Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 115, No. 4, Ed. 1 Monday, August 6, 2018 Page: 4 of 14
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OPINION
Monday, August 6, 2018
Denton Record-Chronicle
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Denton Record-Chronicle
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Texas judicial
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Founded from weekly newspapers
the Denton Chronicle, established in 1882,
and the Denton Record, established in 1897.
Published daily as the Denton Record-Chronicle
since August 3,1903.
\
]»
2018
EDITORIAL BOARD
Bill Patterson
Publisher and CEO
Sean McCrory
Executive Editor
Mark Finley
City Editor
Mariel Tarn-Ray
News Editor
Bob Bland
Community Member
PAST PUBLISHERS
William C. “Will” Edwards
1903-1927
Robert J. “Bob” Edwards
1927-1945
Riley Cross
1945-1970
Vivian Cross
1970-1986
Fred Patterson
1986-1999
exas elects its judges, leaving the
nearly anonymous people in charge
of the third branch of state govern-
ment in the hands of voters who have only
the vaguest idea of who they are.
It’s one of the built-in problems of
running a big state. Ballots are long.
Attention spans are
short. Judges are
almost as invisible as
they are important
— a critical part of
government located
a long way from the
noisy and partisan
front lines of civics
and politics.
The top of the bal-
lot gets the attention.
The bottom of the
ballot gets leftovers.
When a party’s candidates at the top of
the ticket are doing well, it bodes well for
that party’s candidates at the bottom — for
the time being anyway.
For at least one more election, Texans
will be able to cast straight-party votes —
choosing everybody on their party’s ticket
without going race by race through some-
times long ballots.
Texas lawmakers decided last year to get
rid of the straight-ticket option starting in
2020.
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Trump and Putin’s do-si-do
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target “the integrity of our democratic insti-
tutions.” Coats said: ‘We continue to see a
pervasive messaging campaign by Russia to
try to weaken and divide the United States.”
Then why is the president undermining
his own advisers?
Although Trump is referring primarily
to Mueller’s core mission — to determine
whether the Trump campaign was involved
in the Russian interference — he seems
more than willing to minimize the im-
portance of what we already know. Thus,
the question has to be: Why, if there’s no
concern about collusion, would Trump keep
pounding Mueller while defending Putin?
One can only conclude that either there’s
a little smidge of guilt, a problematic family
connection, a dossier embarrassment — or
the president of the United States doesn’t
care that Russia tried to ruin Clinton so that
ASHINGTON — It’s a given that
political candidates will target
each other with as much oppo-
sitional propaganda as they can get away
with. But with the Kremlin now playing a
third-party shadow role in U.S. elections,
the usual game seems to be shifting from
blood sport to cold war.
Given Russia’s well-established pref-
erence for Donald Trump over Hillary
Clinton in 2016, it’s
possible, if not likely,
that the next round
of election meddling
will be geared toward
keeping the Republi-
can majorities in the
House and Senate.
For Democrats,
this added pressure
from Russia could
easily begin to feel like
a threat. Imagine be-
lieving that you’re not
only running against a Republican but also
against a former KGB agent who seems to
be in cahoots with your very own president.
What else should one think?
During a rally Thursday evening in
Pennsylvania, Trump once again referred to
special counsel Robert Mueller’s investi-
gation as the “Russian hoax.” This, amid
the intelligence community’s stepped-up
warnings about new Russian interference.
And let’s not forget the 12 Russians whom
Mueller indicted last month for hacking
Democratic Party computer networks.
Mueller is not generally known as a
hoaxer.
But Trump remains the slick salesman,
entertainer and pot stirrer he’s always been.
Just hours before his stick-it-to-’em jamboree,
press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and
several national intelligence officials convened
a media briefing to address Russian attempts
to impact the midterm elections.
That is, with a slight modification. In her
statement, Sanders assured gathered media
that the administration “will not tolerate
foreign interference in our elections from
any nation-state or other dangerous actor,”
clearly indicating that the focus would not
be only on Russia.
As it should be, given that others would
also like to meddle in our affairs. But as
the gathered officials made clear — includ-
ing Director of National Intelligence Dan
Coats, FBI Director Christopher Wray and
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Niel-
sen — Russia is of central concern here and
now. Wray said that Russia “continues to
engage in malign influence operations” that
W
Ross
Ramsey
Guest View
Efforts to undermine
press has global impact
This editorial was first published in The Toronto Star.
Guest editorials don’t necessarily reflect the Denton Re-
cord-Chronicle’s opinions.
Kathleen
Parker
t’s a big world, and U.S. President Donald Trump has
been particularly attentive to global affairs of late.
