GREETINGS FELLOW DEMOCRATS!





Hell Hath No Fury Like a Wal-Mart Vendor Scorned

For decades, Wal-Mart has used Flagler Productions, a small company based in Kansas, to record their internal meetings. In 2006, Wal-Mart suddenly stopped using their services - wiping out about 95% of their total business. As a consequence, Flagler is struggling to stay afloat and recently made the decision to open its archives to attorneys, unions, activists, and anybody else with a few bucks in their pocket. Needless to say, Wal-Mart is not happy. So, what exactly is on the tapes? From the KC Star:

Those moments never meant for public display include a scene of male managers parading in drag at an executive meeting, a clip used by union-backed critics at Wal-Mart Watch for a recent advertisement castigating the retailer's attitude toward female employees.

"The videos provide insight into the company's real corporate culture when they're not in the public eye," Wal-Mart Watch spokeswoman Stacie Lock Temple said Tuesday.

Much of the interest in the candid videos is coming from plaintiff lawyers pursuing cases against Wal-Mart.

"The rarity is that it exists at all," said Brad Seligman, lead attorney in a massive class-action lawsuit that alleges Wal-Mart discriminated systemically against female employees.





'Ann Richards Is With us in Spirit; She Can Never Die'

by Liz Smith

On April 21, the wonderful and dynamic Ann Moore, who is a titan at Time, Inc., will be holding a private invitation-only lunch for certain VIPs who were appreciators of the late Governor of Texas – Ann Richards. At that time a few worthies will talk about what Ann meant in their lives and reminisce and cry a little and laugh a lot. Click here to see my "Ann Richards Photo Album": www.wowowow.com/photo-essay/ann-richards

Ann’s daughters, Cecile and Ellen, will be with us for this get-together where we’ll also try to raise a bit of dough for Ann’s lasting creation – the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders, www.annrichardsschool.org/index.php which operates out of 2206 Prather Lane, Austin, Texas, 78704. (If you wanted to send a donation, nothing would please the spirit of Ann Richards more. And you can get the school newsletter at www.annrichardsschool.org.)

Thinking on things Ann, as I always am, I wanted to share something she wrote to me in March 2004. It is eerily prescient:

“Liz, I do not think you have to be concerned about Bush becoming a great president in history. My present greatest fear is that we are headed toward a serious financial depression worse than anything since the 30s. I know enough about markets and the economy just to be dangerous, and I see no light at the end of this tunnel. We cannot invade and rebuild Iraq, restore Afghanistan, control Korea, clean up Iran, etc. all on our own. We cannot offend all the world to the point where they don’t eat our Fritos or drive our John Deeres, and it looks to me as if that is where we are headed. I believe that we are about to bring the Labor Party to its knees in Great Britain, and Tony Blair may be in such a crack that he will be forced out by his own party. So far, we look like a bunch of inept nincompoops at the UN, with the inability to muster a paltry majority on the Security Council. Well, enough of that – too depressing.

“I worry about you, Liz. Are you still refusing to exercise, drinking those martinis at night and white wine at lunch and eating only from the brown and white food groups? LOVE, Ann.”

In spite of her depressing financial prediction, before her surprising and untimely death Ann rallied in spirit and did the usual things that endeared her to everyone she met. She had a Tom DeLay doll made into a piñata and gave it personally to her friend George Clooney … she encouraged her significant other, the writer Bud Shrake, to finish up his collected works and now, though Ann is gone, his Land of the Permanent Wave: An Edwin ‘Bud’ Shrake Reader is in the bookstores from The University of Texas Press. Ann would be so proud.

Bud wrote me the other day: “I have always coped because I pretended Ann was off on a trip to India or somewhere. The day after she died, I had delivered to my door a box of grapefruit she’d bought for me. But now, I am beginning to realize that maybe she isn’t coming back.”

Bud, it’s not quite the same thing, but Ann is with us in spirit. She can never die. Even as we speak, her school gathers momentum.

The artist Peter Rogers is doing a portrait of Ann from photographs. (It will be superior to the painting hanging in the State Capitol in Austin with all those criminals and bums who have come before and after Ann as governors.)

And the Emmy-winning actress Holland Taylor is perfecting her one-woman play about Ann to tour the nation with it.

http://www.wowowow.com/post/governor-ann-richards-speaks-great-beyond





NEW SOLICITOR GENERAL WILL GENERATE CONTROVERSY

April 9, 2008 5:05 PM

Distinguished but controversial career including co-authoring paper with John Yoo arguing detainees not protected by Geneva Convention

The Attorney General's release with extensive details about James Ho can be found here.

Although James Ho brings an impressive resume' to the job of Solicitor General, he will also generate his fair share of controversy. Along with another former Department of Justice, offical, John Yoo, Ho co-authored "The Status of Terrorists."

In their paper, Yoo and Ho argue that "enemy combatants" in the War on Terror can be denied the protections of the Geneva Convention. Some say these arguments created the legal predicates for unlimited incarceration at Guantanamo, denial of counsel for extended periods and the practice of torture.

(c)Copyright April 9, 2008 by Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved





JIM HO TO REPLACE DEPARTING TED CRUZ AS SOLICITOR GENERAL

April 9, 2008 1:17 PM

Ho worked for Cornyn and did stint at DOJ Civil Rights Division and Office of Legal Counsel

Quorum Report confirmed today that long time Solicitor General Ted Cruz will be departing the Office of the Attorney General in the near future and will be replaced by Jim Ho.

Ho has a long resume' which includes a stint working for Senator John Cornyn. Before that, he served in the Civil Rights Division and the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice

Cruz will be leaving the OAG later this spring. Details to follow as they become available.

(c)Copyright April 9, 2008 by Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved





Brazos County Democratic Party
P.O. Box 4568
Bryan Texas 77805
979-779-5600 Fax 979-779-5601

America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.
Harry S. Truman, Democrat, President of the United States of America