Very interesting. While Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick (R-Midland) continues to try and run Davis over with the bus he threw her under, the rest of the world continues to recognize her talents–and ethics.

More from the Court’s announcement below the fold:

Under its charge, the Task Force to Ensure Judicial Readiness in Times of Emergency will identify existing gaps in court security, abilities to operate and other preparedness functions and response policies, procedures, and programs within the Texas judiciary. It will develop an interim plan to fill gaps it identifies in the beginning, then design emergency an management program, oversee it and work with court officials and others outside the judicial system to install it.

“Normal court operations may be at risk during an emergency,” Chief Justice Wallace B. Jefferson said. “Our courts must able to quickly deploy personnel, equipment, vital records and technological support so that the rule of law is preserved and substantial rights are protected.”

Denise Davis of Austin, special counsel with the Baker Botts law firm, will chair the task force. Justice Don Willett will be the Court’s liaison.

“Emergency preparedness is a critical and challenging issue facing our court system today,” Davis said. “Having worked in all branches of state government for some 14 years, and now in private practice, I am prepared to accept this unique challenge that affects all aspects of the judiciary.”

The planning will include developing response plans for adoption by individual courts that would continue operations in the event of hurricanes, pandemics, violence, terrorism and threats to computer systems. Task force members will identify ways to ensure that response plans adopted by Texas courts are consistent with regional and statewide procedures, that plans are tested and that court staffs and emergency response teams are trained.

“This task force will ensure that the Texas justice system stands strong and withstands any crisis that erupts,” Justice Willett said.

The 16-member task force will plan for simulated-disaster exercises and will update and modify existing procedures.

The first task force meeting is scheduled December 13.

Davis, of course, has previously worked for the court. Her name, interestingly enough, has also been mentioned as that of a “dream candidate” for SCOTX on the Democratic ticket because of her experience with the court.

Tags: Denise+Davis, Tom+Craddick

Technorati Tags Denise Davis

Though just nine pages long, this brief carries unusual heft with the nine justices. Since 2001 they have taken $1.7 million from the trade groups, affiliated companies and law firm that filed it. When combined with the $307,612 that the justices have taken from defendants and defense attorneys in the BP case, Lord Browne’s briefs come before the court stuffed with $2 million.

Here is how that breaks down:

Note: Justice O’Neill has recused herself from the BP case.
*Includes $350 from the Holman Firm, which represents BP plaintiffs.

Breakdown of the Campaign Funds
Shadowing Lord Browne’s Case

Source: Texans for Public Justice
from Texas Ethics Commission filings.

Tags: BP, British+Petroleum, John+Browne

According to the information from the listserv, APD has been given access to computer files of Austin Energy and is conducting raids on homes with what they classify as high electricity usage in attempts to find Austinites growing marijuana

This story is unverified, but we’re reposting it in hopes we can flesh out whether or not this is true:

I live in Austin Texas and the police have signed an agreement with the local utility company Austin Energy. They now have their own account login that they use without getting a subpoena. The narcotics department is using this to data mine the utility records for high utility usage. This in my opinion is a warrant less search. This is enough for them to get search warrants for those residents looking for marijuana indoor grows. They have performed dozens of raids based on this and are ramping up and expanding their task force due to the massive amounts of properties and $$$ seized in the raids. They are now getting the DEA involved which is splitting a slice of the pie because they have a lot less oversight and the overwhelming negative odds of winning at the Fed level.

If this does turn out to be true, the city of Austin, APD, and Austin Energy better go ahead and open their purse strings and get ready to pay out millions and millions of dollars to folks who were wrongfully searched and, quite possibly, even to people who were searched that were growing marijuana.

How anything like this is constitutional under the state or federal constitution is unheard of to me.

The National Organization of Women said Monday it was asking Congress to investigate whether U.S. District Judge Samuel B. Kent should be impeached and removed from the bench.

Kent’s reprimand made him unfit, especially when it comes to hearing sexual harassment cases, Kim Gandy, president of the half-million member organization, said in an interview from Washington, D.C.

“If he’s found to have committed sexual harassment himself, one can reasonably conclude that he does not consider that a serious issue,” Gandy said.

It’s an interesting argument.

The last time a federal judge was impeached was 1989. With a Democratic Congress in charge, we may very well see an impeachment in the near future. And, Democrats may wish to note that Kent was an appointee of the elder President Bush.

Now, it seems that a memo from the former Commissioner of Education may have provided the ammunition for a federal judge to declare the law unconstitutional:

….The question was whether legislators intended the law to reintroduce prayer in schools.

