Song Dedication

From time to time, I like to post videos for some of my favorite songs. This one is "Cleaning this Gun" by Rodney Atkins.

For reasons which should be apparent, I'd like to dedicate this song to Joe D. of Homer Township, Michigan. Mr. D has to be 65-70 years old by now.

A Win for the Good Guys!

In a post entitled Pearland's Spreading Rebellion, I coyly referred another aspect of parental involvement to counter Pearland ISD's multi-faceted efforts to divert attention and resources away from high performing kids. In this particular instance, Pearland ISD was pulling teachers out of the classrooms of high performing kids so that they could tutor lower performing kids. The high performers endured a substitute two times a week as their teacher was forced to divide her attention among the two groups. Various parents have told me that the teachers were gone one hour at a time, three hours at a time or all day. Parents have reported that getting accurate answers about this practice from Pearland administrators was maddeningly difficult.

I have a guess at why Pearland ISD was pulling teachers out of the classroom for tutoring. I articulated it in this post:

Why would Carleston fail to challenge its high performing students? The University of Chicago study says that it is because schools are evaluated on how many students pass minimum proficiency standards. In other words, a school is judged on how may low performing students it has -- not how many high performing students it has. In order to earn a higher status, Carleston needs improve the performance only of the lowest ability students. Having the high performers improve doesn't matter.

Carleston routinely has 90+% of its students pass the TAKS test. Of course, until all students pass the test, there's room for improvement. Consequently, Carleston Elementary focuses virtually all of its efforts on the lowest performing 10% of the student population -- those children who might not pass the TAKS test or are on the bubble. High performers don't need such attention since they will pass the test anyway. In fact, high ability students are treated as another resource for the school district to use to get the low performers to do better on the TAKS. That is my basic philosophical difference with Pearland ISD.

Pulling the teachers out of the classroom of high performers to tutor low performers is evidence to me that Pearland ISD cares less about its high performing students. After all, those kids will pass the TAKS anyway. No need to spend much time on them.

Anyway, I have received a brief email telling me that Pearland ISD has had a change of heart on this matter. (I wonder what the catalyst for that was.) Teachers will no longer be pulled from high-performing classrooms to tutor students at-risk of failing the TAKS.

Way to go Carleston parents! Keep working at getting the accelerated classes back, too!

I'd bet the farm that Pearland ISD has no clue who the instigator of all this was. Oh, I'm sure they know who did the legwork and authored the emails, but I'm talking about who broke this story wide open. The funny thing is, I'd also bet good money that the instigator doesn't even know yet that Pearland ISD has reversed this policy. I'll have to get on the phone in a bit ...

Susan Hirschmann and Alexander Koulakovsky

I've written separately about these two scandal figures. Now it is time to connect them.

Alexander Koulakovsky is a shady Russian energy executive. Through his firm Naftasib, he and his partner, Marina Nevskaya, transferred a cool $1 million to the Ed Buckham controlled US Family Network (USFN). According to USFN director Christopher Geeslin, this contribution was intended to influence former Rep. Tom DeLay's vote on some International Monetary Fund funding that benefited Mr. Koulakovsky. (Yes, while in Congress, Tom DeLay was behind an appropriation that benefited a Russian who had contributed money to an organization closely linked to DeLay.)

Susan Hirschmann is a former Chief of Staff to Tom DeLay. Ms. Hirschmann went on two troublesome junkets. First, she went on the Scotland/England trip that has landed Mr. DeLay in hot water. Ms. Hirschmann took a second trip to Russia that I'll get to in a minute. At one time, I speculated that Ms. Hirschmann may have been granted immunity in return for her cooperation. I have since backed off that speculation a bit, but Ms. Hirschmann still remains a person of significant interest to me.

In the summer of 1997, Mr. Koulakovsky visited our fair city of Houston. He was to meet with Tom DeLay, but Mr. DeLay had business in Washington, DC. Mr. Koulakovsky was received by Christine DeLay and Susan Hirschmann. I'll let a Josh Marshall article at The Hill newspaper take it from there:

Let’s talk about the Russian executives from NaftaSib and the $1.3 million dollars they pumped into the U.S. Family Network.

