Hang 'em high. It's time for the two Texas Toms — DeLay and Craddick — to go down. Houston Chronicle:

U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay admitted Thursday he provided Texas Speaker Tom Craddick with the same information that state police used to enlist a homeland security agency in the search for runaway Democratic legislators.

DeLay said his staff used public information at the Federal Aviation Administration to track former Texas Speaker Pete Laney's airplane.

Laney was among 55 Democrats who broke a House quorum on May 12 to kill a congressional redistricting bill sought by DeLay, R-Sugar Land. Craddick and DeLay wanted the errant legislators arrested and returned to the House to force a vote on the bill.

"I was told at the time that that plane was in the air coming from Ardmore, Oklahoma, back to Georgetown, Texas," DeLay said of the FAA's information, which he said was also available on the agency's Web site. "I relayed that information to Tom Craddick."

Texas Department of Public Safety officers working in Craddick's office had the same information when it contacted a federal air interdiction agency to seek its help in finding Laney's airplane. The federal agency has since said it was misled into believing Laney's airplane was missing and possibly had crashed.

Homeland Defense Secretary Tom Ridge, meanwhile, said Thursday his agency is investigating "potentially criminal" misuse of the federal air interdiction service by the DPS.

DeLay said he played no part in the DPS' decision to contact the federal air interdiction service. And Craddick denies knowing anything about how the DPS came to call the agency.

"I don't know who contacted who," Craddick said.

How could Craddick not know how DPS came to call the agency? They were installed in the reception room adjacent to his office.

DeLay's admission is the latest revelation that state and federal Republican officials were directly involved in the widespread manhunt.

DeLay has said his office contacted justice officials May 12 "about the appropriate role of the federal government in finding Texas legislators who have warrants for their arrest and have crossed state lines."

Craddick had signed an order requiring any Texas "peace officer" to arrest the missing members. But Craddick's command was not a "warrant," which is an arrest order issued by a court for an accused criminal.

DeLay, in an impromptu interview with Texas reporters, said his office tracked Laney's airplane by contacting the FAA in Washington.

FAA officials told DeLay's staff that public information showed the airplane was en route from Ardmore to Georgetown, north of Austin.

State Rep. Mike Krusee, R-Round Rock, was in the DPS command center outside of Craddick's office May 12. He has said there was a belief that Laney was ferrying lawmakers from Georgetown to Ardmore and the DPS thought some legislators might be caught when the plane landed.

When the plane did not arrive, Krusee said people worried that it had crashed. He said he did not know if that is what prompted DPS to call the homeland security agency, which could not locate the plane.

At 9:39 a.m. on May 14, the DPS ordered all records of the search to be destroyed. DPS claims the records were destroyed because the investigation was over, but the House did not drop the order to arrest the wayward members until 11:25 a.m.

Ridge told the House Select Committee on Homeland Security he cannot release tapes of the May 12 DPS telephone call because of the ongoing investigation.

"This is now a potentially criminal investigation," Ridge said.

Republican claims of honesty and integrity are simply lies unsupported by empirical evidence.

The assistant inspector general conducting the investigation is looking for evidence of "fraud, waste, and abuse." As if there could be any doubt — they are three of the chief characteristics of Republican power. Add hatred, mendacity, and divisiveness, and there you have the state of Texas-bred conservatism in a nutshell.

{ 9:29 AM }

.

Book-of-the-Month Club tilts right. Following on the heels of Penguin and Random House, which have a total of thirty new right-wing books in the works, the Book-of-the-Month Club is planning a copycat venture that panders to the Coulter and Bennett fans (Yahoo/AP):

The operators of the Book-of-the-Month Club announced Tuesday that they are forming a new club, as yet unnamed, devoted to works with a conservative point of view. Within the past month, Penguin Putnam and the Crown Publishing Group have started conservative imprints.

"We don't think we've done enough in this area. We have featured conservative authors like Bill Bennett, but we've never presented them in a coherent way," says Mel Parker, senior vice president and editorial director of Bookspan, which runs the Book-of-the-Month Club and several other clubs.

Bookspan is co-owned by Bertelsmann AG and AOL Time Warner Inc., and its new club is scheduled to begin by early next year. Brad Miner, a former literary editor with the conservative National Review, will serve as editor.

Miner should have plenty of material. Penguin and Crown, a division of Random House, Inc., each plan to publish about 15 conservative books a year. Regnery Publishing, a conservative press based in Washington, D.C., puts out between 25-30.

Does genuine demand really exist for all of these planned books? Relative to its already-exaggerated status, how much bigger can the market for specious reasoning, inaccuracy, and hatred be?

