Perry indicted

JamesL

JamesL

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/08/15/texas-gov-perry-indicted-for-coercion-for-veto-threat/

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has been indicted for abuse of power after carrying out a threat to veto funding for state public corruption prosecutors.

The Republican governor is accused of abusing his official powers by publicly promising to veto $7.5 million for the state public integrity unit at the Travis County District Attorney's office. He was indicted by an Austin grand jury Friday.

Perry said he'd veto the funding if the district attorney, Rosemary Lehmberg, didn't resign. Lehmberg had recently been convicted of drunken driving. The state's Public Integrity Unit operates out of her office.

When Lehmberg refused, Perry carried out his veto, drawing an ethics complaint.

Perry is the first Texas governor indicted in nearly a century. He's leaving office in January, but he's a possible 2016 presidential run.
 
Republicans are a comical lot.:(.

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Republican Impeachment Embarrassment.

The most striking thing about the efforts to impeach the president is not that this idea was mentioned by conservatives in Congress, but that the idea has completely backfired on the Republican Party. Because of the unabashedly and purely partisan nature of the impeachment proposals, the Democrats found it very easy to fight back using the Republican threat of impeachment as a way to rally their base, raise money and bolster support for President Obama.

In recent weeks, Democrats have worked hard to keep impeachment in the news while Republicans have tried to bury any discussion of impeachment. It is now the Democrats, not the Republicans, who speak about impeachment more, as the issue helps Democrats seeking to ensure Obama is not impeached, but not the Republicans. Given that there is little chance of Obama being impeached and even less chance of him being convicted before his term ends, some have accused the Democrats of behaving cynically or of playing politics on this issue.

The Democrats are, of course, playing politics with this issue, but for Republicans to criticize them for this reflects a degree of chutzpah that is laughable. Threatening impeachment, even if only a few members make that threat, and then getting righteously indignant when the president rallies his supporters to oppose impeachment is absurd. It demonstrates a degree of political aimlessness and lack of strategic thinking that has too frequently been seen in the Republican Party in recent years. The Republicans were foolish to let any discussion of impeachment make it into the media or even be floated in Congress, but once they made that mistake they called foul when the other party responded predictably, reasonably and effectively. Regardless of what you think about Obama, the impeachment discussion, such as it is, has further underscored that the Republicans are not ready to govern, and in fact may not even be interested in doing that.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lincoln-mitchell/republican-impeachment-em_b_5682356.html
 
While all of the above fans out,
Dems are busy fine-tuning 2014.

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WASHINGTON -- A report released Friday by a top Democratic political research group details what it calls a "legacy" of layoffs and environmental damage at subsidiaries of Koch Industries, the holding company owned by the conservative billionaire Koch brothers.

The 51-page report was produced by the group American Bridge 21st Century. Titled "Legacy of Loss: Koch Industries' Layoffs and Environmental Harm in Battleground States," it looks at 12 states where Democrats are facing tough races in the fall.

Most of the facts laid out in the report have been previously reported by local news outlets, but taken together they serve to reinforce a major Democratic narrative for 2014: that the GOP is a party funded by billionaires whose business practices cost workers their jobs and pollute the air and water.


Below are some highlights:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/...industries_n_5682362.html?utm_hp_ref=politics
 
The idea that Republicans may not be interested in governing is not necessarily off the wall. If they have control of Congress and of the Court, why bother? The money for the greatest number is in holding office, not necessarily in holding the Presidency.
 
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Even Liberals Think The Indictment Of Rick Perry Looks Weak

Although some Democrats are calling for Texas Gov. Rick Perry's (R) resignation after he was indicted by a grand jury on Friday, a number of left-leaning observers immediately panned the allegations as unimpressive.
Perry, an expected presidential candidate in 2016, is accused of "abuse of official capacity" and "coercion of [a] public servant" by publicly threatening to zero out a state prosecutor's funding and then actually doing it. Several pundits, including former Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod, Clinton and Obama administration alum Jonathan Prince, Vox's Matt Yglesias, and New York Magazine's Jonathan Chait, wrote on Twitter they couldn't see what the big deal was.

"Unless he was demonstrably trying to scrap the ethics unit for other than his stated reason," Axelrod argued, "Perry indictment seems pretty sketchy."

"Have to say Perry indictment seems nuts. Gov has constitutional power to veto. Gov uses power. Grand jury indicts bc they don't like reason?" Prince asked.

"Hard for me to imagine these Rick Perry charges sticking," Yglesias wrote, adding, "Does anyone think this Perry indictment makes sense?"

