edited by: Ted McLaughlin,
Texas Editor
Via press release from the County Clerk’s office, some dates to mark on the calendar:
IMPORTANT DECEMBER 12, 2009 JOINT RUNOFF ELECTION DATES
First Day of Early Voting – Monday, November 30, 2009
Last Day to Apply for Ballot by Mail (received not Postmarked) – Friday, December 4, 2009
Last Day of [...]
Got a red light camera ticket that you haven’t paid? Want to get it taken care of but fear there may be consequences for having waited so long? Well, now’s your chance to do it, as HPD has announced a 60-day grace period, which began Friday, for those with [...]
State Sen. Florence Shapiro was the first Republican to declare her intent to run for the was-supposed-to-be-open Senate seat of Kay Bailey Hutchison. She’s now the first Republican to abandon that pursuit.
In the latest fallout from U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s decision not to resign any time soon, [...]
Metro chair David Wolff would like to see the portion of the sales tax revenue that gets diverted from its coffers to Harris County and the smaller cities go back to Metro.
Wolff believes METRO can build significantly more if it has access to all of the 1 cent sales [...]
Have you started defrosting your turkey yet?
Avoid black luggage. My grandmother used to travel with a piece of puke-green Samsonite that had the letter K (for Kuffner) plastered on it in lime-green masking tape. No one would ever claim to have picked that off the carousel by “accident”.
In 2003 the Republican controlled Texas Legislature ushered in massive tort reform requiring a change to the Texas Constitution by a vote of the citizens of Texas. By a very slim margin Texas citizens embraced tort reform to lower health care costs, expand health care coverage, [...] 
The gentlewoman from Arkansas Walmart Big Pharma takes center stage in advance of Joe Lieberman's second act ...As noted yesterday, the Chronicle endorsed Annise Parker for Mayor in the runoff election.
With city tax revenues eroded by the continuing recession, the next occupant of the office must be a prudent fiscal manager as well as a leader who can make hard decisions on spending priorities. That [...]
Sheriff Adrian Garcia wants to take another crack at building a new jail facility. As was the case in 2007, when a referendum to float bonds for a new jail was voted down, this too would be voted on by the public. Garcia recognizes he has work to do [...]
Want to meet the candidates who are in the December 12 runoff? Here’s your chance:
You are invited to attend …
2009 Runoff Candidate Meet and GreetDECEMBER 3, 2009 – 6:30 PM – The Upper Kirby Building
(details below)
CNU-Houston, Houston Tomorrow, Emerging Green Builders, and Citizens’ Transportation Coalition are proud to host [...]
Redmond and Elvis over at Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog are doing a hilarious chapter-by-chapter review of Sarah Palin's "Going Rogue," which they have re-titled "Why Me Not President?" So far they have covered Chapters One and Two. I'll share a few excerpts,' [...] Via Mike McGuff, the women of the Houston Fire Department have gotten in on the calendar-for-charity act, something their make colleagues have been doing for awhile. Here’s what it’s all about.
Our mission is to represent the diversity, strength, and femininity of the mothers, daughters, sisters, and [...]
In case you missed it Friday night and can't wait for Sunday night's replay, here's the Mayoral "Debate" on PBS's "Red White & Blue" show. Turns out Gene didn't show up, even though he was invited and had agreed to show up. Maybe he was resting up, because the next [...]
Among the runoff elections, only one does not include a candidate that was endorsed by the Chron in the first round. That race is City Council At Large #1, and today the Chron made their choice for the runoff by endorsing Karen Derr.
[Derr] would bring to the position well-honed [...]
Shorter Burka: “KBH says in her new TV ad that she’s needed in the Senate. So why is she running for Governor?”
It’s a good question. And given that no one knows what KBH will do, it’s the reason why this keeps coming up.
Despite protestations to the contrary [...]
We already know why you should stay away from Steven Hotze. But Allen Blakemore is the Horace and Jasper to Hotze’s Cruella de Vil, and the same warning applies to him as well. But don’t take my word for it, listen to a dissatisfied customer of [...]
This is cool.
A deal between the city and Reliant has the electric retailer converting 10 of the city’s new Toyota Prius gasoline-electric hybrids into plug-in vehicles with greater fuel efficiency and the ability to recharge through a standard home power socket. Reliant is also installing 10 charging stations for [...]