The Texas law specifies that students may “reflect, pray, meditate, or engage in any other silent activity.”

The state argued there was a secular purpose to the law, while the plaintiffs argued the law is unconstitutional and the statute’s inclusion of the word “pray” showed religious intent.

“It’s your burden to prove it’s a sham,” U.S. District Judge Barbara Lynn told the plaintiffs, while telling the state that it needed to prove the law’s intent was secular.

Mr. Croft and his wife, Shannon, sued the Carrollton-Farmers Branch school district and Gov. Rick Perry last year after their son’s teacher at Rosemeade Elementary School in Carrollton informed children that the minute was a “time to pray,” then bowed her head and clasped her hands in prayer.

[...]

During the hearing, Judge Lynn questioned a directive issued by the Texas Education Agency’s former commissioner, Shirley Neeley, to the state’s public schools on Oct. 10, 2006 – after the Crofts’ lawsuit was filed – explaining how to carry out the law and its secular reasons.

“The moment of silence statute was passed to encourage thoughtful contemplation at the start of the school day, to promote patriotism through the students’ quiet reflection following the pledges of allegiance, and to protect individual religious freedom,” Dr. Neeley said in the memo.

In that memo, Dr. Neeley also argued that the minute is calming at a time when students are confronted with violence and that the “air of solemnity” fosters discipline.

Mr. Cruz used the same arguments in his defense of the statute, prompting the judge’s questions.

“The timing of this letter providing a secular purpose is troubling to me,” Judge Lynn said.

In that memo, Dr. Neeley noted that teachers and administrators should neither “encourage nor discourage students from choosing on their own to pray during this moment” or favor students who do pray.

The judge noted that while Texas’ legislative history was not as extreme as it was when the Supreme Court ruled against Alabama’s minute of silence law in 1985, there also wasn’t a clear secular reason for the amendment.

There was no clear secular reason for the amendment. There was never any study I was aware of that points to the “minute of silence” having any actual positive impact on students. Clearly, and especially in light of Neely’s memo, it appears that even the judge realizes the state crossed into a very gray area for purely religious purposes.

Too, it appears the same folks will be challenging the idiotic modifications to the pledge to the Texas flag:

Arguments over a lawsuit challenging Texas’ minute of silence law opened in federal court Tuesday in Dallas with the plaintiff revealing a new suit, this time against the state’s pledge.

David Wallace Croft, who identifies himself as an atheist and a humanist, said his latest lawsuit against the state challenges the addition of the words “under God” in the Texas pledge. Legislators approved the wording change this past session. Copies of the lawsuit weren’t immediately available.

I’m not an atheist, but I cannot stand the modification of state and law and symbols simply to please the Religious Right. It’s pointless and discriminates against many Texans who don’t hold those same beliefs.

But, as may things with Republicans, it has:

The state’s top law firms and their attorneys donated $447,000 to help Texas Supreme Court Justice Nathan Hecht defend himself against charges that he abused his judicial office to promote Harriet Miers, his one-time girlfriend, for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.

The biggest donors were the firm Vinson & Elkins and its attorneys at $30,000. Baker Botts and its employees, including former Texas Supreme Court Justice Tom Phillips, kicked in another $26,000, according to Texas Ethics Commission reports filed Sunday by Justice Hecht.

Both Houston-based law firms routinely practice in front of the Texas Supreme Court, the state’s highest civil court.

Locke Liddell & Sapp, the Dallas law firm that Ms. Miers returned to this year after serving as President Bush’s White House counsel, contributed $25,100 to Justice Hecht’s legal defense fund.

Justice Hecht successfully fought a State Commission on Judicial Conduct sanction alleging he improperly used his official position to promote Ms. Miers.

On another interesting note, it seems Hecht has sided with his contributors a whopping 89 percent of the time when it came to pending litigation before the court:

In all signed opinions issued since March, Justice Hecht sided with these large donors to his personal legal defense fund a staggering 89% of time. In only one case of the nine cases involving parties who contributed to his defense did Hecht vote against the interests of his donors.

Hecht, of course, has been criticized for not recusing himself from cases his donors participated in. I’d imagine, however, if he did that, he probably wouldn’t have been involved in many cases.

