothing, you get nothing in return.

Write me an email about that.

If some "my party right or wrong" Democrats give me some rationalizations for this -- i.e. that spamming their supporters is what's necessary to be competitive with the GOP -- I'm going to laugh out loud in their face.

Update: Ramona's Voices makes the same point.

They won't get mentioned very often in other media...

Here are four Texas Greens on your ballot next month -- or on your ballot that you've received in the mailbox already: Kenneth Kendrick (Texas Agriculture Commissioner), Deb Shafto (Texas Comptroller), David Collins (Harris County Judge), and Martina Salinas (Texas Railroad Commissioner). Video is courtesy of Greenwatch TV, a local public access program airing weekly in Houston and surrounding areas.


Four Green Party of Texas Candidates (GWTV, 2014/10/01) from Art Browning on Vimeo.

Your chance to meet Kendrick and Salinas -- if you live in or near Houston -- is this weekend; they will appear together at a joint campaign fundraiser.  Details are here.

Yes. Texas will outlaw abortions if Greg Abbott is elected.

Closing clinics on the basis of "women's health" is Orwellian, to be certain.  But it's only the beginning.  The next step after that for the pro-life faction is to prosecute women who have abortions on a charge of murder, and to exercise capital punishment upon conviction.  Don't act so shocked.

A writer for National Review, (Kevin D.) Williamson likes to be the guy who will brashly express the crudest (and sometimes cruelest) version of his own team's deepest ideological commitments. Want an up-is-down revisionist take on American history that portrays the Republican Party as a far greater champion of civil rights than the Democrats? Williamson's your man. Looking for someone to mock a transgendered person pictured on the cover of Time magazine? Williamson will do it with unapologetic relish.

But none of that compares to what we got from Williamson earlier this week, when he took to Twitter to declare that he thinks women who have had abortions deserve to be executed for their actions. And not just executed in any old way, or by lethal injection, which is the standard in the 32 states that permit the death penalty. No, Williamson thinks women who have had abortions — along with the doctors, nurses, and hospital staff involved in the procedure — deserve to face death by hanging.

Now, the hanging bit is an almost perfect example of intentionally provocative rhetoric. (That's my preferred euphemism for "trolling.") Note how it adds an extra frisson of outrageousness to the proposal of capital punishment, given the way hanging has historically been deployed — as a uniquely public form of execution, used by governments as well as extrajudicial gangs of private citizens to inspire acute fear and intimidation. (Williamson might have just gone ahead and advocated beheadings, though of course, as another National Review author has recently argued, only a "purely evil" political organization could favor anything like that.)

Don't. act. so. shocked.

(T)hose who oppose abortion rights claim that the procedure amounts to the infliction of lethal violence against an innocent human being. If they truly believe that, then of course they also believe it should be prosecuted and punished like any other act of homicide. Indeed, the most remarkable thing about the Williamson controversy may be that his remarks surprised anyone at all.

Did you ask your favorite Republican what they thought of Williamson's proposal?  Perhaps you should, especially if there are going be any more debates you observe among candidates, and especially if they give you the chance to offer a query.

Repealing abortion rights at the federal level would just be the first step. It would be followed by an effort to outlaw abortion on a state-by-state basis. Then those involved in the illegal procedure would have to be prosecuted and punished. At the outer fringes of the possible, anti-abortion activists hope to see a Personhood Amendment protecting fetal life added to the Constitution, or perhaps the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment explicitly expanded to include the unborn.

While Republican presidential candidates are regularly asked if they endorse their party's platform in favor of repealing Roe, they are only rarely confronted with a follow-up question about whether they also believe that women who procure abortions and the medical professionals who provide them should be prosecuted and punished for murder — perhaps even for capital murder.

Since one typically comes to favor outlawing abortion only because of a belief in its homicidal character, it's hard to see how an opponent of abortion rights could do anything other than affirm a desire to see the murderers and their accessories brought to justice. It seems the only alternative would be to look hopelessly soft on crime.

Republicans in Texas, with supermajorities in the Lege and an eager new governor in Greg Abbott, will be the first state in the nation to ban abortion, and they will dare anyone to turn them back.  They have all the votes they need: five, on the US Supreme Court.  And then they will go after the murderers, those dastardly criminal women who would break the law and kill their babies anyway.

This is not an exaggeration.

As a reminder, motivating your voting base by fear is something Republicans do exceptionally well and exponentially better than Democrats.  It's also a very pointed note to a small handful of Democrats who think voting for Greens is a bigger problem than Democrats who vote for Republicans (more than 300,000 of them who voted in Florida in 2000, for anyone who doesn't wish to click the link).  Or for that matter, Democratically-leaning semi-sorta-sometimes voters who mostly don't.

Thank goodness Battleground Texas is working so furiously on the latter.  The former is a more internal failure, and might be remedied with some soul-searching, or perhaps even a 2016 presidential candidate along the lines of Bernie Sanders.  That's a discussion for later... about one month from now.

Fear and loathing and Democrats and Greens

Bumping into this again.

This, of course, is bullshit.  The page that posted it also linked to a Mother Jones article written by Erika Eichelberger, who failed in her reporting as well.  In context, with my emphasis in italics in the excerpt.

