"We close at five." It took these four words for Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Presiding Judge Sharon Keller to deny a convicted killer's last appeal. On September 25, the same day the U.S. Supreme Court granted a writ of certiorari to a Kansas inmate questioning the constitutionality of lethal injection, Michael Richard was scheduled to be executed. The attorneys for the Texas Defenders Service requested that the court clerk's office remain open 20 minutes after the 5 p.m. closing time because their computers had crashed. Keller shocked the world by closing the court's office at 5 p.m. on an execution day without even consulting any of the other judges of the court. As a result, a man was executed without being able to have the merits of his last appeal considered by the criminal justice system.
So what is the scorecard for that magic elixir of politics, privatization? It has been over 25 years since St. Ronnie first revealed to us the holy writ that "Government was not the solution, it is the problem." Let's take stock:
In Texas, the energy deregulation idea? Busted. We have some of the highest average prices for energy in the nation.
From 2000 to June of this year, the average electric rate in Texas rose 56 percent, more than in all but three states, according to the most recent nationwide federal government figures.
"It's like there's a penalty for being a Texan when it comes to your light bill," said Mike Coleman, a Cypress homeowner who also is responsible for the electric bills at an industrial equipment supplier with offices in four states.
Supporters of deregulation say it didn't cause the price increases. They blame the steep hike in the price of natural gas, a key power plant fuel, just as deregulation took effect.
Sibley, a Waco Republican who left the Legislature in 2002 and now lobbies for the electric industry, said deregulation has had successes, including empowering consumers to shop for better rates.
He said the law also has shifted the burden of risk for building new power plants to investors from consumers, who were hit with rate increases to pay for nuclear power plants in the 1980s.
But the very structure of Texas' deregulated market exposes customers to the full impact of rising natural gas prices more than in other states, or even in parts of Texas still served by regulated electric companies, municipally owned utilities or electric cooperatives.
The 25 percent of Texans living in those regulated markets generally pay less than rates available in markets that have been opened to competition.
Oh joy, oh happy day! Ding dong the witch is dead!
The NYT is reporting that Alberto "Abu/Fredo" Gonzales has resigned from his post as the US Attorney General. The official announcement will come at 9:30CST, at which time I expect Gonzo to announce that he can't recall ever being attorney general.
The Texas GOP is just as crazy as we have always known they were.
linkFormer state Rep. Talmadge Heflin, a Houston Republican who served two decades before losing a re-election bid three years ago, was hired Monday as executive director of the Texas GOP.
"Talmadge Heflin has over 25 years of conservative leadership and experience as both a leader in the Texas Legislature and a businessman," Republican Party Chairman Tina Benkiser said.
Heflin succeeds Jeff Fisher, a former Van Zandt County judge who will continue as an adviser to the party, Benkiser said.
Heflin was a state lawmaker from 1983 to 2004, including a stint as the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.
In November 2004, he lost by 16 votes to political newcomer Hubert Vo, a Democrat who became the first Vietnamese to serve in the Texas House. An election recount showed Vo's victory margin over Heflin was 33 votes and Heflin challenged the results before the House. While Heflin gained 17 votes in the investigation, he withdrew his challenge in February 2005 to avoid the possibility of a bitter partisan fight.
He then lost once again to Rep. Vo in 2006 but not before applying for a job to head the Texas Lottery even though he had taken lots of money from gambling interest to help pay for his failed 2004 campaign.
The scandal around the Texas Youth Commission gets bigger and bigger. It now turns out Perry and the Republicans turned the system over to a company that has been sued and had sites closed in other states for the same type of abuse.
link DALLAS — Private contractors used by the Texas Youth Commission to house juvenile inmates have lost numerous contracts and had facilities closed in other states following allegations of neglect and physical and sexual abuse, according to a newspaper investigation.
The findings indicate additional problems for the troubled TYC, which is already undergoing sweeping reforms in the wake of a sex scandal in its state-run youth prisons and a possible coverup by agency officials.
According to a report published Sunday in The Dallas Morning News, companies running private juvenile facilities in Texas have faced lawsuits in other states and had facilities closed after investigators uncovered mismanagement and abuse of juvenile inmates.
"They are a much under-examined problem in the TYC system," said Scott Medlock, an attorney for the Texas Civil Rights Project
When Democratic Rep William Jefferson was recently indicted for accepting a 6-figure bribe from FBI undercover agents, Republicans in Washington were quick to pounce on the story and use it to question the ethics of the Democratic Party.