From a Press Release of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund:

Last week, MALDEF filed a lawsuit in federal district court challenging the exclusion of certain military veterans from the Texas Hazelwood Act. The Hazelwood Act provides military veterans a tuition exemption at Texas public colleges and universities throughout the State. However, veterans who were legal permanent residents when they entered the military are being denied the exemption, including those veterans who subsequently became citizens during wartime and thus served as citizens in defense of the United States.  The Plaintiffs in this lawsuit include two honorably-discharged Texas veterans who are naturalized U.S. citizens as well as the American GI Forum, the Latino veteran’s organization formed after World War II to oppose discrimination.

Prior to 2006, the Hazelwood Act provided a tuition exemption to all honorably discharged veterans who served during combat regardless of citizenship status when they entered the military. In 2005 the Texas Attorney General issued an opinion defining the phrase “citizen of Texas” as used in the Hazlewood Act to mean a person living in the state of Texas and a U.S. citizen.  The application for the Hazlewood Act was changed in response to the Attorney General Opinion and the new application instructs veterans who were not U.S. citizens when they entered the military that they are ineligible for the exemption and that there is no need for them to complete the application.

The lawsuit seeks to provide an equal opportunity to veterans who entered the military as legal permanent residents. In 2005, nearly 9,000 veterans benefited from the tuition exemption.

From the Chron:

Hispanic civil rights groups are railing against the state’s denial of Hazelwood Act college benefits to thousands of mostly Hispanic Texas veterans because of their legal status.

The League of United Latin American Citizens joined the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund’s federal lawsuit against the state, which was filed in San Antonio Thursday. Houston’s LULAC leaders today asked that veterans who were legal permanent residents when they enlisted come forward to join their suit.

“Thousands of soldiers are coming back and are being blind-sided by the fact that they will not get this benefit,” said Jose L. Jimenez, Jr., LULAC’s district director in Houston.

He said measures to make legal residents eligible for the college benefits, sponsored by Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, and Rep. Rick Noriega, D-Houston, failed during the last Legislature session.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Raul Dominguez and Naser Alzer, both honorably discharged veterans and the American GI Forum of Texas, a veterans advocacy group. Both plaintiffs are college graduates who have exhausted their GI Bill money. They now want to seek master’s degrees.

The suit seeks to reverse some veterans exclusion from the benefits of the Hazelwood Act, which exempts qualified Texas veterans and dependents from all tuition and fee charges, except property deposit fees and student services fees at state colleges and universities. Nearly 9,000 veterans benefited from the Hazelwood exemption in fiscal year 2005, according to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.

Before 2006, public institutions in Texas gave the Hazelwood benefit to all qualifying veterans regardless of whether they were U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents when they entered the military. The change came from an August 2005 attorney general’s opinion saying the Hazelwood Act phrase “citizen of Texas” should be interpreted as a person who lives in the state and is a U.S. citizen.

This means that, in addition to forcing the State Office of Administrative Hearings to reconsider its docket on the cases relating to the plants, tomorrow’s scheduled hearining has been halted, and that Governor Perry’s Executive Order allowing the fast-tracking has been struck down.
Moreover, the judge, in a letter sent to attorneys today, said that he believed that coal plant opponents would prevail in showing that Texas Governor Rick Perry lacked the authority to “fast-track” the permitting process for the plants.

I expect the state to appeal this fairly quickly.

Bradley Clark over at Texas Law Blog (one of our favorite law blogs), discusses a recent opinion from the Court of Criminal Appeals on the law passed a few sessions ago that addresses things that can obscure your license plate. Of course, car dealers render millions of Texans every year in violation of this one with those little plate holders advertising their dealership, though most Texans are none the wiser.

Bradley notes:

Judge Cochran correctly concluded that the majority decided the legal question correctly (i.e., that it is a violation of State law) but that section 502.409(a)(7)(B) “is an uncommonly bad law…because it allows the police to arbitrarily stop, ticket, arrest, and search any person who is driving a car whose license plate frame covers up any portion of that plate’s design.” (emphasis added). And after taking the very unusual position of telling the State Legislature that this section is an “uncommonly bad law,” Judge Cochran goes further and points out that members of the Legislature (as well as members of the Judiciary) are entitled to “special” licenses plates that don’t have all the design work that your’s and mine have and yet the same license plate frame which would obscure our license plate will not obscure their’s.

Now that is amusing and important. I’m kind of shocked at seeing this language from a court of appeals that, on more weighty matters like, oh, say the death penalty, is a national laughing stock:

because it allows the police to arbitrarily stop, ticket, arrest, and search any person who is driving a car whose license plate frame covers up any portion of that plate’s design

While I agree with it being an uncommonly bad law, there are other uncommonly bad laws that haven’t received quite this spirited defense-of-liberties response that this one warranted. Indeed interesting.

