Bushwhacked_ Life in George W. Bush's America Large Print - Molly Ivins [108]
Nothing you will ever see in an episode of The Practice, but it is “public” information, paid for by taxpayers, the prosaic material that allows reporters to watchdog government.
The City of Georgetown said no.*
U.S. senator John Cornyn, then a novice attorney general who had served for seven years on the Texas Supreme Court, suited up to go back. He argued that the Austin American-Statesman had a right to Georgetown’s sewer report.
It was Johnny Cornyn’s finest half hour.
Think of it.
His first appearance before his former colleagues as attorney general of the Great State, a court appearance that got the attention of the Texas press because John Cornyn is not exactly a public-interest lawyer. (Between his Supreme and A.G. gigs, he breezed through the court to defend asbestos manufacturer Owens-Corning and a tire maker. And won both cases.) Texas attorneys general don’t argue cases. They raise campaign cash, run a statewide agency, and make speeches. Cornyn could have sent an assistant A.G. to argue the Open Records Law case. But he used his gravitas—and he’s doubled over with gravitas—and the authority of the state’s attorney to defend a newspaper’s right to public documents. “Open government is one of my priorities,” he said.
He got stuffed.
Owen’s opinion, written for the majority, so stunned associate justice Greg Abbott that he rose to a rhetorical level he had never achieved. (He also later rose to the A.G.’s office, winning that race in the same 2002 election that moved Cornyn onto the U.S. Senate.)
According to Abbott, Priscilla Owen rewrote the law from the bench. The Legislature wrote that the law “shall be liberally construed in favor of granting a request for information,” Abbott wrote. In Owen’s opinion, he said, “the court abandons strict construction and rewrites the statute.”
Dubya Bush and the political consultant he calls Boy Genius must have drunk a case of O’Doul’s nonalcoholic beer (Bush’s beverage of choice) to celebrate Prissy Owen’s nomination. Pro-business, anti-abortion, and eager to serve the interests of the most secretive administration in the history of the modern presidency.* Here’s to a judge who goes balls-to-the-wall in defense of government secrecy!
Owen’s appointment to the federal bench was defeated in committee in 2001 when the Democrats controlled the Senate. But who’s surprised by Bush’s unprecedented resubmission of her nomination right after the R’s took control in 2002?
California senator Dianne Feinstein described her first committee vote against Owen as “one of my most difficult votes I have ever taken.” Feinstein, a feminist, had never voted against a woman nominee. She was personally charmed by Owen, whose nomination went down and was then resubmitted along with that of Mississippi judge Charles Pickering.
But Senator Feinstein was bothered by the obstacles Owen tried to insert in the Texas statute that clearly defines a process for a judge to grant a minor the right to an abortion without the consent of her parents. The California Democrat also seemed haunted by the sort of decision Owen could inflict on someone like Willie Searcy. She asked Owen why she took so long to decide, when the boy’s life was at risk. “He did not pass away while the case was pending in my court,” Owen said.
Well, as the Texas Tornados sing: “That’s the way the girls are in Texas.”
There are more Texas girls standing in line behind Priscilla Owen. Houstonian Edith Jones, who sits on the Fifth Circuit Court