Mike Thomas of Rhetoric & Rhythm looks at a week’s worth of opinion columns from the San Antonio Express-News and determines there is a nearly three-to-one imbalance of conservative/Republican columns compared to liberal/Democratic ones.
On Bluedaze, TXsharonbusts the myths that Natural Gas is cleaner, that shale drilling will make us safer, and that Domestic Drilling can make us Energy Independent.
McBlogger takes a look at the latest Republican fundraising pitch and finds that it’s only appealing only to the same geriatric patients who are McThuselah’s base. And those elephants are very tacky.
Libby Shaw puts the pieces together for us over at TexasKos in his dairy Military Contractors Charge U.S. Taxpayers $85 Billion. Not only are we NOT saving money by outsourcing military support functions, we are pissing off people worldwide. Worst of all? Eisenhower’s worst fear has come to pass, the MIC is real , alive and in control….
[The statement below is issued in response to a document that has been circulating around the state today. The document (.pdf) is a memorandum of recommendations by a Texas Ethics Commission task force for potential recommendations the agency may elect to make to the Texas Legislature.]
AUSTIN–Vince Leibowitz, Chair of the Texas Progressive Alliance, issued the following statement concerning the Texas Ethics Commission’s recently distributed recommendation concerning blogs:
“Regulating Texas blogs would be regulation with out representation. Regulation that doesn’t protect the rights of citizens is not good government.
For a state agency that twice ruled it was appropriate for a trustee of the Texas Employee Retirement System to disclose a monetary gift from swiftboater Bob Perry as simply a “check,” to suggest that blogs should be subject to regulation is absurd.
Blogs are a form of political communication that should, by and large, remain unregulated. Independent citizen journalists and bloggers perform a valuable function in the political arena by prompting and promoting political discourse–on both sides of the aisle.
It is my hope that the Texas Legislature, in addressing this issue, will determine it is in the best interest of free speech to leave blogs alone. Blogs and bloggers should not be subject to political advertising regulations. Blogs clearly operated by political campaigns on campaign websites, or the blogs of political action committees, would be the singular exceptions to this rule.
One concern, however, with regard to encouraging the Legislature to adopt regulations similar to the FEC rules on blogs, does arise. Bloggers and citizen journalists in Texas do not yet have protection under the Privileged Matters Clause of the Texas Civil Practices and Remedies Code, and currently aren’t treated on equal footing with the traditional media by Texas Law.
The “Privileged Matters” clause of Chapter 73 of the Texas Civil Practices & Remedies Code (found at Sec. 73.002) protects newspapers and other forms of media from, among other things, libel lawsuits when it comes to “reasonable and fair comment on or criticism of an official act or public official or other matter of public concern published for general information.” Under a strict interpretation of this section, bloggers and citizen journalists operating on their own aren’t protected.
In addition, any bill the Legislature may consider as a result of this TEC recommendation must be carefully drafted to avoid a couple of pitfalls. Number one, because an independent citizen journalist or blogger accepts advertising on their site, they shouldn’t be subject to any different set of rules than a blogger who doesn’t accept paid advertising. Number two, the Texas Legislature should consider appropriate action to ensure that responsible bloggers operating under the protection of a pseudonym are adequately protected. One Texas appeals court has already noted just how important allowing bloggers to keep their anonymity is to the “exchange of ideas and robust debate on matters of public concern.”
If the legislature wants to consider regulating us–in any form–then they need to protect us. The Legislature considering, based on the TEC proposal, regulating blogs while not giving us statutory protection under the Privileged Matters Clause is putting the cart before the horse.”
The Texas Progressive Alliance (TexRoots.org) is the largest coalition of state-level political bloggers in America, representing more than 50 of Texas most widely read and highly respected political bloggers and citizen journalists.
State Senator John Carona (R-Dallas) has been linked to a Houston condominium development that could collapse any day and a controversy surrounding what exactly happened to maintenance fees. Carona is CEO of Associa, a property management group that managed the development until earlier this year.
Now, residents are having to move out and are being forced to pay their monthly maintenance fee assessments for the property as well as property taxes (not to mention rent on another dwelling) while trying to figure out what to do next.