Link via Moby Lives.

{ 2:43 PM }

.

Dick Cheney's owners forbidden from approving his paycheck. Halliburton continues to pay the vice president of the United States of America an annual six-figure "deferred compensation" but the company's shareholders have no say in the exit packages of its executives, according to a new vote reported in the subscription-requiring Wall Street Journal:

A proposal on termination benefits for senior executives was defeated Wednesday by Halliburton (HAL) shareholders but gathered a large number of votes.

The proposal urged the board of directors to seek shareholder approval of any future severance agreements that would pay senior executives more than twice the sum of their base salary plus bonus.

The motion was defeated when 61% of shareholders present voted against it, but 36% of shareholders voted for the proposal. The others abstained.

Halliburton's board of directors had opposed the measure. "If this proposal was adopted, it would have undermined Halliburton's ability to attract and retain highly qualified senior executives*," Wendy Hall, Halliburton's public relations manager, said in a statement.

*By "highly qualified senior executives," I think Wendy meant war-crazed, bunker-bound, cardiac-challenged crony capitalists.

{ 8:40 AM }

.

Last chance to spend tonight with Sharon Bush and a Rolls Royce dealer. Hurry! A thousand bucks will let you join Neil Bush's jilted wife and her wealthy friends at tonight's benefit dinner, according to the Houston Chronicle's Shelby Hodge:

Wednesday [May 21, 2003]

The American Ireland Fund benefits Special Olympics with its garden dinner at the River Oaks home of Paige and Tilman Fertitta, with special guest entertainment by Irish tenor Ronan Tynan.

Chair: Sharon Bush.

Tickets: $1,000.

Details: 832-868-5570

Despite Neil's initial offer of $1,000 a month, Sharon can still afford to hang with her cherished River Oaks friends thanks to generous financial support from her in-laws, George H. W. and Barbara Bush, the last Republican failures in the White House.

{ 2:01 PM }

.

Texas Republicans destroy evidence of their partisan abuse of Homeland Security. Don't take my word for it, read the Houston Chronicle:

AUSTIN -- While under heavy criticism of its investigation into the House Democratic walkout, the Texas Department of Public Safety ordered all records related to that investigation destroyed.

[…]

The order to destroy the records was made May 15.

Democrats involved in the walkout began complaining May 13 that the agency investigation involved the harassment of their families.

Congressional Democrats also raised questions May 14 about whether the DPS misused a federal Homeland Security Department agency in searching for former Speaker Pete Laney's airplane on May 12.

A DPS officer had called the Air and Marine Interdiction Coordination Center asking for help locating Laney's aircraft.

The federal agency last Thursday put out a statement saying the DPS had mislead the interdiction service into believing it was searching for an aircraft that was missing and possibly crashed.

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge has refused to release tapes of the telephone call from DPS.

A total of 55 Texas House Democrats vanished on May 13 in order to break a quorum to keep the House from debating legislation to redraw the state's congressional district boundaries.

As soon as Speaker Tom Craddick, a Republican, knew a quorum was not present, he ordered the missing lawmakers to be arrested and returned to the House. The state Constitution gives the House and Senate presiding officers the power to do that.

The DPS set up a command post in the reception room adjacent to Craddick's office.

All but four of the missing legislators had gone into hiding in Ardmore, Okla. DPS was following a rumor that Laney was using his airplane to ferry lawmakers between Georgetown north of Austin to Ardmore.

Hmm, I wonder who started that rumor. Craddick's unseemly behavior was previously discussed here.

{ 11:56 AM }

.

Jeb sucks sugar cane. The 2008 GOP presidential nominee already demonstrates his obedience to his industrial masters, as shown by this story from
Mmm... sugar.FindLaw/Reuters:

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (Reuters) - Florida Gov. Jeb Bush signed into law on Tuesday a sugar industry-backed bill relaxing requirements to clean up the Everglades, which critics say threatens the health of the massive Florida wetland.

The bill has come under fire from U.S. lawmakers who say it threatens federal funding critical to the $8 billion restoration of the Everglades, the unique "River of Grass" that supplies drinking water to millions of people and is home to numerous endangered species.

The U.S. District judge overseeing a decade-old cleanup agreement between the state and federal governments expressed grave concerns about the bill, which critics say eases water-quality standards and delays a 2006 deadline.

Judge William Hoeveler said he would forge ahead with the 1994 pact even if Bush, younger brother of President Bush, signed the measure.

