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October 26, 2009
Teel Bivins, former ambassador and state senator, dies in Amarillo
Teel Bivins, whose political successes as a state senator and then ambassador to Sweden were curtailed by a draining disease, died Monday afternoon at his Amarillo home, surrounded by family and friends, a family spokeswoman said.
Sharon Miner said Bivins died at about 2 p.m. after a years-long battle with Progressive Supranuclear Palsy. He was 61.
Bivins was diagnosed with the disease in 2004 while serving as President George W. Bush’s appointed ambassador to Sweden. He resigned from that post in 2006 and came back to Texas.
After joining the Texas Senate in 1989, Bivins became a student of public school finance, later serving as chairman of that body’s education panel and then as chairman of its budget-writing finance committee.
I remember him as a gentle presence in public, though it’s my memory too that at least once he marked the end of a 140-day regular legislative session by throwing a party at Austin’s Continental Club. I didn’t make it to the scene, but (again, if memory serves) I believe the senator encouraged dancing in a kind of conga line.
Your memories? I am drafting a story for Tuesday’s newspaper.
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October 9, 2009
Texas GOP sees humor in president's prize; Texas lawmakers hew to serious reactions
Is it humorous that President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize less than 10 months into his presidency?
Early today, U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio, chuckled about it (see my blog on his thoughts here.)
And now the Republican Party of Texas has attempted humor in a fund-raising e-mail; click below to the next page of this blog for its jab.
In Austin this afternoon, I asked Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, if he was amused. He replied that he was surprised like others. “Ordinarily,” he said, “it’s rewarded for accomplishments.”
U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, reacted with a football analogy:
This is the equivalent to awarding the Heisman in September. There are a lot of decisions the President still has to make that directly impact the peace and security of the United States. I applaud his initial position on Afghanistan and hope that he remains steadfast in defeating al Qaeda and the Taliban.
Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, wasn’t laughing, suggesting instead that the award was a recognition the United States has turned a corner from President George W. Bush’s approach to world affairs.
“It is a remarkable change in tone from the bellicose cries of pre-emptive war” under Bush, Doggett said.
Of Obama, Doggett said:
There are already significant accomplishments with which to point, notably to remove the costly and totally ineffective commitment to a missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic to protect the breweries of Pilzen from missiles Iran doesn’t have… (the award) is mainly about the whole approach, whether on climate change or Iran or North Korea, to not having the failed George Bush go-it-alone approach.
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San Antonio congressman, UT professor air surprise at Obama's Nobel Peace Prize
U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, a Republican whose San Antonio-rooted district reaches north into Travis County, chuckled at word that President Obama had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
“I am very surprised,” Smith said Friday. “I don’t know that I see a whole lot of evidence to justify the peace prize.”
“Most people actually tend to think the world is a more dangerous place than, say, it was a year ago.”
Smith, the first Austin-area House member to answer a morning request for reaction, cited as indications of reduced safety North Korea firing off a missile contrary to international wishes, Iran building a nuclear facility perhaps toward fashioning a nuclear bomb, disappointment in the failure of U.S. overtures to Russia and the alienation of European allies over the U.S. decision not to continue working on a missile shield over Poland.
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September 3, 2009
"Conservatives in exile" roar at Waco stop of Tea Party Express
The headline on this blog hearkens to a window sticker I saw in the parking lot next to the park in downtown Waco this afternoon where the Tea Party Express—a two-bus caravan that originated in California, bound for Washington—arrived toward dusk for a rally that drew at least 1,500 people (probably more, at times), most of them waving signs and miniature “Don’t Tread on Me” flags.
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August 26, 2009
Ted Kennedy sang, not so tunefully, in Laredo
A reader alerted us to this moment from Ted Kennedy’s stop in Laredo on behalf of then-Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in February 2008:
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UPDATED: My frail Kennedy memory; what do you recall?
I’ve got a weak memory of Ted Kennedy, though it’s not about the illness that killed him.
In 1972, Kennedy introduced Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern, the senator from South Dakota, at a huge rally in downtown Philadelphia. I was perched on my Dad’s shoulders hanging onto a lamppost. And my memory is that the crowd roared more for Kennedy, the introducer, than for McGovern, the longshot who seemed to overly dwell on a break-in that had taken place at the Watergate complex in Washington.
