Sometimes you know there’s a big, juicy story swimming just under the threshold of public consciousness, but don’t have the tools, sources or knowledge to bring it to the surface. Such is the case with the FBI’s ongoing investigation of Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price, a powerful, long-serving fixture in the Dallas black political power structure. Right now the story involves current Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings and money that may have improperly made it’s way from Rawlings’ campaign chest to Price’s pocket via political consultant Kathy Nealy. The FBI raided Price’s office last year.
The lefty Dallas Observeris more blunt in what the FBI is alleging: “The affidavit claims a pay-for-play scheme existed in which businesses would pay handsome consulting fees to Nealy’s company at about the time they were seeking to win a contract with Dallas County. A portion of that money would be funneled to Price, who would steer the favored contractor through the Commissioner’s Court.”
Not living in Dallas, the first time I ran across John Wiley Price’s name was in connection to the previous mayor of Dallas, then-aspiring Senate candidate Tom Leppert. Leppert and Price seem to have cooperated in killing Richard Allen’s Inland Port project, Leppert allegedly because it competed with a similar project by backer Ross Perot, Price allegedly because Allen wouldn’t pay Price and his cronies $1 million in shakedown money. I should hasten to add that Price, who has been a fixture on the Dallas political scene long before Leppert even moved there, is to the best of my knowledge not one of Leppert’s cronies, or even particularly close to him. However, Willis Johnson, who was allegedly part of the shakedown effort, is one of Leppert’s cronies, and was (along with the late Lynn Flint Shaw) one of Leppert’s conduits into the Dallas black community.
But if Price committed the crimes alleged in the FBI affidavit, the question is: How deep does the corruption go? How many other Dallas political players were paying off Price, and in exchange for what? Price has been in office a long, long time. It’s quite possible he has enough skeletons in his closet to make it an ossuary.
I don’t have the answers, and I don’t even have the knowledge or connections to properly dig for those answers. But I suspect we’re going to find out in the near future anyway…
Finally, the Obama Choom Gang story finally breaks through in the one medium the MSM can’t possibly ignore: wacky Taiwanese animation.
Again, the issue isn’t that our 44th President used to regularly get baked out of his gourd, the issue is why the MSM was unwilling to investigate and report such stories in 2008, and the hypocrisy of Obama carrying out a futile War on Drugs and imprisoning people for the same laws he used to habitually break.
After spending the bulk of my time on the Texas senate race, I’ve spent the last day or so trying to get a handle on some down-ballot races. So here’s who I’m voting for in contested races, starting at the top and providing (very) brief explanations. Hopefully this will be of use to other conservative Republican voters looking for information at the last minute. (Hey, people are busy!)
United State Representative, District 31: Incumbent John Carter. Though not perfect (he was late getting on the anti-SOPA bandwagon), I like Rep. Carter personally, and he’s generally been a very good (and very conservative) Representative.
Railroad Commissioner: I’m leaning toward Roland Sledge, who’s solidly conservative, if a bit goofy. Former Rep. Warren Chisum is also a solid choice. I don’t trust Christi Craddick, who seems to be running on her father’s reputation.
Railroad Commissioner, Unexpired Term: Possibly the toughest race to pick, as both incumbent Barry Smitherman and Greg Parker strike me as very solid conservative choices, and each has picked up some Tea Party endorsements. I lean slightly toward Smitherman based on his impressive array of endorsements.
Texas Supreme Court Place 2: Incumbent Don Willett, a solid conservative with solid endorsements.
Texas Supreme Court Place 2: Incumbent David Medina, endorsed by Texans for Lawsuit Reform.
State Board of Education, District 10: Jeff Fleece, based on endorsements from Holly Hansen and YCT.
Williamson County District Attorney: John Bradley. The fact that Jana Duty has made so much hay from one trial makes me quite suspicious of her. Once again, Holly Hansen provides needed insight on the race here, here, and here.
Williamson County Tax Assessor Collector: Incumbent Deborah M. Hunt. When your opponent can’t be bothered to put up more than a Facebook page…
Williamson County Sherrif: Incumbent James R. Wilson, who has done a good job. His opponent sounds like Grandpa Simpson yelling at a cloud…
425th District Judge: Incumbent Mark Silverstone, based on Rick Perry’s endorsement.
