The debate over what has come to be called Obamacare moved into the eye of a political storm last week as the U.S. Supreme Court weighed the law’s constitutionality. With its civilized tone, the legal discourse was akin to the calm in the center of a hurricane. But at the periphery of the same storm, a multitude of other legal fights are sweeping through federal courts across the country, evidence of the tumultuous relationship between conservative states and the federal government. Some of the strongest winds are blowing out of Texas, a state with a passionate independent streak and a long history of conflict with the federal government.
After the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in January that a Texas court had gone too far in overriding the State legislature’s plan for redestricting, it seemed likely the state’s important primary would be pushed back, further elongating the protracted GOP presidential nomination contest. Today comes the news that, indeed, the primary originally scheduled for Super [...]
Just in time for the renewed talk of a protracted GOP primary fight, the Supreme Court of the United States has crushed a revised redistricting map in Texas and unanimously ordered a lower court in San Antonio to come up with a new map based closely on the one produced by the state’s GOP legislature [...]
Some 125 evangelical leaders and their spouses will gather this weekend at a Texas ranch to discuss the latest iteration of Operation What To Do About Mitt Romney. While organizers say it is not a meeting to stop the GOP front runner, the invitation is urgent: “This coming election could prove to be the most [...]
For Republicans concerned that a lengthy primary could hurt their chances against Obama in 2012, the biggest worry may not be Iowa or New Hampshire. In Texas, a fight over the legality of a redistricting plan is threatening to push the state’s primary from March 6 all the way to May 29, potentially enabling three extra months of expensive and damaging intra-party attacks between GOP candidates. And that’s not all that’s at stake.
Michael Morton faced a throng of reporters last Tuesday just after a Texas judge freed him following 25 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. Now gray-haired and 57, Morton looked on the bright side. “I thank God that this was not a capital case,” he said.
Cameron Todd Willingham was convicted of murder for killing his three daughters in a late 1991 house fire after a prosecution based almost entirely on a forensic fire analysis performed by an assistant fire chief and a state deputy fire marshal in the days after the blaze. Two weeks before Willingham’s execution date in 2004, famed arson analyst Gerald Hurst took a fresh look at the case.
Rick Perry’s whirlwind arrival on the presidential stage has made him a Texas-sized character in Americans’ political imaginations. But some early black-and-white images of Perry’s life and politics don’t quite square with the more nuanced facts.
At some point in every major national politician’s life, their history becomes mythology and their persona becomes fixed in the public imagination. Rick Perry, his opponents and many pundits like to say, is a fortunate fellow, a handsome, photogenic cowboy whose charm exceeds his intellectual ability; a man who’s been lucky in his alliances and [...]
Back in May and before Rick Perry was considering a presidential run, a group of social conservative leaders approached the Lone Star governor. “One of our people wanted to take a look at him,” says Rapid City, S.D., furniture-store owner and conservative organizer Bob Fischer. “Perry became anxious to meet with us, the conservatives of faith.” That [...]