Now it seems as though The Aging Prom Queen (or at least her campaign) has thrown a bit of a hissy about which reporters are “favored” to cover the tour.
The word flying around the Capitol city this morning is that Hutchison invited the Austin American-Statesman and other Texas papers to send reporters to follow her on the tour.
As told to Capitol Annex, the Statesman advised Hutchison’s campaign that Washington correspondent Jason Embry would be joining the tour, since he was in Houston over the weekend. However, the Hutchison campaign told the Statesman that the invitation was only for Statesman reporter Gardner Selby, and nobody else. Since Selby was not available to cover the tour, the tour is without a representative from the Statesman.
We’ve heard this from several reliable sources, and have contacted a couple more to verify this. We’ll let you know what we hear.
United States Senators get noticed by the media, that’s understandable and expected. But why, in an election year, is the media taking more notice of Cornyn than ever before–while not paying nearly as much attention either to his opponent or any other Texas race on the ballot.
The worst offender is, quite simply, the Houston Chronicle. In the last six days, Cornyn has received an obscene amount of coverage from the second-largest circulation daily newspaper in Texas (in fact, the 12th largest circulation daily in America).
Since August 8, Cornyn has been featured prominently in four Chronicle news stories (one of which was entirely about him). In the last 24 hours alone, Cornyn has been the subject of at least three staff-writen blog posts on Chronicle blogs.
We’ll run them down for you:
Cornyn Praises Healthcare In Texas. (Aug. 12, 2008 on the web for the August 13 print edition). This complete fluff piece was about a speech Cornyn gave to a Republican club in Houston. Last we checked, the Chronicle doesn’t cover every speech challenger Rick Noriega (D-Houston) gives to Democratic clubs, so what is so special about this particular speech? And, more importantly, what about Cornyn praising tort reform is newsworthy?
Licensing Of New Bus Companies Halted. (August 13, 2008). Cornyn manages to feature prominently in this story because he met with victims of a recent bus crash. We’ll grant that being worth a mention in the newspaper. However, U.S. Congressman Ted Poe (R-Beaumont) also met with the families along with Cornyn. However, only Cornyn gets four paragraphs (red in the excerpt below) in which to run his mouth:
The relatives met with U.S. Sen. John Cornyn and U.S. Rep. Ted Poe on Tuesday to ask for higher motor coach and school bus safety standards. They urged the Texas congressmen to support a bill co-sponsored by U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, that would require motor coaches to have lap shoulder seatbelts and laminated glass.
The investigation continues into the Sherman bus crash that killed 17 Vietnamese Catholics on their way to a religious festival in Missouri on Friday. Six of the survivors, including the bus driver, remained in critical condition Tuesday.
Cornyn said the two tragedies demonstrate the importance of addressing bus safety as quickly as possible to prevent more accidents.
“These parents have undergone tremendous heartache, yet they continue to fight tirelessly to improve bus safety standards in Texas and across the country,” Cornyn said. “Whether it’s in the area of manufacturing, licensing, or law enforcement, bus safety reform is an issue I will push the Senate to review immediately and comprehensively.”
Cornyn added that it’s important to prosecute those responsible for the Sherman accident.
“If that means someone has to go to jail, then so be it,” Cornyn said. (The guilty must) be held responsible to the fullest extent of the law.”
Nothing Cornyn said was unique or newsworthy. State Sen. Kim Brimer (R-Fort Worth) has said the same thing. All the Chronicle did was give Cornyn an opportunity to claim he’ll push for bus safety. If the Chronicle wanted someone to talk about bus safety, why not ask U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, since she is the author of the bill and is from Texas as well. Yet the Chronicle gives Cornyn almost as much ink as the head of the Federal Motor Carrier Administration. Why?
Sources have been telling Capitol Annex for months that Republicans in the Texas House of Representatives–led by ultra-conservative wingnuts like Reps. Bill Zedler, Phil King, and Linda Harper-Brown–will be unveiling a “Contract with Texans” modeled on Newt Gingrich’s infamous “Contract With America” from 1994.
Today, we received confirmation from a couple of key sources that the “Contract With Texans” plan is, indeed, part of House Republicans’ strategy plan for maintaining the narrow hold they have on that chamber.
Do you know that you can 
