This is one of the stranger “draft somebody” movements I’ve seen. A movement has been building among local Republicans over the past few months to encourage Susan Reed to run for state attorney general in 2014. Reed, the hard-nosed, four-term Bexar County district attorney, would be the first female AG in the state’s history, a [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Attorney General’
Weekend legislative threefer
That sound you heard on Friday was Rick Perry stamping his feet if he doesn’t get his way. Gov. Rick Perry is warning state legislators that it could be a long, hot summer in Austin if they don’t pass his top priorities: funding water and transportation projects and cutting business taxes. With a month left [...]
Baby Bush ready to claim his birthright
Perhaps we should just skip straight to the coronation once George P. Bush figures out what office he wants. George Prescott Bush is gearing up to run for a little-known but powerful office in a state where his family already is a political dynasty and where his Hispanic roots could help extend a stranglehold on [...]
Is there more redistricting for Texas in the cards?
The short answer is it depends. For the most part, Republicans are content to keep the interim map used for the 2012 elections — if the courts allow it. “I don’t sense a lot of anxiousness from either the state or congressional side to open back up congressional redistricting,” said Chris Perkins, a GOP pollster [...]
Parties split on waiting for SCOTUS
Texas Redistricting: Lawyers for the Justice Department and intervenors in the Texas voter ID case told the court yesterday that the court should put off consideration of Texas’ claim that section 5 of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional until the Supreme Court decides the pending Shelby County v. Holder case next year. That case involves a [...]
DRT vs OAG: OAG wins
Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that the Daughters of the Republic of Texas have conceded in the fight over how the Alamo has been maintained. In a news release Tuesday, the Daughters acknowledged recent troubles at the shrine and vowed to use a critical report issued Nov. 20 by the Texas attorney general’s office [...]
DRT vs OAG
Nothing like a little holiday week controversy. A blistering report released Tuesday by the Texas attorney general’s office outlines a long list of problems and dysfunctions in the past management of the Alamo by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas. In a 38-page report to the Legislature, the attorney general’s office accuses the DRT [...]
Patrick wants AG opinion domestic partner benefits
Gotta keep an eye on those tricky gays and the people who want to treat them as equals. State Sen. Dan Patrick on Friday asked the Texas Attorney General’s Office to issue an opinion on whether government entities that provide domestic partner insurance benefits are violating the state constitution. Patrick, R-Houston, said his request was [...]
AG shuts down bogus charity museum
It’s an extremely rare privilege to point out something of actual positive value done by our Attorney General. The doors will finally close on the Texas Highway Patrol Museum in San Antonio, a charity that raised millions of dollars under the guise that the money would benefit state troopers and their families, yet spent less [...]
Is the Amazon deal with the state legal?
The Statesman raises a great question about the settlement deal between Amazon and the state of Texas that will get the online retailer to start collecting sales taxes in Texas while forgiving back taxes the state says it owes. But is it legal? Austin lawyer Buck Wood, a tax attorney and a former deputy comptroller [...]
Bench slaps come in threes
In addition to the tongue lashing they got from the DC Court in the voter ID preclearance trial, the Greg Abbott gang took fire from judges in two other cases recently. Trail Blazers has the highlights. First, some incredulity from the Court of Criminal Appeals: Last Wednesday, Solicitor General Jonathan Mitchell tried to convince the [...]
“Phantom” voters
This is a molehill, not a mountain. Sixteen small counties across Texas appear to have more registered voters on their rolls as of 2010 than qualified citizens of voting age – a phenomenon prompting conservative Washington, D.C., watchdog group to question whether the “overcounts” could raise the potential for election fraud. The Chronicle reviewed public [...]
More on those police “charities”
Nice story in the Statesman about those law enforcement charities that call you for donations. The first time he got the call last year, Rodney Shaheen thought one of his children had been in a bad car crash. The name on his phone said “TX State Troop,” and the caller claimed he was a state [...]
Ames Jones resigns from the Railroad Commission
We have our answer about how confident she was in her defense of that lawsuit. Elizabeth Ames Jones resigned from the Texas Railroad Commission on Monday to devote herself full time to running for state Senate District 25, she said in a statement. State Sen. Jeff Wentworth, whom she is trying to unseat in the [...]
Sonogram lawsuit appeal
The state’s appeal of the injunction granted against the awful sonogram law was heard in court, but there’s no indication yet when the court will issue a ruling. A three-judge panel from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals didn’t immediately rule on Texas Solicitor General Jonathan Mitchell’s request for them to lift a preliminary [...]
AG sues sham police charity
Good. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has sued officials with the nonprofit Texas Highway Patrol Association and officials with a museum the association operates in San Antonio, claiming they have defrauded consumers by soliciting donations to help families of fallen troopers but often using the contributions as a personal bank account. A 37-page lawsuit filed [...]
