Daily - The Austin Chronicle (2024)

Speaker Tom Craddick made his claim to seemingly unlimited power in the last Lege session. But now two ex-speakers have weighed in on the debate, and against Craddick.

First, ex-speaker Rayford Price (62nd legislature, 2nd-4th called sessions, 1972-1973) submitted his take on the issue to the Attorney General. Greg Abbott has been dragged into the House fight by Rep. Jim Keffer, R-Eastland, and has been looking for expert opinions, like that of Price, on what the regulations say. Price argued that Craddick and his parliamentarian/consigliere Terry Keel were wrong to say that the speaker couldn't be removed by the House, because they were arguing that he was a state officer and therefore could only be removed by Senate-approved impeachment. He wasn't just talking from his gut: Price said that, since the speaker isn't listed as an officer on the state constitution, it's House business and House business only. He also disagreed with the concept of mandated two-year appointments for the speaker.

Then on Sunday, in an interview with the Paris News, Pete Laney (73rd-77th legislatures, 1993-2002) says he never thought that the House couldn't replace him if they felt like it. He attacked the power grab as un-American, and against the spirit and letter of House rules.

So either two ex-speakers, including Laney, who is regarded by many as the fairest and most competent speaker in Texas history, are wrong, or Craddick is.

The Texas Republican Party has announced its new executive director, former state rep Talmadge Heflin. Unusual name, unusual guy: Like pretty much anyone in the public sphere, Heflin comes with some baggage. It's just that some of his is, well, pretty unusual.

The 11-term Harris County rep was chair of the House Appropriations committee, and there's a lot of reps who see his tenure in the big budget seat as bad news. Policy-driven politicians on both sides of the chamber look to the budget mess he left behind, while more pragmatic pol-watchers can see that some GOPers regret his electoral inheritance. After all, back in the GOP landslide glory days of 2004, somehow Heflin managed to lose his seat to Dem newb Hubert Vo.

But that's not the weird thing. Nor is the fact that, as a pundit for noted conservative pressure group (read "one-note free market fans and regular witnesses at any tax-related Lege committee meeting") the Texas Public Policy Foundation, he could play off his own reputation for slashing expenditures and still demand that lawmakers break the spending cap to cover the property tax refund.

No, Heflin's baggage is pretty unusual. In 2004, he was caught up in a bizarre adoption scandal. The story goes that Heflin and his wife tried to take custody of Fidel Odimara Jr. The only problem was that the boy's mother Mariam Katamba, an undocumented native-born Ugandan, was working in the Heflin's house illegally at the time. The Heflins and their lawyers tried to claim that Katamba had asked them to raise the child, but also that she was an unfit parent and posed a grave danger to the child. The matter ended up in court and the Heflin's motion was finally thrown out by the judge.

TODAY'S EVENTS

Nick Garza's Songwriter Get Along w/ Garrett T. Capps, Kelley Mickwee, Jonathan Terrell, Jesse Woods, Lou Lewis, Paige Plaisance, Cory Reinisch at Devil's Backbone Tavern

Lesbian Wedding at Sahara Lounge

MUSIC | MOVIES | ARTS | COMMUNITY

It’s 8pm on Saturday night. I am about to turn on ESPN’s nationally broadcast game to watch one of my favorite players play for a team I care nothing about. In my opinion he is a future Hall of Famer. A class act that goes out there every night he has to and gives it his all with what he was born with. He is friendly with the press, signs tons of autographs for kids, helps old ladies cross the street, and despite some legal troubles, remains loved throughout the majors. It is important to remember he is innocent until proven guilty. Tonight he will be trying his best to keep his ass out of the record books. I am referring to none other than Dontrelle Willis.

I don’t know if it was because of his celebrated success on anyone of my, now in shambles, fantasy teams or because he just seems like a nice guy, I always seem to be rooting for him to succeed. He has one of those Rocky-esque rags-to-riches stories that is impossible to root against. His last seven starts have been kind of crappy, though, and he comes into San Francisco ripe for an implosion. The last thing I want to see is for him to land in the history books for giving up a pair of record-setting home runs to that bulbous ass Barry Bonds. I will, at the very least, watch.

A couple of weeks ago, we reported on the staged photo-op that was the launch of Victory '08!, the Texas Republican Party's next push for electoral glory. So where's the Democrat equivalent?