Surely our readers have stronger memories of Kennedy, perhaps from his 1980 run for the Democratic presidential nomination. I’m asking; fire at me at wgselby@statesman.com or feel free to comment below.
Meantime, thanks to a nudge from Democratic blogger Phillip Martin, here’s a link to Kennedy’s 1980 speech to the Democratic National Convention.
Factoid: President Carter walloped Kennedy in the Texas presidential primary of 1980 which, to be fair, occurred well after the president had all but locked down re-nomination. In Texas, Carter drew 770,390 votes, Kennedy 314,129. Jerry Brown of California ran a distant third, getting 35,585 votes.
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August 17, 2009
Win for Cornyn: White House shuts down e-mail box for "fishy" notes about health care legislation
The White House has evidently shut down an e-mail box it recently established for visitors to forward information they consider fishy regarding plans to overhaul the delivery of health insurance.
That’s a score for U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who (as I noted here) speculated the request for fishy notes was leading President Obama’s staff members to compile an electronic enemies list — shades of President Nixon’s outfit nearly 40 years ago.
Word of the apparent shut-down was busted by Politico.com at this link.
Cornyn spokesman Kevin McLaughlin told me today that the White House has not responded directly to Cornyn’s inquiry about the “fishy” endeavor. “They’ve also never said what they are going to do with all the information that was collected at the e-mail address in the time it was up,” McLaughlin said. “Has it been destroyed? If not, will it be?”
I’ll update this post if the White House has anything fresh to say.
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August 13, 2009
Rest of the story on feared citizens army that's not an army after all
I wrote in today’s newspaper here about an Austin man’s concern that an amendment under consideration in Congress would create a citizens army potentially threatening to the rights of everyday Americans.
My take: The fellow’s interpretation of the amendment didn’t add up.
The skinny: There is an amendment under study in the U.S. Senate establishing a “ready reserve” corps of public-health appointees to be available on short notice in the event of public health crises.
A federal official told me that the proposal would morph an existing group called the inactive reserve into a ready reserve component.
Jerry Farrell, executive director of the Commissioned Officer Association of the United States Public Health Service (which is online here), estimated that some 600 individuals currently available to pitch in on short notice during emergencies—such as the fallout from hurricanes after they come ashore—would be affected. He said the proposal originated with public health advocates, not from President Barack Obama’s office.
Farrell said: “This would not create a new group. It would morph the existing inactive reserve component - called to service on a voluntary basis - into a ready reserve component similar to the ready reserve components of the armed services - more structure, training (and) provisions for involuntary call to duty under some circumstances.”
Why did the idea bubble up? Farrell said there’s been increasing demand for fill-ins to respond to public-health emergencies over the past decade. He said the health service’s commissioned corps also has 7,000 vacancies.
“The corps urgently needs a more robust reserve component to meet its full potential and commitments in preserving, protecting and promoting public health - the most fundamental component of our national security,” Farrell said.
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July 7, 2009
UPDATED: Alberto Gonzales, former U.S. attorney general, expected to teach at Texas Tech University
Alberto Gonzales, who resigned as the Bush administration’s embattled attorney general nearly two years ago, has lined up a fall-semester teaching spot at Texas Tech University, the university confirmed today.
Gonzales, who was Gov. George W. Bush’s lawyer, Texas secretary of state and then a Texas Supreme Court justice before joining Bush in Washington, will be working as an visiting professor in the political science department, teaching a “special topics” course on contemporary issues in the executive branch, according to Dora Rodriguez, a senior business assistant in the department. The university later said it will be a junior-level course.
In a press release issued hours after I inquired, the university said that as of Aug. 1, Gonzales will join the Texas Tech University System to assist both Texas Tech University and Angelo State University (in San Angelo) with recruiting and retaining first generation and under-represented students.
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April 27, 2009
Texas Republicans "contest" Vice President Biden's Austin visit
The Republican Party of Texas is warming up for Vice President Joe Biden’s Austin visit Tuesday by throwing an online contest asking viewers to pick their favorite Biden gaffe.