Williamson County Commissioner Precinct 1: Incumbent Lisa Birkman, for reasons outlined here. Holly Hansen also provides compelling arguments why you should favor Birkman over Seitsinger here, and here.
I wonder if the “Choom Gang” VW Microbus our 44th President and his friends used to habitually smoke pot in also had tools and rakes and implements of destruction in it.
Do liberals actually expect this patronizing, passive-aggressive condescension toward Judge Roberts to work? I’d like to believe that treating the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America as though he’s as easy to manipulate as an insecure teenage girl would be counterproductive if it weren’t so transparently laughable.
Just in case you hadn’t heard, today is Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day. Or should I say, “Blog about convicted felon, Speedway Bomber, and all-around psychopath Brett Kimberlin day.” Like Everyone Draw Mohammed Day, Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day is designed to stand up to illegal harassment and intimidation by giving the bad guys (Jihadests or convicted felon Brett Kimberlin) too many targets to attack. And like jihadests, convicted felon Brett Kimberlin has defenders (and funders) among the hard left.
Also, I certainly don’t want to be left out of the Blog About Convicted Felon Brett Kimberlin day festivities if there are tasty death threats to be garnered!
Here’s a short video:
And here are several posts where you can read about what an unmitigated scumbag convicted felon Brett Kimberlin is:
That should be enough to keep you going for a while, but if I have time, I may blog more about convicted felon Brett Kimberlin, if only to be the number one Google hit for the phrase “convicted felon Brett Kimberlin.”
All sorts of stories bubbling away in various states of completion. In the meantime, here’s a nice Saturday LinkSwarm that includes some (but not all) of the links I’ve put up on my twitter feed:
We’ve gotten use to Democratic office holders in Texas switching to the Republican Party, but I don’t think we’ve ever seen all the Democratic officeholders in a county switch at the same time, which is what just happened in Throckmorton County, including the sheriff, county judge, clerk, treasurer, justice of the peace and three commissioners.
Texas Democrats give up on Texas Democrats. “Of the $21 million Texas Democrats have given to candidates running for federal office, Super PACs and party political committees in the 2012 election, only $4.8 million has gone to candidates from Texas.”
Today’s Texas Democrat under federal investigation for corruptions comes to you from Cameron County DA Armando Villalobos, who’s also running for U.S. congress in the newly created 34th congressional district.
A $200 transaction can cost society $100,000 for a three-year sentence. And imprisoning large numbers of dealers produces an army of people who, emerging from prison with blighted employment prospects, can only deal drugs. Which is why, although a few years ago Washington, D.C., dealers earned an average of $30 an hour, today they earn less than the federal minimum wage ($7.25).
I oppose the War on Drugs for reasons of general principles (it’s not the purpose of government to save people from themselves), the specific application of constitutional federalism (the Commerce Clause should not apply to the regulation of drugs manufactured and sold within the confines of a single state), and for reasons of budgetary philosophy (making drugs illegal has expanded the size and power of the federal government while increasing the budget deficit; legalizing, regulating and taxing drugs would reduce both the deficit and the harm to individuals and society). Frankly, I’d be for the immediate legalization of methamphetamine tomorrow if it meant we could stop ID-ing people with colds trying to buy Sudafed.
There has been slow but steady progress in the conservative movement for saner drugs laws, from William F. Buckley arguing for the decriminalization of marijuana, to National Review declaring that “The War on Drugs is Lost” in 1996, to Republican Presidential candidates like Ron Paul and Gary Johnson (who, like Paul once did, bolted for a doomed Libertarian Party run) making the same case.
Despite growing sentiment, almost no legislative headway has been made on the issue because there’s no consensus in the Republican Party (or the American people) for that change. When an initiative for the total legalization of marijuana fails in California (though poor wording helped contribute to the defeat), where can it succeed? But the lack of a consensus for legalization is no reason to avoid fighting for saner laws at the state or national level or trimming funding for the DEA.
Another question is how come we never hear anything about legalization from the supposedly pro-freedom Democratic leadership? If Obama, an admitted recreational drug user in his youth, has ever made a speech as President supporting legalization or decriminalization of any drugs, it’s evaded my attention. Indeed, not only does he not support decriminalization, he’s actively hostile to the idea.