You can't blame them. After the numerous scandals they've had with Republican Congressmen over the past 3 or 4 years, they were downright giddy and grateful for Jefferson. And, yes, the major scandals ALL involved Republicans.
The list of scandals goes on and on and on and...well, you get the idea. It's a real shame the GOP has been so corrupt or they could've acted all holier than thou and could've used Jefferson like a hammer against the Dems. They did try for good measure to act offended, but like Paris Hilton's apology, people didn't buy it.
So they did the next best thing. They basically hoped to convince the public that Democrats were no better than Republicans when it came to corruption.
That strategy will work to some degree, but not everyone watches Faux News and not every American is lazy. You have got to be pretty brain-washed or lazy to think that one corrupt Democrat offsets all the sex, embezzlement, corruption, and bribery scandals have erupted in the GOP the last seven years.
The Democratic Party is not perfect, but the imbalance of scandals tilts so far against the GOP that it's kind of tough to sell that "politicians are all the same" crap.
A really neat posting lets us ask: leaving Iraq aside, ( a huge assignment I know) what is the most memorable FUBAR of this administration? Will we quickly forget and forgive?
link By my rough, conservative calculation - feel free to add - there have been corruption, incompetence, and contracting or cronyism scandals in these cabinet departments: Defense, Education, Justice, Interior, Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services, and Housing and Urban Development. I am not counting State, whose deputy secretary, a champion of abstinence-based international AIDS funding, resigned last month in a prostitution scandal, or the General Services Administration, now being investigated for possibly steering federal favors to Republican Congressional candidates in 2006. Or the Office of Management and Budget, whose chief procurement officer was sentenced to prison in the Abramoff fallout. I will, however, toss in a figure that reveals the sheer depth of the overall malfeasance: no fewer than four inspectors general, the official watchdogs charged with investigating improprieties in each department, are themselves under investigation simultaneously - an all-time record.
Wrongdoing of this magnitude does not happen by accident, but it is not necessarily instigated by a Watergate-style criminal conspiracy. When corruption is this pervasive, it can also be a byproduct of a governing philosophy.
(Healing thoughts and prayers needed ASAP, yall. See the comments for an update. =( - promoted by annatopia)
The contamination has spread to the human food supply. Poultry in Missouri and pigs in several states are now being tested for contamination. When is this going to end?
Claude, my fourteen year old baby, threw up Monday night. We didn't think much of it because, well, cats puke sometimes. But with all the recall mess, I watched him very closely Tuesday.
Tuesday he spent the day curled up in a corner of our bedroom. When I felt his ears and throat, he was very very warm. I tried to get him to eat, and he wouldn't. He also threw up the water he drank.
He's got hyperthyroid and was just at the vet a few weeks ago, where his bloodwork was in the normal range. This morning I dropped him off at Banfield, where he's been treated for years. Banfield's done a spectacular job of dealing with this recall, so I trust that they'll figure out what is going on.
I got a call from them a few minutes ago. They're putting him on an IV because they're trying to get a urine sample.
He eats Royal Canin Calorie Counter prescription dry food. Royal Canin has recalled several brands of prescription dry cat food in Canada, but not the US.
I know that Branded Brazoria already lost a beloved pet to this recall. If Claude is sick due to his dry good, I just don't know what I'm going to do. Pet owners, please go read today's recall update over at Itchmo. It could save your pets' lives.
update: I want to add one more thing to this post. Pet Connections and KOPS are urging people effected by this recall to do a postcard blitz this weekend. Please see this post for details. I've also copied the info beneath the flip.
Johannesburg - Tests have confirmed that Vets Choice and Royal Canin dog and cat dry pet-food products contained corn gluten contaminated with melamine, says the manufacturer.
The contaminated corn gluten was delivered to Royal Canin by a South African third-party supplier and appears to have originated from China.
Those products subject to the present recall were manufactured by Royal Canin South Africa in its Johannesburg plant between March 08 2007 and April 11 2007 and were sold exclusively in South Africa and Namibia.
Although this developement is breaking halfway around the world, I'd suspect that we will soon see dry pet food recalls here in America.
At this point, like many pet owners, I'm banging my head up against the wall. I think we can assume that NO FOOD WITH WHEAT, CORN, OR RICE GLUTEN IS SAFE, regardless of whether it's fit for human or animal consumption.