Here is what the Plaintiffs have to say:

“We feel very much at a disadvantage,” said Katrina Baecht, a member of Citizens Organizing for Resources and Environment, a group fighting TXU Corp.’s proposed Valley coal-burning plant in Fannin County north of Dallas. “If we had time to learn about it and get the information and assemble our case, we would feel that our rights were being protected.”

Of course, Camp Perry predictibly treats the lawsuits like a speedbump in a mall parking lot:

Robert Black, Mr. Perry’s spokesman, said the governor properly used his executive authority to speed up state hearings and try to get new power plants permitted and built.

“I feel confident that that case will be well made by the [Texas] attorney general,” Mr. Black said. “These things need to get started.”

That remains to be seen. The separation of the judiciary (even the “administrative judiciary”) from undue pressure by the executive is a fairly straightforward thing.

Tags: Rick+Perry, Coal+Power+Plant, Texas+Administrative+Law, TXU

And, of course, many include urban counties and rural counties with no real balance with regard to the actual population of the districts. In the recent past, some counties were even in two appellate districts simeltaniously.

Wile some may tout appointing judges as a good way to fix the problems with many of Texas’ appeallate courts which have started to tilt very far to the right, I’d advocate simply splitting some of the districts. They are huge. Many have somewhat odd county combinations.

Perhaps some change might make courts that more reflect the makeup of their areas, unlike what has happened with the 3rd Court in Austin over the past few years, which has tilted rightward at an astonishing pace:

The GOP maintained its 4-2 majority on the Austin-based 3rd Court of Appeals as three incumbent Republicans and Democratic civil lawyer Diane Henson earned six-year terms, according to unofficial final results posted Wednesday after the vote counting stretched into the early morning hours.

Justice David Puryear, a former misdemeanor prosecutor and trial judge who has served on the court since 2000, defeated Democrat Mina Brees, 56, an Austin civil lawyer, for Place 5 on the court, which reviews civil and criminal cases.

While Brees had some of her own difficulties late in the game (including that her son, NFL star Drew Brees, evidently decided to play the role of total jackass during the campaign over advertisements), it’s difficult to run a campaign for court of appeals seats that stretch across huge swaths of Texas and are little understood by the electorate.

If these courts were situated around smaller areas, they would perhaps be more relevant to the people, more prone to have oral argument on more cases, and cases would speed through the system more quickly.

While Republicans will claim that the cost of this would be too significant, I’d tend to disagree. I think it could be managed.

Rove wanted someone who knew about Miers’ faith, and Hecht and Miers had attended an evangelical Christian church in Dallas for years, so Hecht said he agreed to answer reporters’ questions.
Click to learn more…

“It wasn’t, ‘Can you go out and use your position to support this person?’” Hecht said during the tribunal called because he is appealing his admonition by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct over his comments on Miers.

In May, the Texas Judicial Conduct Commission admonished Hecht, calling his endorsement of Miers’ nomination improper. Hecht told the White House staff to directall media inquiries about Miers career to him, and gave about 120 newspaper, radio and television interviews.

Under Commission rules, judges are not allowed to lend their office’s prestige to boost the private interests of themselves or others, or to use their names to endorse candidates for office.
Hecht doesn’t think his actions qualify and that the rules violate his right to free speech:

Later Tuesday, after playing a videotape in which Hecht was interviewed on C-SPAN, Greenwald asked Hecht if he thought he sounded like Miers’ spokesman. Hecht denied that, saying he was simply listing her qualifications because Supreme Court nominees don’t give media interviews.

Hecht also said he talked to reporters to give information about Miers, not to endorse her. He said he was called upon because he had known Miers for 30 years, not because he was a judge.

“I didn’t think it had much value in New York and it had zero value in Washington and California, and people in Texas had already made up their mind,” he said.

The tribunal has already denied motions by the commission to block or limit testimony from Hecht’s witnesses, which could include U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., whose testimony has been videotaped, and former Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Tom Phillips.

Miers, still serving as White House counsel, is on the witness list for the commission. Its executive director, Seana Willing, said Monday that she did not know if Miers would appear.

The commission does not have the authority to subpoena witnesses outside the state. Willing declined to say if the commission asked Miers to appear at the proceedings.

Federal District Judge Janis Jack has chastied Abbott for sending four armed agents to a private, federally sanctioned depsitory in Corpus Christi last month to sieze thousands of records held for the federal courts.

