Thursday Roundup: SecState Scuttlebutt

Word on the street is that there's a head-and-shoulders frontrunner in the speculation over who will be the new Texas Secretary of State: Phil Wilson, Perry's deputy chief of staff. The lowdown is that Perry may appoint him as early as today, though his office wouldn't confirm that.

The Statesman article cites an endorsement from Democrat Kirk Watson, who says Wilson is "extremely competent. He works hard; he knows his business; he's a real straight shooter." He probably gets points for overtly stating that messing around with voter ID legislation would not be "his role" as Secretary of State. Refreshing words to hear in state politics. Next step: getting Craddick to acknowledge that it's not "his role" to redefine hundreds of years of parliamentary precedent. (Not that I'm still bitter.)

Unlike state-level appointments, White House appointments never lack contentiousness. Case in point: Ed Gillespie is getting the nod as the new White House counselor, following Dan Bartlett's rat-in-a-sinking-ship act. Where would you recognize that name? Well, I'm sure most people would recognize him as having been RNC chairman, were it not for the fact that he also represented Bush in the 2000 Florida recount. Oh, yeah, that guy. His recent lobbying portfolio is nothing to sneeze at, either; he represented telco firms, investment firms, Big Pharma, and probably just about any other industry that it could be said certain parts of our government are in the pocket of.

And speaking of industries that often have the word "Big" in front of their names, the House is trying to take a swipe at the oil — er, I mean energy — industry: they're trying to pass a law raising fuel economy standards to a fleet average of 35mph, from the current high-20's number, along with making price gouging in the oil industry a federal crime. The article states that "carmakers have their doubts" about the bill — you should see the surprise on my face — and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is quoted as saying that the bill "doesn't do anything to address expanding domestic (energy) production, and it won't do a single solitary thing to reduce gas prices." It's amazing how ostensibly conservative Republicans so quickly forget the basics of classical economics: lower demand drives down prices, Senator McConnell. Or are you turning monetarist on your party? I don't think they'd appreciate that.

It's not all bad news for the energy industry, of course. It looks like TXU's Oak Grove plant — actually two coal plants, south of Dallas/Fort Worth — is going up despite opposition. You may recall that TXU said it would scale down its plans to build 11 new power plants, scrapping eight of them — turns out the remaining three are a doozy. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality approved the plant's permit yesterday in a 2-1 vote after being recommended against by a panel of judges in a contested hearing. I suppose it shouldn't come as a surprise that the plant would be so controversial; we had to expect of TXU's magnanimity in getting rid of the eight plants that the remaining three would be the biggest, most profitable, and most environment-unfriendly ones on the list.

I can't possibly write a proper news roundup without mentioning the federal executive's scandal du jour, can I? The FBI just finished an internal investigation, and found that they "overstepped their bounds" in collecting data — in other words, obtained data it was illegal for them to have — more than 1000 times. Think that's not much? I wouldn't be underestimating their ability to "overstep their bounds:" those 1000-plus were found after examining only 10 percent of their investigations. Many of those came from telcos and Internet providers giving them more information than they were legally supposed to, and the FBI not destroying that information as they should have, but others came from explicit requests for illegal information.

But as always, I'll try to end with some good news. It seems the reports of the Senate immigration bill's death may have been greatly exaggerated — or at least, somewhat exaggerated. That is good news, right? It seems the Senate is unwilling to give up on all the work they've done with finding compromise and middle ground on this bill after the failed test vote on it, so they're finding ways to get more folks on the bandwagon. The latest addition to the bill: requiring $4 billion to be spent on border security and workplace enforcement. Honestly, I like to think I'm good at following along with these things, but this is one bill where I'm just going to sit back and wait until all the amendments are engrossed before trying to make heads or tails of it.