George Will thinks more seriously and clearly than Barack Obama on the issue of drug legalization. Then again, the first ten words in the preceding sentence are pretty much true all the time,,,
According to this article in the Houston Chronicle, “Sixteen small counties across Texas appear to have more registered voters on their rolls as of 2010 than qualified citizens of voting age.”
As the icing on top of the voter fraud cake, here’s James O’Keefe (who you may know from such classics as ACORN’s Hardest Working Pimp) obtaining Eric Holder’s ballot.
And the cherry? “I’ll be back faster than you can say furious.”
After much back and forth with his campaign trying to find a date, I was finally able to interview Texas Senate candidate Craig James on March 21 at the Rudy’s on South 360 here in Austin. This was, alas, not an ideal atmosphere for an interview (it got better when one of his staffers asked Rudy’s to turn off their piped in music for the area, which is something I should have thought of asking for), and the first part of the interview makes it hard to hear. After the first question, I stopped the camera and moved it closer to James so you can hear his answers, so the audio gets much better about 1:35 in, though I seem to have cut off the top of his head in the process. So let me apologize in advance for the less-than-sterling sound and video quality for various parts of the interview, but the vast majority of the interview is intelligible. I filmed this with my Mino Flip camera and did a light edit in iMovie, so the crappiness is 100% my fault (or that of the environment it was filmed in).
Thoughts:
James is a very confident, well-spoken and personable speaker with a lot of natural charisma. He seems to get the big picture of the conservative agenda (a constitutionally limited government, and a commitment to free markets) and obviously comes from a social conservative background.
I like that he would eliminate the Department of Education, but it’s a bit hard to square with his emphasis on vocational training in the second part of the answer. It’s not that I disagree that it’s a good idea, it’s just that after the elimination of the Department of Education, I don’t see any viable (or proper) role for such fine-grained educational policy control at the federal level.
I’m not particularly interested in the Texas Tech question that starts part 2, but since it’s the most famous controversy he’s been involved in, the interview would have felt incomplete without it.
There are a couple of interesting admissions I give him credit for: admitting that Texans for a Better Tomorrow was created as a vehicle for him to explore a role in politics, and admitting that he would root for the New England Patriots (for whom he played in the NFL) were they to meet the Cowboys in the Superbowl, a brave position that’s obviously not pandering to his constituents.
I didn’t like the vagueness of his positions beyond a few policy specifics, and the fact he tried to straddle both sides of some issues (such as PIPA/SOPA in the second half of the interview). Both Ted Cruz and Tom Leppert were occasionally vague on some points, but James is already sounding awfully vague for someone who hasn’t ever held elective office.
The low-point of the interview (about 3:15 into the second part) was finding out that James has never heard of the Posse Comitatus Act. This is not an obscure statute, it’s one of the fundamental laws governing the limitations of using federal troops. I would expect not only anyone with an interest in politics to at least have heard of the Posse Comitatus act, I would actually expect the same of anyone with a basic college education.
I’d like to thank Craig James for taking time out of his busy schedule to speak with me, and his staff for their assistance in setting up the interview.
Now I’ve interviewed all the major Republican Senate candidates but David Dewhurst. If his campaign would get in touch with me to set a convenient date in the next few weeks, I’d like to correct that oversight…
A left-wing Irish documentary maker sets out to make a documentary about the plight of the Palestinians, but gets waylayed by those annoying facts, and instead decides to tell both sides of the story. Guess what? His friends aren’t interested. “The problem began when I resolved to come back with a film that showed both sides of the coin. Actually there are many more than two. Which is why my film is called Forty Shades of Grey. But only one side was wanted back in Dublin. My peers expected me to come back with an attack on Israel. No grey areas were acceptable.”
Israel and Hamas declare a ceasefire after four days of fighting. Honestly, maybe because I was traveling, or because I no longer feel the need to consult MSM news sources on a daily basis, I was actually unaware that there was slightly more violence than usual in the Middle East. The fact that Hamas cried uncle after a mere four days, despite the fact that Israel set it off by giving Hamas leader Zuhair al-Qaissi an express ticket to paradise, tells you that they must really have been getting their asses kicked by the IDF. Maybe Zuhair al-Qaissi really was important, or possibly Iran and Syria have had their hands too full to dole out the Qassam rockets with their customary generosity.