We’ve known for some time that the Russians funneled $1 million into the U.S. Family Network in 1998. But Peter Stone, writing in National Journal earlier this month, found an earlier 1997 payment of a quarter of a million dollars that seemed awfully closely timed to two favors DeLay did for his Russian funders.

Back in June 1997, Buckham went to Moscow to spend some quality time with the Russian funders he was courting. A month after that, the prime funder, NaftaSib General Manager Alexander Koulakovsky, came to Houston for a DeLay-organized meeting of local oil executives. DeLay couldn’t make it, but his wife and his deputy chief of staff, Susan Hirschmann, were on hand.

One week after the Houston meeting, Buckham’s U.S. Family Network got a $250,000 check from Koulakovsky, laundered through NaftaSib’s London front company NationsCorp. (It was the biggest chunk of money the “network” got that year.) Two weeks after the check cleared, DeLay, Buckham, Hirschmann and Abramoff were in Moscow to meet with Koulakovsky and his crew.

So let’s game this out.

Back in his heyday, Tom DeLay’s political operation was being bankrolled — to a significant degree — by Russian “energy executives” with some murky mix of ex-KGB and Russian mafia ties. The money didn’t come in formal political contributions — it couldn’t have, since it was being paid by foreign nationals. It came funneled through a sham nonprofit that DeLay’s chief political handler set up to take money from now-convicted felon Jack Abramoff.

Is the Naftasib-Koulakovsky-DeLay axis clear enough? Maybe you need more convincing. Remember what the Washington Post reported back in 2005:

At one point, [Alexander] Koulakovsky asked during a dinner in Moscow "what would happen if the DeLays woke up one morning" and found a luxury car in their front driveway, the former associate said. They were told the DeLays "would go to jail and you would go to jail."

The luxury car never materialized. But the bribery scheme was consummated. Tom DeLay will go to jail after all. And once again, all I'm left with saying it is my opinion that Susan Hirschmann is the key to unravelling all of this. The only question left is will she do it under an immunity deal or a plea bargain?

Rep, Wally Herger (R-Calif.) on Tom DeLay

The Chico (Calif.) Enterprise-Record gets its own Congressman, Rep. Wally Herger, to go on the record regarding the announcement that Rep. John Doolittle (R-Calif.) won't seek re-election. Prior to this past week, I'd never heard of Rep. Herger, but I do find his position interesting.

Rep. Herger has donated to Tom DeLay's legal defense fund. Must be a staunch supporter, right? Well, maybe not:

Herger also donated $6,000 to the legal defense fund of another congressman who was implicated in the Abramoff scandal. That was former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, who resigned from Congress in 2006.

Explaining that donation, Herger said although DeLay wasn't a neighbor, he was a good friend and had been a very effective party leader and congressman.

"Many times, if you are an effective leader, people will come after you whether you've done anything wrong or not," he said.

Herger said DeLay once came to Sacramento and held a fundraiser for him.

Asked if he thought Doolittle and DeLay had done anything wrong, Herger said he didn't want to speculate.

Such questions are best left to the judicial system, he said.

Emphasis added

According to Rep. Herger, defending Doolittle and DeLay is a speculative venture now. I've never been one to disparage informed speculation, but this does seem to be a change of position for Rep. Herger.

I do disagree with Rep. Herger that only the judicial system is capable of determining right and wrong. Certainly there are a few things that are wrong that aren't even illegal. I really don't like seeing Republicans claim that the only test of right and wrong is felonious activity.

Tom DeLay, John Doolittle and Ben Fitial

Ben Fitial

OK, so Rep. John Doolittle (R-Calif.) has formally announced that he doesn't have plans to seek re-election. I would preen that I predicted that, but there was a lot of information that appeared in the press as a result of Rep. Doolittle's decision.

The following appeared in the The Sacramento [Calif.] Bee's Capital Alert. Follow the link, and you'll get nowhere. The SacBee has disconnected it. Evidence that the article existed can still be found on Google News, but I expect that to disappear into internet ether-land, too.

By 1999 Doolittle and Abramoff were fast friends, and the DeLay-Abramoff axis was well entrenched. The task at hand was to help Abramoff win back a contract representing the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands in fighting efforts to stop labor law reforms there.

DeLay had taken up the cause of the commonwealth against a bipartisan group of critics on Capitol Hill. Despite concerns among human rights groups and the Clinton administration that the lax immigration and trade laws there were incentives for forced labor, DeLay declared the policies "a petri dish of capitalism."

