Daily - The Austin Chronicle (2024)

Yesterday, the Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA)-chaired Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee held a hearing to consider Bush-nominee Dr. James Holsinger Jr. for surgeon general.

On the same day, Kennedy filed Senate Bill 1777, the Surgeon General Integrity Restoration Act. Good luck with that.

For the skinny and updates, check out Equality Texas' action page.

More inadvertent hilarity from the clash of cultures.

What's that noise?

A Muslim woman was arrested and faces charges after she hid electronics under her headscarf and smuggled them into a British court.

Terrorism? Not so much, but maybe there was some illegal downloading involved. The Manchester Guardian reports the judge kept hearing strange noises coming from the jury box during a murder trial at London's Blackfriars crown court. A lawyer saw a wire peaking out of the hijab or traditional Islamic clothing of one of the jurors. On inspection, it turned out she'd been listening to her mp3 player during the dull bits of the evidence, and had been hiding the headphones under her headscarf. She now faces contempt of court charges.

One thought: how awesome would it be if she was listening to The Black Album?

There was scratching of heads here at Chronic Towers yesterday when we got that rarest of beasts: a press release from our ever-loving local Republican US Rep. Lamar Smith. He wrote to say he'd managed to put away $150,000 in the Commerce, Justice and Science Bill, for the Austin Police Department to buy themselves a driving simulator. Well, kinda. Actually, it's only got through committee, and still has to pass a House vote.

Why this sudden largesse? And why put out a press release about pork that could still get cut? Could it be he's trying to curry some local favor after his performance Wednesday in the House Judiciary Committee? While they were supposed to be discussing Harriet Miers and executive privilege, Smith railed on that this was biting into presidential power, a waste of time, and wholly partisan. He was then on the losing end of the seven-to-five vote that said Miers had been bad for not showing up.

This came after Tuesday's meeting about pardons, when Smith hammered on about presidential power and calling Bill Clinton the Prince of Pardons. (Somebody should make sure he's working off the right talking points. After all, the president told us yesterday Scooter Libby is officially old news.)

Smith threw up all the old canards – terrorism, immigrants, Internet predators – and said the committee should get back to "the people's business." However, if he's hoping to get on the people's good side, someone should tell him big piles of cash for APD may not be the way to do it.

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Parker Woodland at Coco Coquette

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We received this email last night from city council member Brewster McCracken:

I have prepared a short statement below confirming that I and my wife Mindy Montford have agreed to a divorce. We were married in 1995 and have been separated for the last seven months.

Mindy is an assistant district attorney with the Travis County District Attorney's Office and an adjunct professor at the University of Texas School of Law. We have one son, Ford, who was born on March 2, 2004. As for the child custody part of our divorce agreement, we will be joint managing conservators.

STATEMENT OF BREWSTER McCRACKEN:

"With great sadness, I am confirming that Mindy and I have agreed to end our marriage. We are incredibly blessed to have a wonderful son together. We both love our son very much, and we will work together to be great parents for him."

With the weekend looming, time for some light-hearted news from the 'war on terror', courtesy of the UK media.

Metal musician arrested for terrorist facial hair

A story ripped through the media that British security staff at Luton Airport near London questioned a suspicious-looking individual. They were on the edge of getting out the rubber gloves because of his "Taliban" beard. The man in question actually turned out to be Metallica frontman and noted beardy James Hetfied, who was flying in to play the UK end of Live Earth.

Actually, what happened was that Hugo Rifkind made a one-paragraph passing comment about it in his Times of London column (sort of a rich man's Page Six). This got picked up and accelerated through the world's news pages. Rifkind, who many suspect only got the gig with the snooty Times because his daddy was a Conservative MP, is highly unlikely to have ever hung around with the "friends" who he claims were the source of the story – unless they were his own friends, who probably couldn't tell Harvester of Sorrows from a hole in the ground. And there's another slight problem. Hetfield's press people said it's never happened.

Hotter than yer pre-election gay-sex scandal, here come the Beckhams, like British royalty invading La-la land with hot accents, hot photo spreads, and scorching red-white-and-blue ways to change the world …? Or so we/they hope. Will Spice Girls reunited still entice? Will skinny-minny Victoria snap plum in half? Can BeXXX, with his perfectly chiseled features, bubble butt, and extreme ball-kickin' talent change American professional soccer from bore to score? From z-ing to ka-ching?

All this and more, as the Beckhams burn. Sssss.

Meanwhile, it hurts that I can't just sleep in between these two. Every night. Cuddle puddle. Hmmmph.

Lake Travis is staying closed to recreational boaters: that's the latest word from the Lower Colorado River Authority.

Although it's down ten feet from last Friday's peak of 701.52 feet above mean sea level (the fifth highest level ever), the flood pool at Travis is still ten feet deep in water. That means most public boat ramps are still submerged. Plus there's worries about debris and potential risks to marina owners and lakeside residents who might be making repairs.

Because water (and debris) flows downstream, that means no boating in Austin either. The city is keeping Lake Austin, Town Lake, and the Colorado River below Longhorn Dam shut as long as the LCRA keeps the floodgates on the Mansfield and Tom Miller Dams open. The LCRA is saying that it may close those gates this coming week, but only if there's no more rain in the hill country.

In good news for swimmers, as least Barton Springs is open again. Just in time for tomorrow's free swim day and public forum on the new masterplan for the historic swimming hole.

Ghost stories, lullabies: spectral opposites of the same comfort. Two nostrils perched above covers pulled high serve them equally, same as a leaping campfire.

That firelight centers the prologue of John Carpenter’s The Fog. Follow-up to the previous year’s indie tide-turner, Halloween, the filmmaker’s fourth big-screen hit and run blunts its predecessor’s serrated edge with good old-fashion ghost-busting. The blood and guts of All Hallows Eve 1978 recede for The Fog’s milky screen of vengeful dead men returning to celebrate Antonio Bay’s birthday. Jamie Lee Curtis climbs back aboard as well. Cue the piano.