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The first Texas Observer was published almost exactly 55 years ago, on Dec. 13, 1954. It was a sad thing to look at. All that broke up the long ragged columns of type on the front page was a grainy shot of Mrs. Bob Hughes, “20-year-old Port Arthur housewife,” striking a winsome pose from the picket line of the long-running Port Arthur strike. There was also a pair of sharply reported stories about the strike, which the state attorney general had called part of “a Communist plot to take over Gulf oil ports.” On the back page—page 8—sat a big ugly ad for Tomorrow’s Victory, a book meant to inspire and organize liberal Democrats after their man, Ralph Yarborough, lost the ’54 governor’s race. Proceeds from the book sales went to the Democratic Deficit Committee.

In between, there were typos galore and left-out lines and production values roughly equivalent to those of a college newspaper of the day. But there was also a compelling back-and-forth about the kind of journalism this new magazine should pursue. The ultimate goal of the band of liberals who founded the Observer—a fairer, more just, more equitable Texas—was clear enough. But how best to use journalism to pursue it?

Paul Holcomb, editor of The State Observer—one of the publications combined to create the new Texas Observer—recommended that this new beast follow his example and “tell the truth about both friend and foe. In dealing with men and measures I try to avoid showing personal enmity, and treat any man or measure as honestly and fairly as my nature will permit,” Holcomb wrote. “But I make no pretense of being an ‘objective writer,’ simply because I do not believe that there is any such animal in existence—at least not among mortal men.”

Another paper that folded into the new Texas Observer was the short-lived East Texas Democrat. Produced by activists in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, this was an unabashedly partisan rag, battling against what its editor called “the Republicans in false face who stole the Democratic Party machinery. The Democrat was [our] means of facing these hypocrites, ball of thumb pressed to nose, with waving fingers spread and radiating to the front.”

The folks who came together to found the Texas Observer clearly had some clashing ideas about advocacy journalism. Should the Observer be a house organ for finger-waving, left-wing Texas Democrats? Or should it take a progressive but non-partisan approach, skewering bad actors on the left and right alike?

Ronnie Dugger, the brash 24-year-old editor hired to run this new hybrid Texas Observer, settled the issue pretty decisively. On the original front page, he called the thing “An Independent Liberal Weekly Newspaper” and stuck a motto on the top right that began: “We will serve no group or party.”

We haven’t published weekly in quite some time, but the other part of Dugger’s original description—”independent liberal”—has stuck like glue. There have been times, especially over the past 15 years, when we have undoubtedly investigated, editorially flogged and parodied more Republicans than Democrats. But then again, Republicans have had almost all the power in Texas during these years. As Democrats regain power statewide, we’ll be flogging more of them, too. We don’t give a damn about their party; we care about whether elected officials are representing the best interests of the people.

We see our approach, more than anything, as modeled after the Observer slogan that came along after that first issue: “Tyrant’s foe; the people’s friend.” It’s one big reason why we remain absolutists about editorial independence. You can’t be the people’s friend when you’re catering to the powerful. Dugger laid it down pretty good in that first issue:

The editor runs the paper. Editorial policy is in his hands. Ultimate control of the paper is in the hands of the trustees, acting through their directors. If the editor ceases to represent the sentiments of the trustees, or if they decide he’s not doing a good job, they fire him; if they instruct him to do something he cannot, he quits.

Fifty-five years later, the editor still keeps one foot near the door, ready to shove off if he’s asked to do “something he cannot.” And once again, we’re reinventing ourselves. As we look forward to another five decades of telling the truth about this strange state, we’re giving The Texas Observer a serious makeover. The next magazine you see will look dramatically different. Our online daily site, texasobserver.org, is being rebuilt from scratch as a reader-centered, interactive portal for progressive Texans.

The new Observer will look splashier. The content will be sprier. But the fundamentals won’t change. Our ideals have been amazingly consistent since Dec. 13, 1954, and they’re every bit as relevant—and rebellious—as they sounded on that day. Back then, Dugger quoted one of the editors whose papers he was combining into the Observer: “You can’t always be right, but you can always be honest.” We’re still down with that, too.

This is hands down the correction of the week.

The Charlotte Observer wants to make clear that one Gwendolyn Brown-Johnson has no prior criminal record in the state of North Carolina….except, you know, for the whole selling-moonshine-at-daycare thing.

