WCMessenger.com: Texas reps have gone to the dogs

Dirty dozen minus one

I would really like to ask 11 members of Texas’ congressional delegation why they recently voted against the federal animal fighting prohibition enforcement act.

Are they Michael Vick fans?

The legislation upgrades penalties for illegal transportation of fighting dogs (one of the crimes Vick has been charged with by the federal government in Virginia) from misdemeanor to felony penalties.

Who are the 11 Texas reps who supported dogfighting and cockfighting interests?

Here are the dirty dozen minus one: Joe Barton (R-6th), Randy Neugebauer (R-19th), Sam Johnson (R-3rd), Kevin Brady (R-8th), Mike Conaway (R-11th), Louie Gohmert (R-1st), Jeb Hensarling (R-5th), Ruben Hinojosa (D-15th), Ron Paul (R-14th), Ted Poe (R-2nd), and William Thornberry (R-13th).

Incidentally, the legislation passed the U.S. House by a vote of 368 to 39, cleared the Senate unanimously (that doesn’t happen often) in March and was signed by President Bush in May.

Shame on our Texas reps who voted against the bill – and thanks to those (including our Rep. Kay Granger) for wisely voting in favor of it, as well as President Bush for signing it.

And, as far as I’m concerned, they can throw Michael Vick and his low-brow cohorts to the dogs.

Nooks or crooks?

The recent invasion of the crickets in the courthouse created a lot of chirping – and complaints.

So, naturally we needed a story about it for Thursday’s Wise County Messenger.

Reporter Brandon Evans hopped on the assignment and dutifully traipsed over and around the bugs to the historic building that is the pride of Wise County.

One of the most vocal complainers was District Attorney Jana Jones, a prosecutor who is known for telling it like it is.

In our story, Jones called the cricket swarms “very, very nasty.”

Then she gave Brandon a quote which stopped this editor in his tracks.

“It’s an old building with a lot of crooks and crannies,” she said.

I laughed out loud – and then asked Brandon to check his notes again. I was sure she meant nooks and crannies.

Nope, he said, she had said crooks and crannies.

While I was sorely tempted to leave it as she had spoken, I thought she surely meant the well-known idiom, so it was changed and printed that way in our front-page story.

Since then, I’ve had second thoughts.

Knowing Jones, I suspect she meant what she said. It was a very sly description of our beloved Wise County courthouse.

I called Jones to ask her if she had indeed meant to say crooks or if it was merely a slip of the tongue.

She laughed ... and said she probably did say crooks, but she said there was no ulterior motive to slander past or present officeholders.

Then she thought for another minute.

“Wait, I think I was misquoted. You know, you just can’t trust reporters,” she said. She was joking. I think.

(Footnote on the cricket calamity: Texas Cooperative Extension entomologists say grackles and pigeons love the critters. Meanwhile, I wonder if we should just sweep ‘em up and dump ‘em in Lake Bridgeport. I bet the fish would love ‘em.)

Democratic feud,
round 3

I haven’t been able to contact Brenda Rankin, the Wise County Democratic chairperson, in quite a while, but her arch-enemies, the Wise County Active Democrats are regular contributors to my e-mail.

Factional fighting in the Democratic Party in both Wise and Parker counties publicly flared last year and has continued.

A recent story in the Weatherford Democrat newspaper said Parker County’s Democratic chairman, Richard Yoder, would resign his post at the next meeting.

In the story by Galen Scott, Yoder cited the Parker County Active Democrats as the reason why he intended to step down.

Rankin was quoted in the story, too.

“It’s basically a push in the Texas Democratic Party to instill populist progressives from the left into the counties,” Rankin was quoted as saying. “It’s been very difficult because basically you have two different groups and at times in seems like the groups are almost like a dual party in a county.”

That’s certainly been true in Wise County.

Rankin and the Wise County Active Democrats have been at odds both publicly, privately and, most especially in e-mail. The e-mail war of words ended when Rankin blocked her e-mail account to the actives.

Winford Cash of Boyd, a member of WCAD, said in an e-mail to me that he had recently spoken to Rankin and the county’s party faithful would meet Aug. 21 at the sub-courthouse in Boyd.

While it could be the start of some resolution to the Democratic disarray, Republicans are probably hoping for more infighting from their political foes.