This is Pebbles. Pebbles is a Yorkie from Los Angeles. About a week ago, the healthy seven year old began throwing up her Nutro dog food and became lethargic. A blood test on Friday confirmed she has renal failure, and she is currently awaiting a biopsy to determine whether she needs dialysis:
"It's just terrible to see her go through this," Pebbles owner, Jeff Kerner, said Wednesday. [...]
"Since getting this dog, I've gone through a divorce, I've moved away, my daughter has gone to college, I've remarried. Through it all, Pebbles has been there. I just pray to God I don't have to put a price on my dog's life."
Officials in LA county have thus far confirmed nine pet deaths resulting from the recall. Local media outlets across the country are reporting on pet deaths and illnesses associated with this recall, yet the national media continues to downplay this story.
My question is this: how many more pets have to die before this story gets the attention it deserves?
A Chicago woman sued Menu Foods on Tuesday, alleging the pet food manufacturer delayed announcing a recall of 60 million containers of dog and cat food despite knowing its products were contaminated and potentially deadly.
Dawn Majerczyk, 43, said her orange tabby, Phoenix, fell sick last week just two days after he ate a single package of Special Kitty. It is one of 95 cat and dog food brands recalled by Menu Foods of Canada. Friday's recall came two weeks after nine cats died during routine company taste tests of its products, the Food and Drug Administration said.
This is outrageous! MenuFoods knew this product was deadly as early as last month! I am absolutely floored that they allowed deadly products into the marketplace after animals died during internal testing.
A responsible company would have immediately halted distribution and issued a recall. A responsible company would publicly name it's wheat gluten supplier so that other companies could ensure their products are not tainted.
There is absolutely no justification for waiting for the public to begin complaining before recalling those deadly products. None whatsoever. And refusing to name the supplier of the bad wheat gluten is the height of corporate hubris and irresponsibility.
Well well well, so *this* is what happens when accountability is restored to government! The Conyers-led House Judiciary Committee has exercised their power of oversight:
House Democrats voted Wednesday to give their leaders the authority to force White House officials to testify on the firings of U.S. attorneys. [...]
The committees are considering using subpoenas to force Rove, Miers and their two deputies to reveal what they knew about the reasons behind the firings of at least seven U.S. attorneys.
The House Judiciary subcommittee vote Wednesday authorizes issuing of subpoenas, not the serving of them. That action would come later.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to follow suit tomorrow. Rove and Meiers were implicated in the prosecutor purge thanks to the document dumps provided to the Committee. And as PDiddie noted, while Nixon's gap was 18 minutes, the Bush document dump contained an 18 day gap:
(T)he emails released by the Justice Department seem to have a gap between November 15th and December 4th of last year. ...
The firing calls went out on December 7th. But the original plan was to start placing the calls on November 15th. So those eighteen days are pretty key ones.
This is going to get even uglier. It's suspected that Rove and Meiers are protecting Gonzales. Gonzales won't resign voluntarily. He's been with Bush since Bush's days playing Guvnuh here in Texas, and the Decider strongly stated his public support for Gonzo yesterday. Regardless of whether Gonzo lied under oath, it's going to take much more than a pesky little Constitutional crisis to force him out.
Earlier today, a friend asked me if I could give him the lowdown on the Prosecutor Purge scandal. It occurred to me that this is a complicated and ever-expanding story which hasn't been widely discussed in the Tex-o-Sphere. So beneath the fold I've attempted to put the scandal - which truly is looking as though it may be worse than Watergate - in a nutshell.
Why does it take a sex scandal for the media and the world to notice NASA? Pitiful. Both the actions of the astronaut who disgraced such a great institution as NASA and the media storm around the scandal. Where are they when NASA needs coverage of their experiments on lentils which can improve worldwide nutrition?
Why the heck does Sex get so much attention - if it's such a bad thing? A teacher sleeps with her 14 year old student and Nancy Grace plays the teacher's erotic video to the student on continuous loop on daytime television. Aren't young kids watching tv at that time? A gay Congressman has to molest young male high schoolers and a White House connected reverend has pay men for sex for conservatives to finally be disgusted with their Party. And one President almost gets impeached for having oral sex with an intern (and lying about it - because really, we expected politicians to tell the truth about something like that).