If Keister's plan had succeeded, it could have helped Reed—the Northeast regional chairman of the NRCC—by putting on the ballot a progressive candidate who would likely draw votes away from his expected Democratic opponent, county legislator Martha Robertson. But Keister messed up: Because he filed the Robbins petition late and got the other Green Party member's address wrong, neither Green will appear on the ballot for the June primary or the November general election, according to New York election officials.

Let's establish once again that votes are earned, not "siphoned off".  To believe this logical fallacy, you would have to believe another one, that voting populations are zero sum.  So that's pretty much the end of that argument.  But in the comments at the Facebook page, you will see several folks invoking the very stubborn urban legend that Ralph Nader cost Al Gore the 2000 election.

It makes me sad when I see Democrats so afraid of Republicans and losing elections that they go home and kick the cat, so to speak.

So I offered some thoughts on that page, and they promptly deleted them and blocked me.  Then they came over to my blog's Facebook page -- where I had the same comments up -- and posted this.

Baby Boomers and Senior Citizens Against Republicans & The Tea Party Brains and Eggs - We removed you from our page, as it clearly states at the top of our page that we are a "DEMOCRAT ONLY" page, and that we ban trolls. You claim to be progressive? Good luck with that one. Your arguments are comparable to Republican trolls. The only one you are fooling is yourself.

As some of you may know, I was a delegate to the Texas Democratic Party convention, and I did vote in both their primary and their runoff, so by every legal definition of the word, I am a Democrat.  The problem for Democrats -- as you have probably already figured out -- is not just that I don't swallow the party line, it's that I also offer a lot of criticism to Democrats about how they conduct themselves, handle their campaigns, what they stand for, and so on.  This genuinely irritates some people.

As a reminder, I consider myself an independent progressive.  It's accurate to describe me as an activist in both parties.  I am more committed to progressive philosophy than I am partisan politics.  So their blocking me on their page has more to do with their hostility to having their thinking challenged than it does their little rules, or anything else for that matter.  I will acknowledge that the label I have applied to myself creates a lot of cognitive dissonance in partisans, and furthermore that I make no attempt to ameliorate their discomfort.

But for the sake of what happened in this particular disagreement, let's review what "the Democrats" wrote: two logical fallacies, one unprovable premise, one now two several ad hominems, including one calling me an 'ignorant teabagger'.  Hilarious.

That's just no way to get independents and progressives to vote for you, Dems.  And I'm pretty sure that you don't have any votes to lose in 2014, in Texas or almost anywhere else in the country.  And let's also be clear about the verb being used here: you're losing them.  They are not being taken away from you.

Update: Socratic Gadfly wades in with some additional inconvenient truths.

Ebola and Texas

It's too cheap a shot to take at our neighbors to the north about the way the folks at Texas Presbyterian Hospital handled the patient with Ebola who went there and was sent home with antibiotics.  After all, international flights from western Africa arrive daily in Houston.  And Atlanta, and Miami, and New York and Los Angeles and Chicago. 

Overburdened first-line healthcare specialists in the emergency room are responsible for maximizing profit in equivalent measure to the suits in the executive office, no matter which American city's hospitals we speak of.

It is not, on the other hand, unfair to point out that there are lots of people without health insurance who do not see a doctor until they are wildly ill, because their state's leaders refuse to extend them even the most nominal healthcare coverage.

Do we turn away poor folks with Ebola because they don't have insurance?  Of course we don't... because they might infect the children whose parents do have health coverage.  When a third-world problem becomes a first-world problem, then everybody gets excited.

There might be a better way to stop the spread of a contagion than knee-jerk panic reactions.  But that would require planning, and thought, and then taking the proper action.

Not to mention some measure of compassion for those less fortunate.

If there's one thing I know for absolute certain, those are not qualities possessed by the majority of the current leadership of Texas.  And the other certainty is that our once-every-two-or-four-years opportunity to change that is coming up quickly on the calendar.

Texas Lyceum: Abbott 49, Davis 40

From the press release:

A recent poll conducted by the Texas Lyceum, the premiere statewide nonprofit, nonpartisan leadership group, shows that among likely voters Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott is ahead of Democratic State Senator Wendy Davis by nine percentage points.

The killshot...

[Abbott holds] slight leads with both Independents (38 percent to 32 percent) and with women (46 percent to 44 percent).

It's worse for Leticia Van De Putte (47-33, Patrick) and David Alameel (48-30, Cornyn).

This isn't exactly the boost the top of the ticket was hoping for.  If the debates over the past couple of days move the needle favorably, it will have to be reflected in the next poll, YouGov or some other polling outfit working the field at this time.  Time is simply running short for the Democrats to stem this tide.

Here's the link to the executive summary, the full results, and the crosstabs, as well as the main page where those links are all together.

Update: Gadfly has more.

Smackdown

Chris Hooks at the Observer has the best take.