The governor said the bill needed work, but that its underlying premise was sound. He asked lawmakers to "clarify" language in the new law.

"The Everglades bill recently passed by the House and Senate is strong legislation built upon good policy," Bush, a Republican, said in a prepared statement prior to the signing. "(It) reinforces our commitment to restore water quality in the Everglades by providing a strategic plan to achieve this goal."

Critics say the bill eases water quality standards meant to reduce the level of phosphorus in the Everglades, polluted for decades by fertilizer-tainted runoff from sugar plantations.

The sugar industry, led by U.S. Sugar Corp., helped push the bill through the Florida legislature.

Environmental groups, which worked for years to establish the 1994 "Everglades Forever Act," have derisively dubbed the latest legislation the "Everglades Whenever Act."

[...]

Bush, who met with federal officials in Washington this month, said he has asked lawmakers to tighten language that now states restoration efforts should be concluded at the "earliest practicable date" and pollutants be reduced to the "maximum extent practicable."

Bush has repeatedly brushed aside questions about Florida's commitment to Everglades restoration, saying the state has already earmarked $500 million toward restoration and ongoing efforts have already significantly reduced phosphorus levels in 90 percent of the region.

Sugar and spice, industrial vice, that's what little Jebs are made of.

See also FlaBlog, especially here.

{ 11:38 AM }

.

"Your autobiography" by DARPA. Just imagine: the Pentagon keeping track of all the details of your life in a convenient, searchable format!

"The embryonic LifeLog program would dump everything an individual does into a giant database: every e-mail sent or received, every picture taken, every Web page surfed, every phone call made, every TV show watched, every magazine read." — Wired News

The fact that this program is run by Iran-Contra felon John M. Poindexter should give us pause.

It would be nice if some clever programmer with a conscience infiltrated this stupid effort and created back doors in the code, leaked its overseers' LifeLogs, and generally mucked things up enough to disgrace and ruin the program. Otherwise, the USA will likely become Brazil.

{ 4:20 PM }

.

Clear Channel left-wing radio? I'm not sure I agree with the conclusion of this article. Is the move by Clear Channel just a spin ploy that will last only until the big media dereg push wins the FCC on June 2?

{ 12:44 PM }

.

The birth of global is the death of local. From a long piece called "World of media shrinks as it widens: In vote next month, FCC is expected to loosen restraints on corporations" in the Baltimore Sun:

"The days of the locally developed TV show, the locally developed TV talk show or children's shows don't exist anymore. It's not right or wrong. It's simply the time we live in," [Mark] Hyman [vice president of corporate communications and government relations for Maryland's Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc.] said.

Actually, the death of local programming is wrong. The airwaves are a public resource and we have a right to see to it how they are used — as well as who gets to use them. If large corporations don't want to invest in local production infrastructure, THEY SHOULD STAY OUT OF OUR MARKETS. And we should enforce that concept by limiting the amount of ownership across markets and across media.

We have a duty to see to it, through the FCC, that what remains of mass media does not dissolve inevitably into a soup of corporate sludge.

Make your voice heard: Stop the FCC from giving more opportunity to fewer corporations.

Link via Convergence Chaser, May 20, 2003.

{ 9:24 AM }

.

Hypocritical scoundrel Tom Craddick rewrites his own history, decrying the disappearing Democrats in the Texas legislature "when he was one of 30 members of the Texas House who disappeared during the 1971 legislative session."

Link via Liquid List. We last wrote about Craddick, his "emergency" tax breaks concocted with co-conspirator Guvna Dubya, his lobbyist daughter, and his energy industry pimping here.

UPDATE 5/20/03: This May 19 Washington Post editorial puts the whole issue into perspective: "The Texas Republican plan is a naked power grab that pushes in the opposite direction [of a rational system]. The Post's Lee Hockstader reported that one street in Austin would cross four districts -- one of which snakes 300 miles to the Mexican border. Democracy is supposed to be about voters picking their representatives, not the other way around."

{ 5:13 PM }

.

Aaron Sorkin's 25th Amendment. Richard Just writes in an online-only article for The American Prospect about the departure of the creator of The West Wing from his own show, and the loss we viewers will feel: "When the show was firing on all cylinders -- which was not always, but often enough -- it had the sophistication of literature."

Agreed. The intellectual passion that Just rightly identifies as the heart and soul of the show — as opposed to its liberal ideology — will be sorely missed. Its expected disappearance will serve as yet another reflection of the pandering coarseness of our times, and of the sad homogeneity of the broadcast networks, the conjoined quadruplets of marketplace mediocrity.

{ 8:53 AM }

.