In one of three video snippets strung together for consideration, then-Sen. Biden offers to test his IQ against a reporter. In another, he seems to characterize convenience store employees as hailing from India. And in the third, he finds Sarah Palin not the greatest foe for vice president.
Peek and/or play here.
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April 23, 2009
Biden plans to visit Austin's National Domestic Violence Hotline Center
Vice President Joe Biden plans to swing through Austin Tuesday, touring the National Domestic Violence Hotline Center before speaking at a private fund-raiser for the Democratic National Committee, the White House announced today.
Retha Fielding, chief communications officer for the hotline center, said Biden has visited it before; as a Delaware senator, he was responsible for the hotline’s initial federal funding.
Biden is expected to address 40 guests at a lunch fund-raiser. He is penciled in to go to Houston for another fund-raiser Tuesday evening.
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Austin lunch with Vice President Biden will run at least $5,000 per guest
I’ve come across more detail on Vice President Biden’s expected visit to Austin on Tuesday, though no confirmation of any public events.
Biden will be featured at a lunch reception in a private home. The fund-raiser for the Democratic National Committee has a minimum entry charge of $5,000 per guest, though an invitation states that the committee is permitted by law to accept up to $30,400 per donor a year. The event’s hosts include Waco’s Audre and Bernard Rapoport and one of Austin’s leading Obama fans, Eugene Sepulveda.
To get aboard, go here.
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April 21, 2009
Vice President Biden expected in Austin in a week
It’s an official secret for now, but I’m told by Central Texas Democrats that Vice President Biden is expected in Austin a week from today to headline a private fund-raiser being pulled together by the Democratic National Committee, the entity that absorbed President Obama’s presidential campaign committee when Obama entered the White House.
The latest plan is for Biden to attend a fundraising luncheon in the home of Obama donors and, before or after, swing by the East Austin headquarters of Lance Armstrong’s Live Strong Foundation. (It could be the mix of official business—meaning a foundation visit or something of the like—and politics enables Biden to fly to Austin on Air Force Two, his government-assigned plane.)
I’ve also heard Democratic speculation about Biden addressing a joint session of the Republican-majority House and Senate—potentially a fine spectacle presuming Biden attempts a spirited defense of the federal stimulus package that’s been chewed upon by lawmakers and GOP Gov. Rick Perry.
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April 14, 2009
National Democrats place an Obama organizer in Texas
About a week after Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign manager swung through Austin to thank fund-raisers and donors to Obama’s campaign, Obama’s political operation has put an organizer in Texas.
And Luke Hayes, who’s been affiliated with the Democratic National Committee, wants to introduce himself at 11 “listening tour” events starting Thursday in Houston. There’ll be an April 23 gathering in Austin.
As hinted here by Austin’s Eugene Sepulveda, Hayes will be reintroducing himself to some Austin residents. He ran field operations in Mayor Will Wynn’s 2006 re-election campaign and then served on the Texas staff for then-Sen. Obama’s Texas presidential primary campaign. Sepulveda advises that Hayes was second in command in Virginia during the general election; Obama carried the state.
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February 19, 2009
Rick Noriega: Obama offered a job, which I declined
Former state Rep. Rick Noriega, the 2008 Democratic U.S. Senate nominee, says in a post-Valentine e-mail blast that he was recently offered a job in President Obama’s administration and turned it down.
On the Obama possibility, Noriega writes:
Last week I was contacted and asked if I would consider a post as Assistant Secretary of Defense (Reserve Affairs) with the Secretary of the Air Force. I declined the position. I remain open to a position in President Obama’s administration, one that is aligned with my core competencies. I am most honored to have been called. It is hard to consider leaving my family again, and I am not yet sure what the final outcome will be.
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December 22, 2008
Austin's Reed Hawn open to leading U.S. Mint
Democratic activist Reed Hawn of Austin says he’s open to the possibility of President-elect Obama putting him in charge of the U.S Mint, but he’s not yet taken steps to pursue the appointment.
Hawn, an Obama backer since Obama ran for the U.S. Senate from Illinois, said: “The (administration’s) hardest work has begun. I will be part of that somehow.”
And, he added, “I would never turn down a president.”
Hawn spoke in the wake of an online report suggesting his name comes up most often in chatter about the post among coin collectors.
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