09 March 2007
Breaking news you CAN get elsewhere (03-09-2007 edition)
The Chron.com Froot Loop Bureau has been busy watching KTRK-13 again this morning:
An apartment resident fought off two burglary suspects overnight in northwest Houston, according to KTRK (Channel 13).
Authorities gave a reporter this account: Two men broke into an unit at the complex and began rummaging through the apartment.
When they got to the bedroom, the resident attacked the intruders with a broom, flinging one of the suspects out a window.
Police arrived at the scene and arrested the suspects after a short chase on the North Freeway. The three apartment residents — the man, his wife and their daughter — were not injured.
Flinging one of the suspects out a window? At least that has some entertainment value. I wonder if those were the words of KTRK or the Froot Loop bureau.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 03/09/07 07:35 AM |
08 March 2007
A new Chron Eye for the Death Row Killer Guy!
The Chronicle's Allan Turner delivers the latest Chron Eye for the Death Row Killer Guy today, and it's a pretty solid performance considering the last statement from the death row killer guy:
When asked if he had a final statement, he answered in a confident voice, "Yes, yes, I do."
He then unleashed a stream of profanity directed to a female death row major, concluding, "That's all I've got to say."
He again looked toward his family and winked.
Charming fellow.
Still, the Chronicle has a formula that must be followed in the Chron Eye series, and so we have the requisite "nice quality" of the killer:
"Joseph was a phenomenal young man," his mother, Lee Greenwood, said in an earlier interview. "He was wise beyond his years. He was popular in school. The girls loved him. He was an all-around athlete. He made good grades. At one point, he even played the violin."
But then, something in his childhood sent things off track:
Things started to go awry in his last years of high school, and Greenwood, who had moved to California, began hearing from relatives in Houston that Nichols was running with a tough crowd.
And finally, the purported flaws in the justice system that led to the execution:
He died not long after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear his final appeals. His case was marked by national controversy as his lawyers argued he had been sentenced to die for a murder his robbery partner, Willie Williams, had admitted to committing.
And so concludes another edition of the Chron Eye for the Death Row Killer Guy!
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 03/08/07 07:46 AM |
07 March 2007
Mayor White's not mayor of the Greater Houston area
Today's Chronicle carries a story about other local mayors' irritation with Mayor White's call for voluntary benzene emissions reductions from area chemical plants:
The mayors of LaPorte, Baytown, Pasadena and Deer Park say White has no business invading their turf and feel snubbed because they weren't consulted prior to the plan's unveiling three weeks ago.
"Mayor White is over Houston," LaPorte Mayor Alton Porter said. "He's not the mayor over all Harris County."
Yes, it does seem he forgets that on occasion. I'd suggest that he should've been appointed Harris County judge, but the job holds little real power, and we all know Mayor White has much bigger aspirations.
Another example of an issue Mayor White is involved with that affects more than just Houstonians would be Metro's mighty expensive "Solutions" plan -- the new and improved one Mayor White helped create -- for which people all over Harris County get to pay.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 03/07/07 07:47 PM |
METRO operates "in a completely transparent manner" (cont'd)
The Chronicle's Rad Sallee reported Monday that METRO continues to stonewall the newspaper's request for information on land acquisition:
The Metropolitan Transit Authority has asked the state attorney general whether it must grant a Houston Chronicle request for a list of properties it plans to purchase for a Bus Rapid Transit line in the Near Northside.
Metro says such information is exempted by passages in the Texas Public Information Act that protect certain real estate matters from disclosure.
"Exemptions to open records laws exist for good reason: in this case to protect the interests of private property owners," said Metro vice president George Smalley.
One section of the act cited by Metro attorneys applies to information that would "give advantage to a competitor or bidder." Another applies to a property's location "prior to public announcement of the project."
But Metro's plans to build a North Line were announced long before the 2003 election that approved the idea. And on Aug. 23 the Metro board decided on the exact route, then posted it online for the world to see.
Several residents said they are concerned because environmental documents released in December have already listed their properties among more than 200 that Metro said it would need to acquire for right of way on the line.
In recent weeks, Metro has said it will need less than half that many properties — and even fewer whole ones. But it won't identify them.