"My *very* preliminary reaction to the Rick Perry news: I don't understand what law he broke," Chait opined.

ThinkProgress, the liberal-oriented news site, reported that Perry's own attorneys "may have a point" when they argued his veto of the prosecutor funding "was made in accordance with the veto authority afforded to every governor under the Texas Constitution."

"The Texas Constitution gives the governor discretion to decide when to sign and when to veto a bill, as well as discretion to veto individual line-items in an appropriation bill. Though the state legislature probably could limit this veto power in extreme cases — if a state governor literally sold his veto to wealthy interest groups, for example, the legislature could almost certainly make that a crime — a law that cuts too deep into the governor’s veto power raises serious separation of powers concerns," ThinkProgress wrote. "Such laws would rework the balance of power between the executive and the legislature established by the state constitution, and they would almost certainly be unconstitutional."

The Lawyers, Guns & Money blog appeared to agree.

"I’m as contemptuous of Perry as anyone, but this seems really thin," the site said in a post reacting to the indictment. "To the extent that the statute reaches Perry’s behavior, itself kind of a stretch, it’s hard to see how the statute is consistent with the separation of powers established by the state constitution."

But not all Perry critics were skeptical of the indictment against the Republican governor. Indeed, some of the leading voices in Texas Democratic politics called for his resignation, according to KXAN News.

"We call on Governor Perry to immediately step down from office," Gilberto Hinojosa, president of the Texas Democratic Party, said. "Texans deserve real leadership and this is unbecoming of our governor."

Perry's supporters, meanwhile, have accused the special prosecutor in question of partisanship. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) called the indictment "highly suspect" in a Facebook post Saturday.

"Unfortunately, there has been a sad history of the Travis County District Attorney's Office engaging in politically-motivated prosecutions, and this latest indictment of the governor is extremely questionable. Rick Perry is a friend, he's a man of integrity – I am proud to stand with Rick Perry," Cruz wrote.

According to the Texas Observer, the charges stem from "a long-running power struggle involving Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg." In 2013, Lehmberg, a Democrat, was convicted of drunk driving. Perry's office then moved to muscle her out by cutting her funding.

Perry's attorney is set to meet with the special prosecutor, Michael McCrum, on Monday to discuss the two felony indictments, The Associated Press reported. McCrum said he didn't know when Perry will be booked.

McCrum also said he "took into account the fact that we're talking about a governor of a state — and a governor of the state of Texas, which we all love."


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/liberals-criticize-rick-perry-indictment-2014-8#ixzz3AZyY6jag
 
This is the county prosecutor's office for Austin, a hotbed of liberal democrat activism. The previous prosecutor in that county, the notorious political hitman Ronnie Earle, idicted two prominent republicans on sketchy politicized charges. One, Tom DeLay, was convicted and sent to prison but later prevailed on appeal. The other U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson, had her case dismissed. Both cases, like this one, involved lurid allegations of misconduct that upon examination turned out to be rather common political activity.

If anything, the charges against Perry are even weaker. He demanded that a disgraced prosecutor, who had been sent to jail, resign. She refused. That is the basis of a ridiculous charge of extortion of a public official. He said he would veto funding for her office if she refused. He did. That is the basis of the charge of misuse of power. Clearly , this is the attempted criminalization of political disputes.

The person who should be facing ehtics questions and potential disbarment is the DA who brought these charges.
 
AAAintheBeltway said:
This is the county prosecutor's office for Austin, a hotbed of liberal democrat activism. The previous prosecutor in that county, the notorious political hitman Ronnie Earle, idicted two prominent republicans on sketchy politicized charges. One, Tom DeLay, was convicted and sent to prison but later prevailed on appeal. The other U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson, had her case dismissed. Both cases, like this one, involved lurid allegations of misconduct that upon examination turned out to be rather common political activity.

If anything, the charges against Perry are even weaker. He demanded that a disgraced prosecutor, who had been sent to jail, resign. She refused. That is the basis of a ridiculous charge of extortion of a public official. He said he would veto funding for her office if she refused. He did. That is the basis of the charge of misuse of power. Clearly , this is the attempted criminalization of political disputes.

The person who should be facing ehtics questions and potential disbarment is the DA who brought these charges.
More...

I have to admit, I'm shocked. The leftists in Austin who did this know it will not fly but they figure the damage it will inflict will eliminate Perry from presidential consideration. He can't resolve this quickly enough to run. Its a done deal.

Its like a sniper shot. They just took this guy out. DeLay recovered but only *years* later.

It is literally the nastiest political act I've ever seen, a political assassination.
 
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