There was his love-fest with the Russian president in
Helsinki. And then he launched an all-caps Twitter attack
on Iran.
And, most recently, he applauded Italy’s new populist
government for its hard line on immigration. Before that,
the European Union was labeled a “foe” and Canada a
threat to “national security.”
He even saw cause to go after the “very aggressive”
folks of Montenegro, suggesting they could drag NATO
into World War III.
And still, the president found time for one of his favor-
ite enemies: the press.
“Don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the
fake news,” Trump told an audience in Kansas City, Mis-
souri, recently. Then, as the audience booed the attend-
ing press corps, he added with an Orwellian twist: “Just
remember, what you are seeing and what you are reading
is not what’s happening.”
It was a chilling performance, even from a man who
has called journalists “the enemy of the people.”
It’s hard to believe, sometimes, that he’s the purported
leader of the free world and lives in a nation that en-
shrines freedom of the press in its constitution.
Trump’s anti-press rhetoric, as the publisher of one of
his favorite targets, the New York Times, says, is “not just
divisive but increasingly dangerous.”
“I warned that this inflammatory language is contrib-
uting to a rise in threats against journalists and will lead
to violence,” A.G. Sulzberger said of a meeting with Trump
over the issue.
He’s not wrong.
And the most immediate danger seems to be abroad,
where journalists routinely put their lives on the line to
report on regimes with little tradition of democracy or a
free press.
Trump’s attacks on the press gives even more license
to those regimes to crack down on media, whose scrutiny
they simply don’t like. It threatens burgeoning free speech
rights and undermines faith in the media’s efforts to ex-
pose those governments’ shortcomings.
Indeed, a report published in the Index on Censorship
earlier this year found more than 20 political leaders
worldwide, from both authoritarian and democratic re-
gimes, had used the term “fake news” to discredit journal-
ism they did not like.
Malaysia even passed a law imposing prison sentences
of up to six years on people found to be spreading “fake
news,” and it is feared the law could be used against jour-
nalists and publishers.
“The fake news mantra has been weaponized against
the entire news media industry” Tim Franklin, the senior
associate dean at the Medill School of Journalism, has
warned. “He’s normalizing that narrative against the me-
dia internationally’’
Trump’s habit of bypassing the media — so he can
present his actions in any self-aggrandizing light he
chooses to, without comment, context or criticism — is
also being copied.
Abroad and closer to home.
Last spring, for example, Ontario Premier Doug Ford
took steps to replace real media — by ending the tradition
of having a media bus follow his to cover election cam-
paign rallies and question him on proposed policies —
with his own Ford Nation Live.
In TV news-style videos on Facebook, Ford had a PC
apparatchik pretend to be a reporter while he pretended
to present himself for media scrutiny.
It’s a channel that Ford has continued with in govern-
ment. And now opposition parties are raising questions
about whether this partisan production is being produced
on the taxpayers’ dime, no less.
This propaganda path is one that Trump started last
summer with his “real news” channel.
When the media’s ability to fairly criticize and hold
governments accountable comes into question, so too
does the ability of the public to have an informed debate
about the issues.
Trump’s acts to undermine a free press affect us all, and
we all must stand guard against them.
I
he could become president He seems to care
so little, in fact, that he’s essentially calling
America’s intelligence community a pack of
liars and Mueller a hoaxer. Meanwhile, last
month in Helsinki, Trump said Putin was
an “extremely strong and powerful” denier.
(Have these guys exchanged jewelry yet?)
If Putin says he didn’t do it, then Trump
takes him at his word? Yet, when teams of
skilled, honorable investigators tackle the
problem and present indictments based on
facts, Trump insinuates that they’re making
it up?
It’s a Republican Legislature and gover-
nor, and straight-ticket Democrats in Dallas
and Harris and other big counties have
been making early retirees of Republican
judges in recent elections.
It’s easy to find supporters of
straight-ticket voting in any political circle
in Texas. What’s tough on a party’s judges in
El Paso County might be good for the same
party’s judges in Collin County.
It’s popular with voters, too: Nearly 64
percent of the votes cast in the state’s 10
largest counties in 2016 were straight-party
votes.
This reversal of loyalty to his own people,
not to mention the country he is tasked
with leading, is so preposterous that normal
people are at serious risk of joining lemming
colonies. It isn’t possible to use logic with
the illogical; it’s futile to explain the obvious
to the willfully thick; and when it comes to
Trump’s base, witness only the rally last week
in Florida where CNN reporter Jim Acosta
was the target of dozens of Trumpers extend-
ing their middle digits and shouting, among
other salutations, ‘You suck!”