Back in February, Frank "Procurement Disaster" Wilson asserted that METRO operates "in a completely transparent manner."
Right -- Just like Wilson operated in a completely ethical manner in New Jersey!
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 03/07/07 08:49 AM |
06 March 2007
Breaking news you CAN get elsewhere (03-06-2007 edition)
The Chron.com Froot Loop Bureau was working the remote hard today, covering TWO television stations!
Three police chases took place early this morning, according to KHOU (Channel 11) and KTRK (Channel 13).
Authorities gave reporters this account: The first chase ended in north Houston just around midnight. The driver tried to evade police by jumping out of the moving car, but was captured after a short foot chase on McKee near Noble.
Police then discovered that the car was stolen.
The second chase occurred in southwest Houston around 1 a.m. Police tried to pull a vehicle over on Bissonnet near Beltway 8 when three men fled the scene. The driver was arrested and another was captured a short time later. A third suspect escaped.
The third chase ended when the suspect crashed into a police cruiser and two other parked cars on Greens Road near Imperial Valley.
The suspect was able to flee the scene and hide at an apartment complex, but was later found and arrested on a felony warrant.
Hearst should spring for a radio for the Chron.com Froot Loop bureau, and they could include rewritten news reports from KTRH-740 and KUHF-88.7 in addition to their television beat!
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 03/06/07 08:24 AM |
Will they go for the hat trick tomorrow?
Yesterday, the Chronicle ran one of those "Another Voice" editorials in which they reprint excerpts from other newspapers instead of penning their own editorial. Here are some excerpts from their Washington Post "Another Voice":
The Justice Department's firing of a group of U.S. attorneys is neither as sinister as critics suggest nor as benign as the department would have you believe, at least on the basis of the evidence revealed so far. But it is, both sides agree, highly unusual and warrants further inquiry. And it points to the need to fix a law that was changed for the worse not long ago.
[snip]
More troubling: Is the Bush administration seeking to circumvent the requirement that U.S. attorneys be confirmed by the Senate? The administration tucked into the renewal of the USA Patriot Act authority for the attorney general to name prosecutors who could serve indefinitely without confirmation.
Justice viewed the previous law, under which unconfirmed replacements could serve for only 120 days, after which the district courts would name a successor, as an improper incursion of judicial authority into executive branch appointments. Yet the new arrangement presents the greater risk of the executive branch doing an end run around Senate confirmation. The best way to prevent that would be to return the law to its previous state.
Actually, the law's previous state -- in which the judicial branch made executive branch appointments -- is constitutionally troubling. If the perceived problem is that appointees can avoid Senate confirmation, then perhaps tightening the confirmation requirements is a better solution to the problem than a constitutionally troubling appointment mechanism.
Today, the Editorial LiveJournalists weighed in with their own voice on the matter:
The unprecedented dismissal of eight top U.S. prosecutors at the behest of the White House late last year finally is getting the attention it deserves. House and Senate judiciary committees are preparing to question the ousted U.S. attorneys.
There are indications the purge was anything but the routine bureaucratic shuffle claimed by Justice Department spokesmen. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' deputies gave conflicting explanations as to why the officials were forced to resign.
It's not unprecedented. One of Janet Reno's first acts as one of the more political Attorneys General in U.S. history was (with the White House's approval) to fire all but one U.S. attorney upon taking office. That was certainly a political decision, but one that conservative publications like the Investor's Business Daily and National Review concede was within the scope of executive authority.
Now, whether the Bush Administration's move was a wise political move is an entirely different question. The new Democratic Congressional majority obviously feels that oversight of executive moves was lacking under the previous regime, and intends to use its oversight power to political advantage. That's not "unprecedented" either! Undoubtedly, they think they have a political winner here (and maybe they do, if their hearings show something more sinister at work than the usual degree of political patronage and partisanship). But so far, it doesn't quite seem like fodder for editorials two days in a row.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 03/06/07 08:16 AM |
05 March 2007
Now at MFAH: Masterpieces of French Painting (1800-1920)
We've been remiss in plugging an impressive traveling exhibit now on display at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston.