The newspaper writes:

A story in Tuesday’s Local & State section about alleged moonshine sales at a day care center gave incorrect information about Gwendolyn Brown-Johnson, who was accused of selling moonshine. She has no prior N.C. criminal history or arrests.

The original story is here (state law enforcement cracked the case by sending an undercover officer to the daycare to buy two gallons of moonshine).

Maybe they just wanted to make sure the kids passed out for nap time….

(Hat tip to Regret the Error.)

The Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission (TLLRWDCC is its unwieldy acronym) isn’t exactly the sexiest state agency. But the obscure eight-member group will ultimately decide whether Texas becomes the nation’s dumping ground for radioactive waste. The compact commission met in Austin today for the first part of a two-part meeting to write rules governing the export and import of radioactive waste for the Texas-Vermont Compact.

The big decision facing the commission is whether they’ll allow Waste Control Specialists, the company licensed to build an enormous radwaste dump near Andrews, to bury waste from states other than Texas and Vermont. Activists have worried about this so-called “compact loophole” for many years.

Keep in mind that Waste Control has already been granted state approval for the burial of millions of cubic feet of radioactive waste from various sources: uranium mining, federal atomic weapons programs, and nuclear reactor waste from Texas and Vermont. In 2003, the Texas Legislature allowed a private entity (Waste Control) to apply for permission to dispose of low-level radioactive waste. After years of regulatory review, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality management signed off on the WCS dump, over the unanimous objections of the agency’s own geologists and engineers. The state experts, four of whom quit the agency in protest, maintain to this day that the dump is perilously close to two water tables and will almost certainly leak.

But only the compact commission has the power to make the Waste Control facility a truly national dump. By a majority vote, the commissioners – six of eight appointed by Gov. Perry – can allow the importation of waste from “out-of-compact” states. With a number of new nuclear power plants on the horizon and no viable option for much of the existing radioactive waste, the market is potentially huge for Waste Control.

Right now the commissioners are figuring out how the process will work. Based on the draft rules circulated today, they aren’t looking at a particularly complicated process. An entity that wants to send its waste for burial in Texas will make a petition to the compact commission; the commission will take into account various factors (the type and amount of waste, available space in the dump, economic impact, etc); and then take a majority vote.

Waste Control opponents, including a former TCEQ employee, held a press conference today, urging the commissioners to avoid turning the Andrews site into a national dumping ground.

I was able to attend the compact commission hearing today for several hours but had to leave before the main event of the day – the discussion of the “import” rules. I’ll be there tomorrow when a vote on the rules is likely to take place and will file a report.

For the meeting agenda, location and other information see here.

