Governor Impeachable?

[NoPasaran]

Poor Gov. Rick Perry.

It's not enough that he has Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn nipping at his heels about this or that budget fiasco every other day, and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison waiting in the wings for the right moment to make her grand entrance, and even GOP operatives floating Don "Mr. Moneybags" Evans as yet another potential rival to the Mansion. Now a handful of legislators have taken it into their heads to start talking impeachment. It's getting so the governor can't cross the border for a few days to lecture the Mexicans on energy policy without somebody taking the opportunity to stick pins in his effigy back home.

-snip-

The discussion has focused on three episodes, each of which has featured the governor dancing on the edge of ethical impropriety, if not outright illegality. The first was Perry's irritated comment a few weeks ago to a group of Dallas school district officials, saying they should not hope for a better deal on school finance from the courts, because Perry happened to know that his appointees to the Texas Supreme Court would vote in favor of the state. That sounded enough like tampering to make a couple of those justices run for verbal cover.

More recently, Strayhorn accused Perry of manipulating a legislative audit of her agency in an attempt to find favoritism in her tax case decisions (or, as she put it, asking the taxpayers to fund the governor's "political opposition research"). The governor's office duly dismissed Strayhorn's charges, and whatever the truth of the matter, Perry has been sufficiently insulated by the Legislature, which targeted its own punitive measures at the comptroller, to make it unlikely that a battle on those grounds can be more than rhetorical.

But the third line of inquiry apparently holds more promise. As was first revealed by Republican Sen. Jane Nelson of Lewisville in the blowup over "slots for tots," last December the Lottery Commission paid $250,000 to a Las Vegas law firm to draft special interest legislation that would have legalized slot machines at a half-dozen venues across the state. The specific firm was hired at the suggestion of Perry chief of staff Mike Toomey, whose defense has been that he was only "passing on a name" recommended to him by Rep. Kent Grusendorf, R-Arlington, chair of the House Public Education Committee. (Grusendorf apparently keeps lists handy of Vegas lawyers in anticipation of just such an opportunity.)

-more-

http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2004-07-09/pols_capitol.html

[Gman]

1. Strayhorn and Hutchinson have Perry in their sights

I can live with either assuming we have to have a GOP guv. I'd at least prefer Strayhorn as she used to be a Dem and former mayor of Austin. I know a few of her friends and they say she's a repug only because she couldn't get elected statewide unless she was a pug.

Evans, I believe is the preferred nutcase RW'er for guv.

[sonias]

2. I've said it before

There is nothing more entertaining that republican in-fighting. If they're nasty to us, imagine how they treat their own. These are the good people who can justify torture as fraternity pranks, remember. And as for the good Dems in the legislature, Lon Burnham and Pete Gallegos, I applaud them. We need to keep the opposition up, if Gov. Goodhair had broken the law, then by all means let's impeach the bastard.

In yet another scandal, same Austin Chonicle issue, Perry is calling for an investigation on CPS abuse, that makes the Florida Child Protective Service agency look like a well run machine. But Strayhorn is also in there calling it too little and too late.

Perry Calls For CPS Probe
http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2004-07-09/pols_naked9.html
Perry's charge came in the wake of several highly publicized child abuse cases in South Texas, and a day after a Hidalgo Co. grand jury issued a three-count felony indictment of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, which runs CPS and is one of the several agencies overseen by Hawkins and the HHSC. The grand jury faulted the agency for not taking more effective action in the case of three teenage sisters badly abused by their mother and stepfather, who impregnated one of the teens and was indicted for rape.

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Pretty friggin sick. Perry has got to go!

Sonia