Here's an excerpt from the museum's description:
The Masterpieces of French Painting from The Metropolitan Museum of Art: 1800-1920
On view through May 6, 2007 at the Audrey Jones Beck Building
The Metropolitan Museum´s French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist collection is acknowledged as the finest outside of Europe. Founded in 1870, the Metropolitan Museum and its early benefactors acquired many of the Impressionist works by the early 1900s. An array of masterpieces by the luminaries of the movement forms the centerpiece of the exhibition. Over 50 paintings by Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Paul Cézanne, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec show the breadth and depth of the revolutionary vision shared by the members of this group. Among the most outstanding paintings are Manet´s Boating (1874), Monet´s La Grenouillère (1869) and Bridge over a Pool of Water Lilies (1899), and Degas´s The Dancing Class (probably 1871).
Highlights from the Post-Impressionist period include Cézanne´s The Gulf of Marseilles Seen from L´Estaque (c. 1885), Paul Gauguin´s mystical Ia Orana Maria (Hail Mary) (1891) and Vincent van Gogh´s expressive Cypresses (1889). Works by Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard represent the Nabis movement, and works by Henri Matisse, including Reclining Odalisque (1926) and a selection of Pablo Picasso´s paintings on the cusp of Cubism round out the exhibition.
An illustrated catalogue published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art accompanies the exhibition. The catalogue will be available in the MFAH Shops.
Admission and other information is available here.
BLOGVERSATION: Ad Altare Dei.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 03/05/07 10:33 AM |
Breaking news you CAN get elsewhere (03-05-2007 edition)
The weekend is over, and that means the Chron.com Froot Loop Bureau is back on the job, keeping a close eye on the TV news reports:
A 19-year-old man led police on a chase through north Houston Sunday night, according to KTRK (Channel 13).
Authorities gave a reporter this account: At around 10:45 p.m., police attempted to pull over the teen for speeding near 7800 Irvington, but the young man fled. Police then pursued the suspect as he drove along a residential street at speeds near 100 mph.
The suspect lost control of the vehicle after hitting the a curb near some railroad tracks and slammed into a telephone pole, splitting it in two. He was treated at the scene for minor injuries before being jailed.
Police say the suspect had no criminal record or warrants and aren't sure why he fled. The car, a Chevrolet Impala, belongs to the teen's mother.
KTRK news may not have won the latest sweeps period, but they're tops with the Chron.com Froot Loop bureau!
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 03/05/07 07:36 AM |
04 March 2007
Chron's Casey needs a little break
The Chronicle's metro/state plagiarist Rick Casey is apparently worn down from the column grind, and announced today he'll be taking a five-month sabbatical.
Slampo suggests that's good news for Chronicle subscribers!
BLOGVERSATION: HouStoned, Lone Star Times.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 03/04/07 11:04 PM |
Eckels to step down on Tuesday
We sometimes have a chuckle at the hapless Chron headline writers, but they nailed it with this headline over the weekend:
Or, as they might have put it, the fix is in.
County Judge Robert Eckels will formally resign on Tuesday. There is more information in this Chronicle story.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 03/04/07 10:48 PM |
Blogburst pulled from most Chron.com pages
In 2006, Chron.com was one of the early news sites to announce it would be running BlogBurst content. BlogBurst basically delivers blogger content to relevant sections of news sites. This is how BlogBurst describes its service:
Pluck's BlogBurst network is an opt-in aggregation and syndication service that brings high-quality, topical blogs together with high-traffic web sites. With BlogBurst, bloggers gain visibility, audience reach and traffic through placement on major online publishers and media destinations in real time.
In late February, the Blogburst content disappeared from a number of Chron.com sections.
I emailed Dwight Silverman to ask why Blogburst had (apparently) been dropped, and he tersely replied that there had been some "technical difficulties." I followed up with an email query whether the widgets would eventually be returning to pages from which they were pulled, and he said that was being evaluated.
I had also emailed the Blogburst people, and Rachel Brush eventually replied that there had been some "technical difficulties" but that they hoped to get Blogburst running again soon on the pages where it was pulled.
It's not clear what the "technical difficulties" were, and the folks I queried didn't seem interested in elaborating. Unfortunately, the Blogburst content had declined somewhat in quality in recent weeks, as some bloggers flooded the system with "link post" entries and others had occasional trouble controlling their potty mouths -- not exactly the quality sort of content promised by Blogburst. Maybe that was part of the technical difficulties.