“I’m gonna do everything I can to stop the government takeover of health care,” Kay Bailey Hutchison declares at the git-go of her first TV commercial of the gubernatorial campaign. This was Hutchison’s November apologia, her attempt to cast the whole “Why won’t she resign and run for governor?” question behind her. But for Hutchison, every ad matters as she tries to regain the ground she lost to Gov. Rick Perry by bumbling her way through the campaign’s first year. The only other statewide candidate who has to rely as heavily on TV, for different reasons, is Farouk Shami, the hair-care magnate who’s decided to make the Democratic primary for governor his first attempt at public office. So how are Kay and Fauouk doing? Today, we’ll look at Hutchison. If you’re measuring impact by the ads’ effect on polling, she’s doing lousy. This week’s poll had her running behind Perry by double digits. One of many reasons: the ads. The first one, in which Hutchison sets out to explain her about-face on resigning from the Senate, features the senator staring placidly into the camera and talking directly to folks, just the way it’s supposed to be done. But what she says only addresses the question—why are you staying in Washington to run for governor?—in the most oblique of ways. Hutchison’s gurus clearly decided that her best line of argument was to say she was staying to “defeat government-run health care.” But the ad makes no argument about why she is essential to that effort. And it’s bound to raise more questions in many viewers’ minds. Like: Why don’t you just stay in the Senate, if big issues are going to come along at the national level and seem more important than devoting yourself to Texas? Do we want a governor like that? Hutchison obviously wasn’t going to answer those questions directly in her ad. But she should have had a script that allowed her to pierce the skepticism that could have easily been anticipated. As it is, Hutchison just comes off as self-important (“Everybody needs me,” you can easily imagine her saying. “Whatever shall I do?”). Hutchison’s second ad, “Tough as Texas,” continues that “fighter” theme, which is starting to remind me of Sen. John Cornyn’s unintentionally uproarious “Big Bad John” video during his most recent Senate campaign. Will we soon be seeing Hutchison in a hat and Wranglers, riding out on the prairie, rifle at the ready? Not quite yet. She’s still wearing dresses in this one, talking in front of such symbolic backdrops as a Heritage Foundation stage, with her accomplishments being ticked off—all of them sounding very grand but a little beyond the reach of a senator. The last one, for instance: “Quadrupled Agents on the Border.” It’s true that Hutchison voted to boost the number of Border Patrol agents significantly, as have almost all of her colleagues. But to say that she did it, that Hutchison herself did the quadrupling, is spectacularly misleading. As political lies go, it doesn’t rank as a big one. But it’s part of a pattern of Hutchison’s tendency to overstate her importance in Washington and exaggerate her accomplishments for Texas. It’s true that senators don’t have the lists of itemized accomplishments that governors can boast, simply by virtue of how their jobs work. But taking credit where you’re due very little is not the way to make yourself sound like a go-getter. (For another example, check out this fact-check of a Hutchison campaign claim.) More than anything, Hutchison sounds in her second ad like a politician desperate to think of things to brag about. Hutchison also comes out looking like a politician desperate for conversative votes. The ad ends with an image of Hutchison speaking in front of an approving-looking Dick Cheney. Even in Texas, the wisdom of having Cheney be the face of your campaign, not a year after he left office with an approval rating nearly as bad as Osama’s, is questionable at the very least. But if there’s anything that Hutchison’s early mass-media efforts have told us, it’s that she aims to compete for consevative votes rather than relying too heavily on firing up moderates and hoping to lure some non-Republicans to the polls. Hutchison is going toe-to-toe with Perry. And these two commercials illustrate one of the main reasons why she’s falling short so far: She doesn’t know how. I’ll delve into Farouk Shami’s ads shortly.

El Paso has been battling Asarco and its parent organization Grupo Mexico for years to clean up a century’s worth of toxic muck. When Asarco filed for bankruptcy in 2005 the sheer enormity  and complexity of the case made it seem like the embattled mining company would never emerge from the depths of bankruptcy court. Or rather it would emerge when pigs fly as the old saying goes.

Lo and behold, I was perusing the Rio Grande Guardian today and was astounded to read in an Arizona Daily Star article  that Asarco has indeed finally emerged from bankruptcy.

According to the Star, under the bankruptcy plan, Grupo Mexico will pay $2.2 billion in cash to creditors, plus about $1.4 billion held by Asarco.

This will be a swell Christmas for the army of lawyers who worked on this case “Fire up the Yacht boys! We’re going to Aruba!” Apparently, they think they did such a good job they are asking for bonuses on top of what they’ve already charged for their services.

The Houston law firm Baker Botts, which represented Asarco LLC (a group of creditors) in its battle with Grupo Mexico over ownership of the mining firm are asking for a ” fee enhancement” of $3.3 million on top of the $137 million the law firm has already made. Another San Antonio law firm also wants enhancement fees, according to the article.

“Law firm Oppenheimer, Blend, Harrison & Tate, of San Antonio, is asking for a 25 percent enhancement of its fees. If this were applied to the payments received to date, about $10 million, that would add up to about $2.5 million.

Separately, Robert Tate is requesting a “fee enhancement” of 25 percent for his role as a future-claims representative during the Asarco bankruptcy. Through October, Tate had been paid fees of $1,267,187.”

I like the sound of that. Maybe I’ll ask my boss for a  “salary enhancement” instead of a raise. (You understand, I am now completely indulging in fantasy, since I work for a nonprofit and a media one at that.)

The environmental clean up is already beginning around the old smelter in downtown El Paso. This is good news, though, the cleanup is not nearly extensive enough, according to environmental groups. Another concern is that Asarco’s tab for a century’s worth of pollution and Superfund sites across the nation is around $11 billion, according to State Senator Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, who has followed the case closely for years. That means the U.S. taxpayer is left holding the bag.

We can be sure, however, that the lawyers will get their “fee enhancements.” We should now take a moment of silence for the great forest of trees that gave their innocent lives for the 13,441 sheets of paper that were used in the Asarco bankruptcy legal filings. Undoubtedly, many more trees will die to print all the money it will take to pay the lawyers.

It appears that bankruptcy proceedings could be another cause of global warming.