For this episode of On The Record, we speak with Kirk McPike, the campaign manager for Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez and a well-known Dallas Democratic activist.

If you needed any sort of indication that Alberto Gonzales broke new ground as Attorney General, your day has come: a legal defense fund has been placed in trust. You know, just in case it comes out that maybe he was doing things he shouldn't have been doing.

Yet another Democratic candidate debate will be held tonight, this one in Las Vegas at 7 p.m. Central on CNN — which we will, of course, be liveblogging. One person who probably won't be following along on our liveblog? Representative and Senate candidate Rick Noriega, who will instead be attending as a guest of the Democratic National Committee.

He's been running hard already for quite some time, but today Joe Jaworski officially kicks off his Texas State Senate Campaign down in Galveston.

Newly confirmed U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey hasn't even been at the AG position long enough to have gotten his ceremonial swearing in, but already the Justice Department is looking much different than when Gonzales headed it up. Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility has received clearance to reopen the investigation on the administration's warrantless wiretap program.

President Bush vetoed a domestic spending bill today, wiping away some $150 billion in funding for healthcare, jobs programs, and education initiatives.

One of the arguments Republicans like to levy against the Democratic Party is that the Democratic Party likes regulation, which makes it so, so hard for businesses to operate. I would like to offer the following as evidence that self-regulation doesn't work: Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material, or NORM, is a highly toxic by-product of gas and oil drilling. The Texas Railroad Commission allows oil companies to deal with that waste and the decontamination process via self-regulation. You can guess how they usually choose to handle it.

Governor Rick Perry seems to have forgotten a cardinal rule of politics — if you're explaining, you're losing — as he has begun justifying his endorsement of Rudy Giuliani. This is different than the usual litany of reasons one pol gives for throwing his weight in with another, because it is distinctively red meat, and should come as a surprise to anyone familiar with Giuliani's policies: Perry says Giuliani will overturn Roe vs. Wade.

Today we have a tale of two takes on privacy, divergent in scope and application. First is Governor Rick Perry, who has a strict office policy that all email communications in or out of his office are destroyed after 7 days. The other is a senior official in the national intelligence directorate, who has a message for you: get used to a different definition of privacy.

For this episode of On The Record, we speak with John Hardwick, County Chair for the Callahan County Democratic Party.