Tag: Texas

Tom Tom Club.

“In the three Republican primaries that DeLay has faced since he was first elected in 1984, he has never received less than 80 percent of the vote, until now. Over the past four years, the percentage of Republicans who have had enough of the Hammer has doubled.” With perhaps a dollop of wishful thinking, Salon‘s Joe Conason parses the results of Boss DeLay’s recent primary win.

Sugar Land Sours on DeLay?

With three opponents all bucking to take him into a runoff situation, Boss DeLay faces a tougher GOP primary than usual in his home district this Tuesday. (In a January poll, 68% of primary voters remained undecided.) And, even if he emerges from the primary dust-up relatively unscathed, DeLay will then face a credible and well-financed Democratic opponent in former Rep. Nick Lampson, who, in the same poll, led the Hammer by eight points. “It will not help DeLay that his district is more Democratic, ironically by his own making…Always a strong candidate in his own races, DeLay surrendered GOP voters in the realignment to bolster some other Republican districts. Now, after contending with indictment and departure from the House leadership, he could be facing the loss of the very seat he used to rise to power.” Update: Or not. Boss DeLay coasts to victory over his three primary challengers with 62% of the vote.

Justices and Gerrymanders.

The Bush administration loves it, but many Justice Dept. officials think it’s illegal…Now, it’s the Supreme Court’s turn to weigh in on Boss DeLay’s gerrymandering plan in Texas. “Two years ago, justices split 5-4, in a narrow opening for challenges claiming party politics overly influenced election maps. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy was the key swing voter in that case, and on Wednesday expressed concerns about at least part of the Texas map.” (Rehnquist and O’Connor sided against the map challenge then, so a switch by Roberts or Alito will only mean a larger majority against the DeLay redistricting, should the same votes hold.) Update: Justice Ginsburg finds the subject exhausting, and Dahlia Lithwick reports in.

Audit to Silence.

“‘This audit was political retaliation by Tom DeLay’s cronies to intimidate us for blowing the whistle on DeLay’s abuses,’ McDonald said. ‘Enlisting the IRS to intimidate critics is a dirty trick reminiscent of Richard Nixon…It is not a crime to report a crime, as we did with DeLay.’” Texans for Public Justice, a non-profit organization critical of the DeLay ring’s hold over their home state, has been cleared of any wrongdoing in an IRS audit — one seemingly triggered, it was discovered after a FOIA request, by Boss DeLay’s minions. “The [instigating] lawmaker, House Ways and Means Committee member Sam Johnson (R-Tex.), was in turn responding to a complaint about the group…from Barnaby W. Zall, a Washington lawyer close to DeLay and his fundraising apparatus, according to IRS documents.“

Shadies gotta stick together.

Despite well-publicized concerns in their own Justice Department (which were overruled by senior officials), the White House rides to the rescue of Boss DeLay’s troubling redistricting plan by filing an amicus brief before the Supreme Court. “DeLay’s efforts on behalf of the plan resulted in his being admonished by the House Ethics Committee and indicted on charges of illegally diverting money to the campaigns of state legislators who drew the new map.“

Bound for Glory.


Nothing if not textbook and by-the-numbers (Coach Haskell would be proud), Disney’s Glory Road — the story of the 1966 NCAA Champion Texas Western Miners, the first basketball team in tournament history to feature five black starters — still makes for a decent genre matinee. It’s not a movie that’ll light the world on fire by any means, but it hits its beats decently, and benefits from amiable performances from Josh Lucas and Emily Deschanel right on down the bench. I wish the movie had stayed more with the historical game plan it marked out in the opening credits — and that the basketball scenes were more engrossing — but, all in all, Glory Road is a journeyman sports pic.

A synopsis here is probably overkill, suffice to say that a well-meaning disciplinarian coach (Josh Lucas) rides into El Paso, circa 1965, to try to mold a championship basketball team out of a triracial group of college athletes. Do these youngsters overcome their cultural differences, learn there’s a method to Coach’s madness, and become a Team? Do they play well enough to get to the Big Dance? Well, I’ll leave that for you to discover. The main — ok, the only — thing that differentiates Glory Road from its many predecessors is its period flavor. These players don’t just have to worry about the usual assortment of college problems: They’re also caught up in the middle of the civil rights revolution — and the white backlash — across the South, and have to contend with brutal acts of racism off the court as well as the usual opposing teams. George Will recently questioned whether this team was as history-making as it’s made out to be here. Well, ok, but, in a way, that’s beside the point. By bringing race and the civil rights struggle to the fore here, Glory Road acts as a corrective to the main flaw in what’s otherwise a better basketball film, Hoosiers. As Spike Lee points out in Best Seat in the House, it’s hard to watch that film, particularly its final game, and not feel at times that its an uncomfortably white basketball flick.

Speaking of Spike Lee’s book, it also kinda ruined some of Glory Road for me. Therein, Lee (pre-He Got Game) spends a chapter calling out ridiculous basketball scenes in movies — watching unathletic actors dunk on 6-foot rims, etc. And, while the rims look the right height in Glory Road, I have to admit, none of the basketball scenes are all that engaging. They’re cut too close, there’s barely a sense of plays developing, and very few shots seem to leave the actors’ hands to go into the basket. (For that matter, you don’t really get a sense of what various players’ strengths or weaknesses are here, other than that Bobby Joe Hill (Derek Luke) has a nice handle and Nevil Shed (Al Shearer) has a tendency to disappear in the paint. What’s more, Coach’s advice throughout basically can be summed up as “You can do it!” — Not a lot of play-calling going on.) Still, for what it is — an uplifting vignette of sports history — Glory Road is solid enough. Formulaic, sure, but no harm, no foul.

The House that Jack Built.

In the continuing Abramoff fallout department, a disgraced Boss DeLay has picked up a primary challenger, Tom Campbell, in his home district. “‘If we don’t clean house in March, we’ll lose the House in November,’ Campbell said.” Meanwhile, as the GOP tries to choose between two K-Street darlings for their new majority leader, the House looks to the McCain-Shays bill of last month as a template for new lobbying restrictions.”The McCain bill would beef up lobbying disclosure considerably and cover grass-roots lobbying campaigns, which now go unreported. It would also require lobbyists to report each fundraising event that they host or sponsor for candidates for federal office, including the amount raised. In addition, the McCain bill would require lobbyists to report the donations they give to lawmakers directly and at events that honor lawmakers or entities that they created or control. It would also require lobbyists to disclose quarterly — which would be twice as often as they file now — any gift worth more than $20 that they give to lawmakers or their aides, including meals and tickets to events.” Sounds like a start…but it’ll take more than increased disclosure to transform a Washington culture that’s turned rancid in recent years thanks to overwhelming lobbyist influence.