In any case, it's long seemed as though the Washington Post website has a nice approach to outside blog content with the Technorati widgets that appear on stories (linking back to blog posts that reference the story). And USA Today has raised the bar for all online news sites with its launch of features that make its site much more of a social news community. Chron.com may have lots of blogs -- and of course the whimsical linkblog on the editorial page that only Dwight Silverman can update -- but it's starting to lag competing news sites in other cutting-edge web features. Here's hoping that Blogburst makes it back, and features like Technorati widgets, comments on news stories, and Digg-like ratings by users all eventually make it to Chron.com.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 03/04/07 10:33 PM |
One of those dreaded link-fest posts
I finally get a day to do some posting, and our DSL service goes on the fritz. Figures, right? A certain someone said it's a shame we aren't blanketed by county-wide wifi, so I could take a laptop outside, hold it up to find just the right signal, and post away.
Right.
Anyway, here's a quick look at a few things I was planning on posting:
Did you know the city is planning on investing a minimum of $500,000 per year for wifi? I've been out of the loop lately, so I probably missed the news coverage that included that little detail...
Matt Stiles gets results! He shamed the mayor and city council into starting the weekly council meeting on time. Er, well, closer to on-time than had been the norm.
Conservative columnist extraordinaire Mark Steyn is underwhelmed by the journalistic effort put forth here by our beloved HouChron.
And Slampo has posted (as only he can) one of those decline-of-civilization moments. Sigh.
Now I am crossing my fingers and clicking the "submit" button. Have a good week, everyone!
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 03/04/07 04:19 PM |
KHOU news wins February sweeps
KHOU-11 reports that its news broadcasts won the latest ratings period:
The numbers are in for the February sweeps and once again, Channel 11, Houston’s only station broadcasting in HD, is number one.
Nielsen Media Research shows that The Belo owned station won all major newscasts at 5 p.m., 6 p.m. and 10 p.m.
In fact, Channel 11’s 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. newscasts finished a full rating point ahead of it’s closest competitor.
Channel 11 also won the mid-day news time period.
The PR staff did not win any awards for its improper use of possessive pronouns, however.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 03/04/07 01:26 PM |
03 March 2007
It's rodeo time
Richard Connelly has a nice feature on the rodeo in this week's Houston Press.
Here's a teaser:
You're not officially a Houstonian until you've done a couple of things: given the finger to an SUV that cut you off on the Southwest Freeway; tried to mentally calculate just how old Marvin Zindler is; and, finally, gone to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.
The rodeo is a rite of passage that's cornier than Dallas's State Fair, nuttier than San Antonio's Fiesta and way more chaotically fun than Galveston's Mardi Gras. For a few weeks near the end of every winter, Houston chooses to revel in being a cowtown instead of fanatically trying to disabuse that notion.
After growing up in rural Oklahoma, I figured I had taken in enough rodeo (more than enough!) to last the rest of my life. But as Connelly aptly conveys, the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo is as much spectacle as anything. Every Houstonian should experience it... once, at least. Even better if you get to take part in a milking competition!
BLOGVERSATION: Houston's Clear Thinkers.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 03/03/07 10:56 AM |
02 March 2007
Mayor: No redistricting before 2010 census
According to the Chronicle's Matt Stiles, Mayor White has decided against adding new council districts at this time based on the city's estimates of population growth:
Mayor Bill White has decided against adding two single-member districts to the City Council, delaying a move that some believe would offer Houston's growing population more focused representation.
White had largely abandoned the idea last summer. But new city estimates put the population at 2,231,335, a figure that could trigger a charter provision requiring new council districts when the city's population exceeds 2.1 million.
The city's legal department, however, advised White last month that those estimates didn't meet the "stringent standard" in federal law for using noncensus data in redistricting, according to a two-page memo obtained by the Houston Chronicle.
"The 10-year census figures have a presumption of correctness, and that's a hard burden to overcome," White said this week. "If somebody challenged our redistricting, they would prevail under federal law."
[snip]
[City attorney Arturo] Michel said the data weren't detailed enough to ensure that newly created districts had roughly equal populations and didn't dilute the voting strength of ethnic minorities.
White agreed.
