This feels like the Texas Capitol Press Corps equivalent of The Beatles breaking up. The four-man Fort Worth Star Telegram Austin bureau is soon becoming a one-man shop.
(The original band members: Jack, Jay, Jake and John joining up for some brew at Jake's farewell gathering.)
It was almost too perfect. Four cool dudes with alliterative names? One had to know it wasn't going to last. Star-Telegram's owner, McClatchy, made across-the-company cutbacks which led both Jack Plunkett (a photographer) and Jake Dyer (a kickass watchdog reporter) to take buyouts.
Jay Root, the bureau chief, will soon be joining the Associated Press' Austin bureau. My BFF John will stick around, as far as I know. Best of luck, boys! As the real Beatles told us:
For though they may be parted there is
Still a chance that they will see
There will be an answer, let it be.
We got a photo from the trip! And a reeeeally long press release from former Capitol Press Tribe member, Mike Rosen*. So I'll just post the photo:
Texas Congressmen Michael McCaul, Gene Green and Henry Cuellar just got back from their official trip to Pakistan and Afghanistan. McCaul's office says he talked about the need for more military resources in the region. As they left Afghanistan, suicide bombers blasted the Indian Embassy in Kabul.
McCaul met with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf (seen above), and toured a hostile region along the Pakistan border in a Blackhawk helicopter. He visited U.S. troops at bases in Khost, Gardez and Ghazni.
We've been gathering string on this story all day long, but it's taken me awhile to dump it all on the blog.
Here's where we're at. The kid bloggers* over at Burnt Orange Report discovered that their prolific pro-Cornyn commenter, Buck Smith, was none other than Dave Beckwith, longtime Cornyn staffer, former aide to Lt. Governor David Dewhurst, US Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and Vice President Dan Quayle.
Dave Beckwith, aka "Buck Smith". This picture was taken sometime within the past few years.
Beckwith is kind of a legend for the way he deals with reporters when they write stories he views as unfair or unfavorable. He once "berated [NYT's Maureen Dowd] in public on several occassions... at one point, she left a dinner distraught because of Beckwith's open hostility toward her," according to a 1990 Beckwith profile in the Washington Post.
His online persona doesn't differ.
"Buck Smith, time and again, comes in, makes fun of people, challenges them to a duel," said Matt Glazer, BOR's Editor.
But "Smith" never disclosed his true identity. He left more than eighty comments on the left-leaning BOR and in other places, like Daily Kos, since last summer.
I asked Cornyn's campaign whether they stood by all of their paid senior staffer's online comments.
State Rep Mark Strama, D-Austin, is back with his biennial Campaign Academy, and this year it's bigger than ever --forty participants. See earlier post.
We stopped by to see what was going on, and to make sure the youngsters weren't secretly making Kathie Lee Gifford brand clothing. (OK, that joke might pre-date the Academy kids.)
Seriously though, the participants not only seemed to be having a lot of fun, they were impressive in the way they came up with ideas and bounced them off of each other and provided social networking expertise to Strama, who admits he doesn't know much about the Facebook world. (I hate the new profile layouts, btw.)
Campaign academy students discuss ways to outreach on Facebook and Myspace.
Strama asks the group for an update on "Stramarama", a fundraiser they have planned for late July.
They are hearing from a diverse bunch of lunch speakers everyday. Today it was former judicial candidate John Lipscombe.
In the afternoon, the group dispersed to go blockwalking. We went with one pair to drop off literature about an East Austin block party. They were pretty fast walkers, especially when you consider we have to run in front of people to get a good shot of them walking and talking.
I asked a lot of the participants why they were spending their summer this way, and the general answer was that they - like most who wind up in politics - love this stuff. The television story is on in about an hour... KVUE at 6pm (now in HD!!!!)
Say it ain't so! Another Big Bad John video? I'm not sure if there are some sort of copyright issues here, but the Rick Noriega campaign has used images and the song from US Senator John Cornyn's "Big Bad John" video and mashed it all up with their own messages. Check it out:
Tell us: Which version of Big Bad John is your favorite?