The plan was to elect Benigno Fitial, then the representative for the biggest garment plant owner, the Tan family of Hong Kong, to the commonwealth's House.

Within a couple of weeks of Abramoff making his first contribution to Doolittle, $1,000 on Oct. 3, 1999, Doolittle was writing letters and appearing in newspaper ads supporting Fitial's election. Once elected, Buckham and another Abramoff associate, Michael Scanlon, flew to the commonwealth with promises of federal money to two House members to persuade them to switch their votes to elect Fitial as speaker. After that happened, Abramoff's contract was soon renewed.

Over the next two years that Abramoff held the contract, DeLay delivered to Doolittle a coveted seat on the House Appropriations Committee. Abramoff's partner managing the commonwealth account was Kevin Ring, a former Doolittle staffer who became a regular visitor in the congressman's office, talking strategy and federal appropriations for the islands.

Trust me, political writers at the Sacramento Bee did not spill this many pixels on Tom DeLay, John Doolittle and Ben Fitial as some sort of non-sequitur. The reporters there have been told something, and I believe the source is from the FBI.

In 2006, I listed some quid pro quo benefits received by Team Abramoff from Tom DeLay. At that time, I identified a breakwater on the Commonwealth island of Tinian as the federal spending item that helped "sway some fence-sitting legislators [Alejo Mendiola and Norman Palacios]" to see things Abramoff's way. The SacBee names Abramoff associates Ed Buckham and Michael Scanlon (pleaded guilty) as those who provided the money. DeLay staffers Tony Rudy (pleaded guilty) and Brett Loper were also involved in the anti-democratic attempt to influence the legislature of the Commonwealth. All in, Michael Scanlon, Tony Rudy and Brett Loper were all on DeLay's Congressional payroll during this episode.

Kevin Ring was the Abramoff's key man with respect to the Northern Marianas Islands. I've long suspected that Mr. Ring is cooperating with prosecutors. And not unlike the CIA trying to decipher terrorist chatter, I'm picking up a lot of "Kevin Ring" chatter that I just haven't been able to figure out the significance of. In my post entitled "Wild Speculation", I attributed the Kevin Ring chatter to the Mashpee Wampanoag aspect of this scandal.

As always, it is pleasing to me to see Tom DeLay, Edwin Buckham, et. al. getting press with respect to their misdeeds.

===

Conrad Burns and Ben Fitial

Too few people are paying attention to the Ben Fitial angle of this story. You're probably thinking I'm paying too much attention to it. Well, humor me. I want to show you an old article from the Missoulian (Montana) newspaper:

U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., met with a Marianas official who had close ties to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff in the weeks before Burns received an Abramoff-related $5,000 contribution from the Marianas and reversed his earlier position on a bill about the islands.

The politician, Gov. Benigno Fitial, has said he will cooperate with the Justice Department's ongoing investigation into potential bribery of public officials involving Abramoff, a man Fitial once described as a “close friend,” according to Pacific Magazine, a Hawaii publication that covers the Pacific region...

Burns voted against a bill in May 2001 that would have strengthened U.S. oversight over the commonwealth's labor and immigration laws. A little more than a year before Burns had not opposed an identical measure.

Burns has said the $5,000 donation from an Abramoff client had nothing to do with his 2001 change in stance on the bill. Rather, the senator told Lee Newspapers this month he was persuaded to vote against the measure after reading two government reports about the islands and meeting with Fitial, who was then speaker of the Marianas House of Representatives.

Initially, Burns said he didn't know why he changed his position on the bill.

Burns' records show the senator met with Fitial for 15 minutes on the afternoon of April 3, 2001.

Campaign finance records and reports in Pacific Magazine show Fitial is a former executive of Tan Holdings. Eloy Inos, another Tan Holdings executive, donated $5,000 to Burns' Friends of the Big Sky on April 20, 2001, a little more than two weeks after Fitial's meeting with the senator...

Records show the garment association hired Abramoff in 2001 to defeat laws that would put greater federal oversight over labor and immigration on the islands, and paid him $460,000.

The Los Angeles Times and Pacific Magazine have both reported that Fitial won his bid for speaker of the Marianas House through the actions of Abramoff's lobbying partner, Michael Scanlon.