But God forbid we try our current Administration for (a) misleading us into war knowing their data was false, (b) committing treason for outing an anti-terrorism intelligence agent, (c) misleading Congress on the true cost of their Medicare package, (d) suppressing and finally threatening a government auditor ready to blow the whistle on that Medicare package, (e) breaking habeas corpus and Constitutionally guaranteed laws on our privacy and fundamental freedoms, and (f) misappropriating and possibly funneling BILLIONS of taxpayer dollars to politically connected individuals in Iraq. In fact, this adminstration could go through the whole alphabet in scandals and violations.
What that means is if conserva-nut Bob Perry gives $100,000 to his buddy, Bill Cerevaha, who oversees the $20 billion State Employees Retirement System, then all Bill has to do is to describe the donation, such as "check", on his disclosure forms. Nothing will indicate if Perry gave him a bucket or a bucket full of money. And that is EXACTLY the case that brought about this ruling.
How the hell is this ok? Well, it's not. Whether you are a Democrat or Republican or Independent (no, a real one, Kinky), today Texans just got sold out by the TEC. How does the group, whose motto is "Promoting Public Confidence in Government", inspire confidence in our officials if that government doesn't have to disclose anything?
"What the Ethics Commission has done is legalize bribery in the state of Texas. We call on the commission to resign en masse," said Tom "Smitty" Smith, who heads Texas Citizen, an Austin-based group that advocates for campaign finance reform.
That's exactly what should happen. In fact, we need to make public the votes, discover the motivations of each of the five who voted for this atrocity, and kick them off the "Ethics" board.
Now before you go screaming Fraud or think that I'm screaming it, hold on. We don't know what happened but for whatever reason District 13 had 18,382 fewer votes for the race than other races.
That's a 13% undercount which to give you a comparison, was SIX times the undercount in neighboring Manatee.
In other words, That's IMPOSSIBLE.
Voter Fraud is a term that's been a bit abused because there's voter fraud and then there are mistakes and inadequacies of the system. In this case, it could be just a poorly designed system.
That still doesn't excuse it because whether it's Election Fraud or a bad ballot (butterfly ballot) or poor programming, the People's Voice was not heard.
Typical of what happens when problems occur, those responsible are making excuses and hoping people just go away. Democrats are sending a team of lawyers but short of finding evidence of foul play, this race was decided not by the People - but by "Voting Irregularities" again.
Among the many tragedies resulting from 9/11, one of the saddest may be the thousands of firefighters and policmen and New York citizens who suffer from severe lung and respiratory problems after volunteering at Ground Zero.
As they risked their lives amidst falling buildings and debris, they did not consider the quality of the air around the World Trade Centers. Today those volunteers are suffering from serious health problems and it turns out the EPA knew about the dangers the air posed to our heros.
Two days after the attack, Republican EPA chief, Christine Todd Whitman, told everyone at ground zero, "We have not seen any reason — any readings that have indicated any health hazard."
Tons & tons of debris and asbestos just fell around you & you don't think there's any hazard? BULL.
On September 10 and 11, ABC will run a mockumentary about 9/11. It's written by a conservative, was distributed for advance screening to rightwing groups and blogs, and it places the blame for 9/11 on the Clinton administration - while giving Bush a free pass.
ABC has responded to the criticism by shutting down the movie's blog and ignoring calls from people intimately involved with 9/11 such as the Richard Clarke and members of the 9/11 Commission.
9/11 is too important an event in America's history for us to politicize it. We're not asking for and should never have "rightwing" or "leftwing" versions of such a tragic event.
Why should a conservative writer, who wrote "The Day Reagan was shot" and whom Rush Limbaugh calls "a friend of mine", be allowed to write a film on so important a political event without any checks and balance?
[Bush's] remarks came a day after the White House orchestrated an exceptionally aggressive campaign to tar opposition Democrats as weak on terrorism, knowing what Democrats didn't: News of the plot could soon break.
Bush isn't any good against terror, but Rove still knows how to abuse power to prop up a loser. This administration has failed against terrorism and has lost control of Iraq. The only thing left for them to do is abuse power to attack their political opponents.
This is Pebbles. Pebbles is a Yorkie from Los Angeles. About a week ago, the healthy seven year old began throwing up her Nutro dog food and became lethargic. A blood test on Friday confirmed she has renal failure, and she is currently awaiting a biopsy to determine whether she needs dialysis:
The 