On voting rights
Attorney General Eric Holder was in Austin last week to give a speech on voting rights and the things the Justice Department is doing to protect them. No, the location was not an accident. Giving his most expansive speech on civil rights since taking office, the nation’s chief law enforcement officer declared that “we need [...]
Margins tax lawsuit goes to Supreme Court
Oral arguments for the lawsuit that claims the business margins tax is an unconstitutional income tax are being heard by the State Supreme Court this week. In a lawsuit filed in July, Allcat Claims Service LP , a Boerne insurance adjustment firm, said the margins tax runs afoul of a constitutional provision that requires the [...]
Sonogram law still blocked
Good. The Texas sonogram law, that was ruled unconstitutional before it could go into effect, will stay in legal limbo for the time being. U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks ordered the main provisions of the law were improper because they forced speech upon doctors, who could lose their license to practice medicine, if they failed [...]
TRO granted for redistricting plans
Texas Redistricting: The San Antonio panel this morning enjoined provisions of the Texas Election Code requiring counties to redraw precinct boundaries by October 1 and to issue new voter registration certificates to voters by December 6. The panel also enjoined implementation of Texas’ new state house and congressional maps on the grounds that the maps [...]
Beware the Texas Highway Patrol Association
A public service announcement from Grits for Breakfast: This morning Grits received a solicitation phone call from a telemarketer who said he was from the “Texas Highway Patrol,” calling because “we’ve lost two troopers recently” and they wanted to “raise money for their families.” “So you’re from the Department of Public Safety?,” I asked. He [...]
Taking aim at the Voting Rights Act
In responding to a petition by State Rep. Marc Veasey and State Sen. Wendy Davis to intervene against the state in its lawsuit to get the federal court to pre-clear the new maps, the Attorney General responded by saying that the Voting Rights Act is too big a burden for it to deal with. The [...]
AG rules Willingham case off limits for Forensic Science Commission
The last shovelful of dirt is thrown. The Texas Forensic Science Commission’s investigation of the science used to convict Cameron Todd Willingham — executed in 2004 for an arson that killed his three children — may be at an end after the state’s top attorney Friday ruled that the panel cannot consider evidence in cases [...]
Abbott takes his pro-pollution crusade to a new front
This is the sort of thing our Attorney General thinks is worth fighting for. Expanding on the push-and-pull between Washington and Texas on environmental regulation, the state’s attorney general has called federal regulations meant to cut greenhouse gases from auto tailpipe emissions unlawful. The federal government is pushing “hastily enacted, cascading regulations” on states and [...]
Time for the biennial attack on the Travis County DA
Every two years, some Republican legislators try to kill the Public Integrity Unit of the Travis County District Attorney’s office. An amendment tacked on to the House budget bill approved last week would shift roughly $3.4 million a year from the district attorney’s office to the Texas attorney general’s office. The funding shift would happen [...]
The end of the Willingham case for the Forensic Science Commission
Dave Mann reads the Willingham report from the Forensic Science Commission so you don’t have to. The commission’s nearly 50-page report—the product of a high-profile, frequently stalled investigation—is an odd mix. It documents at length the flawed state of fire investigation in Texas and details in general terms the kinds of outdated evidence that led [...]
Can we please get back to the basics?
The ongoing saga of the Texas Forensic Science Commission: Adding an unexpected twist to its investigation of the science used to convict and execute Cameron Todd Willingham for arson murder, the Texas Forensic Science Commission voted Friday to seek an attorney general opinion on the limits of its jurisdiction. The commission is examining allegations, made [...]
Amazon sues Texas
Game on. Four months after Texas officials told Amazon.com Inc. that it owes $269 million in uncollected sales taxes, the online retail giant has filed a lawsuit demanding that the comptroller’s office release the audit information it used in arriving at that amount. The lawsuit, filed Jan. 14 in Travis County District Court, argues that [...]
Austin gay divorce upheld
Gay divorce seekers are one for two in the state of Texas. Over the objections of state Attorney General Greg Abbott, an Austin appellate court has upheld the divorce of a lesbian couple married in Massachusetts. When a lower court granted their divorce in February of last year, Abbott’s office filed a petition to intervene in [...]
Abbott wants to block Austin gay divorce
Attorney General Greg Abbott is once again fighting to protect the sanctity of divorce in Texas. Texas law not only limits marriage to opposite-sex couples, it forbids any action — including divorce — that recognizes or validates a same-sex marriage obtained out of state, said James Blacklock, a lawyer in Attorney General Greg Abbott’s appellate [...]
Endorsement watch: And I hope for a pony, too
I am not surprised that the Chron has endorsed AG Greg Abbott for re-election. My expectation was that the newspapers would all endorse Bill White, Jeff Weems, and each of the Republican incumbents, and so far there have been no deviations from that. I am a bit surprised that they would expose themselves as such [...]