Perhaps, some in Trump’s camp see
things like steady job growth and low
unemployment and say to themselves, Who
cares how he got elected? And if Russia likes
Trump, why is that necessarily bad? The
president, they would note, has been check-
ing off his list of campaign promises with-
out so much as changing his expression.
One could make such an argument, but
this would be a narrow view and an unserious
You can see why Republicans are
against it now: Their straight-party votes
outnumbered the Democrats in only
three of those counties in 2016. And why
the Democrats who now want to keep it
used to hate it: Republicans dominated
one-punch voting in seven of the 10 big-
gest counties in 2004.
And it doesn’t matter what’s happen-
ing statewide — just how the statewide
candidates at the top of the ticket are
doing in a particular place. When he was
winning election to the governor’s office
in 2014, Republican Greg Abbott was los-
ing to Democrat Wendy Davis in Dallas
County.
Guess how the day went for Republicans
in countywide elections there that day?
With the notable exception of Republican
Susan Hawk in a hotly contested race for
district attorney, every Republican with a
Democratic opponent lost. Those with only
Libertarian and/or Green Party opponents
just topped 70 percent.
Without a change in law — always
possible, with the Legislature in regular
session early next year — this will be the
last general election with straight-ticket
voting.
Which means it’s the last time judges
and other down-ballot candidates will have
to pin their hopes and fears on whether
their party is winning.
And some of them are worried indeed.
Look, for example, at that 2014 Dallas
County ballot: Ken Molberg, the only Dem-
ocrat running for the state’s 5th Court of
Appeals, got 54.6 percent over Republican
Craig Stoddart. Stoddart won in the other
five counties served by the court and won
the election.
That’s great for candidates like him,
when it holds. But Dallas County has be-
come a fortress for Democrats — enough
to rattle Republicans at the top of the
ballot and to make those at the bottom
quake.
The Democrats, who sat out many judi-
cial races in previous years, have candidates
this year in most races for the 5th Court and
other multi-county state appellate courts
that are dominated by big population
centers: 1st Court of Appeals in Houston (9
counties), 3rd in Austin (24 counties), 4th
in San Antonio (32 counties) and 14th in
Houston (10 counties).
The Democrats are counting on big blue
counties for upsets. The Republicans are
hoping for offsetting turnout in each court’s
red counties.
When straight-ticket voting comes to
an end in Texas, judges will have to win by
figuring out how to drag their supporters
to the bottom of long ballots. For now, they
have to worry about how their fellow parti-
sans are doing at the top of the ticket — and
whether the big blue counties will spoil
their chances.
ROSS RAMSEY is executive editor and
co-founder of The Texas Tribune. The Texas
Tribune is a nonpartisan, nonprofit media
organization that informs Texans — and
engages with them — about public policy,
politics, government and statewide issues.
response to other facts. These include what al-
most any Russian would surely tell you — that
Putin is playing Trump like a fiddle — and
that something was stinky in Helsinki.
KATHLEEN PARKERS column is
distributed by Washington Post Writers
Group.
Letters to the editor
Sporting events held hostage
Football season is starting, and so is the
debate and controversy about the players’
protest and not standing while the national
anthem is performed.
Sports events are intended for entertain-
ment; they are not supposed to be a polit-
ical or government function. They really
should be something that we can all take a
break from what is going on and relax and
have a good time no matter who we are.
So why do we have to observe the national
anthem when we attend a football, baseball
or basketball game? If it is really necessary,
then why not require we observe it for every
sport? Do we do it for golf, tennis and a lot of
other sporting events we enjoy? No.
What has happened is that it gives people
a national venue to protest and further their
own political agendas. It gives them a stage
in front of the whole world to show how they
feel about our country.
I support our citizens’ right to protest
against what they feel is wrong, but I think it is
wrong to hold our sporting events hostage —
and that is what is happening. A lot of people I
know have quit watching because they are sick
of the controversy. When they see an athlete
JOIN THE CONVERSATION
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verification. Letters should be no more than
250 words and guest essays no more than
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writers will be limited to one published letter
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be edited for clarity, length, taste and libel.
Email them to drc@dentonrc.com or mail
them to: Letters to the editor, RO. Box 369,
Denton,IX 76202.
that is making millions to play a game while
they work and struggle to provide for their
family, they get angry and they can no longer
enjoy the games. Sound familiar?
I just think it has become fashionable for
some players and the players that don’t go
along to catch hell from their fellow players,
and where are these players at legitimate po-
litical events? Well I guess they are probably
back at enjoying their millionaire lifestyles
hanging out with the Kardashians.
Dusty Connor,
Denton
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McCrory, Sean. Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 115, No. 4, Ed. 1 Monday, August 6, 2018, newspaper, August 6, 2018; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1138164/m1/4/: accessed July 2, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .