All of this John Edwards business has got me thinking about early voting. I am registered to vote in Texas, where Election Codes 81.001 and 82.005 specify that I can ”vote early” – up to seventeen days before any federal election. Say, hypothetically, that John Edwards had rallied for a victory in South Carolina and [...]

Primary and caucus results are all about expectations. Candidates spend the weeks before an election day campaigning hard and attacking their opponents, but they suddenly hit the brakes about 48 hours before the vote and begin setting up low expectations for the results. The point of this move is to create the perception of success, [...]

I’ve been thinking a lot about the Michael Richards death penalty case. Richard’s attorney’s had computer difficulties and despite notifying the proper authorities, the judge in charge, Judge Sharon ‘Killer’ Keller slammed the door on them and forced the execution to proceed.
There are things that we can do. For years now, there has been a [...]

I blogged a few days ago about the surprising turn of events in which the Court refused to stay an execution on Tuesday but granted a stay in a nearly identical case on Thursday.
According to TheRegister (via Engadget), Michael Richards was unable to receive a stay on his execution because his attorney was 20 minutes [...]

Yesterday the University of Texas sent out an email to all of its students outlining its policy towards hazing and detailing some crimes that are considered hazing. You can find the entire email in memorandum form here but these are the relevant excerpts:
According to the law, a person can commit a hazing offense not only [...]

Facing South is my new favorite blog.
This post (by correctly explaining how Karl Rove’s recent GOP strategy PowerPoint (.pdf) violated the Hatch Act by being presented on federal property) intrigued me. Then I got sucked in by the observation that, in 2008, every southern state save Florida will hold a Senatorial election. Although Rove [...]

Who would’ve thought that millions of dollars in blood money could manufacture more votes than my endorsement?
Turns out Dallas didn’t quite agree with me on the Oakley issue. You can read an article analyzing how Leppert won here. Basically, he’s not gay.
In equally unnewsworthy news, today is the last day of Laura Miller’s [...]

Earlier this week, the editorial board of The Dallas Morning News endorsed Tom Leppert in the Dallas mayoral runoff election to be held June 16. Unsurprisingly, they got this one wrong.
The best candidate is City Hall veteran Ed Oakley. Oakley, 54, is an experienced city councilman who currently serves as chair of the Trinity River [...]

Before I get into any more of the recent death penalty cases, let me clear up the Penry decision that seems to be central in all three of these cases. The state of Texas had created a system of questions or “special issues” (the court uses the latter term) for juries to answer that were [...]

We all know that Justices Scalia and Thomas have always written the best dissents and Justice Alito’s dissent in Smith is no exception. Even though Justice Alito avoided most of the classic traps of writing a dissenting opinion like excessively broad analysis and only barely touching on the issues that the majority addresses, he is [...]