Politex

Bush "glad Cheney is out there"

Former President George W. Bush made some revealing remarks this morning at a reunion breakfast for the Bush-Cheney Alumni Association.

"I'm glad Cheney is out there," Bush said, according to Politico, in reference to the former vice-president's high profile role as a critic of the Obama administration.

Other Bush musings:

-“Don’t swagger. Sometimes I got carried away rallying the country," he said. "I think the swagger criticism was fair. A lot of others weren't."

-"I don't want to be a panel of formers instructing the currents on what to do. I'm trying to regain a sense of anonymity. I didn't like it when a certain former president — and it wasn't 41 or 42 — made my life miserable.” (He was taking about Jimmy Carter.)

The full story is here.

-Aman Batheja

Rancher a fan of Perry's hair, not anything under it

Readers of the latest issue of Fort Worth Weekly won't have trouble missing a half-page ad on page 3.

It begins, "I believe Rick Perry's only asset is beautiful hair; Otherwise he is just completely full of crap!!!" What follows is a laundry list of criticisms against Perry including the amount taxpayers are currently paying for his rental mansion while the official Governor's Mansion is restored.

This exercise in freedom of speech is courtesy of Billy Mitchell of Aledo. Along with the Weekly, he said he also paid to have the ad run this week in the Weatherford Democrat and the Community News in Aledo.

"My phone is ringing off the walls," Mitchell said. "I did it because of the injustice going on under eminent domain in Texas."

It's a recurring theme for the rancher, who first caught attention in 2007 for leasing this billboard along Interstate 30 in west Fort Worth:

 

The billboard was the culmination of Mitchell's losing fight to keep a natural gas pipeline off his 70-acre ranch. Along with anti-Perry ad, he has another full-page advertisement in the Weekly devoted mostly to plans to build a sewer plant in nearby Willow Park.

Mitchell said his newspaper ad campaign is the latest salvo to bring about private property rights reform. 

"I'd really like to see all incumbents out at this point because they seem to have lost touch with the people," said Mitchell, who is backing Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison.

For those interested, Mitchell has posted most of the text of his ad (along with his sourcing) here on his web site.

-Aman Batheja

Perry widens lead in new Rasmussen poll

Gov. Rick Perry appears within reach of avoiding a runoff in a new Rasmussen Reports poll that shows Perry with his widest lead yet over his two rivals in Tuesday's Republican primary.

The telephone survey shows Perry with 48 percent, U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison with 27 percent and nurse-businesswoman Debra Medina with 16 percent.

Perry supporters hope the governor can pick up enough support from undecided voters - 9 percent in the latest poll - to win a majority without being forced into an April 13 runoff.

In a Rasmussen poll in early February, Perry had 44 percent, Hutchison had 29 percent and Medina 16 percent. 

-- Dave Montgomery  

Campaigning like it's 1979

 A political mailer reaching Tarrant County mailboxes this week has the candidates in the Tarrant County district attorney's race debating an old story.

How old? Try 33 years.

The mailer features the Nov. 18, 1977 front page of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram including a banner headline about Cullen Davis’ acquittal for murder. Across the bottom of the mailer, it reads, “Did you know that District Attorney Joe Shannon’s most memorable prosecution was back in 1977? And he lost.”

Shannon was one of the prosecutors who tried the wealthy Davis for killing his estranged wife’s 12-year-old daughter during a multiple shooting. The high-profile case has been the source of books and television specials. Shannon delivered the closing argument

Shannon's primary opponent, Kirk Claunch, said he sent the mailer because Shannon has mentioned his work on the Davis case in recent campaign forums.

“He touts it as an accomplishment and I felt it was necessary to point out that this was his most memorable case and he lost it,” Claunch said.

Shannon said he’s only ever referred to the case in describing his early years with the DA’s office and to show that he’s handled high-profile cases.

Shannon said he thought it was a strange subject for a campaign mailer.

“I’ve won some since then too," he said.

More on the mailer and the candidates' responses here.

-Aman Batheja

Straus PAC focusing on Tarrant races

This election cycle is the first for the Texas House Leadership Fund, a political action committee run by House Speaker Joe Straus and Republican committee chairs in the House.

The group's latest campaign finance report filed Monday with the Texas Ethics Commission shows the group making contributions earlier this month to help out five GOP incumbents, three of them in Tarrant County.

The fund made contributions of $12,500 to state Reps. Charlie Geren of Fort Worth, Todd Smith of Euless and Vicki Truitt of Southlake. All three are House committees chairs.

The fund also gave $15,000 contributions to state Reps. Chuck Hopson of Jacksonville and Delwin Jones of Lubbock.

The contributions for the local candidates aren't necessarily as big as they seem. Since September, Truitt, Smith and Geren all wrote $10,000 checks from their campaign funds to the PAC, a show of support to Straus that was apparently returned back to them with interest.

-Aman Batheja

Cason pulls in over $90,000 for race against Smith

The latest campaign finance reports shows Jeff Cason taking in over $90,000 in the last month, and the source of the donations make clear that the former Bedford City Councilman's campaign has become a priority for a key group of conservative activists.

Cason is trying to unseat state Rep. Todd Smith, R-Euless, in one of the most heated legislative races in North Texas. His campaign finance report shows him raising far more than any other non-incumbent candidate running for the Legislature in Tarrant County.

Cason's biggest donation comes from the family of Houston homebuilder Bob Perry, well known for pouring large sums of money into primary challenges as well as the Swift Boat ads against John Kerry in 2004. Perry gave $25,000 ($12,500 from himself and the same amount from his wife, Doylene).

Cason also took in $21,858.81 from the Houston-based Citizen Leader PAC, a new group funded largely by Dick Weekley (co-founder of David Weekley Homes) and Leo Linbeck (chief executive officer of Linbeck Construction Corp.). The two men are also the leaders of the Texans for Lawsuit Reform political action committee.

The next two biggest contributions have connections to Midland. Empower Texans PAC, the Austin-based PAC of Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, gave Cason $17,660.96. TFR's chairman is Midland oilman Tim Dunn. Kyle Stallings, another Midland oil executive, gave Cason $12,500.

Smith's report shows him taking in just over $56,000. His biggest donation was $12,500 from the Texas House Leadership Fund, a new political action committee run by House Speaker Joe Straus and Republican committee chairmen in the House.

Here's a breakdown of the latest reports in the Smith/Cason race:

District 92:

Jeff Cason: Raised: 91,049; Spent: $20,331; Cash on hand: $51,469

Todd Smith (i): Raised: $56,398; Spent: $88,015; Cash on hand: $94,808

A snapshot of the other contested legislative primaries in Tarrant County are after the jump:

Ron Paul Rocks C-PAC

object width="425" height="344"> value="always"> Ron Paul,a total crowd fave at something of an unlikely venue - the Conservative Political Action Conference at the Marriott Wardman Park in Washington.! Paul, more of an economic conservative, brought down the house, blasting the U.N., the Fed, and any U.S. intervention anywhere and exited to Queen's rockin' "We  will, we will, rock you!"

 -- Maria Recio

Obama cites North Texas snow in climate change argument

President Barack Obama was asked why America isn't regulating carbon emissions a town hall meeting in Henderson, Nevada today.

Obama took the moment as an opportunity to fight back at recent criticism that global warming couldn't be real because a historic blizzard recently hit the northeast. 

"First of all, we just got five feet of snow in Washington and so everybody is like -- a lot of the people who are opponents of climate change, they say, see, look at that, there's all this snow on the ground, this doesn't mean anything," Obama said. "I want to just be clear that the science of climate change doesn't mean that every place is getting warmer; it means the planet as a whole is getting warmer.

"But what it may mean is, for example, Vancouver, which is supposed to be getting snow during the Olympics, suddenly is at 55 degrees, and Dallas suddenly is getting seven inches of snow."

Some areas of North Texas received over 12 inches of snow in 24 hours last week, setting a record for the area.

-Aman Batheja

Prosecutors urge commissioners to reprimand Judge Sharon Keller

The case of Judge Sharon Keller, presiding judge on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, and the late execution appeal isn't over.

The Austin American-Statesman reports that prosecutors have filed documents saying that the judge deserves to be reprimanded or removed from office for refusing to keep the clerk's office open late to allow an appeal in September 2007 from death row inmate Michael Richard.

Richard, convicted of capital murder in the 1986 slaying of a Houston-area woman, was executed later that night without his final appeal being heard.

The prosecutors filed papers with the State Commission on Judicial Conduct, which will decide Keller's fate. A special master has already ruled that Keller wasn't to blame for the failure of the last-minute appeal to be heard.

Keller's attorney has also filed objections in the case.

(Judge Keller photo by Eric Gay/AP)

Scalia: States have "no right to secede"

 Think Texas can secede from the union?

Gov. Rick Perry has said yes. Various critics insist it's not possible. A poll last year showed Texans split.

Recently, a group of legal bloggers began debating the issue. Eric Turkewitz was able to offer a high-profile source to back him up: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

Turkewitz, a personal injury lawyer in New York, described the story of how his brother, Dan, a screenwriter, was working on a movie script in 2006 about Maine seceding and becoming a part of Canada.

Dan Turkewitz wanted the legal arguments that came up in the script to sound authentic so he wrote all of the Supreme Court Justices and asked their thoughts on the issue.

Amazingly, Scalia wrote back. In the letter, (posted on Eric Turkewitz's blog), Scalia wrote that the answer is clear: States can't secede.

"If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede. (Hence, in the Pledge of Allegiance, 'one Nation, indivisible.')"

At the end of the letter, Scalia wrote, "I am sure that poetic license can overcome all that -- but you do not need legal advice for that. Good luck with your screenplay."

-Aman Batheja