"Part of the requirement for redistricting is that you know the details down to the census-tract level — the precinct level — and we don't have numbers of that detail. So I don't believe it's warranted under the City Charter," White said.
While Mayor White could probably have pushed through redistricting based on the city's estimates, the more prudent course is to hold off for the official census figures. It's not clear that the population growth related to Katrina will be permanent, but the census clearly will do a better job of tracking population, right down to the precinct level. For purposes of redistricting and popular representation, the more detailed information is pretty critical, actually.
BLOGVERSATION: Newswatch: City Hall.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 03/02/07 08:22 AM |
01 March 2007
Montrose construction boom sure to produce traffic crunch
KHOU-11's Doug Miller reports on the midrise construction boom taking place in Montrose:
"I have never seen this kind of development," said Houston City Councilmember Sue Lovell. "I mean, 10 midrises going up, pretty much within a half-a-mile area."
Just check out the holes in the ground and the construction cranes in the sky on the sites of future apartment and condo buildings going up in and around Montrose.
If you think these construction sites are busy now, just wait until the jobs are finished. Just wait until midrises stand on these properties and all of the traffic starts flowing into the nearby streets. City officials are now talking about how they're going to deal with all those traffic problems.
Among the possibilities, more one-way streets, more traffic signals and better planning of driveways feeding traffic onto city streets.
Just wait till METRO adds to the mix with a light-rail trolley in the middle of an already congested Richmond Avenue -- Danger Train Two!
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 03/01/07 09:42 PM |
Psst, Tilman -- want another fire station?
The Chronicle's Jennifer Friedberg reports that the City of Houston is about to retire a fire station:
After more than 50 years in service, the Houston Fire Department is ready to retire Station No. 37 at 3838 Aberdeen Way.
Built in 1955, the station is being abandoned and returned to the city, and the department will move to a new, larger station to be built at 7026 Stella Link under the city's capital improvement plan.
[snip]
Once the station is relocated to Stella Link, the Aberdeen property would revert back to the city, which could sell it or use it for another purpose.
Does Tilman Fertitta need another sweetheart deal?
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 03/01/07 09:23 PM |
Surely he doesn't want to be crushed like a bug...
Blogger Tory Gattis attended a lunch put on by the Blueprint Houston utopians and reports this bit of entertaining bluster:
I'd characterize it as a regroup-and-rally for the pro-planning forces after the disappointment last year. To summarize, last summer Councilmember Peter Brown got the City Council to approve a measure directing the Planning Commission to come up with a "plan to plan" - a timeline and budget to create a comprehensive general plan for Houston. They came back at the end of December, and instead decided to focus on the top priorities of mobility and drainage, to much disappointment by the pro-planning forces. My understanding is that the mayor influenced the Planning Commission in this more targeted direction, but I have no specific inside knowledge.Peter Brown attended and was pretty feisty and fired-up. He guaranteed comprehensive urban planning in Houston before the end of his tenure, and noted that he just needs to corral eight votes on the council, with or without the support of the mayor. Pretty bold and gutsy statement.
Mr. Brown was obviously among fellow utopian planner types, and if he truly said that (and I have no reason to doubt the Gattis account), it was probably partly as a result of the euphoria of being among so many true believers. But surely the architect-councilmember understands that with this powerful and politically astute mayor, he's not going to move anything "without the support" of Mr. White.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 03/01/07 09:06 PM |
KPRC retires Radar the Weather Dog
Mike McGuff notes that KPRC-2 is retiring Radar the Weather Dog from its newscasts.
The Chronicle's Mike McDaniel has the full story here.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 03/01/07 08:21 AM |
28 February 2007
HPD kicks off "March on Crime"
KTRK-13 reports that Chief Harold Hurtt kicked off HPD's "March on Crime" effort today:
Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt kicked off the department's annual March on Crime initiative.
During the month of March, HPD sends patrol officers to community centers, shopping malls, neighborhoods and other areas to speak with citizens about crime prevention. HPD joined the nationwide effort 23 years ago to heighten public awareness of crime in the community and to encourage citizens to join the fight against crime.
It's a good thing Feb. 28 didn't fall on the weekend this year, because that's when Chief Hurtt marches to Arizona.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 02/28/07 09:18 PM |
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