The New York Sun notes Jack was quite peeved at Abbott and his office:

“The arrogance of taking those documents from a federal court-supervised depository is astounding,” an audibly seething Judge Jack said during a conference call last Friday with lawyers involved in the case. “The attorney general of the state of Texas has exhibited a total disregard for the rule of law by doing this.”

Abbott was interested in the records as a result of an opinion Jack issued last year that prompted investigations by a congressional committee, federal prosecutors in New York, Abbott’s office.

The Sun cites court records that say Abbott’s aides appeared at the Corpus Christi depository on June 23 and used a grand jury subpoena to seize all of the original X-rays gathered by Judge Jack’s court:

“I was informed by the lead investigator that if the original X-rays were not turned over immediately that I could be arrested,” the custodian of the records, Gary Cosgrove, said in a an affidavit.

According to court records, Judge Jack learned of the seizure on July 5 and ordered the attorney general’s office to return the records by noon the following day. The state officials brought about 40 boxes back, but Mr. Cosgrove told Judge Jack last week that 152 X-rays had disappeared.

“All I can say is I can vouch to the court that this office does not have those X-rays,” an attorney for the state, Lance Kutnick, told the judge.

“Well, I imagine you don’t, but in the meantime, because of what you’ve done, they’re gone,” Judge Jack said, according to an audio recording of the session. “These are people’s personal X-rays that are absolutely vital to investigations of this case, vital to the people involved in this case, and because of the attorney general of the State of Texas’s malfeasance, they’re gone.”

Judge Jack acknowledged that she was aware of the state probe, but she said no one told her about plans to seize records. She said Mr. Abbott’s aim was “clearly to get an oar in the water” in a matter already under investigation by federal law enforcement and the Congress.

Judge Jack has ordered the Justice Department and the appropriate lawmakers be informed about the episode. “It may be a criminal matter,” she said.

Still more from the Sun:

Mr. Kutnick told Judge Jack that he had concerns about seizing the records but that the decision to do so “was made way above my level.” He said he did not know precisely who made the decision.

According to Texas Lawyer, which has a much better take on the situation than the Dallas Morning News, the lawsuit is basically alleging three things:

1.) The final canvass of the primary election results by the Republican Party of Texas does not include legal votes cast for Smith in at least seven Texas counties: Armstrong, Cass, Childress, Dimmit, Kent, Limestone and Lyon.

2.) The final canvass includes illegal votes for Willett in Galveston.

3.) Final canvass does not include legal votes cast in Tarrant and Gregg counties.

A Wikipedia entry on Smith also makes further allegations related to problematic vote counts:

Other irregularities were also alleged in Winkler County in West Texas as well. Official returns gave Willett a 273-0 advantage in Winkler County. In 2004, however, Smith had beaten opponent Paul Green, 468-249, and in 2002, he had defeated Xavier Rodriguez in the county, 260-92. Therefore, the 273-0 tally raises suspicion.

The magazine also has these comments from legendary Texas election lawyer Buck Wood:

Randall “Buck” Wood, an Austin election law attorney who has represented clients in election contests since the 1970s, says it will be hard for Smith to prevail.

“I think it’s a real shot in the dark for Steve [Smith],” Wood says. “I’m not saying it’s impossible. He may stumble on to something.”

Smith filed the lawsuit on March 31, the deadline for him to take action to contest the election under Texas law.
I’m not familar with the uproar about Galveston or Gregg Counties, but you will recall that in Tarrant County, a “programming glitch” reportedly caused some ballots to be counted as many as six times, a problem for which the company’s voting machine vendor, Hart-Intercivic has taken the blame.After the correction of the results, Willet’s lead shrunk significantly. Smith maintains he took more than 38 percent of the vote in Tarrant County.
Via DMN:

“In a race this close, we think it’s more important than ever that every single vote be counted correctly,” said David Rogers, Mr. Smith’s campaign manager.

Mr. Rogers said the lawsuit has a “1 in 5 chance” of succeeding. He said more results would have to change in Tarrant County for Mr. Smith to win.

Jeff Fisher, executive director of the Texas Republican Party, said he did not believe there were any more problems in Tarrant County. He said Mr. Smith’s lawsuit would not change the election’s results.

The lawsuit also says that the Republican Party’s statewide canvass – the final tally of votes – did not include seven counties. Mr. Fisher said there are very few votes in those counties. Gov. Rick Perry appointed Justice Willett to the court in August.