Burnt Orange Report

Well, doesn't that mean that Democrats are more prone to wrongdoing on a 2-1 clip vs. Republicans? lol

Similarly, we could theorize that, since murders are more numerous in Houston than in San Marcos, Houstonians must be more violent and homicidal. Right, Chris?

Still didn't point out my favorite answer to the "Ronnie Earle is a partisan hack" meme- In the mid 80s Earle (who has been Travis County DA since 1976) filed misdemeanor charges AGAINST HIMSELF. He missed a deadline for filing financial disclosure forms so he filed charges against himself and paid a few hundred bucks in fines.

And on the Kay Bailey Hutchison stuff, I can't remember the details but he had good evidence against her- it was thrown out on a technicality if I'm not mistaken. I'll research it and get back to you all.

i thought Earle dropped the Hutchinson case. i hope he rips the repubs to shreds. i do not like how he handled the Lacresha Murray case... but when it comes to this ethics stuff (or lack of it).. call me a partisan hack. fry those f'ers!

Byron --

FWIW, it could also be jurisdictional. My understanding is that Earle can't indict people who aren't residents of Travis County.

Since Travis is a Democratic island is a sea of Republicanism, it would seem to me that a lot of Republicans (Tom DeLay only being one of them) escape Earle's wrath by simply living in the "right" counties.

(no pun intended)

I'd have to ask a prosecutor about that though.

At any rate, I concur. Ronnie Earle is not partisan compared to many of the Democrats in Travis County. I mean, he's not ambidextrous, you know which side of the fence he's on, but he's not blinded by partisan rage or anything.

The Hutchison evidence was thrown out on an inf of a technicality. According to the trial judge, Earle should have issued a subpoena for the documents from Hutchinson that show she broke the law rather than obtaining a perfectly valid search warrant based on a mountain of legitimate probable cause signed by a Texas judge in good standing and then executing the warrant in such a manner that Hutchison and her office staff could not destroy the offending documents.

After all, we all know that any politician being investigated for felonies that will end their political career and send them to jail, perhaps for the rest of their life, will freely and gladly turn over every one of the documents proving their guilt and never destroy any such evidence.

Jim D

The ability to be prosecuted in a county has nothing to do with the residence of the defendant.(Think about it, if a Houstonian drives to Dallas and murders someone, of course the Dallas DA can prosecute the murderer). Venue is a function of where the alleged criminal activity took place. Since nearly all "political crime" takes place in Austin, Travis County is proper venue.

Here is what I can see happening. Since the Travis County DA has a "disproportionate" number of crimes to prosecute in its public integrity unit due to the Capital being in the County, Earle's office actually gets State funds to partially fund his DA's office. (Most DAs are 100% funded at the County level). Look for the Lege to "defund" Earle's office.

Earle is one of the slimiest partisan hacks around.