Scanlon has since pleaded guilty to bribery and other crimes.

Records show the commonwealth government, at Fitial's urging, hired Abramoff in 2001 and paid him $1.1 million to defeat the kind of bill Burns voted against.

Two points. First, I find it extremely interesting that Ben Fitial is cooperating with the Justice Department. Good. That shows me that he is holding himself accountable.

Secondly, when writing about the announcement that Sen. Burns was no longer under investigation with respect to the Abramoff investigation, I didn't shed any tears for Sen. Burns. Obviously Sen. Burns was involved in Abramoff's activities. We know of this involvement with the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas, and we also know of Sen. Burns' involvement with the Saginaw Chippewa Indian tribe, another Abramoff client. I just wonder if prosecutors determined that Sen. Burns was a minor player in all of this and if he is now cooperating. If I'm right, I'll bite my tongue and defer to the discretion of the Justice Department. In my opinion, Sen. Burns was involved a little too much to get out of legal liability so early.

Presidential Election

Does anyone have any doubt which candidate I'll vote for in the Presidential primaries? Long ago, I listed the criteria I use to determine which candidate deserves my vote:

My top three voting issues are:

1. Integrity and Character ...
2. National Security (win the War on Terror)
3. Fiscal policy (lower spending and growth-oriented tax cuts -- I'm a supplysider)

I'm pro-life and pro-immigration.

There is only one Republican addressing the biggest character defect in the Republican Party:

[Sen. John] McCain also promised to curb abuses by those in the influence business, saying that folks engaged in "this nefarious business" of using illegal tactics to sway government would find themselves in jail, just like disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Of course I like Sen. McCain's position on the war. I can stomach his fiscal policies. That Sen. McCain is also the only Republican that gets it right on the immigration issue is just gravy.

==

On Dec. 10, a buddy who is a former Harris County GOP precinct chair and I made a bet. The wager was a complicated one, but basically my position was that Sen. McCain would outperform in the New Hampshire primary. This was when Sen. McCain was polling in the teens and Gov. Romney was leading handily. Not only will I easily win this bet, I'm likely to get a $10 kicker in the event that Sen. McCain wins the New Hampshire primary outright.

Roseville (Calif.) Press Tribune: Doolittle Speculation

From the Roseville (Calif.) Press Tribune, we get an article entitled Speculation growing on Doolittle campaign plans. So what is this speculation? That Rep. John Doolittle (R-Calif.) will announce that he won't run for re-election amid Jack Abramoff linked scandal:

Congressman John Doolittle has scheduled a series of meetings with those close to him this week, fueling speculation he won't seek another term in office, the Auburn Journal reported on its Web site late Monday.

The nine-term 4th Congressional District Republican, who is under federal investigation related to his dealings with the convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, will discuss with supporters Thursday at his Granite Bay office his future campaign plans, the Journal reported.

The news is fueling speculation Doolittle could announce he won't seek reelection, ending his bid for a 10th term. Earlier Monday, the political blog The California Majority Report reported Doolittle will disclose that he won't seek reelection.

Back in the beginning of September, I speculated that Rep. Doolittle would announce he wouldn't seek re-election. Of course I said it would happen before Halloween. I would crow about how I'm just ahead of the curve with my speculation, but I did say that Ohio State would win the national championship game, didn't I? Judging from the halftime score, that speculation simply won't come true.

The Press Tribune suggests that Rico Oller will enter the race if Rep. Doolittle indeed does not seek re-election. As I said in November, if it appears that Mr. Oller is Rep. Doolittle's handpicked successor, Mr. Oller may be tainted by Rep. Doolittle's corruption.

We'll see if this latest speculation pans out. Rep. Doolittle has an incentive to keep his campaign nominally active. As our own former Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Fort Bend County) showed, campaign contributions can be converted to legal defense resources.

Advice to Pearland ISD ...

... keep the withdrawal forms handy ... you're losing another high performer tomorrow.

Investigation into Former Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) Ends

Conrad Burns, who got and then returned campaign money from a lobbyist's team, pressured officials to give funds to a tribe the team represented. (By Jeff Chiu -- Associated Press)

The Justice Department has announced that no criminal charges will be filed against former Montana Senator Conrad Burns. With scant facts, the Missoulian (Montana) newspaper suggests that this decision was made because investigators were limited in the evidence they could collect:

The Justice Department ended its investigation of former Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., at a time when it fears that all its public corruption cases, including those involving jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff, have been jeopardized by an August court ruling.

