Friday Roundup: Direct from 10 Downing

I am back from London, and the Texas political news seems as if it hasn't changed much since I got on a plane and flew halfway across the world last Saturday morning. For instance, the ongoing story on the TYC scandal continues to be about who knew what and when did they know it, and that circle of questions is starting to zero in on the Governor's office.

Perry's spokesmen claimed no one had ever seen such reports, called to see the evidence, and generally avoided answering questions until they had to. Which, shortly thereafter, they did, when documents were produced proving that an aide in Perry's office had seen the reports. I know I've talked about it before, but I still think someone — some single person — is going to end up having this pinned on them, and it is going to go very badly for them. Buck-passing turns into the Capitol sport when stuff like this starts happening, and the proverbial buck will have to stop somewhere.

State Senator John Carona, recently garnering fans in the anti-toll internets crowd, has learned the hard way how the blogosphere can turn on you with all of its pointy ends locked on target. He was championed after cosponsoring the bill that put a two-year moratorium on toll road proposals, but Ben Wear details the fallout after he revealed that he didn't really intend for it to get a hearing in his committee.

During the last election cycle, I considered what YouTube might mean for the future of campaigning, and what sort of effect it might have on a candidate's ability to communicate not only with more people for less dollars but also as a way to reach the youth on what is more or less their turf. Howard Kurtz is now considering the same thing, in light of how a recent anti-Hillary, PrObama video on YouTube took off. Huffington figured out who the mystery YouTuber was behind the video and had him write about it on the Huffington Post.

There's a little bit of scandal attached to the video and its author as well, although I think that's mostly bluster. The guy who made it, Phil de Vellis, works for Blue State Digital, who did tech work on Obama's website. Or rather, he worked for Blue State Digital, because he got canned over making the video. Something tells me he'll probably land on his feet.

As Karl Rove gets ready for some subpoenas, Wayne Slater regales you with this tale about the last time Rove testified under oath to legislators, way back in the way back of 1991. Now that committees in both the House and Senate have approved the use of subpoenas and have not ordered them, I imagine one off two things is going on — either Democrats are waiting until Monday so they can eat yet another news cycle, or there's some sort of last minute horse-trading going on in an effort by the White House to avoid the whole deal. That means they will have to give something over to Congressional Democrats, and as far as I can tell, the White House's pantry is looking a little barren as of late.

Finally today, I learned the sad story about Elizabeth Edward's cancer diagnosis when I was at Pearson Airport in Toronto yesterday. Political journalists have already started making prognostications about what it all means to the campaign, and they are right to. One way or the other, this will affect the Edwards campaign. It must. It already has: CNN has a decent breakdown of yesterday's press conference and how, even as she talked about the disease that threatening her life, Elizabeth Edwards displayed a great deal of political savvy by discussing it herself, by appearing with her husband, and by making the decision a team effort.