If you only have time to watch one of the three major debates this election cycle, you should make it tonight’s debate in Dallas. If you’re pulling for Wendy Davis to do well, you’ll enjoy it. But it’s worth watching because something strange happened tonight: Like the sky opening up after a monsoon season of turgid talking points, Wendy Davis and Greg Abbott actually took each other on tonight, to a certain extent. And against all odds, something approximating a discussion about policy took place.

[...]

Davis and Abbott grappled with each other on two wide fronts—the first, over ethics issues. Davis was asked about her legal work, which she rebuffed and went through the list of accumulated attack lines about Abbott’s tenure as AG. (She gave a stronger refutation of the conflict-of-interest charge after she was pressed.)

But when Abbott was asked (at about 19:45 in the video) about accusations his office helped hide incompetence and mismanagement with Gov. Perry’s Texas Enterprise Fund, he didn’t handle it very well. He offered that the recently issued audit of the fund didn’t single him out for criticism. “From the beginning of my campaign I’ve been questioning this very fund,” he said. (Perhaps, one suspects, because he knew how badly it was being run.) He tried to turn the question back to Davis, but she beat it back forcefully. As to the question of why Abbott’s office helped hide non-existing TEF applications from reporters, he couldn’t really answer.

The AG did not seem as prepared for tonight's skirmish, was knocked off balance several times, and the moderators -- while very aggressive in going after both candidates -- did not fluster Davis to the extent that they did Abbott. To say that this questioning format was an improvement over the first debate understates its value.

Many more of Davis' punches landed than they did a week ago, Abbott was less successful in batting them away, and the moderators piled on him.  And he couldn't handle it.

On the issues, Abbott and Davis made stark distinctions. Neither could really answer a question about how they’d fund their education plans, though Abbott at least had a dollar figure for student spending that made it appear that he had given it some thought. But Davis hit Abbott hard. It was ludicrous, she said, for Abbott to keep saying he would make Texas schools No. 1 while defending huge cuts to funding and refusing to commit to providing more resources.

“Mr. Abbott, you’re talking out of both sides of your mouth,” she said. “You say you want to make Texas No. 1 in education. You cannot accomplish that goal without making the appropriate investments.”

But the best part of the debate might have been the discussion over Medicaid expansion—at about 29:30 in the video above. Medicaid expansion is, quite literally, a matter of life and death, one of the most serious issues in the race. If Medicaid isn’t expanded in Texas, a quantifiable number of people will suffer and die—unnecessarily. But it hasn’t come up in the race as much as it might.

Abbott said he’d ask the feds to give Texas its Medicaid dollars as a block grant to be spent as the state sees fit, which few think is a realistic possibility. He assured listeners that he “wouldn’t bankrupt Texas” by imposing on Texas the “overwhelming Obamacare disaster.”

Davis laid out a forceful argument for Medicaid expansion. “I have to laugh when I hear Mr. Abbott talk about bankrupting Texas,” she said. “Right now Texans are sending their hard-earned tax dollars to the IRS, $100 billion of which will never come back to work for us in our state unless we bring it back. As governor, I will it bring it back. Greg Abbott’s plan is for you to send that tax money to California and New York.” Abbott’s rebuttal left Davis smiling from ear to ear. The whole fairly long exchange is worth watching.

The debate was pretty much everything the Davis campaign could have wanted.

Later today we should finally see the Texas Lyceum poll we've been waiting for.  Lyceum is nonpartisan, independent, and old-school; they survey adult citizens mostly by landline (which suggests an inherent Republican bias; we'll see).  If it shows Davis any closer than the closest she's been -- eight points behind -- then she'll get a much-needed shot in the arm.

More on the faceoff from the Dallas Morning Views (unimpressed) and Egberto Willies (partisan, impressed).  One excerpt from the second link...

The best illustration of Greg Abbott being beholding to the insurance industry came with a question about home insurance being too high. He could not say the rates were too high. Instead he said he did not look at the numbers. Wendy Davis said categorically that the rates were too high. She slammed Greg Abbott on his insurance industry relationship. “I don’t cotton to people who sell out our hard working Texans for the interest of big insurance companies,” Wendy Davis said. “Mr. Abbott on the other hand has taken enormous contributions from them.”

She went on to say that Greg Abbott most recently advocated a settlement with Farmers Insurance. The judge accused him of laying down to the insurance company and refused to accept the settlement because he was selling out the claimants.

Abbott had one moment when it looked as if he would turn the tables on Davis: in the anticipated discussion of the scandal swirling around the Texas Enterprise Fund, the attorney general accused the senator of profiting from an application (that didn't exist, as we know) to the TEF by virtue of the title company she once worked for having been involved with a sporting goods store (Cabela's, or 'Cabela' as Abbott refers to it) opening in Fort Worth.  She successfully cracked back again: "You're lying, and you know you are lying."  And explained precisely how he was lying.

It seemed to this watcher as if Greg Abbott thought he was gleefully springing a trap, only to have it snap back around his neck, a la Elmer Fudd.

Game over.  Greg Abbott's lifetime of corruption and fraud was exposed and laid bare.  We'll have to wait and see how much it slows his march roll to the Governor's Mansion.

The HouChron also fact-checked.  Also not good for Abbott.

Update: More from Trail Blazers on both the debate and the Lyceum poll.