From day one, the Tribune has put a premium on events as a very vibrant, dynamically interactive form of journalism: always before an audience, always open to the public, always on the record, usually free and whenever possible resulting in recorded content that could be posted on our web site for everyone to see, not just those lucky ducks who happened to be in the room. Usually these so-called TribLive events have been conversations with high elected officials or other newsmakers, and, indeed, they’ve occasionally made news. But more often than not they’ve simply been a way to engage with people in power, to hold them accountable, to ask them questions, to get to know them better. Today we present videos of 21 of those conversations — our way of saying thanks to the men and women who’ve done their time in the hot seat.
Joe Straus
Posted in
State Government
TribBlog: “ABS”
Remember the ABCs? Anybody But Craddick? Not you’ve got ABS folks, who don’t like Republican House Speaker Joe Straus.
Posted in
State Government
TribBlog: RINO Hunters
The latest salvo in the speaker race is a slick internet video that argues the House should have a more conservative speaker than Joe Straus. And it suggests the fight to come, knocking over dominoes with the pictures of “Republicans In Name Only” who could be targets in the GOP primaries two years from now: Keffer, Truitt, Geren, Solomons, Eissler, Cook…
Posted in
State Government
No Ethics Violation in House Speaker’s Race
A House committee heard testimony yesterday on whether or a lawmaker used the threat redistricting as a tactic to coerce a colleague into supporting Speaker Joe Straus. Ben Philpott of KUT News and the Tribune reports on the testimony — and what’s next in the investigation.
Posted inState Government
House Committee Can’t Confirm Misconduct
Members of the Texas House General Investigating and Ethics Committee heard testimony today on whether or not a lawmaker used redistricting to threaten a member into supporting Speaker Joe Straus. Their conclusion: We can’t tell.
Posted inState Government
Interactive: The Speaker’s Race!
We’ve reached a point in the soap opera known as the House Speaker’s Race at which it’s tough to track all the characters and their connections. To keep his post, current Speaker Joe Straus is actively campaigning for the votes of House members who will elect him — or his replacement — in January. In recent weeks, two of his fellow Republicans have emerged as challengers, and the involvement of sundry outside interests make for an increasingly tangled web. As the House General Investigating and Ethics Committee prepares to hold a hearing today about alleged threats made against one minor player in the drama, we present this handy interactive to help make sense of it all.
Posted in
State Government
TribBlog: Joe the Conservative
House Speaker Joe Straus is sooo conservative … that he advertises on the Drudge Report.
Posted in
Criminal Justice
TribWeek: In Case You Missed It
Hu on the Perry-Bush rift, Ramshaw on the adult diaper wars, Ramsey’s interview with conservative budget-slasher Arlene Wohlgemuth, Galbraith on the legislature’s water agenda (maybe), M. Smith on Don McLeroy’s last stand (maybe), Philpott on the end of earmarks (maybe), Hamilton on the merger of the Higher Education Coordinating Board and the Texas Education Agency (maybe), Aguilar on Mexicans seeking refuge from drug violence, Grissom on inadequate health care in county jails and my conversation with Houston Mayor Annise Parker: The best of our best from November 15 to 19, 2010.
Posted in
Economy
Audio: An Interview With Michael Quinn Sullivan
An interview with Michael Quinn Sullivan, president of Texans for Fiscal Responsibility and Empower Texans.
Posted in
State Government
Michael Quinn Sullivan: The TT Interview
The bomb-throwing president of Empower Texas and Texans for Fiscal Responsibility on why Joe Straus hasn’t proved himself as a conservative, why the entry of outside groups like his own into the insiders’ race for speaker is proper and what he’d like to see out of a Texas House with 99 GOP members in it.