Well, no. But they do seem to be levying bigger fines, so maybe their gums are a little harder.
By every measure, the agency is issuing more — and larger — fines, the records show.
“There’s been a shift to focus more on enforcement and compliance,” said the commission’s chairman, San [...]
“I thought we were bullied, personally,” Roy Morales told me this morning.
The conservative mayoral candidate was describing a lunch-time meeting he attended Wednesday with Gene Locke’s campaign manager, Christian Archer, at the offices of political consultant Allen Blakemore. The meeting was an effort on Archer’s part to secure [...]
Hell hath no fury like a fourth-place-finishing Mayoral candidate scorned!
[...]This weekend's football fare ...
REGION I AREA
Odessa (9-2) - 42; Arlington (9-2) - 70
Coppell (10-1) - 14; Plano East (7-3) - 0
Odessa Permian (8-3) - 15; Arl. Martin (7-4) - 25
Euless Trinity (9-2) - 41; Plano (5-6) - 38
NOTES: I'm not sure which [...]
A bit too little of time to blog today, but two "compare & contrast" arguments on health care reform that I'll suggest reading over the weekend:
» WaPo: Obamacare: Buy now, pay later (Robert Samuelson)
» WaPo: Health-care reform's grand bargain (Ezra Klein)
I can certainly appreciate Ezra's point about the' [...]
So, I didn’t get around to the news about NASA finding water on the moon until after I’d published my Friday Random Ten for last week. But the great thing about Fridays is that there’s always another one coming. So here I present to you ten moon songs.
1. Bad [...]
Here’s the full polling data for that KHOU/KUHF poll. Of greatest interest to me is the bit where they note that they asked people whether they’d voted in the November election; about 75% of them said Yes. Given that turnout for this election was about 20%, I find [...]
I know it's Friday and I'm supposed to do another installment of my funnies, but I have a beef. It's the Friday before our thanksgiving break, but all I can think about right now are management issues in education. Since I'm sure these issues are mirrored in industry I [...]
And we have our first poll from a source other than one of the campaigns, but like those two before it, this one shows Annise Parker in the lead.
The poll consisted of 500 telephone interviews with registered Houston voters who consider themselves likely to vote in the [...]
The 2011 legislative session is going to be so much fun.
Sales tax revenues have taken double-digit dives for five months running; in each of those months, the state’s income from those taxes has been more than 10 percent lower than in the same month the year before. In a [...]
Maybe you are, and maybe you’re not.
Barbara Ann Radnofsky, a Houston lawyer and Democratic candidate for attorney general, says that a 22-word clause in a 2005 constitutional amendment designed to ban gay marriages erroneously endangers the legal status of all marriages in the state.
The amendment, approved by the Texas [...]
I don’t follow high school sports at all, but this Chron story about a battle between the University Interscholastic League (UIL) and the Texas Association of Sports Officials (TASO), about who has control over the officials at high school athletic events, was fascinating to me. I don’t have any [...]
The following is a message from HCDP Chair Gerry Birnberg:
CANDIDATES – ALL CANDIDATES – STAY CLEAR OF HOTZE
Steven Hotze is a hatemonger.
For nearly twenty five years he has stoked the flames of bigotry in this community like no other local politico. In the mid-1980’s he masterminded the repeal of the City of Houston [...]
» TX Monthly: The Great White Hope (S.C. Gwynne)
Read it while it's available. If I might highlight one element that has made me appreciate hizzoner's ability as Mayor, it would be this:
Though White prefers to govern by a sort of gentle consensus, he is fully capable of reverting to [...]
» NYT: Cellphone Apps Challenge the Rise of E-Readers
I can relate to this ...
With Amazon's Kindle, readers can squeeze hundreds of books into a device that is smaller than most hardcovers. For some, that's not small enough.Many people who want to read electronic books are discovering that they can [...]
A smattering of Thursday reports to feed into the weekend frenzy that is Texas high school playoffs.
» Two big games on the schedule for Dallas-area 5A competition, and with enough navigation skills and good fortune of the earlier game wrapping up early, you might be able to catch both [...]
Longtime republican family values activist, Dave Wilson, who once led a successful effort to amend the city charter to deny benefits to divorced city employees, said he has sent out 35,000 fliers opposing the candidacy of Lt Governor David Dewhurst in part because of his marriage [...] 
