We are not done with Rick Perry. While partisans hope there is a chance he will be held accountable for either blackmailing or bribing the district attorney in Austin and go to jail, there is just as much of a chance the Texas governor might end up in the White Read more…
During the two months I was decamped from Austin to Mount Carmel watching the federal government and a religious clown destroy several sets of belief systems and dozens of lives, a British tabloid reporter had asked me, “What is it about you Texans?” “What do you mean?” I asked. “There’s Read more…
If the court of public opinion has an impact on a jury’s decisions, Texas Governor Rick Perry may have a chance of beating his indictments. While poorly informed Democrats like Obama advisor David Axelrod call the indictments “sketchy,” Perry’s advisors have him concentrating on defending his constitutional authority to exercise Read more…
Guest post by Mary Pauline Lowry, whose new book “Wildfire” will be published in October. Her previous novel, “The Earthquake Machine,” was a Texas girl’s coming of age story that received wide critical praise. When I was in high school–to quote the television show Portlandia– “the dream of the 90s” Read more…
I have long been bothered about the constitutionality of random checks of motorists by police. I, of course, like the idea of drunks being off the streets and not behind the wheel of vehicles, but I don’t like the concept of giving police authority without probable cause. I agree that Read more…
There was a moment in the Ann Richards campaign against George W. Bush when I knew in advance she had lost. The late governor was speaking to a Girls’ State assembly, which is a little legislature created annually for high school students to meet for a day and learn about Read more…
You never know who’s watching your tweet stream. Or maybe you should assume someone is that might have a question or two. During a trip last week to the Rio Grande Valley, a political activist informed me that U.S. Senator Ted Cruz had made only one visit to the region Read more…
We lived in a small house, 850 square feet, six kids, Daddy and Ma. The neighborhood was all southerners that had moved north to work in the factories. Daddy told me late in his life that he had left the sharecropping of cotton in Mississippi to move to the unknowns Read more…
The accident that changed Greg Abbott’s life was so improbable as to be almost statistically immeasurable. A healthy 27 year-old, he was jogging through the Houston community of River Oaks in 1984 when a large limb broke from a tree and fell on his back. Abbott, who spent months in Read more…
Instead of a romp through various topics of interest, Fridays will sometimes be devoted to a single subject, which is today’s case. Our attempt will always be to provide a context and perspective we don’t see elsewhere, and that’s why this piece is about abortion and the Texas men trying Read more…