A cartoon of Texas with the words "Loon Star State" inside its outline. The "L" in "Loon" is wearing a hat that's part cowboy and part dunce cap.

Loon Star State: Rule of Law

Accountability goes down the drain, too.

by

Ben Sargent, a bald, older white man with a bushy white beard is dressed in a suit and red bowtie, with his artistic tools, including pens, in front of him.
A cartoon image of water (labeled "Rule of Law") dribbling down the holes of a Texas-shaped drain plug.
Ben Sargent/Texas Observer

Part of our coverage of the impeachment of Ken Paxton. To see more political cartoons from Ben Sargent, visit our Loon Star State section, or find Observer political reporting here.

Read more from the Observer:

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  • Paxton, Acquitted: Politics Reporter Justin Miller outlines the prosecution’s many missed opportunities, a big campaign donation to a key Ken Paxton supporter, and more which may have led to the Attorney General getting acquitted on all 16 articles of impeachment against him. And how, even with all that, Paxton still isn’t out of hot water yet.
  • Angela Paxton’s Ties to a Shell Company: Justin Miller gets to the bottom of why K-Pax and his wife stopped over in Kosovo to promote a lobbyist-friend’s shadowy tech business.
  • Paxton is Burning: Correspondent Nancy Goldstein explains why the Texas Republican party turned, at least temporarily, against Ken Paxton after years of open corruption and abuse of power and the law.

is the Texas Observer's staff cartoonist. He launched his career drawing editorial cartoons for the Austin American-Statesman in 1974. He was born in Amarillo into a newspaper family and learned the printing trade from age 12 and started working for the local daily as a proof runner at 14. He attended Amarillo College and received a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Texas at Austin in 1970. Sargent won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 1982. He has also received awards from Women in Communications, Inc., Common Cause of Texas, and Cox Newspapers. He is the author of Texas Statehouse Blues (1980) and Big Brother Blues (1984).

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