"Uh, we don't really bother with one," said Amber Moon, communications director for the Texas Democratic Party. The GOP launch event, which was basically some media, a lot of local party organizers, some staffers and a handful of heavy hitters, is a regular occurrence that the Dems seem to consider as a whimsical diversion, rather than a serious campaign kick-off.

What has figured on a lot of people's radar, including quite a few press at the launch, is how early it was. Well, early for the Republicans, that is. The Dems admit that they've been grassroots sewing since February, but the Republicans don't normally start for a good few months yet.

Then there's the fact that the three bigwigs present – Gov. Rick Perry, US Sen. John Cornyn and campaign chair Roger Williams – were all talking about having to build a new grassroots network of local conservative activists. Which is strange, since the Karl Rove inheritance of GOP electoral organization in Texas has reached near-mythic status. Where have they gone?

Even weirder was that Cornyn talked about how the RNC traditionally had ignored Texas because it didn't really need any external assets to stay a safe Republican stronghold. This needed to change, he added.

False alarm at the Capitol Saturday. Around 4pm, the state house and its grounds were evacuated over a bomb threat. Staff (the handful of staffers and maintenance personnel who are in the building on an out-of-session weekend) and tourists were ushered out by state troopers. No word yet on whether it was a phoned-in warning or a suspicious package, but either way it was all re-opened to the pubic within a couple of hours.

Yet the manner of the evacuation could raise some serious questions about emergency planning at the Capitol. There's always a balancing act between safety matters and massing an over-imposing law enforcement presence in a public place: many residents of Washington DC and New York feel that the balance has definitely slipped/been shoved far in the authoritarian direction. However, the handful of troopers on duty were trying to get everyone out of the 22-acre grounds by asking them politely, person by person. To do this, they had to leave the gates unlocked and unguarded. So while they were trying to get people to leave the grounds, others were still blithely walking in to see what the fuss was about.

The sports world was shaken this week when the tragic death of former Round Rock Express infielder Mike Coolbaugh was reported. Coolbaugh, 35, was killed after being struck in the head by a line drive while standing in the first-base coach's box during a game between the Tulsa Drillers and the Arkansas Travelers in Little Rock, Ark. Coolbaugh was the hitting coach for the Drillers at the time of his death.

Coolbaugh's funeral will be held on Monday, July 30, 10:30am at the Holy Spirit Catholic Church (8134 Blanco Road) in San Antonio – Coolbaugh was a native San Antonian. An open visitation will be held on Sunday, July 29 at Porter Loring Mortuary North (2102 North Loop 1604 East) from 4 to 6pm.

Coolbaugh leaves behind two sons (ages 5 and 3) with a third child due in October.

The combination of Boris' Pink, and the Japanese trio's recent collaboration with guitar god Michio Kurihara, Rainbow, unlocked a spectrum of sounds and hues previously unimaginable to Off the Record, some of which are encapsulated in haiku form below, along with a few notable psych releases.

Boris is scheduled to hit the Scoot Inn on October 19, while Kurihara's band Ghost is scheduled to appear at the Voodoo Music Experience in New Orleans Halloween weekend. Breathe in, breathe out, and jump.

My job sucks today, as it does on any day when the world tilts to one side and then straightens, one soul lighter. At least that’s the way it felt to hear about Uncle John Turner’s death on this sky-is-crying Thursday morning.

There’s so much to be said about Turner’s legacy to Texas music and the blues that if I were queen of Austin, we’d already have a statue of him next to the statue of Clifford Antone next to the statue of Biscuit next to the statue of Doug Sahm next to the statue of Stevie. While you most likely know those last four names, chances are that Uncle John Turner’s name draws a blank.

There’s a bit of irony to the announcement I heard on KUT while driving home, thinking about Uncle John. Jay Trachtenberg was saying that today is Mick Jagger’s birthday as well as the day that Emotional Rescue went No. 1 in the U.S. 27 years ago. It reminded me that the Stones made their initial foray on the rock scene as a blues band, as did the Animals, the Yardbirds, and numerous other British Invasion bands circa 1964. It would take the stateside bands another few years to reclaim the blues, and that was done in large part by two Texans: Janis Joplin and Johnny Winter. And what Johnny Winter knew about the blues, he learned from Uncle John Turner.

PHOTO GALLERIES