Daily News - The Austin Chronicle (2024)

Great news for policy wonks with a yearning for archives: On Monday, the UT Austin Center for American History will formally announce it will be accepting the congressional papers of former U.S. Congressman Jack Brooks.

If you don't know who Jack Brooks is, a quick primer. The former Democratic state rep for Beaumont and a 42-year U.S. congressman, as chair of the House Judiciary Committee in 1992, he pushed to investigate the bizarre INSLAW case. A long-time NRA supporter, he also sponsored the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, better known as the federal assault weapon ban. Brooks was also the second-ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee during Watergate. He helped craft the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Before that, he was in the motorcade behind Pres. John F. Kennedy in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, and sat with Vice-Pres. Lyndon Baines Johnson in the waiting room at Parkland Hospital as Kenny O'Donnell told the future-president that his boss was in a "bad way." He was a friend to LBJ and to other notables Texas Democrats, like House Speaker Sam Rayburn. And he still lives in Beaumont.

Sure, we're noted it before, but we can't help ourselves. The latest campaign email from City Council candidate Laura Morrison goes:

Have you heard the great news?

Our campaign has received seven prestigious endorsem*nts this week!

* The Sierra Club
* Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO
* Better Austin Today PAC
* Austin Lesbian Gay Political Caucus
* Stonewall Democrats
* North by Northwest Democrats
* Ed Begley, Jr.

I say Place 4 goes to whoever gets the vaunted Howie "Dr. Wayne Fiscus" Mandel endorsem*nt, but that's just me.

As evidenced by the picture, the look on Fox 7's Crystal Cotti immediately after I say "redneck fiefdom" is a priceless thing.

This week, the Mustang Ridge controversy and yet more Webberville-landfill-cum-movie-studio rumblings. Click here to watch.

TODAY'S EVENTS

American Psycho at Paramount Theatre

K.A. Linde: The Wren in the Holly Library at BookPeople

MUSIC | MOVIES | ARTS | COMMUNITY

Yep, it's true: After a 46-year journalism career, including 11 at the local daily, Austin American-Statesman Editor Rich Oppel is retiring. He will be replaced by Managing Editor Fred Zipp.

Here's a look back at what I wrote a few months after he first came to town. As you can see, we were pretty optimistic about his arrival. Too bad the Statesman never quite reached the level for which we'd hoped.

A massive press conference at City Hall is set for 5:15pm this afternoon, featuring Council Members Mike Martinez, Lee Leffingwell, Sheryl Cole, Jennifer Kim, and Brewster McCracken, plus Mayor Will Wynn, Mayor Pro Tem Betty Dunkerley, State Sen. Kirk Watson, State Rep. Eddie Rodriguez, and Travis County Commissioner Margaret Gomez.

The topic? According to a press release from the office of council member Martinez, "a public agenda for a public meeting of the Creedmoor-Maha Water Supply Corporation that was posted on the Secretary of State’s Web site lists an agenda item as “Dempsey’s proposed old Harmony Hills tract and possible holding pen for wetbacks.” What?

As you can imagine, the assorted politicos will be calling for the resignation of Charles Laws, General Manager of the Creedmoor-Maha Water Supply Corporation and Mustang Ridge's Mayor Pro Tem. Writes Martinez, "It's the posting for an agenda item related to supplying water to an immigration detention center. When I contacted Mr. Laws today and asked him to explain his use of language for this item his response was … 'that's what it is, that's what they are.'"

Some shameful sh*t, indeed.

It seems that Texan politicians are in big demand to talk about immigration issues.

Rep. Debbie Riddle, R-Tomball, put out a press release yesterday saying she was in Kansas last month (yes, you read that right.) She was there to talk before that state's Federal and State Affairs Committee in favor a tough new immigration bill. After fear-mongering about drug gangs, she railed on "those who cloak themselves with pseudo-compassion and stand ready to take as much money for services as necessary to satisfy any want or need of any and all illegal aliens." The Kansas senate took so much notice of her that they gutted the bill of all the bits she was raving about.

Meanwhile, Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, sent a sharply-worded letter yesterday to U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, warning him not to waste the estimated $49 billion on a border wall when there was going to be a new president and congress in ten months. In it he reminded Chertoff that, in the 1850s, the Know Nothing party tried to ban all catholic migrants. He also had a humdinger for the party of Ronald "tear down this wall" Reagan, when he reminded Chertoff of what Mikhail Gorbachev said about the "muro de odio": "I don't think the U.S. is so weak and so much lacks confidence as not to be able to find a different solution."

A new report argues anti-immigration fever is fueling a spate of new hate groups across America.

The latest edition of “The Year in Hate,” an annual tracking by the Montgomery, Ala.-based Southern Poverty Law Center, counts a record 888 U.S. hate groups of all kinds in 2007.

Expect to see some form of vouchers-lite come out of the Texas Education Agency in the next couple of weeks.

Education Commissioner Robert Scott is expected to use his administrative powers to create a grant program to recover high school dropouts. Public and private schools likely would be given a per-student reimbursem*nt for recovering the students.

Scott has argued such a program should not be deemed a voucher, per se, but talk is that it will be close enough to a voucher to please multimillionaire Jim Leininger, who has poured $8 million of his own money into recent elections in order to get vouchers passed.

Local education groups promise a courthouse brawl if TEA bypasses the Legislature to approve any program that might open the door on vouchers.

During a lecture on the dangers of weaponizing outer space at UT's LBJ Library, the Independent Institute's Mike Moore (who has a quite nice journalism resume as well, might we add) joked that the space-related arms race the world's powers are inching toward could transform the doomsday clock into a nice modern little digital number.

Moore said that the US' repeated refusal to adopt a treaty banning weapons in outer space has only made more likely the future star wars. But it's not going to play out like George Lucas vs. Commander Worf. More likely, Moore said, was that advanced anti-satellite weapons would be developed by powerful countries, like China, that could bring the international economy to a halt by crippling global communications and navigation systems.

Since the US has more satellites in orbit than any other country, and China has already demonstrated at least the potential power to knock one out of the sky, wouldn't that kind of treaty benefit the U.S.?