The department has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the ruling, saying that “until it does so, investigations of corruption in the nation's capital and elsewhere will be seriously and perhaps even fatally stymied...”

Justice lawyers said two weeks ago that an August decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit could impede remaining aspects of the Abramoff investigation...

Justice Department lawyers filed a petition on Dec. 19 asking the Supreme Court to overturn that ruling, saying incidental exposure to legislative records should not stop agents from being able to use other documents. It said the Constitution protects speech or debate only, not the disclosure of information through a criminal search warrant.

The ruling cast an “immediate cloud over ongoing public corruption investigations,” the petition said. It “casts doubt on searches of other places and a wide range of other investigatory techniques deemed essential to ferreting out corruption and criminal conduct by both members of Congress and persons who deal with them.”

The petition said the ruling has been interpreted by some members of Congress that federal agents cannot conduct voluntary interviews with Hill staffers without the members' consent.

Because of the ruling, federal investigators changed their techniques, it said. Federal agents no longer search for documents in an office of a member of Congress located in his home, nor use wiretaps against members in the District of Columbia, “the location where relevant communications are most likely to occur.”

The Post article said Justice lawyers were unavailable to comment on the effect of the decision on the Burns investigation, but that “among the other inquiries affected” are Abramoff-related investigations of Reps. John Doolittle, R-Calif., and Tom Feeney, R-Fla., and former House majority leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas.

Emphasis added

A couple of points. First, I'm not really sure it is fair to say that the court opinion limiting the evidence prosecutors can collect had a major impact on the Sen. Burns investigation. After all, not all Abramoff-linked investigations against lawmakers are over. At the same time, I can't imagine that the Missoulian would take a non-sequitor that far. I mean the headline of the article is "Court ruling chilled Justice probe of Conrad Burns". Oh well, all I really need to know is that Burns is off the hook with respect to legal jeopardy.

Secondly, it always perks me up to see our former Congressman, Tom DeLay, mentioned in the context of a Justice Department investigation. Unfortunately, this article tells us that the legal opinion limiting the acquisition of evidence applies to Mr. DeLay.

==

Sue Schmidt, my favorite reporter at the Washington Post, tells us why former Sen. Burns was under investigation in the first place:

Burns was a major beneficiary of campaign contributions from Abramoff's lobbying team and the casino-rich Indian tribes it represented, taking in more than $140,000, which he returned during the heat of his campaign. Several of Burns's Senate staff members accepted trips and gifts from Abramoff's lobbying team, and two went to work for him.

Federal prosecutors were investigating the pressure that Burns brought on the Interior Department to give a $3 million school-construction grant intended for poor Indian tribes to the wealthy Saginaw Chippewa tribe of Michigan, an Abramoff client. The Washington Post reported in 2005 that Burns pushed Interior to reverse its decision that the tribe did not qualify for the funds and that when the effort failed, he earmarked the money in a 2004 appropriations bill.

Unlike his staffers and some other members of Congress caught up in the Abramoff probe, Burns was never accused of accepting personal gifts or favors from the lobbyist, a key element in many of the prosecutions growing out the Abramoff investigation.

So a Senator from Montana pressured Dept. of Interior officials to give money to an Indian tribe in Michigan. It just so happened that this tribe was a client of Jack Abramoff and that Jack Abramoff made political contributions to Sen. Burns. Apparently, this is acceptable behavior, even in the judgement of prosecutors who specialize in corruption cases. Well, I don't condone it. (I know that statement will raise the ire of some. Comments left on a thread about JD Hayworth seem to argue that felonious activity is the only standard on which to judge a politician.)

Ms. Schmidt seems to be telling us that the test prosecutors apply to these corruption cases is whether or not the politician received personal gifts or favors from lobbyists. Don't worry about the application of this test to Mr. DeLay. Recall that he accepted a golfing junket to Scotland. Former Rep. Bob Ney is currently sitting in prison due to a similar trip. Also, the DeLay family was enriched when lobbyist Ed Buckham gave Christine DeLay a bogus "job".

