Carona

John Carona, our Republican state senator from Dallas, learned some hard lessons this session about how his fellow lawmakers' business interests tend to dominate the doings in the legislature. Last month, Carona's bill to try to reform the incredibly predatory payday loan industry was picked down to its skeletal bones by other state senators, several of whom were on the phone with loan industry lobbyists as Carona spoke on the Senate floor.

But as Texas Tribune's Jay Root reports today, in a particularly excellent installment of their "Bidness as Usual" series, Carona has also benefited spectacularly from the uncomfortably close relationship between business and politics that flourishes in the Legislature.

See also:
- John Carona's Payday Lending Reform Crashed into a Wall of Lobbyists Today
- State Senator John Carona is Walking Back His Support for Craft Brewers

More »

Judge John Roach Jr.

A while back, before his father retired as district attorney against a backdrop of small-town political intrigue, Collin County District Judge John Roach Jr. described his philosophy on family law in a less-than-hard-hitting interview with Dallas Child.

His "obvious passion spill[ing] over in precise speech honed by years in the courtroom," he spoke of the importance of ensuring that children in custody cases wind up in a strong family environment with loving, involved parents.

"I often tell people I would not want them to make decisions about my kids -- why would you want me to make decisions about yours?" he said. "It is certainly my job to make these decisions; I make the decisions when I have to. However, parents going through divorce need to agree to disagree as to why, how or whose fault it is and focus on the kids. Your spouse may make a sorry husband or wife, but it does not mean you have to be sorry parents."

More »

Patrick Michels

Washington is still reeling from the revelation on Friday that the IRS has been singling out Tea Party groups for extra scrutiny. The news immediately drew howls of bipartisan protest, and pretty much everyone agrees that using the tax system to target political enemies is not what happens in a healthy democracy.

The optics are incredibly bad for President Obama, who has apologized, but it's useful to put things in perspective. For starters, the IRS has a legitimate reason for looking into Tea Party and similar groups. The New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin explains:

More »

If there's one thing everyone in America can agree on this morning, it's that Kermit Gosnell is disgusting and belongs in an especially dank and fetid section of some sort of subterranean prison.

In a case that millions of talking heads have been shouting at you about from your TV, the Philadelphia doctor was convicted yesterday of first degree murder of three infants and involuntary manslaughter in the death of an adult patient.

More »

There was a City Council election on Saturday and, if you're like the vast majority of Dallas, you didn't notice. But whether you were paying attention or not, some important things were decided and some interesting trends emerged.

Here's what you need to know:

Angela Hunt's legacy: Saturday's most interesting race was the District 14 contest to replace Angela Hunt, who is term limited. The vacant seat drew a crowded field of seven challengers, but the race soon turned into a referendum of sorts on Hunt's term in office.

Hunt threw her weight behind attorney Philip Kingston. Her name and face were featured prominently in his mailings, on his website, and at his campaign appearances. His main challenger was Bobby Abtahi, a 31-year-old former community prosecutor and City Plan Commission member who has the backing of Hunt's opponents in the Dallas establishment.

More »

Lon Burnam

You wouldn't have expected a bill to rename a stretch of Central Expressway for George W. Bush to inspire a rare bipartisan kumbaya moment in the Texas legislature. His presidency is too recent and remains a source of bitterness for too many Democrats. But when the House vote was posted, there it was: 147 yeas, 0 nays.

Representative Lon Burnam, a Fort Worth Democrat, would like everyone to know that tally is wrong. "He most definitely voted against the bill," chief of staff Conor Kenney said in an email yesterday. Burnam's opposition hasn't yet shown up on the still-unofficial tally posted to the House website, but that's because "the clerk is running behind because we're moving so fast right now," Kenney wrote. "I think they're just marking most local and consent bills as unanimous."

More »

Washington Post

We were pretty sure that Pulitzer Prize-winner Thomas Ricks' recent suggestion in the Washington Post that America exile Texas in pursuit of a more perfect union was a joke. Blaming the state for the JFK assassination (without Texas, "John F. Kennedy might still be alive") and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan looked at first glance like a low blow, but otherwise the piece seemed to strive for satire.

Ricks' piece inspired some very serious tut-tutting from the Morning News' editorial board. First, it was Sharon Grigsby:

More »

Patrick Michels

Activists at the Lone Star Tea Party's Tax Day rally in 2010.

The Dallas Police Department still hasn't given a very satisfying explanation for why it took officers so long to respond to an armed robbery and shooting at a West Dallas grocery on Sunday. Partly it was the 911 caller's heavy accent, partly that officers were working what they thought was a separate shooting call down the street. Either way, you come up with a ridiculous 75-minute response to an armed robbery.

The folks at the Arlington-based Lone Star Tea Party have a theory: Dallas is so focused on coddling illegal immigrants that it neglects to provide basic services to English speakers like Joe Cho, the Korean-born manager of the West Dallas grocery.

"We wonder if this would have been a mexican 911 caller instead of a Korean Caller (Joe Cho) the DPD would have said there was an accent problem?" a blogger writes on the group's website. "What makes it moronic is this is coming from a sanctuary city that encourages immigrants not to learn English and assimilate. But we are sure there was a mexican speaking 911 dispatcher on staff, everyone else is hung out to dry. Bottom line is if you shoot someone or get shot, stay calm talk clearly or help may not arrive anytime soon."

More »

HB 3520 designating a portion of US 75 the George W. Bush Expressway just passed. #txlege #txgop

— Dan Branch (@TexansForDan) May 8, 2013

When State Representative Dan Branch introduced his proposal to change the name of a seven-mile stretch of Central to George W. Bush Expressway, we thought it might be one of those novelty bills that gets a couple of chuckles before dying a quiet death in committee. We hoped it was, at least. We couldn't stomach the confusion of having two North Texas freeways named for George Bushes.

But wouldn't you know it, Branch's bill just sailed through the state House. And this wasn't just a Republican thing. Every single Democrat signed on save for Dallas' Helen Giddings, who wasn't there. The final vote was 147-0. That's an unofficial tally, mind you, so it's a hypothetical possibility that a couple of votes were recorded incorrectly. But not 147 of them.

(Update on May 9: A staffer from the office of Fort Worth Democrat Lon Burnam writes to inform us that the vote was not, in fact, unanimous. "He most definitely voted against the bill," he writes. "The clerk says an updated, official version of the vote should be up tomorrow or early next week.")

Dallas Democrat Eric Johnson made sure to remind his colleagues on the other side of the aisle just how cooperative his party was.

More »

This dude: Facebook-approved.

It's pretty frequent these days to experience Impotent Facebook Rage (IFR), in which the social media giant does something so profoundly irritating or angry-making that you immediately vow to get off the site altogether. And yet, you don't cancel your account cold turkey (or at least I don't), probably because Facebook is basically a blue-and-white, pixelated version of crack cocaine. Today in IFR moments: According to campaign donation data from several sources, Facebook and its employees donated between $12,000 and $15,000 to Ted Cruz in the last election cycle.

Back in 2011, Facebook formed a PAC; a spokesperson told the Washington Post at the time that the body would "give our employees a way to make their voice heard in the political process by supporting candidates who share our goals of promoting the value of innovation to our economy while giving people the power to share and make the world more open and connected."

That's an amazingly wordy sentence that manages, at the same time, to say absolutely nothing at all. It's never been clear how the PAC chooses candidates to give money to; in 2012, Mashable found that they donate to Republicans at a slightly higher rate than Democrats (although, according to campaign donation tracker Open Secrets, they gave some $95,000 to President Obama's re-election, compared with just $20,000 to Mitt Romney).

More »