The city elections were this last weekend, and Democrats made it in all over the place. City Councilman Ed Oakley is in the Dallas mayoral runoff against Tom Leppert, and Melissa Noriega, wife of State Representative (and friend of the show) Rick Noriega, came pretty close to winning outright the Houston City Council seat vacated by Shelley Sekula-Gibbs, but will face a runoff opponent in Roy Morales.

For this edition of On The Record, we talk to Donald Bankston, SDEC Committeeman for SD 18.

As I see it, there are three reasons we have a penal system in our society. Our communities should be protected from those who have demonstrated an inability to keep themselves from harming others. Those that do harm others should have the opportunity to rehabilitate themselves. And there have to be demonstrable consequences to bad acts to give those who might be thinking of harming others reason not to.

To file a case in federal court, a potential litigant must meet what is called the amount in controversy. Basically, if your case is not worth a minimum of $75,000, then you can’t make a federal case out of your problems. There are, of course, many exceptions.