==

When the Justice Department announced that there would be no formal investigation into former Rep. JD Hayworth (R-Ariz.), I went back in my archives to see how I had treated Mr. Hayworth over time. I'll do the same with former Sen. Burns.

April 16-17, 2006
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) is one of my favorite US Senators. Clean as a whistle, and I tend to agree with him politically. Anyway, in April 2006, Sen. Coburn predicted that six Congressmen and one Senator would go to jail over corruption related to Jack Abramoff and others. I mentioned Sen. Burns as the most likely candidate for the Senator (other possibilities included Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.). Sen. Coburn's prediction was expressly not limited to Abramoff-linked corruption. So now in 2008, with Sen. Burns off the hook, I'll predict that no Senator will go to jail over Abramoff-linked corruption. If it ain't Sen. Burns, it's noone. Now Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) may have some problems with corruption unrelated to Abramoff, but that is beyond the scope of this blog.

June 6, 2006
I mentioned the Montana primary where Sen. Burns faced some opposition. I had hoped that Republican voters would nominate Sen. Burns' opponent and save this seat for the GOP. Unfortunately, Republican voters in Montana refused to nominate Burns' opponent, and this seat is now held by a Democrat.

September 15, 2006
Time Magazine names Sen. Burns as being under investigation for Abramoff-linked corruption. I didn't say a whole lot about Burns at the time. I just took the appearance of this article to take a gratuitous swipe at Tom DeLay. Look at the Time Magazine article, though. Melanie Sloan of CREW says that "Abramoff has said that Burns and his staff used Signatures [Abramoff's restaurant] like their cafeteria." Why doesn't that trigger the Justice Department's "personal gifts or favors" rule as reported by Sue Schmidt?

November 20, 2007
I mentioned that Barbara Bonfiglio was treasurer and/or advisor to Sen. Burns' leadership PAC. No commentary. Just the fact.

Wild Speculation

I'm getting a sense that there is movement on the Robert Coughlin, Kevin Ring, and Herbert Strather and the Mashpee Wampanoag front.

If I'm right, I don't know if Rep. John Doolittle (R-Calif.) or former Rep. Richard Pombo (R-Calif.) should be more worried.

==

For those who really like my rank speculation, take it to the bank that Ohio State will upset LSU on Monday night. Take the Buckeyes and the points. "Across the Field" is a great song -- and this comes from a Michigan boy.

The Final Countdown

Final Countdown - Europe

Posted Mar 02, 2006

Yes! This awesomely bad Swedish hair metal epic brings back the outrageous clothes, huge power chords and extravagant '80s synthesizers.

Jared Woodfill can Learn!

Harris County DA Chuck Rosenthal has generated a scandal. I don't know all the details of the case, but apparently he has recently written some intimate e-mails to a woman he admits he had a previous affair with. The whole episode provides me with enough insight into Mr. Rosenthal's character to conclude that the Republican Party should nominate someone else for the District Attorney position.

The good news is that Harris County Republican Chair Jared Woodfill agrees!

Link

Harris County Republican Party leaders interviewed potential candidates for district attorney Tuesday night as they tried to anoint a single challenger against scandal-scarred incumbent Chuck Rosenthal in the March 4 primary.

"My goal is to get behind one individual," party chairman Jared Woodfill said.

The county party's advisory committee, principally made up of chairmen from each of the county's state Senate districts, was set to meet with at least five potential candidates for the top law enforcement job.

"All have indicated to me they won't run if they are not the person the party wants to support," Woodfill said...

Woodfill said the e-mail scandal not only could damage Rosenthal's candidacy but also drag on the candidacies of Republicans seeking judgeships and other countywide offices in the November general election.

Contrast Mr. Woodfill's decisiveness in 2008 to his ineffectiveness in 2006. In 2006, I wrote about how Mr. Woodfill either accepted Tom DeLay's corruption or couldn't see Mr. DeLay's corruption. Either way, Mr. Woodfill's inaction in the TX22 race of 2006 led to Democrat Nick Lampson temporarily holding this seat. Like he is doing in the 2008 Harris County DA race, Mr. Woodfill should have recruited a candidate to oppose DeLay (or supported Tom Campbell's candidacy) in 2006.

It is good to see Mr. Woodfill grow in office.